By Pablo Neruda
Neither clown nor child nor black
nor white but verticle
and a questioning innocence
dressed in night and snow:
The mother smiles at the sailor,
the fisherman at the astronaunt,
but the child child does not smile
when he looks at the bird child,
and from the disorderly ocean
the immaculate passenger
emerges in snowy mourning.
I was without doubt the child bird
there in the cold archipelagoes
when it looked at me with its eyes,
with its ancient ocean eyes:
it had neither arms nor wings
but hard little oars
on its sides:
it was as old as the salt;
the age of moving water,
and it looked at me from its age:
since then I know I do not exist;
I am a worm in the sand.
the reasons for my respect
remained in the sand:
the religious bird
did not need to fly,
did not need to sing,
and through its form was visible
its wild soul bled salt:
as if a vein from the bitter sea
had been broken.
Penguin, static traveler,
deliberate priest of the cold,
I salute your vertical salt
and envy your plumed pride.
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Uneventful Wednesday, mostly chores, throat still not great but sinuses better, tried to go out but a big accident on 270 meant it took fifteen minutes for me to drive just around the corner and I decided that meant I should just go back home. Shutterfly had a free shipping coupon but of course the site was down every time I tried to go take advantage of it.
We watched the season finale of Burden of Truth, which was pretty satisfying if not entirely believable in terms of how quickly things happened, then we started watching the terrible Yankees-As game before putting on the Doctor Who marathon instead after Cheryl reminded us about it. Here are the penguins of the Greensboro Science Center:
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