Poem for Monday and Catoctin Mountain

Welcome Morning
By Anne Sexton

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.
All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.
So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.
The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

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I am always sad the day the clocks go back no matter how much extra sleep I get because it gets so dark so early in the evening. It was quite chilly but pretty for all of Saturday, so as soon as Adam was done working at Hebrew school we drove to Catoctin, where we met Paul's parents and hiked a couple of miles over to Cunningham Falls. The leaves are mostly gone -- Catoctin is usually quite yellow in the fall, but between the dry summer and the superstorm, fall came early and fast -- but it was still lovely in the woods -- we saw deer and woodpecker and had dinner at the Cozy Inn's huge buffet.


Cunningham Falls flows down the mountainside.


Adam with his grandparents, posing with his pink fingernails on display.


We saw many little woodpeckers enjoying the trees.


Many people enjoyed the stream from the boardwalk...


...though Adam climbed up to photograph the falls.


The yellow leaves of the upper mountain were gone but there were more near the visitor center.


Adam climbed the glacial rocks on the path to Hog Rock...


...where we arrived too late for the sunset, but he posed with Clair at the overlook.

We got home in time for Once Upon a Time, which finally did a first-rate episode this season, then Upstairs, Downstairs, which has become pretty much unwatchable -- suddenly I have a new appreciation for this season's Downton Abbey, in fact the only moments I really cheered were the two when Persephone bared her claws and showed her true colors. Now we have the Romola Garai-Jonny Lee Miller Emma on, even though it's my least favorite Austen novel -- the cast is great, but I still want to smack pretty much all the characters. Perhaps Emma could straighten out everyone's love lives on the period soaps...