Poem for Wednesday

Blue
By May Swenson

Blue, but you are Rose, too,
and buttermilk, but with blood
dots showing through.
A little salty your white
nape boy-wide. Glinting hairs
shoot back of your ears' Rose
that tongues like to feel
the maze of, slip into the funnel,
tell a thunder-whisper to.
When I kiss, your eyes' straight
lashes down crisp go like doll's
blond straws. Glazed iris Roses,
your lids unclose to Blue-ringed
targets, their dark sheen-spokes
almost green. I sink in Blue-
black Rose-heart holes until you
blink. Pink lips, the serrate
folds taste smooth, and Rosehip-
round, the center bud I suck.
I milknip your two Blue-skeined
blown Rose beauties, too, to sniff
their berries' blood, up stiff
pink tips. You're white in
patches, only mostly Rose,
buckskin and saltly, speckled
like a sky. I love your spots,
your white neck, Rose, your hair's
wild straw splash, silk spools
for your ears. But where white
spouts out, spills on your brow
to clear eyepools, wheel shafts
of light, Rose, you are Blue.

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My father or my younger son's friend has chosen generously to share his cold with me, so I spent the day being stuffed up and cranky, and it's the wrong time of the month to begin with so I stayed home and drank lots of tea. Reviewed Star Trek: The Animated Series, not in great detail because we're planning to run reviews of each episode after finishing the original series, though since the episodes are short it'll probably be in clusters rather than each one getting its own review. I also tried turning on the entertainment shows to see the alleged Order of the Phoenix specials, but kept running into Tom & Katie and having to change the channel before I got an upset stomach on top of the head cold.

I also had time to catch up on all the activist sites I avoided religiously in the days before the election and just afterward because of the endless demands for money, starting with Planned Parenthood, where I promptly discovered Bush's plan for family planning by refusal to allow same (because celibacy has worked so well, historically, right), so if you would rather not have an anti-birth control, anti-sex education activist overseeing family planning you might want to put in your token protest for all the good it will do -- I don't think anyone is listening. Also Wyoming wolves are in a crisis situation...see, this is the other reason I stop reading activist pages, I just make myself hysterical with all the things I can't really do much about. Ah well, told me about the shopping penguin on YouTube and even though I am flabbergasted that people can keep penguins as pets in Japan no matter how they encountered them, I am also amused.


Bonsai at the National Arboretum. This is a Japanese White Pine that has been trained since 1625.


This Thorny Elaeagnus has been trained since 1825.


A Japanese Maple, trained since 1906.


A California Juniper, trained since 1968.


A Chinese Elm whose dates were labeled unknown.


And a Buttonwood from the tropical collection...it was nearly 80 degrees in this room.

In the early evening, in honor of the date, we watched JFK on one of the Cinemax channels. Haven't seen it since it was first in the theaters and my general impressions remain the same: the ludicrous excesses are still ludicrous excesses and Costner's Southern accent is only a marginal improvement on his British accent, plus Sissy Spacek is wasted in her role and Gary Oldman, while brilliant as Oswald, doesn't get nearly enough screen time (they should have cast him in Don DeLillo's Libra). But it's worth it just to see the light it sheds on the Zapruder film and the Magic Bullet theory. Tuesday nights are just not the same when there is no Boston Legal. Have had assorted sports on, including football highlights and currently UCLA beating Kentucky, but please don't ask for details as I have not been paying attention. Sister and her family are coming tomorrow, Thanksgiving madness will start, I just want my sinuses to stop hurting!