Poem for Tuesday

Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm
By Carl Phillips

So that each
is its own, now--each has fallen, blond stillness.
Closer, above them,
the damselflies pass as they would over water,
if the fruit were water,
or as bees would, if they weren't
somewhere else, had the fruit found
already a point more steep
in rot, as soon it must, if
none shall lift it from the grass whose damp only
softens further those parts where flesh
goes soft.

There are those
whom no amount of patience looks likely
to improve ever, I always said, meaning
gift is random,
assigned here,
here withheld--almost always
correctly
as it's turned out: how your hands clear
easily the wreckage;
how you stand--like a building for a time condemned,
then deemed historic. Yes. You
will be saved.

--------

Quiet chilly Monday, I mostly stayed home, though I had to get dressed properly to put my parents' trash cans back in their garage after the garbage pickup since they weren't there and at that point I figured I might as well stay dressed instead of putting on my fuzzy pants all day. Thus I do not have a great deal to report. Did some reading, ate some leftover lo mein, cleared off some of the pile on the dining room table.

Watched Heroes and Rome as a bit of snow fell, though we're supposed to get more tomorrow. "Run!" was a perfectly respectable episode but there was no single moment that really grabbed me, except the funny ones: Ando's blonde bitch calling Hiro "Sulu" as she attacks him, then Hiro giving the security officer the Vulcan salute as he explains, "I come in peace!" I know it's not a popular position not to like Nathan -- I know the popular position is to slash him with his brother -- but it does not surprise me one bit that he'd blow off his daughter to protect his precious campaign, and although Meredith really disappoints me jumping at the chance for money (and settling for the $100,000 without blinking -- given how quickly he offers, she should hold out for half a million), I can't really blame her. I really dislike Mother Petrelli; quite on top of the way she treats Peter, the whole "you're a sperm donor who should wire the money" routine is just...ugh.

I like Claire's arc, though, getting mad at her parents and wanting her biological parents to become her instant family -- I've known enough people like that whose fathers were not manipulating their lives and their mothers' memories. Sylar meeting Mohinder is amazing, and so creepy...and I know this is wrong, but I was kind of hoping Jessica/Niki would shoot Matt, because I am so sick of Greg Grunberg and his "my popular friends got me in all these cool franchises" interviews. I enjoy the fact that I really like some heroes and really dislike others, though, it makes the show seem more real to me...and Ali Larter is really terrific because I really loathe Jessica and really like Niki.

Rome was a lot less violent this week, fortunately, because I was reaching the point where I wanted to leave the room regularly and it's not character development to show me who's willing to beat who to a bloody pulp! I like the verbal machinations so much better anyway: Cicero making the bed he's going to have to die in, Octavia spending too much time on escapism and not enough asserting her position like her mother does, Atia taking one look at her strapping boy and deciding to play the game differently! No matter what she and Servilia do to each other, I like her so much!

I enjoyed the scenes with Vorenus' daughters being unable to forgive him for their mother's death, and being convinced to suck it up and bide their time, plus Vorenus making love to a woman whom he then must make a whore of to justify having done it, but of course the episode highlight for me is Pullo's wife complaining that he left her there for Vorenus! "Him, you love. Me? No." And Pullo explaining that if they were both drowning he'd rescue her first because she weighs a lot less than Vorenus, but she doesn't quite get the joke and he doesn't quite mean the joke! That's the only true love story of this series, though I did get a little thrill when, inevitably, Octavian first sent his mother and then went himself to make peace with Antony. That was a very lovely hug. I can't wait to see what happens when Octavian hands off his sister in marriage to Antony.


The National Zoo has two nesting pairs of Sunbitterns, one pair in Amazonia and the other pair in the Indoor Flight Room in the Bird House.


While the female sat on the nest in the Bird House, the male patrolled the railing nearby...


...and let anyone who got too close what he thought about it!


Here you can see him on the railing while the mother of his eggs sits in the nest in the artificial tree at right.

In the wake of our on-and-off raccoon problems, I was very amused to read about Caddyshack raccoon problems at the MacDill Air Force Base golf course, where the critters have been stealing not only junk food but watches, car keys and wallets. In more serious scientific news, the Spitzer Space Telescope team released an infrared image of the Helix Nebula sometimes known as the eye of God or the eye of Sauron. Gorgeous photos and a mystery about all the dust in the nebula, possibly from comets that don't realize their sun is gone.