Poem for Wednesday and Mount Vernon Sheep

Achieving Perspective
By Pattiann Rogers

Straight up away from this road,
Away from the fitted particles of frost
Coating the hull of each chick pea,
And the stiff archer bug making its way
In the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,
Up the stem of the trillium,
Straight up through the sky above this road right now,
The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster
Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm
Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.
I try to remember that.

And even in the gold and purple pretense
Of evening, I make myself remember
That it would take 40,000 years full of gathering
Into leaf and dropping, full of pulp splitting
And the hard wrinkling of seed, of the rising up
Of wood fibers and the disintegration of forests,
Of this lake disappearing completely in the bodies
Of toad slush and duckweed rock,
40,000 years and the fastest thing we own,
To reach the one star nearest to us.

And when you speak to me like this,
I try to remember that the wood and cement walls
Of this room are being swept away now,
Molecule by molecule, in a slow and steady wind,
And nothing at all separates our bodies
From the vast emptiness expanding, and I know
We are sitting in our chairs
Discoursing in the middle of the blackness of space.
And when you look at me
I try to recall that at this moment
Somewhere millions of miles beyond the dimness
Of the sun, the comet Biela, speeding
In its rocks and ices, is just beginning to enter
The widest arc of its elliptical turn.

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It rained much of Tuesday, keeping me in the house (and in my PJs, ha) until after noon, though I got a decent amount of work done in that time. Then I went out to the park for a little while before Paul came home and we ran out to Giant.

We watched The Gifted instead of The Flash -- it's holding my interest better, though those mutant groups need to put aside their differences and work together -- and Black Lightning -- a bit too diffuse this year, needs more family, less conspiracy.

My west coast in-laws have returned to their home, which is great, though I have two friends having crises this week which is upsetting for me too. Here are some happy sheep at Mount Vernon in the late afternoon during the Colonial fair last weekend: