Poem for Thursday

To the Smell of Water
By W.S. Merwin

But is it really you
behind the pretenses
beyond dust and distances
beneath the salt and the siren
announcements and ancient
impurities and decays
that claim to be you

we have thought we knew you
emerging around us
as we came to the lake
and racing by us
as we listened to the river
and reminding us
from the ends of the streets
and waving across the boardwalk
and along the sand
and hovering above the clear glass

as a child I ran to you
with a pounding heart
and out in the desert
the camel turns to you
and the rain at night
falls through you

yet it is said that none
of the breaths that we
believe to be you
is really your own
for you have none
that is yours alone

and what we take to be
you is only
what is told about you
while you remain
apart from it like our days
our nights our years

--------

Wednesday I paid for having a life Tuesday by having to write hours' worth of news bullets plus an obit of Andreas Katsulas (who deserved better than two sources) and some schlock in which Bryan Singer says he might sorta be interested maybe in directing Trek XI if and when possibly there is another Trek movie...dragging stuff like that out into five paragraphs is sometimes harder than condensing a long interview. But in better news, I caught up on comments! Other than the ones I got tonight while watching "Metamorphosis" so I can review it Friday (I can't watch it tomorrow night, as we have tickets to see Jennifer Cutting's Ocean Orchestra), I have answered that whole massive backlog! Whoo! And I took a walk in the nearly 60-degree weather that has melted nearly all the snow already.

Otherwise it was a quiet day...got quite a bit of writing done, technically finished Lupercalia fic in time for the holiday but it needs beta-ing before posting, updated my web pages, had a really fun plotty thread going in , read some more of that book of Harry Potter essays I am reviewing for GMR, ate way too much leftover Valentine's Day candy (I almost wrote Halloween, that should tell you something about what this holiday has turned into) and read half of Mr. Popper's Penguins aloud to younger son because he was in the mood for being read to, even though he is perfectly capable of reading the book himself. Haven't read it in years and was howling -- older son, who was depressed about something that happened in his Runescape game, was listening too and laughing. (I keep calling it Mr. Potter's Penguins and I keep calling Captain Cook "Captain Kirk" -- not sure if this is senility or too damn much time in fandom!)

Does anyone know where I can find a downloadable/burn-able version of "Cheney's Got a Gun" as recorded by that Seattle deejay? There seem to be a couple of versions around but I heard that one on the radio -- the one with the lyrics about Cindy Sheehan and Scooter Libby -- and thought it was really well done. That is definitely a keeper.


Today would have been my mother's mother's 100th birthday. (She kept working into her 80s, taking the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan every day.) Here is a photo taken nearly that long ago of her with her mother. I am betting that I am not the only person on LiveJournal with a relative named Goldie Horowitz.