Poem for Friday

Done With
By Ann Stanford

My house is torn down--
Plaster sifting, the pillars broken,
Beams jagged, the wall crushed by the bulldozer.
The whole roof has fallen
On the hall and the kitchen
The bedrooms, the parlor.

They are trampling the garden--
My mother's lilac, my father's grapevine,
The freesias, the jonquils, the grasses.
Hot asphalt goes down
Over the torn stems, and hardens.

What will they do in springtime
Those bulbs and stems groping upward
That drown in earth under the paving,
Thick with sap, pale in the dark
As they try the unrolling of green.

May they double themselves
Pushing together up to the sunlight,
May they break through the seal stretched above them
Open and flower and cry we are living.

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It's almost the weekend and it's almost the end of March and these both must be good things. I fought off a headache all day today -- I'm sure the pollen is largely responsible, it doesn't feel migraine-ish -- and am finally feeling clear-headed. Met spontaneously for lunch, which ended up being really nice even though it took the Corner Bakery half an hour to make two cold sandwiches and the manager griped at me when I went in to ask what was taking so long (one of the waitresses offered us free cookies as compensation but I am really unimpressed with the way the place is run). Then we went to Target and Barnes & Noble and now I have an earpiece so I can use my 600 whenever minutes without having to hold the phone up to my head. I tried to test the wi-fi on the phone in B&N but this one doesn't have a Starbucks, so it's on AT&T's network and it's not free! Still, I could surf B&N's web site really fast, so I am assuming it works. Must go to Borders (which sent me a 25% off coupon so I will be buying my next book there anyway) and test it there since the hot spot it T-Mobile's.

In the early evening younger son had soccer practice. I wrote a bunch of articles, reasonably interesting -- George Takei is speaking on GLBT tolerance at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, and Scott Bakula is still in DC doing Shenandoah at Ford's Theatre which I really wish I could afford to see on Good Friday, the night Lincoln was shot, since that is supposedly the best night to see the ghost. This weekend (weather cooperating) we are going to an American Revolution reenactment at Gunston Hall, the home of George Mason, so it would only be appropriate to visit it on the day the school bearing his name plays in the Final Four. *waves to and smooches *

Tonight before watching "The Trouble With Tribbles," which of course we all enjoyed greatly, we watched the new unimproved Smallville where Lex hires mass murderers to fuck with Clark. In every sense of the word. My kids were embarrassed by the sex scene that was fortunately interrupted and so was I; something is wrong when someone burning down a warehouse with people in it bugs me less than gratuitous sex on a show. I mean, yay that Clark and Lana broke up Really For Real For Good this time (until sweeps month), but otherwise I enjoyed the Professor Fine-and-Lex parts of the episode much more than anything else. Even though I felt sorry for Simone and think it sucks that they killed her off so gratuitously, though I knew she was doomed when we found out she killed her father; on this show that was bound to be inexcusable, since it's Lionel's crime.

Okay, good points: Clark still has to be under mind control to be heterosexual. When he said he discovered from Simone that he really, truly does not want Lana, that's what I took it to mean, at least. Also, when Lex wants to know about Simone's progress and she says Lana won't be sending Clark any more Valentine cards, I expected current Lex to do a "YES!" because he wants Lana...but no, he blows off this information to demand to know what she knows about Clark! Simone says Clark is extraordinary kisser and Lex takes a long, deep breath before asking if there is more. He wants details about Clark in bed! But Simone says he's just what he looks like -- a farm boy -- and tells Lex to get out of her life. That was the moment at which I started to like her, so I knew right then that she was doomed.

But seriously, I can't enjoy Chloe when she runs around harping on how Clark needs to stay with Lana! Like, in five places this episode all she wanted to talk about was Lana, Lana, Lana! Which would be fine if she had a crush on Lana (though silly, when she could have a crush on Lois or even Martha), but since allegedly she has a crush on Clark...urgh. Okay, nice that she took out Martha when Martha was holding a gun on Lois but please, doesn't Lois ever get to use her kick-ass strength instead of being rescued by someone? And nice that she thought to bring the kryptonite to knock out Clark when he needed to be knocked out...for all his going on about how it's too dangerous to tell anyone his secret, Chloe is proof that he NEEDS to make sure someone he really trusts knows his secret, so that someone will be able to stop him when he gets under the influence of red kryptonite or mind control or whatever the next menace to come along might be.

If anyone needed proof that Clark and Lana do not belong together, Kristin Kreuk's apparent boredom while delivering the line, "I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you don't love me," should be enough. I loved Martha suggesting that maybe Clark didn't want to tell her because maybe deep down he didn't think she was the one! Even if this goes against canon. Though then Martha had to deliver that bad line about how maybe he gave her reason to hate him and she hopes they don't all regret it. Bad foreshadowing anyone? Just like the ending when sinister Lex tells her not to feel stupid, she put her trust in the wrong person. I am kind of rooting for the X-Files rip-off black oil alien clones who look like James Marsters; at least he still has a sense of humor.

Ooh, but did you see that Michael Palin's book on his trek through India, Pakistan and China is about to become required reading in British high school geography classes? Monty Python teaches geography! "This graph represents one-quarter..."


Because I don't think I've ever posted a photo of Great Falls taken from between the towpath and Falls Island, before the bridge to Olmsted Island -- the whirlpool.

Kids have no school Friday and I have to write up my Tribbles review and do laundry. But Doctor Who is on at night!