Poem for Monday and Halloween

All Souls
By Michael Collier

A few of us — Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula,
Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky — peer through
the kitchen window at a raccoon perched
outside on a picnic table where it picks

over chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte.
Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more
dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with the bloody
screwdriver puttied to her forehead.

Hillary Clinton, whose voice is the rumble
of a bowling ball, whose hands are hairy
to the third knuckle, lifts his rubber chin to announce,
"What a perfect mask it has!" While the Count

whistling through his plastic fangs says, "Oh,
and a nose like a chef." Then one by one
the other masks join in: "Tail of a gambler,"
"a swashbuckler's hips," "feet of a cat burglar."

Trotsky scratches herself beneath her skirt
and Hillary, whose lederhosen are so tight they form a codpiece,
wraps his legs around Trotsky's leg and humps like a dog.
Dracula and Oprah, the married hosts, hold hands

and then let go. Meanwhile the raccoon squats on
the gherkins, extracts pimentos from olives, and sniffs
abandoned cups of beer. A ghoul in the living room
turns the music up and the house becomes a drum.

The windows buzz. "Who do you love? Who do you love?"
the singer sings. Our feathered arms, our stockinged legs.
The intricate paws, the filleting tongue.
We love what we are; we love what we've become.

--------

When the weather has cooperated and when Halloween has fallen on a weekend or school holiday -- the first quarter ends at the end of October, so it's sometimes a conference day, as Monday is this year -- we have often gone to Scott's Run, where the creek joins the Potomac River. That's what we did this Halloween morning, hiking over the stone bridges and down the cliff to the waterfall and flat, expansive view of the river in northern Virginia. Then we came home so Daniel could pack and get ready for the Halloween slumber party he's attending overnight; the plan is apparently Shin Megami Tensei and other video games, plus some Doctor Who, plus junk food. It's a co-ed party and if I had a different kind of kid, I'd probably be worried about what shenanigans might occur, but given what these kids are like, they are probably going to stay up all night with actual joysticks in their hands.

The rest of us stopped at Michael's for big candles to put inside our pumpkins, then at the food store for a couple of extra bags of candy and some actual food, then came home in time for the neighborhood Halloween party, which was mostly for little kids but had plenty of adults and some teen siblings milling around. I chatted with a lot of neighbors and took a lot of adorable photos of small children in costumes, then came home for a rushed dinner with trick-or-treaters already starting to arrive. I had miniature Snickers, Three Musketeers, Kit Kat, Reese's, Nestle Crunch, Milky Way, and Butterfinger, then Adam made the devastating discovery that Junior Mints contain gelatin, which will sadly make it easier for me not to overeat at the movies from now on. Even so, it was a lovely evening, with cool weather and fewer visitors than previous years. If only the Redskins had not had such a horrible afternoon!


My hippie younger son, Adam, got to hang out with his good friend the demon, Daniel Wigle, who threatened Harry Potter at the neighborhood party on Sunday afternoon...


...while I got to hang out in a coven of witches (the one in the center is Cybel, the mother of Daniel from above; the one on the left is a friend of hers).


It was quite a good crowd at the party, where there were homemade cupcakes and cookies, plus juice boxes, cheese balls, pretzels, even carrots.


Many lions were prowling, plus an assortment of princesses, dinosaurs, fairies, cowboys, witches, clowns, horses, superheroes, and firefighters (I asked the latter which way to vote on the ambulance fee ballot measure, but since they were four years old, they had no opinion).


Rosie was viciously tortured by being forced to wear a witch hat for 42.6 seconds.


Several neighborhood houses had tombstones, skeletons, and ghosts as well as pumpkins.


And a couple had big inflatable decorations.


The Wigles even had a fog machine.


Obligatory shot of our Stewart/Colbert pumpkins on the front porch awaiting trick-or-treaters.

Poem for Halloween and Autumn Parks

All Souls' Night, 1917
By Hortense King Flexner

You heap the logs and try to fill
The little room with words and cheer,
But silent feet are on the hill,
Across the window veiled eyes peer.
The hosts of lovers, young in death,
Go seeking down the world to-night,
Remembering faces, warmth and breath—
And they shall seek till it is light.
Then let the white-flaked logs burn low,
Lest those who drift before the storm
See gladness on our hearth and know
There is no flame can make them warm.

--------

We went to bed last night not sure whether we were getting up early and going to the Rally For Sanity and/or Fear -- the kids were ambivalent about being out dawn till dusk, Paul was ambivalent about the crowds, and I wasn't feeling very well (the only disadvantage I've experienced from ten months of vegetarianism is cyclical anemia, and I was feeling really draggy on Friday, even worse on Saturday). So we ended up watching it from home while eating eggnog waffles and scrambled eggs with peppers...while part of me was sorry not to be there when Ozzy came marching on stage, another part of me was just as happy not to be worrying about how to get back through the throng from the port-a-potties midway through the rally. Things I loved: the musical "Train Wreck" with Yusuf Islam, Ozzy Osbourne, and the O'Jays; Stewart and Colbert's interpretation of Star Trek's "The Corbomite Maneuver" (hahaha they are bigger nerds than some of my friends); John Oliver's interpretation of Peter Pan; the Reasonableness Awards; Stewart's speech. And I discovered that John Legend is a graduate of my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, which of course makes me happy. Otherwise I was ambivalent about the musical guests and don't feel like I missed much not getting to do The Wave, so I'm not deeply sorry I wasn't there in person. I am much sorrier that I never managed to connect with two friends who are in the area for the rally, though from talking to a couple of people downtown, I'm not sure how easily we'd have found each other even if I'd been in the city.

Instead, in the afternoon, we went to Brookside Gardens at Wheaton Regional Park, which was having a chrysanthemum show in the conservatory and had its own fall color on display outdoors. There are still many roses in bloom at this time of year, and though the geese seem to have wandered off -- I'm not sure any of the Canada geese in this area actually migrate -- there were still turtles and koi enjoying the afternoon sun. We also stopped at Meadowside Nature Center, where we hiked by Rock Creek and visited the raptors (younger son and I are a bit concerned because the eagle seemed very agitated and was very vocal, and when we looked at our photos afterward, it looked like there was a bleeding wound on his wing; the nature center itself was already closed when we left and will be closed tomorrow, so I hope whoever feeds the eagle can take care of this). It was dinnertime when we headed home and Paul mentioned that we weren't far from Cici's Pizza, so I rolled my eyes, checked to see whether Bagel City next door was still open, and went and got a cinnamon raisin bagel with walnut spread while the rest of the family had pizza buffet. The Maryland Terrapins had a huge win over Wake Forest, but we didn't see any of it; instead we got to see Duke beat Navy while at dinner, bah!


Brookside Gardens had gorgeous color outdoors, where the trees are in full autumn glory...


...and indoors at the chrysanthemum show.


Part of the gardens were roped off for a wedding.


Despite the cool weather, this turtle was sunning itself on a rock in the pond.


Here I am by the bird of paradise plant in the conservatory.


Though the nature center was closed, we visited the raptors at Meadowside Nature Center, all of which live in large outdoor cages since they have disabilities that prevent them from living in the wild.


Here is a photo of the sky over Rockville Pike at dinnertime, just because it's spectacular...


...and here, in honor of the rally, are our jack-o-lanterns, carved from patterns Paul found on the internet.

Poem for Saturday, 'Thine Own Self,' More Zoo

Rank
By Donna Hilbert

I never wore white shoes
before memorial Day
or suede in summer.
I crossed my legs
primly at my ankle,
wore a panty girdle
and a full-length slip,
no shadow of body
apparent through my dress.
I knew better than
to crackle gum,
or walk down the street
cigarette dangling
from my mouth,
knew better than
to pierce my ears,
like some common girl.
Still, his mother
rooted out the tell-tale
signs, traces of a family
line who worked for wages
in "mediocre" jobs.
The day after
we'd spent the night together
and got caught,
he came to my apartment
with a deck of cards
that he spread across
the kitchen table,
saying Mother says
I have to teach you bridge
so we'll have something in common.
He arranged the cards
in suits to demonstrate
their ranking,
clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades,
saying spades are the boss
trump, outrank everything,
always.

--------

From Hilbert's 1999 book Transforming Matter.

I slept later than I meant to because the temperature dropped overnight and I wound up with one cat pinning down my left leg, another cat pinning down my right arm, and everyone too warm to want to move. (See Robin Wood's Theory of Cat Gravity if you do not have a cat and don't understand the phenomenon.) Eventually I hauled myself downstairs, wrote a review of "Thine Own Self", did some research on the relative merits of the Kindle and Nook (opinions welcome -- my Facebook friends are heavily in favor of the Kindle), and took care of various chores.

Adam started his job as a dog-walker and Daniel was glum because his girlfriend broke her foot. Daniel also had the whole family in hysterics by announcing, "I don't think I inherited any intelligence" when disgusted with us at dinnertime -- far be it from us to argue (Adam labeled this an elephantine failure, which I believe is even worse than an epic failure). I didn't walk as much as I did on Thursday, though I did manage a couple of miles before we went to my parents' for dinner.

We had Asian food -- I had relatively low sodium tofu pad thai -- then came home for Smallville, which I loved until (spoilers) Clark's decision to let Lois cast him as a god instead of trying to break the crazy cult of its warped belief in the supernatural; if they hadn't all been arrested (and are they going to charge every single person in the town?) they'd just reform the cult around a new god, and those kids will be screwed up forever. That ruined an episode that made me really happy in every other way -- the creepy "Lottery" town, Lex's ongoing obsession with Clark "he promised we'd always be friends and our friendship would be the stuff of legend"), and Lois on top when she and Clark finally go to bed together! Sanctuary, too, was really enjoyable this week, since you all know I like it when Kate kicks ass and I really had no idea where the creature was...I was sure it was the old lady, then the guy who got shot, and then when we knew there was a villain I expected it to be the guy who worked in the bank.


These photos are all from July at the Maryland Zoo. Here, an Addra gazelle seems determined to carry a log much longer than it is.


The rhinoceroses try to stay in the shade out of the heat.


The lion has a similar plan.


And you can see how warm the ostriches look, though the zebras don't seem to mind the sun as much.


The chimpanzees have both indoor and outdoor enclosures so they can move between them.


The zoo has baby warthogs that are kept off display part of the day for observation and quiet time. One of the parents looked unhappy to be kept outside.


The East African crowned cranes keep near the water when it is very hot out.


This is not an African animal, but the zoo has no Central American region yet is involved in breeding Panamanian golden frogs since they are critically endangered. They live in rainforests, so the zoo keeps them in the Chimpanzee Forest exhibit.

Poem for Friday and Maryland Zoo's Africa

Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, 1803
XIV: Fly, Some Kind Harbinger, To Grasmere-Dale!
By William Wordsworth

Fly, some kind Harbinger, to Grasmere-dale!
Say that we come, and come by this day's light;
Fly upon swiftest wing round field and height,
But chiefly let one Cottage hear the tale;
There let a mystery of joy prevail,
The kitten frolic, like a gamesome sprite,
And Rover whine, as at a second sight
Of near-approaching good that shall not fail:
And from that Infant's face let joy appear;
Yea, let our Mary's one companion child--
That hath her six weeks' solitude beguiled
With intimations manifold and dear,
While we have wandered over wood and wild--
Smile on his Mother now with bolder cheer.

--------

Thursday was probably the last ridiculously warm gorgeous October day -- we're supposed to drop 20 degrees tomorrow -- so I didn't get a lot done but I did take two long walks in a neighborhood whose sidewalks are increasingly covered by yellow tulip poplar and brown oak leaves with some red maple mixed in. One of my neighbors stopped by to offer Adam a job walking her two big dogs after school every day -- he'll soon be making more money a week than I am and be able to buy himself some of the camera equipment and software he wants -- so we chatted for a while, and I visited with another neighbor later in the day while she was out working on her Halloween decorations. (Ours are going to be very simple -- jack-o-lanterns, giant fake spiderweb, candles!)

I actually enjoyed $#*! My Dad Says this week -- far fewer gratuitous gay jokes, just Henry being hot for the male real estate guy, and I snickered at the main plot because my father always jokingly warned me not to write a Neil Simon-style play about him which is essentially what Henry does (well, a $1000 article, which is awfully cheap to sell out one's relatives). I enjoyed Nikita far more, though -- it makes me so happy that so many of the stories are focused on women and their experiences, and thus far they haven't bumped any off gratuitously the way I feared might happen this week. I'd bet anything that Nikita's murdered lover isn't really dead at all -- he's probably secretly running Section -- and now that the show has a full season order, I want to meet him.


A stork in the Africa region at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore.


A sleepy leopard enjoys the sun.


There are many other birds, including guineafowl who share the meadow with various antelope.


This is a photo of the okapi at the zoo in July. One of them died later in the summer and now there is just one left.


The sitatunga apparently prefer to eat the vines that grow near the walkway than the food set out in in their enclosure.


I am always pleased to see wild animals living in a zoo. Near the penguins, there's a pond with many frogs like this one.


This chipmunk had snuck into the warthog enclosure...


...and this snake was just outside the giraffe house.

Poem for Thursday and Mountain Autumn

To a Butterfly
By James Merrill

Already in midsummer
I miss your feet and fur.
Poor simple creature that you were,
What have you become!

Your slender person curled
About an apple twig
Rebounding to the winds' clear jig
Gave up the world

In favor of obscene
Gray matter, rode that ark
Until (as at the chance remark
Of Father Sheen)

Shining awake to slough
Your old life. And soon four
Dapper stained glass windows bore
You up--Enough.

Goodness, how tired one grows
Just looking through a prism:
Allegory, symbolism.
I've tried, Lord knows,

To keep from seeing double,
Blushed for whenever I did,
Prayed like a boy my cheek be hid
By manly stubble.

I caught you in a net
And first pierced your disguise
How many years ago? Time flies,
I am not yet

Proof against rigmarole.
Those frail wings, those antennae!
The day you hover without any
Tincture of soul,

Red monarch, swallowtail,
Will be the day my own
Wiles gather dust. Each will have flown
The other's jail.

--------

Gblvr and I met for lunch and bead shopping on yet another unseasonably warm October afternoon. It rained on and off all morning and we were under a tornado watch for most of the day, though my county didn't get the heavy storms and wind damage that hit north and east of us, so I just had to contend with some rain while driving and walking around Kentlands, which I didn't mind all that much because it wasn't the least bit chilly and it made the leaves look even more colorful and shiny. We ate at Moby Dick House of Kabob, which I had thought was Caspian House of Kabob but no big deal, then went to Bead Attitudes and Kentlands Candles & Gifts -- the former is a serious beading store with classes and lots of high-end beads, the latter carrying pretty much no candles these days but thousands of inexpensive, wonderful craft beads where for under $10 I got eight Pandora knock-offs, a pair of lampwork glass turtles, some cloisonne owls, and a few other beads. We also went to Michael's (I figured I should get some tools and earring wires to see if I can make my own) and stopped in the vintage store Lipstick Lounge.


The view north from the summit of South Mountain at Washington Monument State Park.


It was a rather hazy afternoon but we could see the circling biplane very clearly.


The trees were more orange atop High Knob in Gambrill State Park.


I have photos of my kids climbing on these rocks at Gambrill each year since they were very young. I can't believe the older one will be at college this time next year!


These trees are at an overlook above the city of Frederick that served as a Civil War lookout.


Wildflowers were still blooming there and we saw lots of grasshoppers, crickets, butterflies, and moths.


The sun was already starting to set when we got to the ruins at Gathland.


And here is a photo of the sow and one of her piglets at South Mountain Creamery, because OMG CUTE PIGGY.

Paul had discovered that it was Navy Day, so he made navy bean soup for dinner, which we had with some of the cheese we bought at South Mountain Creamery over the weekend. Older son was working on college applications and younger son was working on his blog but we all watched Undercovers together...I keep seeing predictions that NBC will axe it soon because the ratings aren't great, which makes me very sad, but I'm also frustrated because while I love the cast and the premise of the show, the spy plots are really dumb and predictable (can someone please explain to me why for instance the CIA can't make up a credible threat other than the actual, undisclosable crisis -- "There's an Al Qaeda bomb in the fireplace!" -- so they have legal access to an art director's office instead of having to sneak around?). In better news I did learn today that Nikita has been picked up for the full season, yay! We watched enough of the World Series to know that the Giants were blowing out the Rangers in an embarrassing manner, and now we are watching Obama on The Daily Show sounding more defensive than I wish he would; there's a time for making speeches and a time for reaching out, even Huckabee knows that when he's talking to Jon Stewart.

Poem for Wednesday, 'Secret Garden' & Prairie Dogs

Great Sleeps I Have Known
By Robin Becker

Once in a cradle in Norway folded
like Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir
as a ship in full sail transported the dead to Valhalla

Once on a mountain in Taos after making love
in my thirties the decade of turquoise and silver

After your brother walked into the Atlantic
to scatter your mothers ashes his khakis soaked
to the knees his shirtsleeves blowing

At the top of the cottage in a thunderstorm
once or twice each summer covetous of my solitude

Immediately following lunch
against circadian rhythms, once
in a bunk bed in a dormitory in the White Mountains

Once in a hollow tree in Wyoming
A snow squall blew in the guide said tie up your horses

The last night in the Katmandu guest house
where I saw a bird fly from a monk's mouth
a consolidated sleep of East and West

Once on a horsehair mattress two feet thick
I woke up singing
as in the apocryphal story of my birth
at Temple University Hospital

On the mesa with the burrowing owls
on the mesa with the prairie dogs

Willing to be lucky
I ran the perimeter road in my sleep
entrained to the cycles of light and dark
Sometimes my dead sister visited my dreams

Once on the beach in New Jersey
after the turtles deposited their eggs
before my parents grew old, nocturnal

--------

It was very warm and humid for late October on Tuesday so I spent as much of the day outside as possible -- though rain had been forecast, it never fell beyond a drizzle, so by the time I took Adam to tennis in the afternoon, the woods smelled like damp leaves without actually being wet or the ground slippery and it was glorious to be out walking among the falling leaves. There's less red than previous years because of the lack of late summer rainfall but the tulip trees are turning yellow quite late in the season; I like it when the fall color lasts past Halloween!

Otherwise, I did some writing and some editing, and my major chore was folding laundry which ended up being pure delight since I put on Agnieszka Holland's The Secret Garden, having realized that I'd never managed to see it before. What a beautiful movie, both in terms of adapting the story (I haven't read it in probably three decades -- I know some changes were made -- I will confess that I always identified more with Sara Crewe of A Little Princess) and the production values of the film (Fountains Abbey! Maggie Smith!). I need to watch it again with Adam since there are animals in nearly every scene of the second half of the film -- robins, fawns, lambs, goslings, bunnies!

We all watched "The Rocky Horror Glee Show," though I think parts of it were lost on the kids since we've never shown them The Rocky Horror Picture Show, less out of concern that it's not appropriate for high school students than out of fear of being ridiculed as epic failures which often happens when we show the kids things we think are hilarious...Adam didn't even laugh at "I'm Tired" from Blazing Saddles, and Daniel was more interested tonight in Dean of Invention, the new show about Dean Kamen, who started the FIRST Robotics competition. Have some photos of prairie dogs from the Maryland Zoo on Saturday:

Poem for Tuesday, Johns Hopkins, SW Holiday Special

Under a Certain Little Star
By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity in case I'm mistaken.
Don't be angry, happiness, that I take you for my own.
May the dead forgive me that their memory's but a flicker.
My apologies to time for the quantity of world overlooked per second.
My apologies to an old love for treating a new one as the first.
Forgive me, far-off wars, for carrying my flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss.
My apologies to those in train stations for sleeping soundly at five in the morning.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing sometimes.
Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing in with a spoonful of water.
And you, O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage,
staring, motionless, always at the same spot,
absolve me even if you happen to be stuffed.
My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs.
My apologies to large questions for small answers.
Truth, do not pay me too much attention.
Solemnity, be magnanimous toward me.
Bear with me, O mystery of being, for pulling threads from your veil.
Soul, don't blame me that I've got you so seldom.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere.
My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me,
since I am my own obstacle.
Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and then labor to make them light.

--------

This will be quick because Jon Stewart (in my city for a week of Indecision 2010 coverage before the rally next weekend) is making me laugh too hard to type, which Dementordelta did earlier while she was here with the Star Wars holiday special earlier. First, though, we went Halloween shopping -- at A.C. Moore, World Market, and the temporary Halloween store in between them, followed by a fabulous lunch at La Madeleine which is in the same shopping center (I had tomato soup, pasta salad, and the best spinach quiche ever), then at Claire's, Hot Topic, Torrid, Bath & Body Works, and the temporary Halloween store at the mall (where I was very virtuous mostly because I had coupons for so many freebies at B&BW that I didn't actually have to spend money).

Then we came back to my house, where we had gotten in the mood to watch A Knight's Tale from a conversation in the car about how people make clothing out of curtains more often in fake historical movies than actual historical stories, and it was wonderful as always. But the highlight of the afternoon for me was watching the aforementioned Star Wars Holiday Special, which I had only seen once before...when it originally aired in 1978. This is a rare instance when something was actually as completely awful as I had remembered, possibly the worst two hours of television in history! My kids watched with us, since the show is legendary for how terrible it is, and we all laughed a great deal, though not at the "comedy" attempted in the show. It's worth looking at the TV Tropes page for some descriptions of the nightmare.


Here are a few more photos from our visit to Johns Hopkins University on Saturday.


As I'm sure I mentioned, it was a gorgeous day to visit the campus...


...with students and squirrels alike enjoying the fall weather.


Though the school is in downtown Baltimore, the campus is quite pretty, with a garden in the center and Baltimore's art museum on one side.


There are several sculptures of animals in the garden...


...and a sculpture of a tree stump by the administration buildings.


This robotic car was built by engineering students for a robotics competition.


And this is the entrance to the main campus library, with the flags of the four current classes on display.