Poem for Friday and Rehoboth Shopping

At the Galleria Shopping Mall
By Tony Hoagland

Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear,
there are some 49-dollar Chinese-made TVs;

one of them singing news about a far-off war,
one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood

to the breast size of an actress from Bollywood.
And here is my niece Lucinda,

who is nine and a true daughter of Texas,
who has developed the flounce of a pedigreed blonde

and declares that her favorite sport is shopping.
Today is the day she embarks upon her journey,

swinging a credit card like a scythe
through the meadows of golden merchandise.

Today is the day she stops looking at faces,
and starts assessing the labels of purses;

So let it begin. Let her be dipped in the dazzling bounty
and raised and wrung out again and again.

And let us watch.
As the gods in olden stories

turned mortals into laurel trees and crows
                    to teach them some kind of lesson,

so we were turned into Americans
to learn something about loneliness.

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 I had to go back to the eye doctor on Thursday because my eyelid has felt infected for a week, and warm compresses weren't really clearing it up. So now I have some kind of antibiotic, anti-inflammatory eye drops and a new eye mask, which thus far has made my eyelid less swollen but more itchy, so hopefully that means it's healing. 

 It was otherwise an uneventful afternoon, nice weather for a walk, baseball on TV -- as much as I hate the Yankees, I am not rooting for cheaters, so I may need them to win -- then Thursday Night Football, because Tom Brady (which you all know was not my choice, heh). Here are some photos from shopping and eating in Rehoboth last weekend: