Poem for Thursday and Richmond Bats

Love Letter to a Stranger
By Jenny Browne

Tell us of a bypassed heart beating in 12C,
how the woman holds a stranger's hand
to the battery sewn in beneath her collarbone,
and says feel this. Tell us of the man's ear
listening across the aisle, hugging itself,
a fist long since blistered by blaze.
Outside, morning sun buckling up.
Inside, twitching bonesacks of bat, birdsong
erupting as light cracks the far jungle canopy.
Ten thousand feet below ours, a grey cat
tongues the morning's butter left out to soft.
Last night we broke open the sweet folds
around two paper fortunes. One said variety.
One said caution. The woman in 12C would hold that
her heart needs its hidden spark, but the man shows
how some live the rest of their lives with half a face
remembering its before expression. Who was it
that said our souls know one another
by smell, like horses?

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I actually felt well enough and it was actually not-freezing enough to go for a walk on Wednesday, even though we got enough of a dusting of snow in the morning that schools were delayed and even though the bunnies stayed warm in their warrens so I didn't see them. I am still coughing on and off, which is getting more annoying by the moment, but I made the whole neighborhood loop without getting winded!

We all saw Boyhood, which is phenomenal -- longer than The Hobbit yet feels half the length, superbly directed and acted (Patricia Arquette better get an Oscar nomination in the morning). In fact my only real complaint about it is the title, which makes it sound like yet another coming of age movie about a white boy when in fact the women are for the most part well-written and just as much a focus.

Now we are watching Julianne Moore on The Daily Show -- she better get a nomination in the morning too, though not having seen Still Alice, I won't know who to root for -- and trying to figure out how we're going to get everything done in what remains of the kids' winter vacation. Here are some pics from last October of the adorable flying foxes in the "bat cave" at the Richmond Metro Zoo: