By Jane Hirshfield
One day in that room, a small rat.
Two days later, a snake.
Who, seeing me enter,
whipped the long stripe of his
body under the bed,
then curled like a docile house-pet.
I don't know how either came or left.
Later, the flashlight found nothing.
For a year I watched
as something - terror? happiness? grief? -
entered and then left my body.
No knowing how it came in.
Not knowing how it went out.
It hung where words could not reach it.
It slept where light could not go.
Its scent was neither snake nor rat,
neither sensualist nor ascetic.
There are openings in our lives
of which we know nothing.
Through them
the belled herds travel at will,
long-legged and thirsty, covered with foreign dust.
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It was a dark, rainy Monday during which I did nothing but chores -- the high point of my day was uploading photos to Flickr, if that gives you some idea. Tuesday will have more excitement, but not in a good way: Westboro Baptist is planning to protest at WCHS, my and Adam's high school, because they have a LGBT student group, so those of us in the community are planning to stand between the hatemongers and the students at dismissal.
We had black pepper chick'n and potatoes for dinner, then we watched Supergirl, which makes up for its moments of fluff with hilarious dialogue -- "Keeping Up with the Kryptonians," "Millennial Falcon," even a Russell Crowe joke! And I am sad Minority Report is already getting yanked, but there was a great Bones Hitchcock-parody rerun which made me think I should watch the show. Here's some more Huntley Meadows wildlife:
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