Saturday, April 11, 2009

Poem for Saturday

Ancient Anecdotage
By Kathryn Starbuck


As a former
and future
child, his ancient
anecdotage
was still in
pretty good
shape. But
Poor Richard,
his almanac of
day to day
had gone away,
and had become
instead a steady
palaver of what
where when and
why as he tried
with disturbing
perseveration
and failure to
tell us the date,
read the clock
and clean his
plate while regaling
us with enthralling
details of the day
he completed

the composition of
his first symphony
and of the time he
jumped naked into
the Orinoco, drunk
on jungle hooch,
and almost lost
his manhood
to the piranhas.

--------

My first thought when I saw that poet's name was that she'd made it up and was obviously a sci-fi fan into Janeway and Kara Thrace. Turns out she's the widow of another poet whose work she had edited.

Hello from Hanover, Pennsylvania, where I am visiting my in-laws for the weekend (they celebrate, we don't, but we got here after their Good Friday services and will sleep late while they're at Easter morning services on Sunday). We spent the morning getting ready -- I had a bunch of work and e-mail I had to catch up on since I was barely home yesterday, and I watched and wrote a review of "Half a Life", a sad but terrific Next Gen episode. En route to Pennsylvania, we stopped in the local mall to return the chargers for the kids' old DS systems -- they'd told us we could get an additional $20 on the trade-ins if we brought them back -- and ran into my mother, who is watching our house and feeding our cats.

We had a relatively quiet evening, though we did manage to watch The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a show whose fate I wasn't very invested in at the end of last season but which I now am really hoping will return, though signs don't look good. There was a lot of crazy time-loopy stuff in this season or series finale, but also some really nice stuff -- lovely moments between Sarah and John, a really creepy powerful scene between John and Cameron, the return of someone I wasn't sure we'd see again, Shirley Manson's best performance yet, the awesomeness of John Henry and (as always) really terrific special effects. Having sat through Battlestar Galactica and various other more ballyhooed sci-fi series, I've learned to appreciate this one.


The stone circle in the Enchanted Woods at Winterthur.


Me in the fairy ring (photo by DementorDelta). The toadstools spray mist out of the base when their motion sensors are triggered.


Daniel and Adam beneath one of the enormous flowering trees in the garden.


Adam inside the Tulip Tree House.


The Fairy Flower Labyrinth, which has stones depicting wildflowers and a Navajo quote about walking in beauty.


Me and Adam crammed into the tiny chairs in the Faerie Cottage.


This is the Faerie Cottage and well seen from the Tulip Tree House.


And this is Harvey the Enchanted Frog at Water's Edge.


Since Daniel has finished most of his homework, I think we are going to Lancaster on Saturday for farmer's markets, smorgasbord and science museums!

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