Poem for Thursday

Atlas
By Michael Hoffman

He went West, drifted
through the Italo-Western desert,
bluffs, razor-wire, Coppertone,
to the paranoid steers' heads
of Atlas' spread.
He nosed along the wire,
grazing beasts in their thousands,
through to the sea.
A peon took him to Atlas.
They spoke under a greenback tree,
the bark was singles, the leaves tens,
the fruit hundreds. He didn't know
where to look, the man-mountain
or his millions. He blurted out
his request, something to eat
and a place to stay. "I'm the son
of God. If you treat me real nice
he'll pay you out.
I may be just a kid,
but I been in with some fellows
I can tell you about." Atlas
had been tipped off. Verbum sap.
A guy shooting this kind of line
about gods and great deeds
was coming to get his tree.
"Son, if your daddy's not
who you say he is, and your deeds
are nothing special, you in big trouble.
Now get out of here, before
I make you." Perseus talked back,
pleaded with him, got fresh.
He grabbed him by the scruff,
lifted him clean off the ground,
carried him straight-armed
off his property like a kicking
jackrabbit and dropped him.
Red with snape and exertion,
Perseus went for his big shooter,
a museum piece, his grandmother's.
He looked the other way,
and let him have it, both barrels.
Atlas stiffened and went all big on him,
went slope, scree, treeline,
col, ridge, dome, peak.
It was really neat.

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Another poem for which you can thank -- I am sure it is both very wrong and shallow that in addition to the mythic references, it makes me think of Lucius and Draco Malfoy and Voldemort. *g*

We got half an inch of snow this morning, mostly on trees and grass and rooftops, so the entire world was stunningly scenic before lunchtime. I stayed in and caught up on comments and work and stuff, finished the that I realized was due in less than a week, organized my photo books, resized some photos. Hubby had asked me to record The Man With One Red Shoe off cable in the afternoon and I left the TV on -- damn, I forgot how funny that movie is. Then older son wanted to be picked up early to work on his science fair project, which required lots of typing and cutting and pasting for the posterboard.

So it was a relatively quiet evening, and when we got bored with the Olympics I pulled out my 1984 videotape Torvill and Dean: Path To Perfection which I am gratified to report that my entire family watched and enjoyed! Then we just spent two hours watching the best of Monty Python on public television, laughing hysterically -- how come the Ministry of Silly Walks, Spam and the communist quiz show on football never get old? Maybe because I could not deal with watching the news, again, this evening! (How not to be seen...don't stand up!)


Another from the cemetery at Gettysburg.