Friday, August 23, 2024

Poem for Thursday and Green Lake Birds

The Barcelona Inside Me 
By Robin Becker 

Give me, again, the fairy tale grotto
with the portico-vaulting overhead.
Let me walk beneath the canted columns
of Gaudí’s rookery, spiral
along his crenelated Jerusalem
of broken tiles, crazy shields.
Yes, it’s hot as hell and full
of tourists at the double helix,
but the anarchists now occupy
the Food Court, and the arcadian dream
for the working class includes this shady
colonnade cut into the mountainside.
I’ve postponed my allegiance to
the tiny house movement, to the 450
square feet of simple, American maple
infrastructure and the roomy
mind suspended like a hammock
between joists. Serpents and castle
keeps shimmer, and a mosaic invitation
to the Confectionery gets me a free
café con leche on the <i>La Rambla</i>,

where honeycombed apartments bend
on chiseled stone and host
floating, wrought-iron balconies.
I think I’ll move into Gaudí’s dream
of recycled mesh, walk barefoot
on his flagstone tiles
inscribed with seaweed
and sacred graffiti
from pagan tombs.
O, Barcelona of chamfered corners!
And chimneys of cowled
warriors! From Gaudí's Book
of Revelations, I invite the goblet
and the stone Mobius strip
to a tapas of grilled prawns and squid.
Gaudí’s book of Revelations.

-------- 

I had my semiannual doctor's appointment on Thursday, which was fine -- she wants me to take less of one of my medications because my blood pressure and blood sugar are well enough controlled by the others, which is good news. It was otherwise a quiet day, warm enough to walk to the beach in shorts but not so hot that it was too warm in the apartment. I did some editing, freecycled a bunch of books about skating that I meant to give away before we moved, and repaired some earrings. 

Cheryl and I were the only members of our Thursday night chat group who came to chat, since everyone else was watching the convention; I adored Pink's performance and Kamala's speech, but my tolerance for Al Sharpton and Adam Kinzinger is a lot lower, so I kept switching back to baseball (the Orioles had an atrocious game and the Mariners fired their manager, so not a great sports day). Now we're watching Magpie Murders, which is great. Birds we saw at Green Lake last weekend:

2024-08-18 14.13.30

2024-08-18 15.33.05

2024-08-18 14.59.04

2024-08-18 15.34.21

2024-08-18 14.35.22

2024-08-18 15.22.29

2024-08-18 14.08.15

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