Poem for Monday

From "Five Poems Entitled 'Questions"
By Gail Mazur

What is my purpose in life
if not to peer into the glazed bowl
of silence and fill it for myself
with words? How shall I do it?
The way a disobedient child sings
to herself to keep out the punishing
night, not knowing that her brother
and sister, hearing the song,
shift in their cots of demons
and are solaced into sleep?

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Another from Poet's Choice by Robert Pinsky in Sunday's The Washington Post Book World. (There, , more Gail Mazur!) "Audacity and modesty," writes Pinsky. "In Mazur's work, those apparent opposites reveal their secret kinship: Modesty from its place on the sidelines can see through the conventional sham of the rules, and audacity has the confidence to embrace the plain, ordinary truth. In the face of demons or emptiness, Mazur offers a song. In her 'Five Poems Entitled 'Questions,'' all five parts begin with the grand yet homely words 'What is my purpose in life.' Here is the first poem of the sequence [in which] even the phrase 'purpose in life' is ironic, almost parodic -- and not. Part of the pleasure in these poems is their simultaneous large scope and measured, deceptively quiet voice."

Have had utterly lovely and completely exhausting day, beginning early since the kids had Hebrew school. I saw very little of my family today; in the afternoon and I went to the Northern Virginia circle's Yule ritual, which involved mistletoe, wassail and demolishing a gingerbread house; we met there and after eating much wonderful food including hummus, chili, almond cookies and several kinds of cheese, we went to see Brokeback Mountain. I'm afraid I cried just as much as the first time. And lost my voice, though says this is probably less from crying than because I talk too much. *g* I can't help it if there are many lovely fannish people in the pagan circle and if the husband of the woman who was hosting the ritual has many Grateful Dead bootlegs though not as many as my husband and if I always thought it was pronounced "Baldur" rather than "Balthur" and many other things to discuss!

Meanwhile family went out to dinner at Burger King because younger son wanted one of the Furby kids meal toys, and everyone was happy when I got home because the Redskins had beaten the Cowboys by a huge margin (the kids, of course, were not yet asleep). Now I have taken my shower and really must go collapse, since my head is refusing to stay upright. Shall catch up on things tomorrow. Thank you, , for my birthday present! Here are a couple more Congressional Aquarium photos from Saturday...


An electric blue lobster admires itself in the mirror.


And here's a little red lobster showing off its own underside.