Poem for Thursday

Poems, Potatoes
By Sylvia Plath

The word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line
Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous,
In establishments which imagined lines

Can only haunt. Sturdy as potatoes,
Stones, without conscience, word and line endure,
Given an inch. Not that they're gross (although

Afterthought often would have them alter
To delicacy, to poise) but that they
Shortchange me continuously: whether

More or other, they still dissatisfy.
Unpoemed, unpictured, the potato
Bunches its knobby browns on a vastly
Superior page; the blunt stone also.h received
and renders nothing back.

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Am half-asleep after Grammy show that seemed endless but at least it seemed like lots of music performances this year and almost no awards...I felt like they cut it down to ten televised awards and performing spots for everyone the major labels are pushing. (How Kelly Clarkson beat Bonnie Raitt is something no one will ever, ever, ever be able to explain to me, so I will just take it as yet another sign of the apocalypse.) McCartney looked good, Bono still loves the sound of his own voice, I love Faith Hill even if she is shamelessly pop, my son was thrilled Green Day won. I must admit that I prefer the Oscars, Tonys and Emmys.

This morning my husband discovered that Ian McKellen's Richard III was on, and I meant only to record it but I ended up watching it while I was doing chores...then I went out to lunch with and the aforementioned , who asked me to record Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which we don't actually own on DVD. So I made watch it with me, and oh, that movie has not dated AT ALL and is still SO GOOD and I was reciting along with all the good lines, which are far too many to list here, and I got all choked up at the end even though I have 1) seen it 30 times and 2) know what happens in the sequel! Shatner gives a really lovely performance -- I'd forgotten about the scene with McCoy and the glasses, and the one with Scotty's nephew in sickbay -- and it was so poignant to see Carol and David, both of whom are played by actors no longer with us.

And then, in the evening, after writing a funnier than it should have been TrekToday article on a British guy who rebuilt his flat to look like the interior of a starship but is now broke, we stumbled across To Catch a Thief. Grace Kelly is one of my favorite guilty pleasures -- quite possibly the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, even though she has the whole stereotypically blonde Irish Catholic aristicratic royalty thing going and you'd think after I griped about this in King Kong I should have more politically correct attractions or something. Heh. Anyway, that movie holds up magnificently too. "Do you want a leg or a breast?" "You make the choice."

Yeah, it was a pop culture indulgence kind of day. Oops. *g*


Sharks in the great circular Open Ocean tank at the National Aquarium. In the water below the tank you can make out rays in the Wings in the Water pool, where there are also small sharks and a sea turtle.