Sunday, August 28, 2011

Poem for Sunday, College Move, Hurricane Irene

A Line-storm Song
By Robert Frost

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.

There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea’s return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.

--------

We had the major event of Hurricane Irene distracting us on Saturday from the even more major event of sending Daniel off to college. His original move-in slot was from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but since we brought most of his things over on Friday while it was still dry, we didn't leave the house till after noon, following Adam's track practice at a park in Gaithersburg. His roommate was there when we arrived, having unpacked quickly in the morning so his parents could drive back to New Jersey before the storm arrived -- it started raining in the late morning, but even when we walked across campus at 3 p.m. to get a longer USB cable at the bookstore, it felt like a regular August rainstorm, not a hurricane, with temperatures in the 70s that made it much more pleasant in the dorm without air conditioning.

Daniel and his roommate (also an engineer, and also a Daniel, which my Daniel says means whoever did the room assignments might be a troll) mostly conversed about computers and seemed to hit it off fine. They had plans to go to dinner and then a floor meeting in the evening, though nearly all activities at the University of Maryland have been called off for the entire weekend. We left College Park around 4 p.m. which was when the heavier rains were supposed to begin and drove home on a very wet Beltway. My parents invited us over for leftovers, so we had dinner with them. Daniel was on his computer in the evening chatting about routers and power outages -- College Park is east of us and has had more storm issues -- so I am not as traumatized at his departure as people seem to expect me to be, though I'm sure it'll sink in over the next several days and then I'll be sad.


My Superpoke penguin hung out with some friends during Hurricane Irene.


Meanwhile Daniel and his roommate fiddled with computer wires.

We watched The Tourist, which seemed like a good fluffy movie for an evening on which my attention span was pretty low -- so much so that we all forgot there was a new Doctor Who episode on till after it had started. I like Angelina, I like Johnny, I didn't even know Paul Bettany was in the movie, it was superficially enjoyable and I think may have had massive plot holes but I wasn't really concentrating enough to worry about anything but how pretty Venice looked. We caught the midnight rerun of "Let's Kill Hitler" and perhaps I am a bit overtired and stressed, but it felt not cleverly absurd nor wittily silly but just plain stupid. Gay gypsy Bar Mitzvah...way to trivialize the Holocaust, boys. Fortunately Amy is cardboard and has no substantial human emotions, so it doesn't matter that River's origins become less important than River looking hot in a Nazi uniform. No wonder I'm slowly moving from disinterest to dislike.

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