Poem for Thursday and Winterthur March Bank

Tis Late
By April Bernard

Of course the tall stringy woman
draped in a crocheted string-shawl
selling single red carnations
coned in newsprint the ones
she got at the cemetery
and resells with a god bless you
for a dollar that same woman
who thirty years ago
was a graduate student
in playwriting who can and will
recite "At the round earth's
imagined corners, blow--"
announces silently amidst her louder
announcements that the experiment
some amateurs mixed of
white fizzing democracy
with smoky purple capitalism
has failed. We already knew that.
Her madness is my madness
and this is my flower in a cone
of waste paper I stole from
someone's more authentic grief
but I will not bless you
as I have no spirit of commerce
and no returning customers
and do not as so many must
actually beg for my bread. It is another
accident of the lab explosion
that while most died and others lost legs
some of us are only vaguely queasy
at least for now
and of course mad conveniently mad
necessarily mad because
"tis late to ask for pardon" and
we were so carefully schooled
in false hope schooled
like the parrot who crooks her tongue
like a dirty finger
repeating what her flat bright eyes deny. 

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We had much nicer weather on Wednesday than Tuesday -- warmer, brighter, less damp -- which unfortunately did not make it any easier to get work done since I wanted to be outside! I had to do some rearranging to make space for the big camera bag I bought to take to Europe, which took a ridiculous amount of time and reorganization and no one but me can tell anything was accomplished at all. The good news is that I found two 1928 Ernest Shepard Winnie the Pooh prints that we received as a gift several years ago, put aside to frame, and forgot where we'd put, so now those are finally hanging up!

Because I was reorganizing camera equipment, I also had to organize the craft stuff that shares the shelves, which led to my making a couple of pairs of earrings (come on, I have to have a pair of Eiffel Towers now that I've been to Paris). We caught up on the Once Upon a Time we missed (meh) and saw this week's Nashville (fun). We only saw one bunny today, but there are still many daffodils, lots of forsythia, dozens of magnolias opening all over the neighborhood, and the first purple rhododendrons coming into bloom. In honor of that, here are some photos of Winterthur's March Bank last Sunday: