By Jane Hirshfield
On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.
The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees.
Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.
The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.
Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,
while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.
The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking,
of rivers, of boulders and air.
In gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.
Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.
They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.
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Quickie, I'm watching the end of Avengers: Endgame which is finally out on Blu-Ray, so I could finally get it from Target with the store-exclusive extras and now I can stream it too. I had an uneventful morning of trying to print things out while Katniss tried to grab and shred the pages before I could get them, then a trip to the aforementioned Target and a little while in the park for some sunshine and a raid.
We had dinner with my parents, who were out of town last week visiting my sister and who had gotten us bagels. Then we came home for Endgame and the extras (the Stan Lee tribute, the gag reel, the deleted scenes -- I wish they'd finished the Thor one and left the final Tony one in). From Great Falls last weekend, a muskrat collecting canal weeds while a curious little green heron looked on:
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