Poem for Thursday and Brandywine Zoo

Summer Nights and Days
By Rachel Hadas

So far the nights feel lonelier than the days.
In light, the living keep me company,
and memories of voices through the years.

Each summer threads a green familiar maze.
Emerging sun-struck, you can barely spy
the slow kaleidoscope of clouds and hours.

Those flannel nightshirts chilly sleepers wear
as summer wanes: I'm giving them away.
Pass it on: you keep at the same time.

A bough has broken from the Duchess tree.
Rain swelled the apples. Too much lightness weighs
heavy: the heft of the idea of home
tempered with the detachment of a dream,
or tidal pulls, like ocean, like moonrise.

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I spent all of Wednesday morning fighting a migraine -- I have no idea why, as we have only a minor cold front here this evening -- and fighting with Flickr, which decided for a while that I had posted too many photos on a supposedly unlimited pro account (mysteriously it started working again after I fired off an angry help request and tweeted a complaint). While Flickr was claiming that my JPGs were not legitimate files, I made a bunch of earrings and worked on an article.

Afternoon involved work and chores and the Nationals playing horrendously and many deer looking balefully at me for interrupting their late afternoon munch beside the path that runs through the woods in my neighborhood. Evening involved watching the Orioles until I couldn't bear it, then the pilot of Nashville -- music better than script, may or may not be back for more -- then the Orioles blowing it to the Yankees again, arrrrgh. Some more rainy summer Brandywine Zoo photos: