Poem for Sunday and Brookside Winter

A Supermarket in California
By Allen Ginsberg

  What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
  In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
  What peaches and what penumbras!  Whole families shopping at night!  Aisles full of husbands!  Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

  I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
  I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?  What price bananas?  Are you my Angel?
  I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
  We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

  Where are we going, Walt Whitman?  The doors close in a hour.  Which way does your beard point tonight?
  (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
  Will we walk all night through solitary streets?  The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
  Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
  Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

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It rained Sunday morning, so we had a quiet morning watching college football and doing chores. Then we had lunch and went to Brookside Gardens with Adam, where we saw geese and ducks plus the orchids in the conservatory (which unhappily no longer has the holiday trains). On the way home we stopped at Mom's Organic Market for cheese curds for poutine (and Giant for toilet paper but that's not as exciting).

















Because of Bad Times at the El Royale, we decided we should watch The Cabin in the Woods, which I liked better than I was expecting given that it has horror movie violence and doesn't exactly duck misogyny just because it mocks stereotypes -- Bradley Whitford, Chris Hemsworth, and Surprise Director made it worth it for me, anyway. Still, it may have been less horrible in its final minutes than the Cowboys-Seahawks game.