Poem for Wednesday

The North Ship
By Philip Larkin

I saw three ships go sailing by,
Over the sea, the lifting sea,
And the wind rose in the morning sky,
And one was rigged for a long journey.

The first ship turned towards the west,
Over the sea, the running sea,
And by the wind was all possessed
And carried to a rich country.

The second ship turned towards the east,
Over the sea, the quaking sea,
And the wind hunted it like a beast
To anchor in captivity.

The third ship drove towards the north,
Over the sea, the darkening sea,
But no breath of wind came forth,
And the decks shone frostily.

The northern sky rose high and black
Over the proud unfruitful sea,
East and west the ships came back
Happily or unhappily:

But the third went wide and far
Into an unforgiving sea
Under a fire-spilling star,
And it was rigged for a long journey.

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Had a somewhat hectic day as younger son remembered only this morning that he needed a list of things for Hebrew school this afternoon, necessitating a trip to Staples, and I was under orders from the entire family to pick up a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from Circuit City, which I did very happily. Since these stores are near each other I made meet me at the very good Lebanese place where I had wonderful garlicky chicken shawarma. The afternoon was crazy with carpools -- had to get kids from school and bus stop respectively, get them home, make sure that they in fact had everything they needed for Hebrew school and get them there -- but once they had been dropped off I wrote my TrekToday articles and tried to get Regulus Black to stop trying to insert himself into every fic idea in my head.

Tonight after dinner and sitting on kids about homework, we watched The Hitchhiker's Guide, which is one of those movies that gets funnier every time you see it, especially if you are in a room with your kids who can recite along and screech hysterically at the good parts. I had a crapload of laundry to fold, having gotten several days behind due to several unfortunate cat incidents better not described here but which required washing things that are not part of the weekly routine. The deleted deleted scenes were very funny and I played a few rounds of Marvin's four-letter-word hangman (not that kind of four-letter-word). I am embarrassed to talk about how I did because you can only miss five letters before you get Marvin killed, and there are a LOT of four-letter words with the same vowels! On "home" for instance I could easily have lost had the word turned out to be dome or tome. And I'd tried A and I for the second vowel after E, so I didn't have many chances to find the M, even. Anyway, even if you saw the film in the theater I highly recommend at least renting the DVD which has fun extras.

And since I don't have enough ways to waste time, I discovered and had to make this Harry Potter postcard (warning: sort of HBP spoiler, though really it will only be a spoiler if you read the book because otherwise it will make no sense at all). I need to make a Snape one tomorrow.


All the butterflies on exhibit at Brookside Gardens were obtained from a butterfly farm. I wonder whether they were taught to pose on the pretty flowers, like this viceroy.


Because can there be anything prettier than a blossom with a malachite butterfly like this one on it?


The exhibit has caterpillars as well, though not in the main part of the arboretum as I guess they are afraid they will eat the plants. This is a malachite caterpillar that will grow up to look like the photo above.


Some butterflies, like this redrim, apparently prefer rotting fruit to live flowers, so there were pieces of apple, strawberry and watermelon in dishes.


Some of the butterflies preferred to shun people and plants alike, flying to the dome of the arboretum...


...while these butterflies preferred to hide in the shade beneath the plants over the little bridge in the center.


And there were outdoor butterflies on the bushes like this swallowtail, attracted to the park by its permanent gardens.

Tomorrow is my very early morning so I shall go collapse! And I might as well end on a political note. I am not particularly a fan of Alan Dershowitz at all on a whole host of levels, but found his comments on Rehnquist and his followers worth reading anyway.