Poem for Tuesday

At the Window
By Linda Gregerson

Suppose, we said, that the tumult of the flesh
were to cease
and all that thoughts can conceive, of earth,
of water, and of
air, should no longer speak to us; suppose
that the heavens
and even our own souls were silent, no longer
thinking of themselves
but passing beyond; suppose that our dreams
and the visions
of our imagination spoke no more and that every
tongue and every sign
and all that is transient grew silent—for all
these things
have the same message to tell, if only we can
hear it, and
their message is this: We did not make ourselves,
but he
who abides forever made us. Suppose, we said,
that after giving
us this message and bidding us listen to him who
made them they
fell silent and he alone should speak to us,
not through them
but in his own voice, so that we should hear
him speaking,
not by any tongue of the flesh or by an angel's
voice, not in the
sound of thunder or in some veiled parable
but in his own voice,
the voice of the one for whose sake we love
what he has made;
suppose we heard him without these, as we two
strained to do …
And then my mother said, "I do not know why
I am here."
And my brother for her sake wished she might
die in her own
country and not abroad and she said, "See
how he speaks."
And so in the ninth day of her illness, in the
fifty-sixth year
of her life and the thirty-third of mine, at the
mouth of the Tiber
                           in Ostia ...

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Another Linda Gregerson poem, this one snicked from Slate, of which Robert Pinsky (who also writes Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World. I try not to snick from just him too much, but she's worth reading more.

I pretty much accomplished two things today: finished the slideshow for my mother's birthday party Tuesday (to "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof, which younger son declared stupid, which makes me think it's definitely the right song), and took the cats to the vet. I should note that our vet's assistant says that Cinnamon is the loudest cat she has ever heard, and she's worked there for quite awhile! Cinnamon is normally a rather cheerful chatty cat -- not a lap cat like Rosie, but she sleeps in bed with us and follows us around the house -- so to get rrrowls and mrrreeeowls of this magnitude out of her requires true horrors like blood tests, rabies shots and having her thyroid examined. She checked out fine; Rosie has a badly rotting tooth that will have to be removed and that may be causing her sneezing, though she's doing much less of that now. Neither of these cats is a biter or a scratcher, but they are both wrigglers and strugglers and great big whiners, so taking them to the vet is always exhausting, and with stitches in my neck I couldn't have managed both carriers myself.


Cinnamon being put through the torture of being weighed. It generally takes two grown men to keep her still for long enough to accomplish this.


Rosie attempts to escape the same terrible fate. The floor is just too far down for her to risk jumping, though it was not far enough to keep Cinnamon from leaping and trying to squish herself under the bench.


Cinnamon may look resigned to her fate, but don't be fooled: you can tell from her perked ears that she is just waiting for an opportunity to yowl and leap.


Rosie was not happy until she was back in her cat carrier. Of course, as soon as she was in the van, she started meowing piteously again and kept it up until we got home.

Saw my sister for awhile when we got back from the vet, since she is in town for my mother's party. We offered to take my parents out to dinner Thursday night for my mother's birthday and can already tell that there is going to be strife over this because my father is angling to go to different places than my mother is angling to go. Missed part of Heroes because mother and sister were here -- I gather that Claire's father remembers more than is probably good for him if the Bad Shapeshifter Chick is pretending to be his wife and getting him busted? I picked up a bit of blathering exposition with characters declaring that Nathan is really a Nice Guy who Cares Too Much but sorry, not buying it, haven't seen nearly enough evidence that he is anything other than Selfish and Short-Sighted. Love Claire trying to defy the Haitian -- and meeting her grandmother, who introduces herself as such and at the moment I am liking better than her politician son!

I suppose Mohinder wasn't going to escape from Sylar no matter what, nor could he protect the list once he he realized what he was dealing with, but man that situation sucks. How come Cancer Man is stalking the good guys and ignoring him? It rocks that Linderman is Malcolm McDowell (does "I've been known to eat zucchini when the mood strikes but not as a rule" mean "I suck cock sometimes but I don't want to suck yours"?) and it's totally awesome that Ando comes back to rescue Hiro, but it sucks that they're so inconsistent about when Niki can overwhelm Jessica and when she can't, and I wish D.L. would get a clue.

At 10 we put up with pledge drive interruptions to watch Loreena McKennitt's Nights from the Alhambra on Great Performances on PBS. The pledge drive people interviewed her in between requests for money and it was very interesting to listen to her talk about being inspired by mystics and the early music of the Celts. She did many of the pieces off her new CD ("Incantation, "Caravanserai," "Penelope's Song") and talked about the history of Alhambra, but she also did many of my older favorites: "The Mystic's Dream," "The Bonny Swans," "The Lady of Shalott" (shamelessly sliced up by PBS to get in more time for pleading for money), "Bonny Portmore," "She Moved Through the Fair," "The Old Ways" and "Dante's Prayer." So at least I am calmer after the Cat Crisis. Must get up early and make myself pretty for mother's party! Am way behind on comments and haven't read anyone's LJ for two days (sorry sorry), so if I missed something big, please tell me?