Saturday, April 06, 2019

Poem for Saturday, On the Basis of Sex, Captain Marvel, Spring

Double View of the Adirondacks as Reflected Over Lake Champlain from Waterfront Park
By Major Jackson

The mountains are at their theater again,
each ridge practicing an oration of scale and crest,
and the sails, performing glides across the lake, complain
for being out-shadowed despite their gracious
bows. Thirteen years in this state, what hasn’t occurred?
A cyclone in my spirit led to divorce, four books
gave darkness an echo of control, my slurred
hand finding steadiness by the prop of a page,
and God, my children whom I scarred! Pray they forgive.
My crimes felt mountainous, yet perspective
came with distance, and like those peaks, once keening
beneath biting ice, then felt resurrection in a vestige
of water, unfrozen, cascading and adding to the lake’s
depth, such have I come to gauge my own screaming.
The masts tip so far they appear to capsize, keeling
over where every father is a boat on water. The wakes
carry the memory of battles, and the Adirondacks
hold their measure. I am a tributary of something greater.

--------

My neighbor Rose and I have had plans to see Captain Marvel together since the week it opened, but she has been crazy busy, so on Friday we finally managed to get there and I was so happy to see it again! I think I liked it even better this time, in a theater with maybe 18 people total; it didn't have the same energy as the packed opening weekend crowd, but it was mostly women plus a couple of dads with daughters and everyone was watching with great intensity and delight. I know it's unlikely but I really hope they find a way to keep Annette Bening in the MCU.

My parents caught the stomach flu at a Bat Mitzvah out of town last weekend, so Paul and I did not get to have dinner with them. Instead we ate here, saw this week's Blindspot, and then watched On the Basis of Sex, which doesn't really seem like an unconventional enough movie for someone as unconventional as the notorious RBG; the performances are good, but the screenplay, though interesting and relevant, is somewhat didactic. Before we move into late spring and the daffodils give way to tulips and azaleas, here are some photos of my neighborhood in early bloom:

DSCN5722

DSCN5692

2019-03-31 11.53.00A

2019-03-20 19.28.34

DSCN5707

DSCN5686

2019-03-26 19.26.41

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