Wednesday, June 03, 2020

Poem for Wednesday and Canal Ducklings

Childhood Memories
By William Saphier

Those years are foliage of trees
their trunks hidden by bushes;
behind them a gray haze topped with silver
hides the swinging steps of my first love
the Danube.

On its face
grave steel palaces with smoking torches,
parading monasteries moved slowly to the Black Sea
till the bared branches scratched the north wind.

On its bed
a great Leviathan waited
for the ceremonies on the arrival of Messiah
and bobbing small fishes snapped sun splinters
for the pleasure of the monster.

Along its shores
red capped little hours danced
with rainbow colored kites,
messengers to heaven.

My memory is a sigh
of swallows swinging
through a slow dormant summer
to a timid line on the horizon.

--------

Tuesday was exhausting, and I'm saying that as someone who only watched the terrible parts from a distance -- I have so much admiration for and rage on behalf of the protestors. It wasn't a bad day here otherwise: having finished the personal photo scanning project of doom, though I still have a whole bunch of editing to do, I started to tackle the basement filing cabinets which have papers and documents dating back to when I was in high school. The first drawer I encountered was all baby stuff: lamaze, hospital forms, La Leche information, lots of warranties and instructions for equipment and toys. It's all getting recycled, since most of it is out of date and some of the equipment has been recalled.

We took a walk in the afternoon since it was gorgeous today and is supposed to be atrociously hot here the next two days, then had veggie burgers for dinner. I needed a break from the real world, so watched Stargirl, which gets better as more characters get involved, and the season finale of Legends of Tomorrow, which had some truly glorious moments ("I played hooky at Hogwarts, I learned magic the hard way, in Hell!"), followed by some more fifth season Arrested Development (in which G.O.B. can't tell the difference between tainting someone's brand and branding someone's taint). Here are a mother wood duck and her ducklings in the canal last weekend, a calming sight to end Blackout Tuesday:

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