Poem for Saturday

Worldling
By Elizabeth Spires

In a world of souls, I set out to find them.
They who first must find each other,
be each other's fate.
There, on the open road,
I gazed into each traveler's face.
Is it you? I would ask.
Are you the ones?
No, no, they said, or nothing at all.

How many cottages did I pass,
each with a mother, a father,
a firstborn, newly swaddled, crying;
or sitting in its little chair,
dipping a fat wooden spoon
into a steaming bowl,
its mother singing it a foolish song,
One, one, a lily's my care...

Through seasons I searched,
through years I can't remember,
reading the lichens and stones
as if one were marked
with my name, my face, my form.
By night and day I searched,
never sleeping, not wanting to fail,
not wanting to simply be a star.

Finally in a town like any other town,
in a house foursquare and shining,
its door wide open to the moon,
did I find them.

There, at the top of the winding stairs,
asleep in the big bed,
the sheets thrown off, curled
like question marks into each other's arms.

Past memory, I beheld them,
naked, their bodies without flaw.
It is I, I whispered.
I, the nameless one.
And my parents, spent by the dream
of creation, slept on.

--------

This is going to be a very discombobulated entry because, due to an incredible stroke of luck and the generosity of an old friend, I am going to see Paul McCartney at FedEx Field Saturday night with my family! WHOOOO! Old friend -- whom I haven't really seen since high school -- works for a company that had bought a big block of tickets, didn't distribute them all, she wound up with a bunch of them, offered them to friends on Facebook, I was lucky enough to see her post before someone else grabbed them! So we have a long day tomorrow starting with picking up the tickets from her on the way to drop Daniel off at robotics, then taking Adam to meet my in-laws at a corn roast and tour of the Union Mills Homestead which has a Civil War encampment going on, then we're stopping at the Baltimore Ravens scrimmage open to the public in Westminster, then picking up Daniel and going to FedEx Field! (Anyone know whether their "no cameras during concerts" rule includes cell phones with cameras?)

Anyway, any excitement of my Friday cannot compare with my plans for Saturday, though there was a tornado warning in my county that I received while my mother was in Gaithersburg bowling with my kids and called to warn them. I stayed home so I could finish my review of "Unification, Part Two" and do various unimpressive chore-type activities. We did not get any major thunderstorm here, but we did get rain, which the sun came out halfway through, and I walked down the street to see if there was a rainbow. It was very faint compared to the one earlier in the week, but the leaves looked very pretty wet in the sunlight. We had dinner with my parents, came home and watched three episodes of Due South including the one that Jane Krakowski is in -- hilarious -- and the one where Vecchio thinks Fraser slept with his sister and is wildly jealous overprotective. Did I say WHOOOO! yet?

















Have a very blessed Lammas/Lughnasadh whatever you may be doing on Saturday!