Poem for Tuesday

The Shyness
By Sharon Olds

Then, when we were joined, I became
shyer. I became completed, joyful,
and shyer. I may have shone more, reflected
more, and from deep inside there rose
some glow passing steadily through me, but I was not
playing, now, I felt a little like someone
small, in a raftered church, or in
a cathedral, the vaulted spaces of the body
like a sacred woods. I was quiet when my throat was not
making those iron, orbital, rusted,
coming noises at the hinge of matter and
whatever is not matter. He takes me into
ending after ending like another world at the
center of this one, and then, if he begins to
end when I am resting I feel awe, I almost feel
fear, sometimes for a moment I feel
I should not move, or make a sound, as
if he is alone, now,
howling in the wilderness,
and yet I know we are in this place
together. I thought, now is the moment
I could become more loving, and my hands moved shyly
over him, secret as heaven,
and my mouth spoke, and in my beloved’s
voice, by the bones of my head, the fields
groaned, and then I joined him again,
not shy, not bold, released, entering
the true home, where the trees bend down along the
ground and yet stand, then we lay together
panting, as if saved from some disaster, and for ceaseless
instants, it came to pass what I have
heard about, it came to me
that I did not know I was separate
from this man, I did not know I was lonely.

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Monday was my older son's birthday so in the morning I...why am I explaining this when I got maybe three comments after saying my younger son had come home early from school because he'd hit his head? You're here for fannish stuff and maybe pictures or poetry. Unfortunately I don't really have any fannish stuff at the moment, as I'm not watching any Monday night shows and I didn't have any time to read today.

I didn't even manage to transcribe the Marina Sirtis-LeVar Burton interview I was supposed to do for TrekToday. There is something wrong when I am living in dread of having to sit through one more Sirtis interview, and the prospect of trying to dredge some new information out of yet another Connor Trinneer interview is making me want to run screaming. My editor was trying to be nice and said I could do the interviews in two parts but there is just not enough interesting material for two articles, I don't think! Perhaps I am just cynical, since there seems to be enough for ten Shatner articles a month.

I have been doing this for too damn long. All of this. The fortune in my fortune cookie at the Chinese buffet tonight said I would soon be in a new line of work. Am thinking these days I could write ad copy and feel like less of a sellout than I do as a professional science fiction fan, particularly since I am barely even a fan nowadays. Then again I am not even sure who I am actually talking to here, either...

Got new live October Project CDs with some of the songs we heard them do in Philadelphia and Vienna that aren't out on a studio album yet. Having survived an evening of fencing lessons, Skies of Arcadia and Furby, I'm going to listen, because this is a very awesome thing. Yes, I am getting my period -- what makes you ask?


Bunny on a leash at Rock Creek Park Day. This is the first time I've ever seen anyone walking a rabbit outside of a backyard or a county fair.