Little Reviews: Poem for Tuesday and Birthday Celebrations

Grudges
By Stephen Dunn

Easy for almost anything to occur.
Even if we've scraped the sky, we can be rubble.
For years those men felt one way, acted another.

Ground Zero, is it possible to get lower?
Now we had a new definition of the personal,
knew almost anything could occur.

It just akes a little training, to blur
A motive, lie low while planning the terrible,
Get good at acting one way, feeling another.

Yet who among us doesn't harbor
A grudge or secret? So much isn't erasable;
It follows that almost anything can occur,

Like men ascending into the democracy of air
Without intending to land, the useful veil
Of having said one thing, meaning another.

Before you know it something's over.
Suddenly someone's missing at the table.
It's easy (I know it) for anything to occur
When men feel one way, act another.

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I spent a lovely Monday with Delta, whose birthday is Wednesday so we had to celebrate early. We went to lunch at Tara Thai, stopped in Target to see if they had Halloween stuff yet (not the full display but they have the cat costume Barbies, so we were happy), then came back to my house to watch movies. Both Amazon Instant Video and Comcast On Demand have The Eye of the Storm on even though it just opened this week in New York -- the Geoffrey Rush-Charlotte Rampling-Judy Davis movie about a dying matriarch and the children she messed up. The acting and cinematography are more impressive than the script but as Delta said it's worth watching any movie in which Geoffrey gets to have vigorous sex with the director's daughter.

Delta had never seen The Hunger Games, so we watched that afterward. I've only seen the movie three times but I swear it gets better every time I watch it, and I felt that way about the book, too. Adam's good friend Daniel Wigle's birthday was Monday and his mother invited us all over for cake, so near the end of the movie we paused and went over there, where we survived a lightsaber attack by younger brothers and had yummy chocolate cake. Adam had to leave to go to a pre-cross country meet spaghetti dinner at another friend's house, so we watched the end of The Hunger Games, then Delta went home and Paul and I had dinner and watched Warehouse 13 in between the start and end of the Ravens' delightful victory. I doubt I'll make it to the end of the Raiders game!