Northern Pike
By James Wright
All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
Else is going
To die in a loneliness
I can't imagine and a pain
I don't know. We had
To go on living. We
Untangled the net, we slit
The body of this fish
Open from the hinge of the tail
To a place beneath the chin
I wish I could sing of.
I would just as soon we let
The living go on living.
An old poet whom we believe in
Said the same thing, and so
We paused among the dark cattails and prayed
For the muskrats,
For the ripples below their tails,
For the little movements that we knew the crawdads were making under water,
For the right-hand wrist of my cousin who is a policeman.
We prayed for the game warden's blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
There must be something very beautiful in my body,
I am so happy.
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Tuesday was drizzly and cool in the morning, so I spent some of it reading, some of it dyeing my roots, and some of it finishing up the many laundries of the past couple of weeks, plus I rearranged some of my Renfaire jewelry after having taken it out for the fests. In the afternoon I did some organizing in the basement, and later we took a walk to enjoy the cool weather -- only one bunny was enjoying it with us.
We ate leftover pizza for dinner because we were tight on time; I watched Voyager's excellent Holocaust-themed episode "Remember" with my Tuesday watching group, and we chatted about books and theater and things. Then Paul and I watched the Red Sox knock the Yankees out of the postseason, which was lovely. Here are some photos from Pike's Place Market last month, including the chewing gum wall:
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