Poem for Wednesday

Rising Dust
By Margaret Avison

The physiologist says I am well over
half water.
I feel, look, solid; am
though leaky firm.
Yet I am composed
largely of water.
How the composer turned us out
this way, even the learned few do not
explain. That’s life.

And we’re in need of
more water, over and over, repeatedly
thirsty, and unclean.

The body of this earth
has water under it and
over, from
where the long winds sough
tirelessly over water, or shriek around
curved distances of ice.

Sky and earth invisibly
breathe skyfuls of
water, visible when it
finds its own level.

Even in me?
Kin to waterfalls
and glacial lakes and sloughs
and all that flows and surges,
yet I go steadily,
or without distillation climb at will
(until a dissolution
nobody anticipates).

I’m something else besides.
The biochemist does not
concern himself with this.
It too seems substance,
A vital bond threaded on an
as-if loom out there.
The strand within
thrums and shudders and twists.
It cleaves to this
colour or texture and
singles out to a rhythm
almost its own, again,
anticipating design.

But never any of us
physiologist or fisherman
or I
quite makes sense of it. We
find our own level

as prairie, auburn or
snow-streaming, sounds forever
the almost limitless.

--------

Last night I was whining that I needed to go to Target to return stuff, and it turned out that had to go to Target to return stuff too, so we decided to meet for lunch and returning stuff! I had a reasonably successful day, too, as I found underwear at Kohl's that was a much better replacement for the underwear I was returning. My mother's new strategy is apparently to e-mail my husband with questions/advice and bypass me, so I only heard the discussion about food plans second-hand, which is fine with me. Now I realize I must buy some decent pantyhose.

When the kids got home, younger son told me that they had a writing assessment today and they were supposed to write about what they like about autumn. He wrote about an evil black leaf that wouldn't let bugs land on it and scared all the other leaves into falling off. I am not sure whether to praise his creativity or worry that his teacher will think he's a wise-ass, since I know some of the kids in his class undoubtedly used high school level adjectives to describe the colors of the leaves and stuff. *g* Speaking of younger son's interests, posted about And Tango Makes Three, a book about the New York gay penguins for children, and she posted some pictures from it here -- I must get this for our family! Also discovered the situation with wolves in Alaska, which is appalling.


The USS Enterprise! Which the Air & Space Museum has taken out of a speculative fiction gallery that used to have actual clips from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and relegated to a place of honor in the gift shop. The good news is that this means it's much closer to eye level; the bad news is that it means it's behind glass and hard to get a good photo!


This is a Fokker D.VII from World War I. If you are not laughing hysterically at that name, you are obviously not a ten-year-old boy.


Also from the World War I Aviation exhibit, a replica of an Underground station entrance leading to a display on air raids. This made me nostalgic for London despite the circumstances.


And for , one more photo of Earhart's Vega with the side markings visible.

Wednesday I am finally seeing and after months of going without! Whoo!