Poem for Tuesday

French Horn
By Jane Hirshfield

For a few days only,
the plum tree outside the window
shoulders perfection.
No matter the plums will be small,
eaten only by squirrels and jays.
I feast on the one thing, they on another,
the shoaling bees on a third.
What in this unpleated world isn't someone's seduction?
The boy playing his intricate horn in Mahler's Fifth,
in the gaps between playing,
turns it and turns it, dismantles a section,
shakes from it the condensation
of human passage. He is perhaps twenty.
Later he takes his four bows, his face deepening red,
while a girl holds a viola's spruce wood and maple
in one half-opened hand and looks at him hard.
Let others clap.
These two, their ears still ringing, hear nothing.
Not the shouts of bravo, bravo,
not the timpanic clamor inside their bodies.
As the plum's blossoms do not hear the bee
nor taste themselves turned into storable honey
by that sumptuous disturbance.

--------

From this week's New Yorker.

I spent a delightful day with DementorDelta, though our original plan to go see Inkheart was foiled by its terrible box office take and subsequent failure to have an early show. Instead we went out to lunch at La Madeleine, where we sat in the wine cellar near the fireplace which is the most evocative room in the restaurant since they took out the water wheel. There's a craft store two doors down, so of course we had to go in there and shriek over all the cute Valentine's Day and spring animal decorations, though this time we only bought pre-made pendants in the bead section. Then came back home to watch Wimbledon -- she hadn't seen it and I adore that film, which is perfectly cast and has wonderful chemistry between Paul Bettany and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Kirsten Dunst. I also made her watch a bit of the commentary because it's so entertaining to listen to Paul make his character gay.

I had to go out in the late afternoon to take Adam to an actual tennis lesson -- his teacher says he sees a big improvement in the past couple of weeks and also recommended that we get Adam a new racket. Since we had our 3-D glasses from the Super Bowl, we watched the 3-D Chuck, which was reasonably entertaining though I doubt I'll watch it again unless the kids want to. Then we watched Heroes, which is starting to remind me of BSG and I don't mean that in a good way; I don't like never knowing which characters are complex versus which characters are batshit insane from week to week, so even though we got an inkling that the old Angela Petrelli might be back, I didn't really feel anything toward any of the characters. It's not good news when I'm watching Claire's first big scene of the new year thinking that her coral lipstick has got to go.


The looks on these guys' faces say it all -- model train shows, like this one at the Maryland State Fairground, are just as geeky as sci-fi conventions!


I'm as infatuated with the miniatures as much as the trains, like this old camper and family car...


...not to mention the car dealership with rotating platform for the newest model.


This brand-new diner, surrounded by posh cars...


...has a playground next door complete with ice cream truck and retired caboose for exploring.


This miniature mine is surrounded by exposed stone for quarrying.


A train passes a reconstructed section of old Baltimore, with pretty shops and a movie theater.


But disaster has struck! It does not appear that all the miniature model fire trucks will be able to put out the orange blinking lights!

I know London is at a standstill but I loved getting to see photos of snow at Stonehenge on Imbolc. And I loved reading about the discovery of the lost 1744 HMS Victory, and developments in teleportation, and the coatimundis second-guessing the groundhogs and predicting an early spring (yes, I deliberately linked to the article about Bloomberg getting bitten, even though Phil is more famous). And that's the news from here.