Poem for Tuesday and Folger First Editions

The Lady in 38 C 

By Lori Jakiela 

The Lady in 38 C

gets confused. She thinks I'm her nurse.

“Nurse!” she yells. “My finger!”

So I bring her a band-aid

and put it on even though she's fine.

“Oh thank you nurse!” she yells.

“You're a good one.”

She winks and smiles and the woman next to her

glares into her computer.

I think the old lady's charming.

She's 86, still pretty. Her eyes are blue.

Her hair is a cloud.

She looks exactly like what's outside.

She's the only air in this cabin, the only light.

“Nurse!” she yells, and I look back

over the sad heads, eggs in a carton,

faces pressed against

the mite-ridden blankets

and pillows they fought for,

and there she is, beaming.

“Nurse,” she says. “Where are we?”

I take her hand

and look out the window.

I scratch my head, smile

and say, “Somewhere

over Idunno.”

She's the only passenger

who's ever gotten that joke.

Up here, nearly everyone is miserable.

I count on small joys to get by.

The woman in 38C says, “Oh, Nurse!”

and the woman next to her

who probably thinks we're somewhere

over Idaho, that wonderland of Hemingway

and golden potatoes,

rolls her eyes and bangs the computer keys

until the seatbelt sign goes on

and the captain says,

“We'll be experiencing weather.”

which is what people say

instead of scary things like storm and turbulence

and pretty soon the plane is bouncing

and the woman with the computer

grips her armrest

while the old lady throws her arms up

like she's on a roller coaster and yells,

“They should charge extra for this!”

-------- 

My Tuesday morning was about unpacking, laundry, organizing stuff, catching up on correspondence, etc. It was foggy when we woke up but turned sunny before we walked to the park, where the sandy beach and the stretch of grass and trees surrounding the play equipment was closed to the public, even the bridges over the stream to reach that part, because of all the fallen trees and still-precarious branches. 

I came home to watch the atrocious "Human Error" with my Voyager group to much scorn, after which Cheryl  and I watched Star Wars: Skeleton Crew together -- great so far -- while Paul and I ate dinner. Then we caught up on Silo and Dune: Prophecy, both of which are very well done and enjoyable. Here are some of the rare items we saw in the Folger Library collection, from Holinshed to Joyce to Tolkien to Milne:

 

Canterbury Tales printed by William Caxton, first Englishman to use a printing press to produce books, in 1477. 

 

1505 Haggadah printed in Constantinople on the first printing press outside Europe to use Hebrew movable type. 

 

Holinshed's Chronicles, 1577, one of Shakespeare's historical sources.

 

James Joyce's Ulysses, numbered and signed by the author, from the limited first printing by Sylvia Beach in Paris in 1922. 

 

Galley proofs of the first printing of The Lord of the Rings with Tolkien's corrections and notes; "and in the shadows bind them" becomes "and in the darkness bind them" here.

 

1957 galley proofs of Ian Fleming's Dr. No with the author's corrections.

 

First edition of Winnie-the-Pooh presented in 1926 by A.A. Milne to his son, the inspiration for Christopher Robin, "For Moonest Moon and Poohest Pooh."