Poem for Wednesday

Seagulls
By Hiroaki Sato

Seagulls, the rare birds
that have bucked the tides
of man's advance
and increased spectacularly
in the past two hundred years

fly from right to left
like leaflets
dropped into a gentle wind.
There are many of them,
apparently disturbed.

As I turned into 22nd
more of them appear and keep appearing
above the uptown-side rooftops
near Ninth
and cover the whole block,

moving southeast. Evening
clouds, generous melons of summer
rise to the west.
An airplane enters the scene.
It is the size of a seagull.

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It's been a frustrating media day since the power went out unexpectedly just around midnight. In the morning I went looking for news on the Annapolis peace summit and got swept up in city-wide grief over a football player. Representatives of 40 countries sit down to discuss difficult issues, with the US president in attendance, and even though it's probably mostly ceremonial and Dubya doesn't deserve any credit for progressive initiative, you'd think the news in the US capital could give the talks and the demonstrations and the editorials a bit more coverage than "tune in later, Redskins coach to hold press conference" or referring people several pages into the newspaper in order to put photos of a candlelight vigil around an empty parking spot at Fed Ex Field on the front page. Sean Taylor's death is a senseless tragedy -- something that occurs almost nightly in this city, I'm sorry to say, though Taylor was murdered in Florida -- and the level of hysteria over a sports star is somewhat bizarre.

When the kids got home, I dropped Adam off at Hebrew school and took Daniel shopping for new black trousers, since he told me just yesterday that he had to come to school on Wednesday dressed in his chorus performance outfit and the black trousers he used for that purpose last spring are now two sizes too small. (The tuxedo shirt only barely fits but I'm not paying to replace that until I absolutely have to, and he is wearing Paul's dress shoes because they fit well enough if he wears thick socks!) When we got home I went through his closets and drawers to see what should be handed down to Adam, and discovered that both of them have a small collection of brand new shirts given as gifts by my mother (who had a tooth pulled earlier, ouch) that they have never worn because they don't like the collars on them.











We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas because it was on, though it's kind of silly because we own it on DVD. There's something about communal national watching, even though I dislike most Christmas specials and the commercial American fantasia of christmas (lower case because it's in no way a religious holiday) that inspires a two-story fake mountain with a laser light show to encase the Santa Claus in my local mall. Later, after giving up on finding television news with more than superficial coverage of the peace conference, we turned on PBS and watched Ghost Ship, The Mary Celeste, which was a bit depressing but rather interesting.

No one ever likes Occam's razor when there's a conspiracy to be had, do they? And speaking of Razor...I recorded it but haven't watched it. I haven't been in the mood, heard very mixed reviews particularly over evil lesbian stereotypes and am wondering whether the last season is ever going to get filmed, since it sounds like the actors at NBC in particular are very pissed off over how the network is treating them during the writers' strike and may not return to work after not being paid for weeks if the strike drags on. Time to rewatch the Sharpe series I think!