By Linda Bierds
Osseous, aqueous, cardiac, hepatic—
back from bone the echoes stroke, back
from the halved heart, the lungs
three years of weightlessness have cinched to gills.
From a leather chaise, the astronaut’s withered legs
dangle, as back they come, sounds
a beaked percussion hammer startles into shape.
The physician cocks his head and taps—exactly
as a splitter halves his slate, the metamorphic rock
chisel-shocked, then shocked again, halved
and halved, until a roof appears, black as space.
I’m gaining ground, he says, the astronaut,
who knows, from space, earth is just a blue-green glow,
a pilot light he circled once, lifted, swiftly flown
above the rafters and atmospheres, half himself
and half again some metamorphic click,
extinct as memory. I’m gaining ground,
he says, and back it comes, his glint
of cloud-crossed world: a pilot light
or swaddled leaf, green in the season’s infancy.
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Because I couldn't go to Yorktown with Cheryl and other friends this weekend, since my back won't permit me to sit in a car long enough to drive down there, she came to visit me on Monday and we had an awesome day -- shopped at the Container Store, picked up Noodles & Company (Thai and Japanese), ate it while watching The Right Stuff (which I haven't seen in years and it seems dated after Hidden Figures but still pro-science and enjoyable). Paul had been downtown at a job interview; when he got home, we went to Baskin Robbins and watched some Robin of Sherwood.
After Cheryl went home, Paul and I had sandwiches for dinner since we were still full from ice cream, put all of niece's linens and towels in the laundry, and watched Supergirl, which would have been okay except they never explained or even mentioned again a rather big plot point which now seems to have been declared irrelevant. Then we watched Billions, a show about two completely heinous men and the women silly enough to want them in their lives (I hesitate to say "love them" because they may just be there for the money). Animals from Meadowlark Gardens on Sunday:
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