Poem for Friday

Missing
By Jane Shore

These children's faces printed on a milk carton--
a boy and a girl
smiling for their school photographs;
each head stuck atop a column
of vital statistics:
date of birth, height and weight, color
of eyes and hair.

On a carton of milk.
Half gallon, a quart.
Of what use is the body's
container, the mother weeping milk or tears.

No amount of crying will hold it back
once it has begun its journey
as you bend all night over the toilet,
over a fresh bowl of water.
Coins of blood splattering the tile floor
as though a murder had been committed.

Something wasn't right, they say,
you are lucky.
Too soon to glimpse the evidence
of gender, or to hear a heartbeat.

Put away the baby book, the list of names.
There are four thousand, at least, to choose from.
No need now to now their derivations,
their meanings.

Faces pass you in the supermarket
as you push the wire cart down the aisles.
The police artist flips through pages
of eyes and noses, assembling a face,
sliding the clear cellophane panels into place.

You take a quart of milk.
Face after face,
smiling obedient soldiers,
march in even rows
in the cold glass case.

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My day involved laundry, helping with a science project, watching Blackadder's Christmas Carol (with Rowan Atkinson, Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, Tony Robinson -- wonderful), eating leftover Thai noodles (also wonderful), and buying myself a camera...Amazon.com had dropped the Canon PowerShot A590 IS to under $110 (it was $117 on Monday) and I decided that was a sign that I didn't need to waver any further. I still desperately want a superzoom, but I need a camera I can stick in my purse that will take a good photo, and while I love the ancient Nikon that is now my son's, it doesn't have VR and it has a one-inch LCD screen which is nearly impossible to use in sunlight. So, yeah, that's all the news. Here are some butterflies from last spring at Brookside Greenhouse:

















I must say, again, that I am really loving Smallville this season after being ready to give up on the show several times during the past two. I miss Lex and Lionel, but really I miss them as they were several years ago, not as they were the past few years. And having Oliver as a regular makes up for a huge amount. Spoilers: I can't decide whether Lois/Clark, Lois/Oliver, or Clark/Oliver is my OTP, so I've just decided to have an OT3 instead. I doubt Lois will be ready for marriage any time soon, anyway ("Marriage is the only war where you get to sleep with the enemy. ...you can edit out that last part, right?") and Ollie's jealousy when he found out Clark wouldn't blow off Chloe's wedding for him, and his concern for Clark -- "Chloe may not know your secret anymore, but Lex still does" -- is really adorable. "It's a good thing the infamous blue blur is faster than a speeding bullet," declares Ollie, and "The truth is I'm going after Lex for you...he may even know how to kill you." And then his tech guy comes in to explain that he swiped the information from Clark "while you two were having that lovers' spat" -- hee! Lois only thinks Lana is her problem.

Speaking of whom, I like the new hairdo but I like the new attitude better -- Lana has moved on, finally finally finally! I'm not sure what she's up to; in fact, until the final shot of the episode, I thought it was Lana and not Lex behind the messages to Tess, pulling everyone's strings. But I guess Lex will be back eventually and that makes me happy too, even if he's going to be a supervillain from now on. I snickered when Oliver told Lana that that Clark knows more about Oliver than Clark knows about Lana, but I really laughed when they both pretended they were there to settle score with Lex, rather than because they both love Clark. I'd get sick of everyone loving Clark if Chloe, too, were not so completely over him, and I really enjoyed Lois and Clark both all OMG DO ME when they saw each other in dress clothes. And poor Lois all a-flutter over Clark reading Jimmy's vows. I suppose it is too soon for them to kiss. Oliver and Lois are as adorable as friends as they were as lovers, and it's cute that Oliver assumes everyone is as in love with Clark as he is so of course he assumes that's who Lois is talking about. My kids were rolling their eyes having to sit through the Clark-and-Lana relationship angst so soon after the Oliver-and-Lois relationship angst, but I must be a teenage girl because except for the cheesy comic book foreshadowing, I liked it.

Now, I don't know anything about Doomsday -- is he the one who killed Superman in the early '90s death of Superman series? This time Lana rescues Clark for once, and yay, I have no problem with Lex watching it all even if it doesn't make a lot of sense.I think this is the most I've written about a Smallville episode in four years -- afterward I watched Next Gen's "Remember Me" because I have to review it and tried not to flinch during the "Jean-Luc, I have something to tell you" moments. Friday bright and early I am going to see Twilight with friends so we can snicker at the high school girls swooning, so I had better get to bed!