Poem for Monday

Tangled
By Kenneth Fields

The rabbits were at the door, a little bulge
Just above the left eye. The rattlesnakes
Tangled above her knees as the bedclothes turned,
"Another transparent night." The songs were singing
Every day now even while she was driving,
Her little finger buzzing like the end of a tail,
Her toos cant moos, this was not being well.
She began to dream of someone who needed her,
Somebody lost on the highway, left
To dry on the line, barbed wire, telephone wire --
The whips and jangles, nothing coming clear,
The buzzing static on the radio,
Heat-seeking, diamondhead,
And safety somewhere beyond those coils of sound.

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Another from Poet's Choice by Robert Pinsky in The Washington Post Book World on Sunday from Fields' poetry about his battle with alcoholism. "The peculiar music of distortion -- 'Her toos cant moos' -- is more evident, less held back," writes Pinsky. "It's notable that these poems are clear without being judgmental. Imaginative details such as the buzzing little finger, the three kinds of wire, unexpected adjectives like 'diamondhead'...create an intimacy, a shared viewpoint or imagining. The poet's art, by being so closely attentive, is generous to its desperate characters."

I spent Sunday morning in an only partially successful effort to catch up on mail and stuff, then went with to celebrate Lammas in Virginia. It was a very small group this time and I think the two of us and were the only people there who did not meet initially through love of Gerard Butler. *g* But I love the harvest holidays even though they're sadder holidays than Beltane and Midsummer -- fall is my favorite season in every way except the earlier sunsets -- and as always the food was wonderful, peach bread and cheese fondue and punch made with the sweet wine whose name I always forget to write down.

My parents had taken the kids swimming while got stuff to try to fix our downstairs toilet, so we ended up having dinner at their house. It turns out that one of my father's longtime friends and tennis partners is now dating my mother's very good, recently widowed friend whom I really don't like but whom I felt obligated to invite to the Bar Mitzvah because of her bereavment...so they are both coming. I don't object to the partner, in fact I worked a couple of summers at his law firm in high school, but I feel overwhelmingly like we are throwing a party for more of my parents' friends than our own. And I feel more at home in a pagan circle than I do at my own synagogue...something really has to change before younger son's Bar Mitzvah.


Seeing a baby deer in Shenandoah National Park is perhaps not as utterly cool as baby bears, but it's still adorable.


We were much closer to this deer in the woods right off the Bearfence Mountain summit trail, which crosses the Appalachian Trail a few yards from here.


A caterpillar in sunlight on a tree near the summit.


And a bird atop one of the numerous dead trees in the park -- hemlocks attacked by aphids, I'm told.

My only major plans for Monday are to buy younger son new shoes. The kids are home all week next week, meaning I am going to be crazed and unproductive!