Poem for Wednesday and National Zoo Lions

Literal, Littoral, Littleral
By Danielle Pafunda

I have enough times been the ampersand,
the hitch between two vehicles
the vehicle itself careening questionably
up the mountain road, which is,
in my opinion, poorly designed, a hazard.
It is sometimes called the coast,
the coastal highway, but never
the cliff-side transfer whereby you take
your life in your hands, or more literally
the wheel in your hands, or the hands
beside which you sit, the wheel by which
many subtle gestures ensure
your safe arrival. Anyhow, it seems to me
a very poor choice of transit. However
much we love vehicular independence,
the illusion thereof. Or the glamour
of regency ghouls. That golden age.
Anyhow, the vehicle, she, why not,
that has many times been me,
and hardly splendorous, sinking
dolefully, doefully, dutifully
into the “lake,” rolling graceless over,
eating up the “blurred yellow lines,”
eating pavement, often graciously so.
I have been the pinch of weather
in the phenomenological space
between you lovers, the compartment
in which you exist hand to thigh.
The crowbar in the garden rusting
from strange use, with little ambition,
who would throw such a thing there?
And when I am no longer analogous,
I go. Likely poorer and better off besides.

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It was more than 20 degrees warmer on Tuesday than Monday and the sun came out, which was a really nice change! Little of the new snow stuck around, although we still have some big piles in places around the neighborhood where it was plowed or shoveled. Apart from work and laundry, nothing exciting happened. We caught up on Downton Abbey and The X-Files, the former clearly heading into its endgame, the latter satisfying from a shipper perspective but just once I want to see a show where we see Muslims praying and there's no terrorist act; this is three in two weeks.

It was the birthday of several relatives -- my mother's mother who'd be 110, my sister's middle daughter, Paul's youngest brother's wife and Paul's first cousin's wife -- so I talked to a bunch of family members. Younger son introduced me to Thingiverse, the 3D printing design app, and while I have no idea how to design or print using 3D printers, I found lots of things I would love to make if I knew how. We watched The Flash, then the two-part Agent Carter, which I was liking better than a lot of this season until the Gratuitous Thing and then the other Gratuitous Thing. From the National Zoo, some of the lion pride: