Poem for Tuesday and National Colonial Farm

Spring and All
By William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

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A big thunderstorm woke me up before 6 a.m., but other than that, I had an awesome day, mostly with Dementordelta, mostly watching movies and eating leftovers, and really is there a better way to spend a Monday? We started with the Santa Barbara Film Festival footage that I linked to yesterday because Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, and Tom Hooper could not be any more adorable. Then we watched St Trinians 2, because girl power and pirate ships and David Tennant and shower decontamination and music class and Colin and Rupert doing Romeo and Juliet at the Globe...this film just gets more entertaining with subsequent viewings. After that (and the Banger Sisters bloopers and Love, Actually deleted scenes), we watched all 180 minutes of Mercury that we had on DVD -- I see that IMDb says that there were originally 13 episodes and I want to know where we can get the rest in a region we can watch here, because who can resist Geoffrey as an editor in bad ties who can't keep his pens or glasses out of his mouth?

Dementordelta also brought me awesome souvenirs of her travels like a Snape keychain from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and a Playbill from How To Succeed in Business..., plus a complete Shakespeare illustrated throughout with photos from old stage productions, which I love. Paul made shish kebabs for Nowruz for dinner, and we had hummus and fruit with the potatoes, peppers, various vegetables, and fake chicken. Then we watched Chicago Code, which was particularly entertaining because Jason Clarke -- to whom I first paid attention when he was Jason Isaacs' sibling on Brotherhood -- played a very young and not well trained reporter in Mercury, so it's interesting to see him cheating on his fiancee with his ex-wife and trying to nail drug dealers. Then we watched Harry's Law, which had one reasonably interesting case with an overly idealistic speechified ending and one really annoying case involving a transsexual that was full of stereotypes and an idiotic judge, but I could see both on Boston Legal so I forgave it. Here are some more photos from the National Colonial Farm over the weekend: