Poem for Friday

At Baia
By H.D.

I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."

Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:

"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"

or

"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."

--------

Adam got me up early so our penguins could get their own Badlands and magical forests, then went to school and e-mailed to ask if I could please send his English paper that was saved on my hard drive (this is more complicated than it sounds because my desktop does not like it when I try to run MS Word and Firefox at the same time, and he wanted to make sure it was a particular version). It was worth it, though, because the school had an open house this afternoon -- this is his middle school, which was my junior high, and the building is being torn down to build a better facility on the site, just as they did with his elementary school last year -- and I ran into his English teacher, who told me he's an excellent writer and asked whether I'd read various projects of his.

The school had cookies and brownies in front and had most of the classrooms open for people who wanted to wander through. I went to visit Adam's social studies teacher, who happens to be someone I've known since elementary school -- we had lost touch till son ended up in his class earlier this year, but at this point we're both in touch with several of the same people via Facebook, since we graduated from high school together -- and the local paper was in there interviewing people for a story on the school closing. I remembered the names of more teachers I'd known I recalled, and he took a photo of us...I am hoping my hair wasn't as horrible from the downpour I had to walk through to get to the school as I suspect.


Adam signs the farewell card to the school (or, more specifically, draws a penguin on it).


My seventh grade math classroom. My seventh grade math teacher, Mrs. White, was half of one of four married couples (the Whites, McCartneys, Wehrles an Lubinetskis) who taught at the school while I was there. There must have been some pretty interesting staff parties.


I don't think the tables in the science classrooms have changed since I was a student.


The lunch room hasn't changed much either, although now it has vending machines, which did not exist when I was there.


The courtyard in the middle of the school can be seen from many of the classroom windows that don't overlook the street. I am hoping someone will save the tree before the wrecking ball comes.


The orchestra/band classroom where Adam takes violin. When the school reopens, the orchestra and band will have separate rooms with storage lockers for instruments.


Adam's sixth grade science classroom, which was my seventh grade science classroom nearly three decades earlier. I memorized much of the Periodic Table of Elements while bored in this room.


Here's a better view of the card and the front of the building as I knew it -- soon to come down.


A photo taken by the local reporter: Adam's social studies teacher, Adam, me, and two longtime teachers at the half-packed school.

My mother stopped by to sign the kids' service learning hours forms (they volunteer at the Hebrew school where she teaches) and we all proceeded to howl at how they had described their duties -- Daniel said he had taught moral values, Adam said he didn't have to do too much when the younger children were behaving. We watched the first two episodes of Rome in the evening because Daniel is reading Julius Caesar and was interested...I had forgotten there was even more sex in that than The Tudors! Eep! Tomorrow night maybe it will be the Ian McKellen production of Julius Caesar instead.