Poem for Tuesday, A Month in the Country, Artisan Animals

The Hour After
By Sharon Olds

The hour after, when we gaze and doze
and gaze, feels like the central hour
of my life -- the joy before it may be
too enormous to be carried out
into the world. Sometimes we tell each other
things: I want to go inside
your eyes, and dwell. Last night, you held
your eyes open, long into sleep, so I could
swim and swim, I feel filled, still, with that
circumnavigation. I thank you
for your seeds, we smile, I am honored to receive them.
I love for you to know me, I whisper,
to see that knowing deep in your gaze.
Every time we open our eyes
we are married, all the time we doze
we are married -- and every minute of the day
apart, married as if it could be physically demonstrated.
Early in the hour of knowing,
I had exclaimed, suddenly, kneeling between
your legs, and looking up, a moment,
It's like affection! It's very much like
extreme affection! And you'd smiled and softly
laughed. Who knows what it is like,
the play of love, foreplay, gazeplay,
dozeplay, and the play at the center like precious
work. It is like making something --
making what's there visible
and audible. We cry out, we sing,
and then for an hour it is there in the room,
the song. I look into your eyes as if I had been
parted from you for a long time or
were to be parted from you for an endless time.

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I spent an awesome day with Dementordelta shopping and eating and watching movies. My synagogue has an annual holiday boutique which we'd visited together last year, so we went again to look at the jewelry, accessories, and gourmet foods (we glanced at the clothes but none of them would have been affordable even if they'd fit). Then we stopped at a local girls' clothing store that has lots of adorable jewelry to get owl, teapot, and lion charms before going to lunch at Lebanese Taverna, where we had fabulous hummus, babaganoush, grape leaves, and cheese dumplings. Back at my house, we watched A Month in the Country -- the other world war-era movie in which Colin Firth plays a stammerer, which also stars Kenneth Branagh and is pretty enjoyable though very British (thank you !), then we decided that my new blu-ray player really needed to be broken in with a viewing of my blu-ray copy of The King's Speech, which I am delighted to report is just as awesome as ever on blu-ray.

In the evening after she had to go home, Paul made Tuscan white bean soup and we watched the second half of Neverland, which was okay, though I must confess that I preferred Disney's animated sequel to this CGI-heavy prequel, even in terms of the women's roles. The boys are trying, but they aren't as memorable as the ones in the Rachel Hurd-Wood/Jason Isaacs Peter Pan. Rhys Ifans is touching at moments, but his character is written just as over-the-top unbelievably as his character in Anonymous. Anna Friel is quite enjoyable, but since there are no adult women in Neverland, I figured she would ultimately be forgettable, which she is. And Tinkerbell and Tiger Lily are as Peter-obsessed as ever. I am out of time so have a cat from Art of Fire and an alpaca from A Paca Fun Farm, which was closed to visitors on Saturday but we didn't know that till we'd driven to the gate: