Poem for Tuesday

Towards Kiyomizu
By Yosano Akiko
Translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro

Towards Kiyomizu, crossing Gion
under moonlit cherry blossoms
this evening, everyone passing
is beautiful.

The passionate gaze of the bride
contradicts the white Hagi flowers she holds;
the god of love slyly
smiles this evening.

Listen, Lord!
Love is the voice of admiration
for violets
in the purple evening.

Hair unbound from this hot house
of lovemaking scented with lilies
I dread the night
fading to pale rose.

--------

I spent a very soggy Monday with Dementor Delta, who braved traffic through flooded Virginia to get here. Sadly, because of the rain, we could not go see goslings or Great Falls or anything scenic, and I didn't feel like fighting with traffic being rerouted in the rain so we just went to the mall for lunch. But then we spent the rest of the afternoon watching hot men -- first Daniel Radcliffe in the deleted scenes and interviews for My Boy Jack (I must say that Kim Cattrall really impressed me in the latter; it's so nice to hear her talk about something other than Samantha, though she's the only thing I really loved about Sex and the City).

Then I wanted to show her Captain Jack on Doctor Who -- I still like his character better there than on Torchwood, though the latter grew on me last season -- so we watched "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances," followed by Jack's farewell and the Doctor's regeneration in "The Parting of the Ways." My children came home in the middle of this and insisted that we watch the Dalek army, too, so younger son could show off both his new stuffed Dalek and his remote control action figure. And then I had to show Delta "The Shakespeare Code," partly because of the Globe Theatre and the actor playing Shakespeare, partly for all the Harry Potter references. And she brought me seahorse socks, a penguin magnet and a fantastic book on Legendary Britain!


Pigs at Frying Pan Farm Park.


The sow, Lucy, delivered nine piglets on March 27th.


Lucy is known as a blue butt sow. There is also a Hampshire sow on the farm who had piglets earlier this year.


Lucy, however, was by far the largest pig we saw on the farm.


The little piggies were adorable and quite well-behaved compared to the goats, who tried to chew our clothing...


...but they smelled about the way you would suspect from this photo, at least until the stall was cleaned. *g*


The goats and pigs live in the big red barn. The sheep-shearing at the festival took place under the tent to the left.

We had turkey burgers for dinner and I got four loads of laundry done over the course of the day, though none of them are folded yet. I also did some work on my bookshelves -- we have a new six-shelf bookcase down the basement for the books that have piled up on various tables, and I moved some stuff I never look at down the basement so I could move more art books and poetry upstairs. Every time local basements start flooding, I get the urge to move the heavy art books off lower basement shelves, even though we had to replace the rug and put in a sump pump not long after we moved in. At least the noisy drain cleaning of last week seems to have been well worthwhile: our cul-de-sac did not flood!