Poem for Friday

Dark Harbor 10
By Mark Strand

It is a dreadful cry that rises up,
Hoping to be heard, that comes to you
As you wake, so your day will be spent

In the futile correction of a distant longing.
All those voices calling from the depths of elsewhere,
From the abyss of an August night, from the misery

Of a northern winter, from a ship going down in the Baltic,
From heartache, from wherever you wish, calling to be saved.
And you have no choice but to follow their prompting,

Saving something of that sound, urging the harsh syllables
Of disaster into music. You stare out the window,
Watching the build-up of clouds, and the wind whipping

The branches of a willow, sending a rain of leaves
To the ground. How do you turn pain
Into its own memorial, how do you write it down,

Turning it into itself as witnessed
Through pleasure, so it can be known, even loved,
As it lives in what it could not be..

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Son was much better Thursday but we decided to keep him home another day; he's still eaten almost no solid food, had been spending a long time on the toilet because his intenstines were irritated and he has to get up so early to catch the bus across the county that we thought it wasn't worth risking him getting sick again. Our original plans for this weekend were to visit my sister in New York, but she and her family are going to Florida unexpectedly, so we will take it somewhat easier around here and maybe go to the National Aquarium to see the new Australia exhibit and the National Zoo to see the pandas. Of course, as soon as he started to get better and I thought I could get out of the house for awhile, called to tell me that when he went out at lunchtime to get Gatorade, his van started making horrible noises and the "Service Vehicle" light went on...now that van is at the dealer and I will be without transportation! I believe that the lovely and her mother are going to shlep up here anyway, to my great joy, because I will not see her for far too long once she leaves for England.

Tonight after I got done schlepping to the dealer to pick up , I took a walk in the gorgeous nearly-60-degree weather. The sun was setting, there was a nearly-full moon hovering on the horizon and on the path into the woods I saw two deer who stood and stared at me until I was quite close to them. Of course, I did not have my camera, only my mp3 player, but I bet that if I had had the camera, I might not have seen all this loveliness, so it's all good. In the evening we all watched "Mirror, Mirror" which I need to review tomorrow (oh, the camp, the slash, the costumes, the fun!) and Smallville, which I just don't enjoy the same way I did now that I must listen to Clark and Lana's romantic tribulations and rarely get the Clex I crave, but I do have a wish list: If they must kill someone off, since it looks like Lionel, Chloe and Jonathan are the most likely choices and I really, really don't want to lose Lionel or Chloe, let them kill off Jonathan and then let Martha and Lionel date! Please! It would rock, it would fuck up Clark AND Lex, it would be so right in its wrongness and then if they decide to bring Bo Duke back from the dead (c'mon, this is fantasy, not even Superman stayed dead forever), he can find his wife canoodling with Lionel Luthor and break heavy farm equipment!

Otherwise, I giggled at Clark trying to explain his sexual problems to a reluctant-to-think-about-it Chloe, I loved Lex's little stalker fan and I especially loved the way Lois dealt with her during the Manchurian Candidate scenes, though I must agree with Lex's stalker that Lois is really off her military conditioning. It would really, really have been nice for a change if Lois saved the day all by herself without Clark catching bullets. It was a neat special effect but not really necessary story-wise, and after Lois got put in that compromising position because neither she nor Jonathan took threats seriously, it would have rocked to see Lois take charge and have the situation in hand before Clark ever arrived.


Tethys and Oceanus in a Roman mosaic from the ruins of Antioch at the Baltimore Museum of Art.