Poem for Thursday, Red Riding Hood, Homestead Farm

Tigers
By Melissa Ginsburg

for Erik Lemke (1979-2012)


1.

A hummingbird flies into a window
that looks like the sky. Everything around here

looks like the sky. The sky looks tiger striped.
They call that kind of cloud

something. I know somebody
who knows about clouds. I could find

out the name. Everything around here
has a name.


2.

The hummingbird fell to the deck. My husband picked it up.

--What did it feel like in your hand?
--Nothing. It felt like nothing.
--Where is it now?
--Gone.
--Dead?
--Not dead. It flew away. It disappeared and it disappeared again.


3.

I'll tell you a joke. A hummingbird flew into a window...

I'll tell you another joke. Treachery,
we were friends once.


4.

In dreams the bird
weighs more, so you can feel it

when you pick it up. So when
it dies it seems

like something actually happened.
It's a word

bound
around your hand and a sign

at the stripped road.
A mylar star on a plastic stick

tied to the sign.
Blacktop. Post. A fat star's

wrinkles
taut. It's stuffed.

It's shining.
There's going

to be a party around here somewhere.
The bird weighs nothing waits nowhere.

The sky looks like a window and it flies right through.

--------

My Wednesday was spectacularly unexciting -- it started late, since we got a dusting of snow that caused schools to be delayed two hours (condolences to people in the South who got the worst of the storm) and mostly involved chores and work stuff. I stalled for nearly an hour in the afternoon goofing off on Pinterest while expecting Adam to call to be picked up from school so he wouldn't have to walk home in the bitter cold, but he decided to stay in the weight room longer than usual, and Paul got home before Adam decided he was finished. Then he went to get a haircut.

After dinner we decided to watch Red Riding Hood, figuring hey, it has Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried, so maybe it'll be fun. It's fairly inoffensive -- it didn't aggravate my feminist sensibilities or do anything grosser than the original Brothers Grimm stories -- but it's a bit disjointed and kind of hard to root for any of the men who are the main character's major concern apart from not getting killed by a werewolf. Afterwards we watched Nashville, which is finally getting back to arc stories. Some pics of Homestead Farm's animals from pumpkin season: