Poem for Monday

Us in the Dark Wandering Home
By Michelle Mitchell-Foust

    Falcarragh, Ireland
        For Kevin and Pam

I found the Aristotle paraphrases
of Albertus Magnus, and the milky way
was certainly full of stars. I couldn't stop
reading the revision of Magnus saying the lunar
rainbow appeared to him twice in one year,
not the once-in-fifty-years of Aristotle.
I have only seen the lunar rainbow once in a lifetime,
over the high bog of an ancient gravesite
lit by a ringed moon. The whole thing
with a small rain.

It was midnight and the arch was black
and every color, and the new burros and sheep
made such a racket instead of sleeping
that we knew we were seeing something profound
among the sock puppet headstones
in the deep August light, us wondering whether
the souls of the layers of the dead beneath us warmed
to the rain under the phenomenon,
us in the dark wandering home.

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Another from Poet's Choice by Robert Pinsky in Sunday's The Washington Post Book World. He calls this "a poem more candidly of wonder -- also in response to an unusual natural light, also urbane and learned, and also with a personal component -- [from] Imago Mundi, a recent book by the American poet Michelle Mitchell-Foust."

We got nine inches of snow, all told, and woke to a gorgeous world iced in white. The sun came out for a while and melted some of it, then the sky clouded over and flurried for awhile, then the sun came out again in the evening...so now we have ice, power lines in trouble and school closed tomorrow because parts of the county have no electricity and plenty of traffic problems. My kids are not terribly devastated. *G* They went sledding first in the yard here, then behind my junior high school. In the late afternoon after I wrote the articles I didn't write yesterday, we went over to my parents' for dinner and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which neither of my parents nor my uncle had ever seen. I know it's not faithful to the books but I still adore that movie. ("I could tell you the odds, but you won't like them.") Younger son sang "So Long And Thanks For All the Fish" and recited half the movie before it happened -- he adores this film.









It's early Monday and I still haven't done the Friday Fives. this week is about what five villains have been so overused that I never want to see them again; I'm not sure whether this is about types or specific characters but as I don't read comic books or see all the movies based on them, which is where the overused-villain syndrome seems most acute, I can't really think of any (I mean, I'm certainly not sick of Cardassians or Napoleon). this week is about belief in God, whether good and evil exist, what forgiveness is and what I'd do if I played God. If I thought these questions could be answered seriously in the space of a nightly journal entry, I'd be very depressed. Which brings us to :

Bittersweet
1. Can you dance? Terribly, but does that really matter? I like to dance.
2. Who is your current crush? Hah!
3. Tell us about a dream you remember. The most recent one I remember in any detail was about my family going with my parents and my in-laws on a trip to Australia where my father was convinced we were going to be late for everything because of the time change and failure to set our watches correctly.
4. Do you live with anyone, or do you live by yourself? Husband, two sons, two cats, two gerbils.
5. When is the last time you bled from an injury? When I was viciously bitten by one of the aforementioned gerbils.

To quote , "So, Vice President Cheney shot someone while hunting. Why couldn't it have been Scalia?" And on that bitchy note, I shall go to bed! Have a happy Tu B'Shvat. I don't suppose I will be planting any trees tomorrow, but they look very pretty with the snow on them.