Tuesday, February 06, 2024

Poem for Monday and Luther Burbank Wildlife

Wildpeace 
By Yehuda Amichai 

Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds—
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

-------- 

My Monday mostly involved chores, but I got to talk to Laurie for the first time in ages and catch up over Google Meet, and I attended a JTS webinar on teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses that was very informative and nuanced, when I hadn't been sure what to expect since JTS is Conservative and has connectedness to Israel in its mission statement (the speaker was surprisingly critical of the narratives about Israel that a lot of us got in our Hebrew school educations). It made me feel marginally hopeful. I also tried to keep an eye on the L.A. area weather concerns. 

Paul had to go back to the dentist to get his implant looked at, so I went with him and stopped in a couple of stores (now I have a Pikachu baseball cap that was on a huge sale). We didn't take a very long walk because it was raining, but we saw the two adult eagles and also a juvenile eagle in the same tree in our neighborhood, then we ate dinner and watched the newest episode of Masters of the Air, which is good and also stressful. Now we're watching The King of Staten Island, which we hadn't seen before; it's much sadder than I expected, though good. Animals at Luther Burbank park:

2024-02-03 13.28.59

2024-02-03 13.46.18

2024-02-03 14.18.45

2024-02-03 13.57.37

2024-02-03 13.39.41

2024-02-03 13.29.22

2024-02-03 13.46.12

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