Poem for Tuesday and Green Lake Evening

Canada Geese At Sunset 

By Dewell H. Byrd 

Autumn colors sweep the hillsides

that fall away to a farm pond

on the valley floor.

Evening vapors rise, gather

geese in a storm of feathers

leaving a wake in water and fog.

I walk the day down with the sun.

My shadow, roaming the hills,

slips back into me.

Last rays of sun creep up my back,

electrify the hair on my neck,

hot as my tongue in a lie.

Geese circle the valley, rise in formation —

a gaggle of conversation —

follow the glow-road home.

-------- 

I took it easy on Tuesday in the hope my cold would go away. I dyed my roots, did some reading, cleaned up some computer files, and eventually took a walk to the park, where we saw a large dead salmon being eaten by a loose affiliation of ducks, crows, and seagulls. Also, it looks like the coot family that was away all summer is back for the fall. We had baseball on nearly all day (yay Red Sox!).

My DS9 group watched the phenomenal "Necessary Evil" and we saw the Dodgers-Reds over loaded baked potatoes for dinner. Our evening entertainment started with Only Murders in the Building (finally Meryl!), then Slow Horses (not really holding my interest this season), then The Morning Show (I really wish the women were supporting each other more). Scenes from late afternoon walking at Green Lake: 

Poem for Monday and Bellevue Dahlias

The Dahlias 

By Didi Jackson 

By now the fields are overgrown,

most ironweed and parsnip have turned black,

even the closed cabinet doors of milkweed pods

have burst open, spilling their shucked silk

into the day. I wear a coat

and remember August, those nights

filled with moths that like fireworks

put on a show at our window,

circled the lights like monks in meditation.

At every new cycle, I miss the one

now gone. I am never happy and have

no excuse not to love the dying

season, the growing season, the season of sleep.

That is to say, to love it while it is

happening. But what of the fall dahlias

that like bodiced planets float above

their roots and leaves? Surely they contain all

the colors of our universe. They must love

the cooler days, the beginning

of a time for rest, less forced display.

Take it easy I will say. But the wind

has something else in mind.

They might perform a roundelay

or the danse macabre. In time

we all will be bones, our eyeholes hallowed

and our skeletons clattering like chimes.

-------- 

I have definitely caught a cold from one of the men in my life, so I spent a lot of Monday sniffling and sucking on zinc. It was a chilly, rainy day, so at least I didn't miss any excitement outside; we took an abbreviated walk along the lake in the afternoon and we did see three eagles and a great blue heron, though I miss the goats. I started reading Alix Harrow's Starling House but was too sleepy to concentrate for long. 

In the evening, we watched all of Marvel's Marvel Zombies, which I liked much better than I was expecting given my hatred of pop culture zombie stories. It starts with girl power and Star Trek references and winds up having many of my favorite characters non-zombified for long stretches. The story picks up threads not only from What If...? but from the Thor movies, the Ant-Man movies, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, and Shang-Chi, among others. 

There was little onscreen brain-eating, and since that was animated rather than live, it did not ruin my dinner -- pumpkin chili after a day in the slow cooker. I'm actually hoping for a second season, since Wanda is more interesting as a zombie than in the last Doctor Strange movie. Now we're watching another episode of The Artful Dodger. Here are some of the very sunny flowers from Bellevue Botanical Garden's dahlia garden on Sunday:

Greetings from Bellevue

To my surprise, my Sunday began with goats! I thought they were getting picked up while we were out yesterday afternoon, and it was too dark last night to tell that they were asleep behind the building, but they were maaaaaing in the morning and I got to see them get marched around the building and onto the truck that took them wherever they will be eating weeds next. We saw some of the Vikings-Steelers game and ate lunch, then we went to Bellevue -- first to Kelsey Creek Farm, to see more goats, plus sheep, horses, chickens, and other animals, then to Bellevue Botanical Garden, to see dahlias, fuschias, late irises, early turning trees, and ponds where we could hear frogs though not see them.

 

It was a Pokemon raid day, so now I have a shiny Mega Camerupt, and we stopped at Safeway, so now we have cat food and acai bowls. We also have zinc tablets because one of my nearest and dearest shared his cold with me, or maybe it was my next door neighbor who also has one. The Ravens game wasn't on here and I missed the last baseball games of the regular season while we were out, but we saw far more of the Packers-Cowboys game than I wanted and it ended ridiculously in a tie after overtime. Now we're watching the first episode of The Artful Dodger, in which a plucky girl and a Dickens antihero revolutionize surgery in the 1850s, plus romantic comedy and class conflict -- very enjoyable.

Greetings from Green Lake

My Saturday started with goats (who have sadly eaten all they were brought in to landscape, and so will be going to eat someone else's brambles) and sports (UW football, Orioles, Mariners all not good). Then we went to meet Daniel and Cahaya, who gave us souvenirs from South Korea and Malaysia and went to walk with us and their dogs around Green Lake in the gorgeous afternoon weather. Afterward, we went to Ada's Restaurant in Phinney Ridge for dinner, which was fantastic and had live music by Su Oktay. Then we went back to Daniel and Cahaya's for birthday cake by Paul decorated with the Pokemon Zoroark, Daniel's favorite.

 

Last time I read a Dan Brown novel I wrote a whole post about it, so I shall note of The Secret of Secrets that I enjoyed it enough to read it in a day and a half, I liked the Prague travelogue, I appreciated the smart female characters, I rolled my eyes at the noetics in The Secret of Secrets aren't improved from when they (and the character invested in them) as I did in The Lost Symbol. The presentation of epilepsy seems problematic to me but I haven't seen anyone with epilepsy discussing it; the Jewish stories are sympathetic and the Catholic Church is no longer villainous. These days Brown's conspiracies pale next to the real world!

Greetings from Idylwood

My whole Friday was sitting outside on the egg swing on the porch, watching and listening to the goats who are currently eating the brambles directly below our apartment between us and the lake, and reading The Secret of Secrets, which has both all the flaws of a Dan Brown novel and all the entertaining aspects that are why people read Dan Brown novels. It feels almost nostalgic now reading even a new book of his, now that we're living in an endless series of conspiracy theories and nearly everything we feared might be true of the government has proven so. 

We went out to dinner at BJs to get their Halloween drinks and a Spooky Pizookie, which we split, while watching the end of the Orioles game and start of the Mariners game on their big screens, neither of which ended the way I wanted. Now we have a Futurama episode on. Earlier in the afternoon, we walked to the beach, and here are the geese preparing for autumn:

Greetings from Overlake

On Thursday I took a break from goats and baseball -- though I saw both in the morning, since the Orioles played early (and won with a walkoff) and the goats are moving closer to our building as they eat their way through the weeds. I went with Paul to his colonoscopy appointment, and while he was having the procedure I walked around the Overlake Hospital complex, which has big central gardens and lots of artwork on display by PNW artists, even Chihuly:

 

While waiting in the hospital I started reading The Secret of Secrets (Dan Brown is trashy, I don't care, it's still entertaining). We had Rosh Hashanah leftovers for dinner, went to see the goats again, and watched the Seahawks beat the Cardinals. Then we watched this week's Peacemaker, which has an awesome twist I'd seen predicted on the internet somewhere but that just made it more fun. Now I'm watching KPop Demon Hunters again because it's awesome.

Poem for Wednesday and Watching the Kids

Weeds 

By Edna St. Vincent Millay 

White with daisies and red with sorrel

And empty, empty under the sky! -

Life is a quest and love a quarrel -

Here is a place for me to lie.

Daisies dpring from damnèd seeds,

And this red fire that here I see

Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds,

Cursed by farmers thriftily.

But here, unhated for an hour,

The sorrel runs in ragged flame,

The daisy stands, a bastard flower,

Like flowers that bear an honest name.

And here a while, where no wind brings

The baying of a pack athirst,

May sleep the sleep of blessèd things,

The blood too bright, the brow accurst.

-------- 

I apologize if you're tired of hearing about goats or baseball, but I'm afraid those have been far and away the highlights of my week. We just watched the Mariners win the AL West -- in part Cal Raleigh's 59th and 60th home runs of the season -- and the only real break I took between the Orioles game and that was going out to see the goats that are eating our neighborhood's overgrown blackberry bushes and other weeds, which I did several other times today. One of the goats is a mom with two kids who occasionally stop eating the reeds to nurse, and it is adorable to watch them at work with her.

 

Besides watching baseball and doing some computer work, I finally finished The Paris Bookseller, which I ended up rating 4/5 stars because of the number of times it mentions Margaret Anderson and The Little Review though I still think Beach's autobiography tells her story better (it's easy to read between the lines about her anger toward certain men). Now we're watching Gen V -- Cipher may be the most evil of all -- and hopefully will get to the season premiere of Slow Horses before bedtime, though Paul has a colonoscopy tomorrow so he may not last that long tonight.

Poem for Tuesday and Goat Landscapers

Bait Goat 

By Kay Ryan 

There is a

distance where

magnets pull,

we feel, having

held them   

back. Likewise

there is a

distance where

words attract.

Set one out

like a bait goat   

and wait and   

seven others

will approach.

But watch out:

roving packs can

pull your word

away. You   

find your stake   

yanked and some   

rough bunch

to thank.

-------- 

Tuesday was Rosh Hashanah, and my Grandma Sylvia's birthday, and apparently the Rapture though for a previously mentioned reason I did not qualify so I'm still on the planet. But although I was expecting a quiet New Year celebration with itchy eyes because smoke from the Cascades and Canadian fires is sitting over our area, I ended up having an excellent afternoon, because our neighborhood has hired goats to manage the overgrown vegetation that they're not allowed to chop down to protect the wetlands, so we got to watch the goats arrive and depart their trailer and start eating the massive knot of invasive blackberries and other vines between our apartment and the lake. The cats we often see in the corner window were just as interested in watching the goats as we were. 

I did not finish The Paris Bookseller due to being distracted by the goats, but I did manage to walk to beach despite the smoky skies. Many Canada geese are congregating at the park, possibly to eat acorns like the ducks. Then I came home for my Trek group, which watched DS9's "Rules of Acquisition" -- Ferengi sexism has aged terribly, as has Jadzia's tolerance for it, but "Necessary Evil" is next and that was a life-changing episode for me so I can live with a bad one this week. We watched the Orioles winning around dinner, but the real baseball news here is that the Mariners have clinched a spot in the postseason! We just watched the season finale of Alien: Earth, which I really, really hope will be back next season, and now we're watching The Morning Show which I have missed.