Poem for Thursday and Cabin John Crocuses

Nostos
By Louise Gluck

There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts
of crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor's yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts --
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

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Wednesday was nearly 60 degrees and sunny and it really felt like spring is on the way, especially out walking with crocuses and snowdrops blooming all over the neighborhood and the daffodils starting. I did a bunch of work in the morning, then talked to my high school friends after lunch, then did a bunch more scanning and editing of old correspondence, which reminded me to get in touch with a couple of people I hadn't spoken to in too long. This is what it looked like in Cabin John Park: 

 

We watched this week's Legends of Tomorrow -- the season finale I think, and it looks like at least one character isn't coming back, which is a bummer but this show has done a good job with a revolving cast and as long as Sara and Ava are there, so am I. Then we watched the new West Side Story, some parts of which are fantastic (Rita Moreno! Singing "Somewhere"!) and some parts less so (in a movie this long they rushed the death scene? Maybe because Ansel Elgort can't sing nearly as well as Rachel Zegler).