Poem for Wednesday and King John's Castle

The Wolf Reader 

By George Szirtes 

for Marilyn Hacker 

There were the books, and wolves were in the books.

They roamed between words. They snarled and loped

through stories with bedraggled wolfish looks

at which the hackles rose and the world stopped

in horror, and she read them because she knew

the pleasures of reading, the page being rapt

with the magic of the fierce, and she could do

the talk of such creatures. So one day

when teacher asked if there were any who

could read, she rose as if the task were play,

to claim the story where she felt at home.

The tale was Riding Hood, the wolf was grey.

The fierceness was the wood where grey wolves roam.

She read it round, she read it through and through

It was as if the wolf were hers to comb,

like those bedraggled creatures in the zoo

that, trapped behind the bars, would snarl and stride

as you'd expect a page or wolf to do.

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The weather on Wednesday was even worse than Tuesday! I spent the morning on chat with the one high school friend who could make it this week, then doing some organizing, then we had lunch, after which Kristen and I watched the last two episodes of Ms. Marvel together and discussed Celebrimbor's life story. After that, Paul and I decided we really needed a walk despite the pouring rain, so we put on our vinyl pants and headed to the beach, where we had the geese and ducks to ourselves. We even saw two eagles. 

When we got home, we put on some college football, ate veggie burgers for dinner, and watched The Masked Singer, the last new group of this season. Then, because several friends told me to, we watched 'Tis the Season To Be Irish, which is set mostly in a coastal town with pretty scenery and doesn't have a contrived Other Woman or ridiculous misunderstanding, so that's all to the good! Here is King John's Castle in Limerick, from the Viking ruins to the castle built under English orders and besieged by Irish Confederates: