Poem for Friday

Pigeons at Dawn
By Charles Simic

Extraordinary efforts are being made
To hide things from us, my friend.
Some stay up into the wee hours
To search their souls.
Others undress each other in darkened rooms.

The creaky old elevator
Took us down to the icy cellar first
To show us a mop and a bucket
Before it deigned to ascend again
With a sigh of exasperation.

Under the vast, early-dawn sky
The city lay silent before us.
Everything on hold:
Rooftops and water towers,
Clouds and wisps of white smoke.

We must be patient, we told ourselves,
See if the pigeons will coo now
For the one who comes to her window
To feed them angel cake,
All but invisible, but for her slender arm.

--------

One from our new poet laureate and winner of the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award.

Starting to get a bit crazed with pre-beach plans. We're leaving Saturday morning, the same time as the Chesapeake Bay Blues Festival is starting at Sandy Point State Park in Annapolis, which means that traffic in the vicinity of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is going to be even more insane than is typical for an August weekend...and I'm not so sure I'm in the mood to drive over a bridge, even though the views from this one are beautiful. Threw in laundries that I need to fold tomorrow and took the kids to buy some essentials, which to them included Rayman Raving Rabbids for the DS and flash drives (which they are, in fairness, going to need for school in the fall anyway) to bring all their vital gaming links.

We had lunch with at Minerva, the wonderful Indian restaurant where I have eaten several times with yet only just discovered that they have a location in Rockville...joy! They have the best food of any of the local buffets and are only a dollar more per person at lunchtime...plus they decided that they had overcharged us for the kids, even though the kids eat more than most adults, and gave us a $10 gift certificate to make it up to us! More joy! Trek news about Whoopi Goldberg joining The View and Leonard Nimoy being in love with J.J. Abrams not so thrilling but what can you do.


Cats like to help pack for the beach.


They are particularly useful at letting you know which clothes your kids don't really need, as they will stand in the drawers until you get the idea.


Cats are also good at giving you an idea exactly what will fit in your cooler.


Their complete disinterest in leaving the cooler should be a strong indication that you have picked out the right one.


And cats are experts at letting you know when your plan to fold laundry on the couch is interfering with their plan for sleeping.

In the evening I had to watch one of the dreadful Next Gen episodes to review, and then I got an irresistible urge to watch the Buffy musical which happens every once in a while. So we did, with older son and myself singing along while younger son rolled his eyes at us. Despite his proclamations that it was boring, he did stay through the entire thing and keep up a running commentary. We stopped watching Buffy because older son got very upset when Xander broke off the wedding and Anya became a demon again -- he was quite young at the time -- and then after the Spike attempted rape we decided we could not have the show on at 8 because he was still awake, and then we taped it all season and forgot to watch, so there are still late Spuffy-era episodes I have never seen, though I saw the lead-up to the finale. Someday I shall catch up, because my love for Buffy as a character really knows no bounds.