By Anne M. Higgins
One son was invited and he said yes
and he did not come.
the other one said no
and regretted it
and came.
Was that the same son
who was killed by all those
tenant farmers?
Were those farmers
the ones
who worked all day
and got the same pay
as the ones who came
at the last horn's blow?
Did all this happen
in the same vineyard
that glistens in the evening sun
where the lovely macramé of
green strings
reaches out
for the anchoring pole?
Grapes are heavy in the
September air.
Here is a place for
the liar and the rash.
Here is time to say no
and change your mind.
Here, also,
the jealous
and the killer.
Here, harvest.
--------
Tuesday was even more gorgeous than Monday, mid-60s and sunny, though I had a migraine that diminished my appreciation of it for much of the day, triggered in part by the combination of leaf blowers and our neighbors having someone using electric tools on the roof for the entire day, in part by cleaning the oven and breathing fumes and smoke that actually set off our fire alarms at one point (scrubbing didn't work after the parkin bread exploded out of its pan on Bonfire Night, requiring the three-hour cleaning cycle that always makes the house smell like it's on fire). I got out to take a walk in the afternoon and to drive Adam to tennis, at which point I went to walk around the mall since it was too dark to walk in the woods, just to get away from the still-smoky house. That and laundry were my exciting chores for the day.
I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides on DVD while folding the laundry, and I must admit that while there are some lovely moments I adore -- cameos by Keith Richard, the stuffy officer from the first POTC movies, the HMS Surprise -- I don't love this movie a tenth as much as I love the original trilogy, which is a world in which women can aspire to be pirates in command of their own destiny and succeed. Elizabeth Swann is the main character of those films, not Jack Sparrow, for it's her story: it starts and ends with her. The fourth film is a world where human women aspire to be seduced by pirates or to serve their pirate daddies while mermaid women aspire to kill men and so get butchered. I so much prefer an Angelica who is lying and scheming than the loyal pirate captain's daughter willing to die for a man who doesn't care about her. Even the toughest girl in the film, the Queen Anne's Revenge, can be controlled by any guy with a big enough sword. I miss the sea goddess and Pirate King Swann.
The house smelled better by the time I picked Adam up from tennis, and we had leftover pizza for dinner since Paul had just had a crown put on a tooth so was not in the mood for baking potatoes as he'd originally planned. We watched Glee, which mostly bored me except when Santana was playing Anita (the Artie-Coach Beiste conversation was so phony, un-funny, and wrong that it threw me out of the entire episode); then we watched Ringer, which I am liking much more, though Andrew is really a dope and I really dislike Henry, nearly as much as I dislike Siobhan who has been portrayed thus far as entirely despicable. Here are many chrysanthemums from Longwood Gardens:
No comments:
Post a Comment