By William Matthews
Here comes the powdered milk I drank
as a child, and the money it saved.
Here come the papers I delivered,
the spotted dog in heat that followed me home
and the dogs that followed her.
Here comes a load of white laundry
from basketball practice, and sheets
with their watermarks of semen.
And here comes snow, a language
in which no word is ever repeated,
love is impossible, and remorse. . . .
Yet childhood doesn’t end,
but accumulates, each memory
knit to the next, and the fields
become one field. If to die is to lose
all detail, then death is not
so distinguished, but a profusion
of detail, a last gossip, character
passed wholly into fate and fate
in flecks, like dust, like flour, like snow.
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Quickie because we got home late after taking Daniel back to College Park -- his spring break ends tomorrow morning. So we let him sleep as late as he wanted while Adam worked at Hebrew school. We didn't see much of Adam today because he biked to DC along the C&O Canal towpath with friends from school; unfortunately his bike got a flat tire in the city and they got somewhat lost around Dupont Circle trying to get it changed, so they took the Metro back to the area, but we didn't retrieve him till dinnertime.
The rest of us went for a walk at Locust Grove, which still looks pretty wintery (and we have winter temperatures again, which would bother me less if we did not have snow forecast for Tuesday, bah). Paul made us Swedish meatballs since his mother's recipe was what he wanted for his birthday, which is on Monday. After we ate, we went food shopping with Daniel and took him back to his apartment, getting home just in time to watch Cosmos with Adam. Here are a few not-very-springy pics from the park:
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