Poem for Monday and Seneca Creek November

Day of Grief
By Gerald Stern

I was forcing a wasp to the top of a window
where there was some sky and there were tiger lilies
outside just to love him or maybe only
simply a kiss for he was hurrying home
to fight a broom and I was trying to open
a door with one hand while the other was swinging
tomatoes, and you could even smell the corn
for corn travels by wind and there was the first
hint of cold and dark though it was nothing
compared to what would come, and someone should mark
the day, I think it was August 20th, and
that should be the day of grief for grief
begins then and the corn man starts to shiver
and crows too and dogs who hate the wind
though grief would come later and it was a relief
to know I wasn't alone, but be as it may,
since it was cold and dark I found myself singing
the brilliant love songs of my other religion.

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I had a quiet Sunday morning catching up on reading (not the news, which is too depressing, nor Facebook, where the oversimplifications of the news on all sides just fill me with rage) while Adam was working at Hebrew school and then at our neighbor's house helping him install cables in his guest room. Then we went to Seneca Creek State Park, whose leaves have mostly fallen though downtown Gaithersburg on the way there still had plenty of red-gold on the smaller trees. There was a lot of evidence of Hurricane Sandy -- flattened grass and small plants for many feet on either side of the creek, cracked and fallen trees, and the water is still pretty high -- but we got to see a gorgeous sunset, and the winter lights have been set up, so that we got to see them turned on for a special event just as we were leaving beneath a gorgeous sunset:

















On the way home we stopped at the Whole Foods in Kentlands, which was absolutely mobbed with Thanksgiving shoppers; you'd have thought snow had been forecast. We were just looking for vegetarian frozen food since this is a weird eating week (Thanksgiving was never my favorite food holiday even when I ate turkey, I much prefer Passover). Much to my pleasure, the Redskins blew out the Eagles, which is satisfying even without Michael Vick playing. We had leftovers for dinner but they were awesome -- Tuscan potato soup and Moroccan chick pea chili -- then watched the Ravens-Steelers game, both teams suffering from major injury problems so it was a good, close game, and Baltimore pulled it out in the end which made it that much better!