By Peter Meinke
for Gretchen and Herb: June 15, 1991
imagine the very first marriage a girl
and boy trembling with some inchoate
need for ceremony a desire for witness:
inventing formality like a wheel or a hoe
in a lost language in a clearing too far from here
a prophet or a prophetess intoned to the lovers
who knelt with their hearts cresting
like the unnamed ocean thinking This is true
thinking they will never be alone again
though planets slip their tracks and fish
desert the sea repeating those magic sounds
meaning I do on this stone below
this tree before these friends yes in body
and word my darkdream my sunsong yes I do I do
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A massive thunderstorm disrupted much of our Monday -- directly, since Adam's trip with a friend to play miniature golf got cut short and Daniel never took the walk around the neighborhood he promised to take to get some exercise, and later indirectly because trees and power lines came down along several local streets, though fortunately not our own. We left to go to the dentist (both kids had their semiannual appointments) only to be diverted onto side roads, at which point I called to tell the receptionist that we were going to be late and was warned that if we were too late, we shouldn't bother to come because he was leaving early. We made it to the office in time despite the fact that the traffic lights weren't working along a critical stretch of road; apparently they hadn't been working along the road we'd originally taken either, and there were live wires down in the street which was why it had been blocked off. (To make matters worse, a man apparently committed suicide jumping onto the Red Line tracks at the Metro station nearest my house.)
That was all the excitement for the day; I dragged the kids around for a bit of entirely unsuccessful shopping, got them bubble tea to make up for this, took them home for dinner, finally finished unpacking my various sunblocks, lotions, etc., tried to watch some of the G20 summit coverage, got depressed and watched the Deathly Hallows trailer instead, tried to learn to use GIMP since Adam is better at it than I am, ordered tickets to see Shakespeare plays at the Blackfriars in Staunton next weekend, realized I was going to need to do travel-related laundry again, end of thrills. Here are some more photos from Durham's Museum of Life & Science:
A resident of the Magic Wings butterfly house.
This quail lives in Magic Wings as well, darting around in the low plants.
We saw many colorful poison dart frogs inside the museum...
...and warbling songbirds outside in the former quarry now turned into a wetlands.
In addition to the bears, lemurs, and other exotic animals that live in the surrounding area, the wetlands hosts herons, turtles, frogs, and many other birds.
These sheep live in the farm area, which also has a cow, ducks, donkeys, goats, rabbits, and the rest of the usual suspects.
The main building houses a large collection of rocks and minerals.
And there is an astronomy exhibit including spacesuits inside plus this rocket outside.
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