By Cleopatra Mathis
Don't be fooled: he liked to travel.
He had a pattern, and always a woman
woven into his art. Even Athena spelled him at the helm,
kissed up to Zeus, and so on. His strength, he thought,
was courting temptation—the time he had his men bind him
so he could look the irresistible in the face.
He liked the romance in saying no. As he unbuttoned,
unzipped, he'd mumble wrong, so wrong...
the dance of that back and forth excited him.
And so I served the progress of his journey—
he fooled even me, small story
within his bigger story, just another way
to get himself home. Ready for his desk,
he could put down the details
of a ravishment, ever-penitent,
as he wove the threads of loss into a telling:
useless I was in the face of her tears...
all that grand wrenching
played out in an agony of ego. It was like this:
he had to eat the peach down to its seed. He needed
to break the pitted husk, get to the kernel's half
milligram of arsenic. He needed the right poison
to make a proper lament, served by wife, child and dog,
the waiting and ripping. Even so,
it took the gods to intervene — to make me want to let him go.
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It was not an eventful Tuesday, since I had lots to catch up on after playing all day Monday. I drove Adam and his two crazy friends to school late in the morning (there are still high school assessment exams before lunch, so they were all hanging out here having insane conversations). Then I did a bunch of work and chores and folded laundry till the kids got home, at which point we had conversations about Puzzlepalooza at Daniel's school and I took Adam to tennis. I walked for an hour in Cabin John Park while he was there, which was lovely -- cool, damp, lots of squirrels and chipmunks running around -- then we came home for dinner.
Evening entertainment was Glee (finally a Sue Sylvester episode that was truly moving and had some great zingers at the same time -- musically, only Santana and Kurt get props from me), then this week's delayed The Borgias which had very bloody war carnage but Lucrezia was so awesome that I could deal -- I keep finding myself rooting for the Borgias in spite of everything because everyone else in the Church is just as bad or worse. Here are some more photos of the goslings at Lake Whetstone the weekend before last:
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