Little Reviews: Poem for Thursday

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain
By Wallace Stevens

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.

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I have had A Day. It started out quite nicely, getting some stuff done online, then going out to lunch with and who are two of my favorite women (and we had Indian food, one of my favorite things). Then I drove home, in a pouring rainstorm that left me with a headache from trying to concentrate on the slippery road, to an e-mail from my older son's Spanish teacher telling me that the two kids who taunted him on and off last year have been complaining in her class that my son is rude to them and she is concerned that he may be provoking them. He says they wait for him outside the classroom and tell him he has no friends and call him a geek, which sounds accurate -- I don't think he's lying about this to get out of trouble. But now I don't know what to do, because if I tell the teacher that these boys have been harrassing him, she may be obligated to tell the vice principal because of the school's anti-bullying policy, and he may be taunted ten times worse about having told his mommy and the administration. On the other hand, if I don't say something, the teacher is going to think he's a troublemaker. God, middle school sucks -- I'd almost forgotten.

Then younger son came home from school and started going on about how he HAS to have a Furby and can't wait till Chanukah and what chores can he do and can he have a bake sale or car wash or something to raise the money? When I suggested that it would be a much nicer idea to have a bake sale to raise money for hurricane victims, he became disconsolate. Meanwhile, for the school's coin drive, I have been counting all the change that has collected in plastic cups behind the gerbil cages, where apparently has thrown far more quarters than I realized...I stopped counting at $110 in quarters and dimes (didn't even count the nickels, and the enormous jar of pennies is going to school uncounted). I guess the small change really does add up. Younger son wanted to know why he couldn't borrow $30 of this to get a Furby and was not in the mood for discussing generosity toward people who have much less than himself. Tried to put some respect in him by asking how he would feel if Hurricane Ophelia came up the coast and wiped out everything we had, succeeded only in making it impossible for him to fall asleep. My parenting score for Wednesday: -5, according to older son, even though we agreed to let him subscribe to some Nintendo magazine for his school's magazine drive. Hey, did I ask whether anyone wants to buy some Sally Foster wrapping paper to support public education? Samples here. *g*

In the "irrelevant but relaxing" department, I made some more postcards: one more Harry Potter (POA spoilers) and two Deep Space Nine (finale spoilers). And husband spontaneously decided to make a chocolate chip bundt cake because he spotted sour cream in the refrigerator, so I cannot really complain, apart from being a failure as a mother. Thursday we have Back to School night and I am not looking forward to meeting the Spanish teacher at all...