By Dean Young
Every sunrise, even strangers' eyes.
Not necessarily swans, even crows,
even the evening fusillade of bats.
That place where the creek goes underground,
how many weeks before I see you again?
Stacks of books, every page, characters'
rages and poets' strange contraptions
of syntax and song, every song
even when there isn't one.
Every thistle, splinter, butterfly
over the drainage ditches. Every stray.
Did you see the meteor shower?
Did it feel like something swallowed?
Every question, conversation
even with almost nothing, cricket, cloud,
because of you I'm talking to crickets, clouds,
confiding in a cat. Everyone says,
Come to your senses, and I do, of you.
Every touch electric, every taste you,
every smell, even burning sugar, every
cry and laugh. Toothpicked samples
at the farmers' market, every melon,
plum, I come undone, undone.
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From this week's New Yorker.
Dementordelta came over and we watched the second season of Slings & Arrows in one gulp. I was ready to be nostalgic for Hamlet and the original theme song, but I'd forgotten all about it two episodes in. I think I liked this season even better than the first, though I am not sure what to make of the intimation that the right Juliet can turn a gay Romeo straight. But putting that aside, how come no one told me that Paul Gross is married to Martha Burns! I mean, I gather that we were supposed to know already, but I'm glad I didn't know going into the show because so few married couples have actual chemistry onscreen -- or they start out with chemistry but lose it over time, though these two have been together for what, 20 years? -- and I might have been skeptical. It's a total delight to discover now.
And really, that was my day, other than running out to get hummus and pie in the morning before Dementordelta arrived, then taking Adam to tennis after she departed. (Yet again the tennis teacher was AWOL, so Adam played doubles with the three other kids in the class, and they had better be planning to refund our money!) In the evening we watched The Tudors, which yet again has cast a very pretty girl as a character traditionally portrayed (and in this case reported by history) to be unattractive. Part of me is pleased about this refusal to judge a woman by her reputed unfortunate appearance, while part of me wonders: is Joss Stone the producers' definition of a woman who looks like a horse? Or, if they're trying to cast doubts on the reasons for Henry's proclamation that he likes her not, what are we to make of the fact that Mary Tudor is a beautiful girl -- just that they didn't want to cast anyone who didn't fit Hollywood standards of attractiveness?
A puppet show involving a farmer and a cow last weekend at the Frying Pan Farm Park Spring Festival.
Children play in the cornbox (a sandbox filled with corn kernels)...
...and help strip the stiff kernels off last season's intact ears of corn.
These children -- I can't call them "kids" since there were actual baby goats -- were riding toy tractors.
A boy admires the recycling fountain. Or maybe he's just trying to keep cool.
In the barn with the sheep and alpacas, a demonstration of knitting and spinning.
4-H participants wash a newly shorn sheep. The sheep did not sound at all happy about this.
And an overview of the festival grounds, with the barns and dairy to the rear.
A friend of mine was much too close for comfort to the tragedy at Camp Liberty. At least Atlantis had a beautiful launch for its mission to save the Hubble Space Telescope.
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