Poem for Saturday and Black Friday

Balance, onslaught
By Khadijah Queen

after Clare Rojas

(I have a diamond house
with men. I have pierced
men and diamond shoes.
I have shoed horses and
a tilted head. I have a tilted
cart and a flowered scarf.
I have a gray dress and a
hell of a guitar. I play the
guitar and the jukebox jack-
in-the-box gutted brown
bear and canoe landscape. I
play the grayest song and a
cat's yarn game.) I sit in the
forest with a cat and a knife.
(I see the quilted mountains
and long knitted birds. I see
the man limping across the
path of chevrons between
the trees. I sit between trees,
hanging hair and red mouth.
I mouth and sit. The buck
stands by the river. I am in
my paper mask, my wood.)

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Post-Thanksgiving Friday around here involved no shopping except a stop in the food store for milk and a stop in the liquor store a few shops down for egg nog. The orthodontist couldn't fit Adam in to fix the retainer till Saturday morning, so while Adam went downtown to museums with his girlfriend, the rest of us had a quiet morning -- I wrote a review of "Dax" -- and ate lunch, then went to Seneca Creek State Park for a bit of a hike. There was nobody else on the trail while we were there and the weather was quite warm, just under 60 degrees, so it was lovely to be walking by the water.


The creek was over its banks in places at Seneca Creek State Park...


...yet quite low and very clear in others.


Fortunately there are bridges over some of the offshoot streams.


pointed out that the stream and stones here looks like an otter.


Daniel found this fallen beehive.


As you can see even in this blurry phone photo, the leaves are mostly down by now too.

We had dinner with my parents and two of my nieces, though it was a bit of a chaotic affair because my sister and her husband had gone out to dinner and my parents had only just arrived home with the girls, while we were running late because Daniel spent the late afternoon fighting with his computer's power supply (which I believe Dell has agreed to replace, since it's making weird noises and the computer is still under warranty). Still, Thanksgiving side dish leftovers are always awesome. Now we're watching Blackadder, who is on a roll with prick jokes.