Poem for Monday and Festival of the Nativity

Roadside Creche 

By Ron Koertge 

Traditionally, Gaspar, Melchoir and Balthasar

show up with their exotic gifts, though the Bible

does not name them and some scholars believe

the Chinese sage Liu Shang might have attended

with a gift of silk rather than myrrh. Or even

better - fireworks. The Christ child's missing

fingers suggest he already has some experience

with cherry bombs or Red Devil Ground Blasters.

In this crèche, though, the magi have yet to arrive.

There are no camels, just a plaster zebra peering

over Mary's shoulder. Joseph must have stepped

out for milk or cigarettes. The weight of adoration

has fallen onto the shoulders of a single, scowling

shepherd with binoculars slung around his neck.

He is still keeping watch over his flock despite

that mischievous star that lured him from his

tranquil hillside and utterly bewildered dog. 

-------- 

I slept till nearly noon on Monday to make sure I would have energy for the rest of the day, because at 2:30 we went to pick up our new RAV4, and (as I predicted) we weren't back here till after 6:30, by the time we had inspected, test driven, signed the purchase papers, had the minivan inspected, signed the sales papers, talked to the manager, talked to the finance guy, signed the warranty papers, and consumed two cups of tea, one cup of hot chocolate, and at least two chocolate chip cookies (Michael's of Bellevue has a free full-service coffee shop for customers). 

We said a fond farewell to the minivan after 20 years -- there are still rocks our kids found in the doors -- and came home for dinner, which we ate after watching What If...?'s second episode with Cheryl (Hollywood and Bollywood, yay). Then, inevitably, we watched Die Hard, which Disney+ has at the top of their "Christmas Movies" list and we hadn't managed to see yet this year. No laundry has been folded in two weeks because I can't stay awake to stand up that long, unfortunately! Here are some of the cutest creches from the Bellevue Festival of the Nativity at the LDS Temple:

Poem for Sunday and Conservatory Orchids

Snow 

By Gillian Clarke 

We're brought to our senses, awake

to the black and whiteness of world.

Snow's sensational. It tastes

of ice and fire. Hold a handful of cold.

Ball it between your palms

to throw at the moon. Relish its plushy creak.

Shake blossoms from chestnut and beech,

gather its laundered linen in your arms.

A twig of witch hazel from the ghost-garden

burns like myrrh in this room. Listen!

ice is whispering. Night darkens,

the mercury falls in the glass, glistening.

Motorways muffled in silence, lorries stranded

like dead birds, airports closed, trains trackless.

White paws lope the river on plates of ice

in the city's bewildered wilderness.

-------- 

Sunday, much like Saturday, mostly involved half-watching football while sucking cough drops and sipping tea (I still have no sense of smell or taste, so this wasn't as much fun as it should have been). I do go out, masked, for about half an hour to Safeway for supplies, but otherwise I did a lot of dozing and a little reading. 

Cheryl, Paul, and I watched the What If...? season premiere (fun, we don't get enough Sam/Bruce in canon), then I watched Happy Howlidays, which is overlong but set in Seattle and has a dog named Russell after Russell Crowe (because of Gladiator, though Gerard Butler and Chris Hemsworth get named too). 

Now we're watching the stressful season finale of Dune: Prophecy, which I'm very happy is getting a second season even though it's a messed-up Imperium -- amazing how hereditary patriarchy doesn't often end well even for the hereditary patriarch, though sisterhood doesn't fare any better. Orchids at the Volunteer Park Conservatory:

Poem for Saturday and Witches' Market

I am the Ghost of Christmas Past 

By Isobel De Gruchy 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past;

I will stand at your side,

here in Christmas present ,

and I will whisper, – remember,

remember how it was –

the family was all together then,

all here, all together,

alive to the spirit of Christmas Present,

then – but Christmas Present now?

I am the Ghost of Christmas Past;

and I will keep on whispering,

remember.”

I will hear the voice of the Ghost of Christmas Past;

I will remember – its joy and its sorrow,

but I cannot live there:

so I will turn to him and say;

“Be gone now.

I have heard you,

I want to embrace Christmas Present, –

I want to be fully part of it:

it will bring its own joy,

it may even bring more joy

than you, the Ghost of Christmas Past;

can bring to mind.”

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past;

And I will keep on whispering”, he said.

“And I will ignore you.” I replied,

as I turned my face away –

towards the present.

-------- 

I woke up Saturday with no sense of smell or taste and concluded that it was probably time for a not-expired, professionally administered covid test...which, by the time I got one in the afternoon at least, was negative. So I think it's safe to assume at this point that I don't have covid (or the flu, which they also tested for, and probably not RSV because my symptoms really don't align with it though it's the only one of the three for which I'm not vaccinated). Somehow that knowledge doesn't make the coughing fits better. 

It was otherwise a quiet day of football both college and pro, a quick masked stop at Whole Foods after the lab for chick'n soup and cough drops (Beekeeper's Naturals has honey and no added sugar and tastes great), and dozing off every time I sat down for more than ten minutes. Right now I'm falling asleep during Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which may be terribly paced or may just be the wrong thing for me to be trying to watch at the wrong time. Here are some photos from the PNW Witches' Market Yule festival a couple of weekends back:

Poem for Friday and Evergreen Arboretum

The Garden Year 

By Sara Coleridge 

January brings the snow,

Makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,

Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes, loud and shrill,

To stir the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,

Scatters daisies at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs

Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses,

Fills the children's hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,

Apricots, and gillyflowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,

Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit;

Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasant;

Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast;

Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,

Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

-------- 

I slept more of Friday than I was awake -- absolutely no energy, though I coughed less during the day than all the previous night. My throat hurts less but aches more from the coughing, if that makes any sense; my chest hurts but I think that's from coughing. WebMD says this has gone on too long to be a cold but probably not long enough to be RSV, and if it's not significantly better by tomorrow night, I'll see if I can get a test to find out (I took one more covid test, still negative). 

We had college football on all day, but except for the woeful Notre Dame-Indiana game, I couldn't tell you what happened in them. I had noodle soup and peanut butter toast for dinner because that's about all I can handle, and we watched this week's episodes of Silo and The Agency, which hopefully I'll remember next week because my brain is definitely not firing on all thrusters. Oh, and we watched the Christmas Ghosts. Some of the holiday lights at Evergreen Gardens' Wintertide:

Poem for Thursday and Christmas Railroad

Model-Train Display at Christmas in a Shopping Mall Food Court 

By James Arthur 

These kids watching so intently

on every side of the display

must love the feeling of being gigantic:

of having a giant’s power

over this little world of snow, where buttons

lift and lower

the railway’s crossing gate, or switch the track,

or make the bent wire topped with a toy helicopter

turn and turn

like a sped-up sunflower. A steam engine

draws coal tender, passenger cars, and a gleaming caboose

out from the mountain tunnel,

through a forest of spruce and pine, over the trestle bridge,

to come down near the old silver mine.

Maybe all Christmases

are haunted by Christmases long gone:

old songs, old customs, people who loved you

and who’ve died. Within a family

sometimes even the smallest disagreements

can turn, and grow unkind.

The train’s imaginary passengers,

looking outward from inside,

are steaming toward the one town they could be going to:

the town they have just left,

where everything is local

and nothing is to scale. One church, one skating rink,

one place to buy a saw.

A single hook-and-ladder truck

and one officer of the law. Maybe in another valley

it’s early spring

and the thick air is redolent of chimney smoke and rain,

but here the diner’s always open

so you can always get a meal. Or go down to the drive-in

looking for a fight. Or stay up

all night, so tormented by desire, you can hardly think.

Beyond the edges of the model-train display, the food court

is abuzz. Gingerbread and candy canes

surround a blow mold Virgin Mary, illuminated from within;

a grapevine reindeer

has been hung with sticks of cinnamon. One by one, kids

get pulled away

from the model trains: Christmas Eve is bearing down,

and many chores remain undone.

But for every child who leaves, another child appears.

The great pagan pine

catches and throws back wave on wave of light,

like a king-size chandelier, announcing

that the jingle hop has begun,

and the drummer boy

still has nothing to offer the son of God

but the sound of one small drum.

-------- 

I'm feeling worse rather than better, which makes me wonder whether I should get an RSV test before the weekend starts, though I'm not sure how knowing even if it is RSV will change anything since it doesn't respond to antibiotics. I had another quiet day -- slept late since I didn't sleep well, had Walgreens deliver Dayquil and cough drops, walked to the park because I didn't see how getting no exercise would make me feel better. 

My Thursday chat group met in the evening for a lively discussion of fandom and politics, and then we watched Conclave, which is still on as I type this and it's hard to evaluate the storytelling without the ending though the acting is excellent. (I feel like Jude Law or Ewan McGregor might end up being the best choice.) From the Volunteer Park Conservatory, the holiday trains, the station, Santa, elves, and lots of poinsettias:

Poem for Wednesday and High Crosses

Dark Night of the Soul 

By St John of the Cross 

Once in the dark of night,

Inflamed with love and wanting, I arose

(O coming of delight!)

And went, as no one knows,

When all my house lay long in deep repose

All in the dark went right,

Down secret steps, disguised in other clothes,

(O coming of delight!)

In dark when no one knows,

When all my house lay long in deep repose.

And in the luck of night

In secret places where no other spied

I went without my sight

Without a light to guide

Except the heart that lit me from inside.

It guided me and shone

Surer than noonday sunlight over me,

And lead me to the one

Whom only I could see

Deep in a place where only we could be.

O guiding dark of night!

O dark of night more darling than the dawn!

O night that can unite

A lover and loved one,

A lover and loved one moved in unison.

And on my flowering breast

Which I had kept for him and him alone

He slept as I caressed

And loved him for my own,

Breathing an air from redolent cedars blown.

And from the castle wall

The wind came down to winnow through his hair

Bidding his fingers fall,

Searing my throat with air

And all my senses were suspended there.

I stayed there to forget.

There on my lover, face to face, I lay.

All ended, and I let

My cares all fall away

Forgotten in the lilies on that day.

-------- 

I'm still sick and still cranky so I'll keep this short. Of my high school friends, only Kay could chat, but it was nice to talk to her when my throat and her internet permitted; afterward, we had lunch and I watched the second half of Marvel's Frost Fight and The Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special with Kristen. Then took a walk to the park, since it finally stopped raining. 

We saw bits of bowl games before the season finale of The Masked Singer, which ended as I had hoped pretty much all season -- right final two, in fact -- and spent the rest of the evening catching up on Doctor Odyssey, which is either epic crack masquerading as The Love Boat or has something else entirely going on. Back to Ireland because I found these lovely high cross details from Monasterboice:

Poem for Tuesday and USBG Cacti

The Thanksgiving Cactus 

By Nathan Spoon 

Here in a chair 

in a cozy corner of this room, 

under the glow of a lamp, 

with the sun replaced by 

the moon     hanging 

boldly in the sky, I pause 

to consider the small pink buds 

of a toothed cactus, 

and I pause to consider 

the moon as well,     although 

it is too far away to touch, 

and in my pausing I feel 

as if I am a wave on the ocean 

or a seed     pulsing 

in a warmer season, now 

that the leaves have gone 

from most of the trees, now 

that frost dusts the brittle grass 

most mornings, now 

that weather keeps us more 

indoors,     so that we are more 

able to be together, even more 

together, even during moments 

in lamplight     like this one.

-------- 

My throat is still horribly sore, but my covid test is still negative, so I just took it very easy on Tuesday -- slept late, did some reading, considered going for a walk but it was raining really hard. So I did some cleaning, then my Voyager group watched "Author, Author" (not one of my favorites, but admittedly I hate the way pretty much every character is written by this point of the seventh season). 

Cheryl and I watched Skeleton Crew together before dinner (pace a little slow this week, but it's fun not knowing what Jude Law is up to and the droid, as is so often the case, steals scenes), and now we're giving Doctor Odyssey another try after reading fun internet theories, trying to figure out whether he's in a coma or purgatory or what. Cacti and desert plants at the US Botanical Garden: