Poem for Friday and Virginia Historical Society Toys

Sonnet
By Alice Dunbar Nelson

I had no thought of violets of late,     
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.      
The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,         
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;           
The perfect loveliness that God has made,—
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.

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I ran around all day on Thursday and I am very tired. I had a lab appointment in the morning for blood work for my annual physical next week, meaning I had to drive with my blood sugar crashing after drinking too much water but no food for at least 10 hours. (At least they let me lie down while taking my blood and gave me orange juice afterward.) I ran home, grabbed a quick breakfast, and raced out again to go to the dentist for my semiannual cleaning, which thankfully this time involved no waterboarding!

I got home just as the Verizon truck was leaving, having restored our internet, yay! We dropped Maddy off at the mall and went to pick up a freecycled bed frame for the queen bed we picked up for her the other day, then stopped at Home Depot to get wheels to replace the missing ones on the frame. Maddy was out for dinner so we had bangers and mash and caught up on early-week TV: Madam Secretary, Elementary, Supergirl, The Flash. 20th century toys at the Virginia Historical Society:

Poem for Thursday and Rainy Lewis Ginter

A Red Flower
By Claude McKay

Your lips are like a southern lily red,
Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night,
In which the brown bee buries deep its head,
When still the dawn's a silver sea of light.

Your lips betray the secret of your soul,
The dark delicious essence that is you,
A mystery of life, the flaming goal
I seek through mazy pathways strange and new.

Your lips are the red symbol of a dream,
What visions of warm lilies they impart,
That line the green bank of a fair blue stream,
With butterflies and bees close to each heart!

Brown bees that murmur sounds of music rare,
That softly fall upon the langourous breeze,
Wafting them gently on the quiet air
Among untended avenues of trees.

O were I hovering, a bee, to probe
Deep down within your scented heart, fair flower,
Enfolded by your soft vermilion robe,
Amorous of sweets, for but one perfect hour!

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Our internet is out and Verizon is giving us a big B.S. runaround about when it will be fixed (it's something outside the house, meaning we need a truck, and it's not the whole neighborhood, meaning we're not a priority. So my photos are not uploaded, my emails are not answered, and pretty much all other online chores are not finished, but the laundry has been washed and we went to the mall with Maddy for As Kindred Spirits' going out of business sale and froyo.

I also got to enjoy spring in the neighborhood, which right now involves the remaining daffodils and cherry blossoms plus hyacinths and the first tulips. Since we couldn't watch any television, we watched pre-recorded British shows: a couple of episodes of Broadchurch and a couple of episodes of The Halcyon (the latter quite interesting with a lot of messy, not very likeable characters). Some of Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens' flowers:

Greetings from Virginia

Paul and I are home after a wonderful day in Williamsburg and Richmond with Cheryl -- the former to see Botticelli and the Search for the Divine at the Muscarelle Museum of Art on the campus of the College of William and Mary (we also saw The Art and Science of Connoisseurship, an exhibit on authenticating the work of artists, and Written in Confidence: The Unpublished Letters of James Monroe, correspondence mostly between close friends). Then we had a quick lunch at Noodles and Company and went to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, where it was raining when we arrived and for a little while when we were in the Tree House but was mostly gorgeous and not at all crowded because of the weather. Because Olive Garden had a deal the night before that if you bought one entree, you got another to take home, we had pasta waiting for us for dinner at Cheryl's before we drove home. Here are a few pics:

Greetings from Richmond

I am in Richmond with Paul, where we have had a lovely very full day with Cheryl and Kevin -- lunch at Greek Cuisine, Toys of the '50s, '60s and 70s and The Fine Art of Children's Book Illustration at the Virginia Historical Society, The Rachel Lambert Mellon Collection of Jean Schlumberger jewelry exhibit at the VMFA, a walk around the frog-filled lake at Deep Run Park, a visit to Kevin's house to see his son, dinner at Olive Garden, and a viewing of Mystery Men at Cheryl's house. In the morning we're going to Williamsburg to see Botticelli and the Search for the Divine! Some pics of the toys, jewelry, and a duck:

Poem for Monday and DC in Bloom

Sea Lily
By H.D.

Reed,
slashed and torn
but doubly rich—
such great heads as yours
drift upon temple-steps,
but you are shattered
in the wind.

Myrtle-bark
is flecked from you,
scales are dashed
from your stem,
sand cuts your petal,
furrows it with hard edge,
like flint
on a bright stone.

Yet though the whole wind
slash at your bark,
you are lifted up,
aye—though it hiss
to cover you with froth.

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Sunday was much colder and greyer than Saturday, not least because we had to take Adam back to school for the rest of the spring semester. We had a mostly quiet morning involving various chores and keeping cats warm, then we took son food shopping, grabbed lunch, and took him to his dorm to finish his spring break homework.

We picked up Maddy from work and were going to have a quiet dinner, but someone I know locally was Freecycling a queen mattress and box spring, so Maddy and I went to pick that up for her room, which required four people to tie it on top of the minivan and three to get it down and take it upstairs, but now her room has a big bed!

Paul and I watched To Walk Invisible, a film about Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Bronte with an annoyingly apt title for a movie that obsesses about their brother and his disappointed hopes vis a vis their father rather than on their independent interests. Here are some more photos of the cherry blossoms from yesterday:

Poem for Sunday, Cherry Blossoms, Independence Day: Resurgence

Sakura
By Mushimaro
Translated by Michael Hoffman

Soaring in white clouds,
The cherry trees are in full bloom,
Every branch bending with loaded blossoms.
But the wind is ceaseless as the peak is lofty,
And day after day falls the spring rain;
The flowers have scattered from the upper sprays.
May the blossoms on the lower branches neither fall nor lose their beauty,
Till you, who journey, grass for pillow, Come home again!

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Because the weather was lovely and the cherry blossoms were reported to be as close to peak as we're going to get this season, we went downtown Saturday morning to see what there was to see. I know a lot of the flowers were ruined by the snow, but it was hard to tell except up close; from a distance the trees looked a bit pinker than usual, and there were plenty of pretty clusters of blossoms. Since we got down early, we only hit major crowds as we were walking back to the car, having concluded that the lines at the food trucks were too long, so we went to Lebanese Taverna for lunch instead and it was great.

















Maddy had to work for much of the day, so we didn't see her till late in the evening, before which we watched some basketball (with the Maryland women now out of the tournament, I will root for both Oregon teams, though as long as UNC doesn't win the men's tournament, I won't complain too much whatever happens). In the evening we watched Independence Day: Resurgence on HBO with Adam, and while it's not a particularly good movie, it's not nearly as bad as, say, Batman v. Superman, so I'm not sure why the reviews were so terrible. It's kind of the Equilibrium of alien invasion movies only without Sean Bean.

Poem for Saturday and Hubby's Birthday

Basketball
By Cole Lowman

I'm at half court
I look at the board
2 seconds left am I gonna score
I look at the basket I look at me
I pull back my arm and yell
Kobe

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Friday was Paul's birthday and we spent the entire day with family. We took Adam and Maddy to Hanover to see their grandparents and have lunch at Hibachi Buffet Grill followed by cake back at their house, then we drove home, dropped Maddy off at work, met Christine at our house, and went to my parents' for dinner and more cake!

Over the course of the evening we discovered that Christine had never seen Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and since we've been meaning to see it again since we got back from Carcassonne since so much of it was filmed there, we watched that. After Christine went home, we Skyped with Daniel. Now we're hoping Wisconsin comes back against Florida!