By Stephen Dunn
The door had a double lock,
and the joke was on me.
You might call it protection
against self, this joke,
and it wasn't very funny:
I kept the door locked
in order to think twice.
The room itself: knickknacks,
chairs, and a couch,
the normal accoutrements.
And yet it was an empty room,
if you know what I mean.
I had a ticket in my head:
Anytime, it said, another joke.
How I wished I had a deadline
to leave the empty room,
or that the corridor outside
would show itself
to be a secret tunnel, perhaps
a winding path. Maybe I needed
a certain romance of departure
to kick in, as if I were waiting
for magic instead of courage,
or something else
I didn't have. No doubt
you're wondering if other people
inhabited the empty room.
Of course. What's true emptiness
without other people?
I thought twice many times.
But when I left, I can't say
I made a decision. I just followed
my body out the door,
one quick step after another,
even as the room started to fill
with what I'd been sure wasn't there.
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From Here and Now: Poems, which The Washington Post yesterday, saying, "The poems are consistently smooth and insightful...overall it's a wonderful example of the poet's ability to satisfy readers and anticipate their thoughts."
It was such an uneventful Wednesday that I forgot it was Wednesday when it was time to take Adam to tennis and had to be reminded. My mother took Daniel out to lunch, then dropped him off at driver's ed. Adam went to the track with his friends. I fought with LiveJournal for a little while, then realized it was hopeless and went researching how other web sites deal with DDoS attacks because I don't understand why on LJ they last for days and days while on other sites they seem only to last for a few hours (and I can't figure out from the conflicting articles whether the villains are supposedly enemies of Russian democracy trying to silence liberal bloggers or pro-democracy Russians trying to disrupt a blogging site owned by Russian oligarchs).
I worked on a writing project, worked on an article, and while Adam was at tennis I took a nice long walk in the woods, where it was both cooler than last week and blissfully wasp-free (or, at least, if there were wasps I didn't get stung, though I did get rather mosquito-bitten). After dinner I put on The English Patient which I'd gotten in the mood to watch after seeing that Kristin Scott Thomas movie last week; I'd only seen it once and I must admit I thought it was somewhat overrated, though very well acted (and I wasn't a Colin Firth fan at all then). Watching it again, I must confess that again I thought it was a bit overrated; don't get me wrong, the acting is phenomenal and the cinematography is gorgeous, but the main story leaves me feeling rather distanced and even somewhat annoyed with the characters. I keep wanting more Hana and less flashback.
I was going to pass more photos from Star Gazing Farm, but LJ does not want to let me access that page of my Scrapbook, so here are a few more photos from Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens and hopefully you'll get adorable sheep tomorrow:
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