Poem for Monday and Meadowlark Gardens

Turtle
By Mary Oliver

Now I see it--
it nudges with its bulldog head
the slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble;
and now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal

who is leading her soft children
from one side of the pond to the other; she keeps
close to the edge
and they follow closely, the good children--

the tender children,
the sweet children, dangling their pretty feet
into the darkness.
And now will come--I can count on it--the murky splash,

the certain victory
of that pink and gassy mouth, and the frantic
circling of the hen while the rest of the chicks
flare away over the water and into the reeds, and my heart

will be most mournful
on their account. But, listen,
what's important?
Nothing's important

except that the great and cruel mystery of the world,
of which this is a part,
not to be denied. Once,
I happened to see, on a city street, in summer,

a dusty, fouled turtle plodded along--
a snapper--
broken out I suppose from some backyard cage--
and I knew what I had to do--

I looked it right in the eyes, and I caught it--
I put it, like a small mountain range,
into a knapsack, and I took it out
of the city, and I let it

down into the dark pond, into
the cool water,
and the light of the lilies,
to live.

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We got up at 5:30 to drive Maddy to BWI, said our goodbyes for now, then came back home and fell back asleep from around 8-10 so I've been kind of groggy all day! After we finally got up and showered, we had lunch, picked up my mother (my father has a cold and stayed home), then picked up Alice (whose husband and son both had homework) and went to Meadowlark Gardens which isn't far from where the latter lives. The cherry blossoms and tulips for which the park is famous were gone, but there were still plenty of azaleas and we saw many turtles, frogs, geese, koi, tadpoles, red-winged blackbirds, and other wildlife as we walked through the wetlands and Korean bell gardens.

















It was nicely overcast, so not as horrendously hot as the forecast. After we took Alice home and visited her family for a few minutes, we stopped at Tara Thai to pick up food and went back to my parents' house for dinner, where my father was in a good mood after watching the Nationals' 23-5 victory over the Mets (when we got there he was concerned that the Yankees were going to beat the Orioles in extra innings, but the Os came back and won). In the evening we watched the very annoying Once Upon a Time (Belle's compulsive self-erasure is unwatchable, I almost hope Gold kills her as a cautionary tale instead of glorifying their "love") and the always enjoyable Madam Secretary.

Poem for Sunday and Brookside Soap Bubbles

Soap Bubble
By Valerie Worth

The soap bubble's
Great soft sphere
Bends out of shape
On the air,
Leans, rounds again,
Rises, shivering, heavy,
A planet revolving
Hollow and clear,
Mapped with
Rainbows, streaming,
Curled: seeming
A world too splendid
To snap, dribble,
And disappear.

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Since Maddy is leaving for an indefinite amount of time on Sunday morning, we spent the day with her, starting with brunch at Metro 29 Diner in Arlington with Alice, Jeremy, and their son. We also took her to the bank, to UPS to ship some things home, and to pick up a friend at the mall, with whom we had dinner and with whom she is currently out along with other work friends while we watched Doctor Who ("Thin Ice" aka the Frost Fair episode, which I really loved -- I am really loving this season after being annoyed with the show for a long time) and Class (not terrible but thematically meh, no "Father's Day"). Now we're watching Graham Norton but I need to get to bed because we're driving Maddy to the airport before 6 a.m. Here are some photos of a guest's soap bubbles floating through Brookside Gardens:

Poem for Saturday, The Handmaid's Tale, Great Falls

Not Speaking Of The Way
By Yosano Akiko
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth

Not speaking of the way,
Not thinking of what comes after,
Not questioning name or fame,
Here, loving love,
You and I look at each other.

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Busy Friday -- took Maddy to Subway then to an appointment, went for a walk in Woottons Mill Park while she was there, came home for a few hours to do chores, then took Maddy to work at California Pizza Kitchen, where we met my parents for dinner. Now we're watching the first three episodes of The Handmaid's Tale, which is everything I'd read -- superbly acted and really well filmed, not a letter-faithful adaptation of the book so much as a horror story for our own time (I like the Richardson-Dunaway-Duvall movie but it cuts and compresses a huge amount of material and invents other parts for a convenient resolution that the book deliberately lacks). Here are some photos from Great Falls the other day:

Poem for Friday and Great Falls Reptiles

Imagery
By Archibald MacLeish

The tremulously mirrored clouds lie deep,
Enchanted towers bosomed in the stream,
And blossomed coronals of white-thorn gleam
Within the water where the willows sleep—
Still-imaged willow-leaves whose shadows steep
The far-reflected sky in dark of dream;
And glimpsed therein the sun-winged swallows seem
As fleeting memories to those who weep.

So mirrored in thy heart are all desires,
Eternal longings, Youth’s inheritance,
All hopes that token immortality,
All griefs whereto immortal grief aspires.
Aweary of the world’s reality,
I dream above the imaged pool, Romance.

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Quickie as I have been on the phone with relatives all night -- mostly Maddy's sister Noelle, who is getting married in August and has lots of good things going on in her life. It was a warm, pretty day, so after doing a bunch of chores with Maddy and going to lunch at California Tortilla with her, we dropped her off at the mall to hang out with friends and went to Great Falls, where we saw lots of happy reptiles:













Our intention was to catch up on Blindspot, then watch the first episode of The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu, but we decided to watch the NFL draft until the Ravens and Redskins had their first-round pics, then I wound up on the phone and we didn't watch anything else. Maddy is out at a birthday party with friends from work and I finally have an MRI appointment for next week, so that is all good news!

Poem for Thursday and Mount Vernon Animals

High School Senior
By Sharon Olds

For seventeen years, her breath in the house
at night, puff, puff, like summer
cumulus above her bed,
and her scalp smelling of apricots
--this being who had formed within me,
squatted like a bright tree-frog in the dark,
like an eohippus she had come out of history
slowly, through me, into the daylight,
I had the daily sight of her,
like food or air she was there, like a mother.
I say "college," but I feel as if I cannot tell
the difference between her leaving for college
and our parting forever--I try to see
this house without her, without her pure
depth of feeling, without her creek-brown
hair, her daedal hands with their tapered
fingers, her pupils dark as the mourning cloak's
wing, but I can't. Seventeen years
ago, in this room, she moved inside me,
I looked at the river, I could not imagine
my life with her. I gazed across the street,
and saw, in the icy winter sun,
a column of steam rush up away from the earth.
There are creatures whose children float away
at birth, and those who throat-feed their young
for weeks and never see them again. My daughter
is free and she is in me--no, my love
of her is in me, moving in my heart,
changing chambers, like something poured
from hand to hand, to be weighed and then reweighed.

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I posted that poem in 2003 -- weirdly enough, with a photo of Mount Rainier and the stadiums in Seattle taken a few blocks from where Daniel lives now.

Busy Wednesday. Maddy arrived very early in the morning from California, then had to be at work at the mall at 10 a.m. Adam needed a ride at noon from College Park to NIH for an orientation lunch meeting and some administrative stuff (ID, medical, etc.), then back to the pediatrician to get his TB test checked -- fortunately it was negative! Plus we had half an hour to fill between NIH and the doctor, so we stopped for Krispy Kreme on the way and had salted caramel doughnuts. We came back to the house until Maddy was finished with work.

Then we went to meet Maddy at California Pizza Kitchen for dinner, where she told us that she is going back to California to enroll in a program to get her ready for college after her chaotic high school years, which we agree will be a good idea for her. After that, we all drove Adam back to the University of Maryland. When we got home we wound down watching The 100 and Designated Survivor, neither of which gave us the episode originally advertised but at least they didn't suck. Some more photos of animals at Mount Vernon:

Poem for Wednesday, Genius, Mount Vernon Flowers

Dancing Adairs
By Conrad Aiken

Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel,
Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight,
And into the shadow again, without a whisper! —
Firefly’s my name, I am evanescent.

Firefly’s your name. You are evanescent.
But I follow you  as remorselessly as darkness,
And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always,
Till you are lost,—as a voice is lost in silence.

Till I am lost, as a voice is lost in silence...
Are you the one who would close so cool about me?
My fire sheds into and through you and beyond you:
How can your fingers hold me? I am elusive.

How can my fingers hold you? You are elusive?
Yes, you are flame, but I surround and love you,
Always extend beyond you, cool, eternal,
To take you into my heart’s great void of silence.

You shut me into your heart’s great void of silence...
O sweet and soothing end for a life of whirling!
Now I am still, whose life was mazed with motion.
Now I sink into you, for love of sleep.

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We had a crazy Monday and we're going to have a busy Wednesday, so we had a fairly quiet Tuesday doing work at home. We donated Daniel's twin bed to the Salvation Army now that we have a queen bed in that room -- for political reasons they were not my first, second, fifth, or eighth choice, but they were literally the only organization in the greater DC area willing to pick up before the end of May without charging us for the privilege of donating and we needed the bed moved before Adam finishes the semester. It rained most of the day, though we did go to Cabin John Park to take a walk when the rain turned to drizzle.

We watched The Flash, which needs to stop dragging out the Savitar storyline before I no longer care what he does, then we watched the first episode of Genius, which is a little bit too self-consciously quirky but very well acted and quite timely in its depiction of how the rise of fascism depends on both nationalism and denial of facts. Maddy is flying back from California overnight and has to be taken to work when she arrives in the morning, then we're picking up Adam from College Park again for an orientation at NIH and one more visit to the doctor, so we will run around a lot! Flowers from Mount Vernon last weekend:

Poem for Tuesday and Mount Vernon Lambs

Open
By Rachel Barenblat

God is the doorman,
the one you don't notice

holding the heavy panel
so you can go through.

God is the hinge
that swings the door,

the joint and socket
that make opening possible.

God is the door
through which you walk

from one chapter
to the next,

adorned with words
that remind you

who you are becoming,
who you really are.

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Monday was chaos all over the area. While we were doing morning chores and getting ready to pick up Adam at the University of Maryland to take him to his pediatrician for the physical he needs to intern at NIH this summer -- he's staying with the pediatrician through college since his health and immunization records are there -- a massive fire broke out in a building under construction in College Park, closing several major roads to campus and causing afternoon classes to be canceled. Plus one of the lenses in my glasses popped out. We avoided most of the traffic by meeting Adam at his dorm, and we stopped at the optometrist who is fortunately near the pediatrician to get the glasses repaired, so at least that worked out.

Adam needed tetanus and hepatitis boosters, the new meningitis vaccine, and a TB test, so his arm (and probably the rest of him) is sure to be sore tomorrow, but he got everything done though he has to go back and get the TB test examined on Wednesday, which is fine because he needs to be at NIH for an orientation and that's on this side of the Beltway. We came back to our house to rest and recharge our phones, then met my parents for dinner at BGR before driving Adam back to College Park, where the fire department is hoping to stabilize what's left of the new building so it doesn't collapse entirely. We came home for Supergirl and Billions, plus an Orioles win and a Nationals loss. From Mount Vernon last weekend: