Poem for Thursday and Mount Vernon

The Sparrow
By Gerald Stern

Here's a common sparrow, a bit of a schnorrer
come to celebrate my 88th at
Whole Foods at 10th and Alton in
Miami Beach, a block away from where
my mother lived for 27 years,
the wrong end of Miami Beach then
but now the center; though she can hardly stay
for the party she is so busy with the cheese
which disentangled from the bread and one would
kiss her but she is partial to the bread
and has to fly away so she can eat
in secrecy which is a good enough gift
compared to the knowledge that I was common too
and if I eat from china I would just as soon
eat from paper--or plastic--the difference between
the sparrow and me is I need a solid plate
of some sort--even a leaf--a noble spine
and green in all directions and the smell of the
mother tree everywhere but I am slow now.

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It rained in the early evening on Wednesday, but before that it was gorgeous and warmer than predicted. I met Kay for lunch at CPK (though we ate no pizza -- she had soup and salad, I had hummus and their version of pita), and I deliberately parked over by Target so I'd have a reason to walk around the lake to get back to my car. I didn't see the goslings, though several other geese, ducks, fish, and little birds gazed at me hopefully to see if I had food for them. I did stop in Target, but since they unfortunately don't have Russell Crowe Jor-El action figures yet, I did not buy anything.

I am still trying to watch Arrow, since I have been promised that that is coming back next season, but I am hopelessly confused by the flashbacks and not entirely sure who did what to whom in the present. I need genre shows that are a little less arc-tastic. Since The Americans (which is also coming back next season, whoo) is over for the spring, we watched Nashville, whose fate will probably not be announced until after sweeps month; love Rayna, getting sick of Juliette and Scarlett being jerked around by storylines, like the music best. Some pics from Mount Vernon's spring color before it's summer already:


This is the upper flower garden at Mount Vernon.


No photos are allowed inside the mansion where George Washington lived and died.


This is the kitchen, which is detached so as not to burn the house down in case of fire.


This is a replica of the barracks where the slaves who worked in the house and upper gardens slept.


From the farm near the mansion (as opposed to the lower part of the estate near the large replica barn), these are some of this year's piglets...


...and some of this year's lambs (we saw some of the sheep at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival too)...


...and some of what blooms in the spring in the gardens, which grow tobacco as Washington did, but don't grow hemp, which he grew as well.


This dock is relatively recent, but Washington too had docks on the Potomac River.