Poem for Thursday and Virginia's Falls

Ghost Elephants
By Jean Valentine

In the elephant field
tall green ghost elephants
with your cargo of summer leaves

at night I heard you breathing at the window

Don't you ever think I'm not crying
since you're away from me
Don't ever think I went free

At first the goodbye had a lilt to it —
maybe just a couple of months —
but it was a beheading.

Ghost elephant,
reach down,
cross me over —

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It was not a very exciting Wednesday apart from discovering via a science news article that I may be addicted to cheese. Paul worked from home so we got to have lunch together and Adam needed a ride home from school again because between neither his bike nor his sports-injured body is in shape for riding. One of the dogs he has walked for several years died earlier in the day, so we are all sad about that. It was chilly but not too cold, I took a long walk. We watched Nashville, which is killing someone off next week and that's good because there are too many soap opera characters to keep track of.

I also watched this week's Deep Space Nine for review -- the excellent "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" -- a day early because I am going to subject my family at least to the beginning of The Sound of Music on Thursday. I figure it will either be the biggest nightmare in the history of musical theater, in which case I will turn it off and watch Elementary, or it will be fun, particularly since they're doing the stage version of the musical with "No Way To Stop It" and without the schlocky love song. Some pics from Great Falls, Virginia last weekend, including views of the Maryland side: