Poem for Tuesday and Munching Squirrel

Exhibit 1
By Susan Barba

Start with a base map, unlabeled terrain,
in shaded green and ochre, nude relief,

cool continental mass bathing in blue,
a face whose features now are visible,

unannotated, apolitical,
as if a mighty snow had settled here

and muffled every static line and letter,
earth as naked as the moon, but full

of lively color, from the fissured west
into the placid belly of the country,

eastward over quartzite ridge, carbonate
valley into southwest-trending s-curves

up the coast, a range two thousand miles,
two hundred fifty million years of mountain

formed in three successive waves of rock
uplifted and depressed, and in the west

it’s just begun. Nine hundred million acres
under time, under stress and stretches

of content. Reserved for a duration.
Blue-green grid of constant revolution.

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Monday was a Monday -- writing, laundry, photos, nothing terribly exciting besides 65-degree weather a week into December. So of course I did outside chores and we all took a walk after lunch! Otherwise our only major activities were sandwiches for lunch and Ethiopian food from Sheba for dinner. And we had happy squirrels enjoying the weather on the deck: 

 

In the evening we watched the short Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas, which was cute and very funny, and Free Guy, which was enjoyable -- Reynolds and Waititi obviously having a blast, plus lots of very fun cameos, though really not a good movie for women (Bechdel fail, feminism mocked, lots of female underlings treated badly in and out of game).