Poem for Wednesday and Farm Park Animals

After David Hammons
By Claudia Rankine

In the darkened moment a body gifted with the blue light of a flashlight
enters with levity, with or without assumptions, doubts, with desire,
the beating heart, disappointment, with desires—

Stand where you are.

You begin to move around in search of the steps it will take before you
are thrown back into your own body, back into your own need to be found.

Destinations are lost. You raise yourself. No one else is seeking.

You exhaust yourself looking into the blue light. All day blue burrows
the atmosphere. What doesn't belong with you won't be seen.

You could build a world out of need or you could hold everything
back and see. You could hold everything back. You hold back the black.

You hold everything black. You hold this body's lack. You hold yourself
back until nothing's left but the dissolving blues of metaphor.

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Spent a lot of the day working on a Stupid Project that is the fault of , so I don't have a lot to report. Daniel went out to lunch with my father; I had hummus and pita and spent hours trying to convince the cats that they were hours early for their afternoon feeding. I did go for a walk in the afternoon because it was gorgeous out -- both my kids did too, Daniel after a couple of hours of playing video games and Adam with the neighbor's dogs -- and I watched Voyager's "Concerning Flight" while folding laundry, an episode I have only good feelings about.

We ate dinner early so we could watch Maryland's first-round game in the NIT, which the Terps won, beating Niagara 86-70 to advance (the second round will be on their home court, too). Then we watched Smash, which did my favorite thing all season with the on-crack Les Liaisons Dangereuses musical, which of course will cease to exist now so we can get back to Dungbombshell -- I liked this show so much, now the only thing I'll miss is seeing Jack Davenport and Anjelica Huston every week. Here are some more photos of the animals at Frying Pan Farm Park on Saturday: