Poem for Tuesday

They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek
By Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek,
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek
That are now wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown did from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, "Dear heart, how like you this?"

It was no dream, I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness,
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

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You can thank The Tudors for the poem, since Wyatt was writing it in the sixth episode which I finally got around to watching (he read it to Thomas Tallis, who's delightfully a bit gay in this production.) I got to watch while finally getting the laundry folded, though it was a near thing, because younger son came home and announced that he had to have pine cones for a math project, and the pine cones in our neighborhood were rejected because they didn't have the right swirl patterns to determine how many of the little pointy bits were going clockwise or counterclockwise, thus requiring my husband and my parents to check out the pine cones near where they live and work before finally came home with five that passed muster.

Otherwise, it was a quiet day...wrote up a bunch of trivial Trek news (including Doohan's ashes gone missing as the rocket payload is lost somewhere in the New Mexico mountains), took a long walk because it was so gorgeous out, and ate very little because I have a cankersore right where my tongue hits the inside of my mouth and it hurts like hell when I eat. Watched Heroes, a.k.a. My Mother Made Me Do It; was pleased to see various plot threads converging (hey, they did have a plan!) but am still not liking some of the characterization, namely: the Petrelli love is lost on me.

Hello, Nathan? The correct answer when someone tries to justify mass murder to you is "Excuse me, but I need to be leaving now," not "Hmm, let me think about how this might impact my career and consider the ways in which this might be rationalized." Even sociopathic serial killer Sylar is more freaked out about the impending destruction of New York than Nathan! I gather we're supposed to believe that their manipulative pushy evil mothers are at fault, because with the very refreshing exception of Nikki/Jessica, the mothers on this show are pretty much sticking to stereotype -- they're either ignorant/victimized/trivial like Claire's adoptive and birth mothers, Hiro's and Mohinder's mothers who vanish beside their powerful fathers, et al, or they're Bitch Queens of the Universe like Mrs. Petrelli and Gabriel's mom. I'd be more willing to buy that Sylar's mother put so much pressure on him that he snapped if I wasn't supposed to buy as well that Mrs. Petrelli has Nathan so whipped that he sits around contemplating mass slaughter as presidential strategy because Mommy said it would be all right.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I am so annoyed about it that it really ruins the things I like about this episode, like Hiro's insistence that he can't kill Sylar if it will make him become like Sylar, Mohinder discovering that he was born too late to save a sister he never knew but he can save the little girl whom Thompson says might be able to save them all, and Bennett wanting to stay focused on the big picture but unable not to show how happy he is to see Claire. I found Jessica and D.L. strangely passive when they realized how much their lives had been manipulated -- I can't believe I actually miss the Jessica who'd lash out and kill just because she was pissed off! At least Claire had her priorities straight: the man she still calls her father, to my very great pleasure, took a bullet to keep her from the man Nathan is in cahoots with. I wonder if Molly's bogeyman is supposed to be Sylar or Nathan, because right now they look so similar...


No Gaithersburg goslings yet, but this goose certainly looks like she's sitting on eggs.


Whereas these appear happy to be enjoying the spring in the lake at Montgomery Village.


And these geese at the Rio shopping center have the usual one track mind and are hoping for food!