Poem for Thursday and Longwood Gardens

In a Blue Wood
By Richard Levine

The couple in Van Gogh's blue wood is walking
where there is no path, amid tall,
seemingly branchless blue and pink trees. The tree crowns
are beyond the frame, reaching up into our mind's eye—
because we know where trees go and that they are full
of wind and a thousand softly stirring
machines that are alive. Equally out of sight,for
nests of intricately woven strength and fragility hang
like proofs that there are no diagrams or maps
for life's most important journeys. The horizon
at the couple's back, between the trees, is black.
They walk toward light. Crowds of waist-high flowers,
on thick-leaved stalks, sing in stout slurries of pink and white.

The couple cannot think of anything good
ever coming from anger, so they are more happy than not.
That could be true. Maybe I want it to be
true of me, of us. And like us, they may have worn paths
to the most forest-deep secrets in each other's lives.
Or perhaps they are only now on their way to the place
where they will become lovers, the excitement of their flesh
through their clothes singing, making them careless,
giddy, and light as birds in flight.

Of course, we can't know any of this. Perhaps, even Van Gogh
didn't know anything about them: so many unseen possibilities
lived in a blue wood, so like ours.

--------

On Wednesday I learned an important life lesson: always go bathing suit shopping before August. By then the suits may all be on the half-price rack, but they're pretty much all size 2, size 32, or one or two hideous-colored separates that have been stretched out of shape from so many people trying them on. I found a cute summer blouse on sale for half off and an inexpensive pair of fall leggings, but Kohls and Target were hopeless in the bathing suit department.

Otherwise, it was a pretty quiet day. We watched swimming trials in the morning while doing various work on our laptops, and in the evening we interrupted watching swimming and men's gymnastics, which had some awesome moments, to watch Dallas and Futurama (go Rebecca! go Ann! and Sue Ellen, do not touch that drink!). For dinner for Lammas we had blueberry "chicken" and potatoes, plus corn. It's a week for flower posts, apparently; here are some from Longwood Gardens: