Poem for Thursday and Flight Decorations

The Moment
By Margaret Atwood

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

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Happy Impeachment Eve! Of which I watched very little because by 11 a.m. I had a migraine, which has pretty much not happened to me since I've been on medicine to keep my blood pressure normal, so I concluded that the Republican fuckwittery was driving it up past tolerable levels and went to the park for a walk instead. It was cold but nice out and I now have a brand-new Pokemon, Virizion, who only just arrived in raids. When Paul got home, we went to Toyota to drop off the minivan, which has decided to start making creaking noises when the steering wheel is turned to the right -- not a great week when we will have other people here needing vehicles in a few days.

We tried to watch the actual impeachment but I still had a lingering headache, so instead we watched the season finale of The Masked Singer, which was a bit silly since Patti LaBelle had been eliminated several weeks ago and obviously she should have won, but I liked all three of the finalists and was fine with the top winner though I thought two and three should have been reversed. By then the impeachment vote was complete, so we figured we'd catch up during the news at 11 and watched The Mandalorian, which did not do two twists I expected and did do one I did not and BABY YODA HAD BETTER BE SAFE, JON FAVREAU. Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden's holiday theme this year is flight:

Poem for Thursday and Port of Honfleur

Invitation to the Voyage
By Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Think, would it not be
Sweet to live with me
All alone, my child, my love? —
Sleep together, share
All things, in that fair
Country you remind me of?
Charming in the dawn
There, the half-withdrawn
Drenched, mysterious sun appears
In the curdled skies,
Treacherous as your eyes
Shining from behind their tears.

There, restraint and order bless
Luxury and voluptuousness.

We should have a room
Never out of bloom:
Tables polished by the palm
Of the vanished hours
Should reflect rare flowers
In that amber-scented calm;
Ceilings richly wrought,
Mirrors deep as thought,
Walls with eastern splendor hung,
All should speak apart
To the homesick heart
In its own dear native tongue.

There, restraint and order bless
Luxury and voluptuousness.

See, their voyage past,
To their moorings fast,
On the still canals asleep,
These big ships; to bring
You some trifling thing
They have braved the furious deep.
— Now the sun goes down,
Tinting dyke and town,
Field, canal, all things in sight,
Hyacinth and gold;
All that we behold
Slumbers in its ruddy light.

There, restraint and order bless
Luxury and voluptuousness.

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So apparently I am either having allergies, or my sinuses are upset from all the dust from cleaning yesterday, or the migraine that came in with this evening's storm has settled in my sinuses, or despite having seen few of my friends in days I have managed to catch a cold, but in any case my head is stuffed right now and I feel incoherent. It was not an exciting day, anyway, despite being older son's 25th birthday -- we Skyped him briefly, but he was on his way out to go play mini golf with friends.

We were supposed to have dinner with Karen and Jim, but postponed till tomorrow because of the weather, so we ate leftovers. I had to turn off the news so I wouldn't throw up and ended up watching a bit of Iron Man 3 on USA, which put me in the mood to watch the whole thing, and we did. Here are some photos from Honfleur, including the plaque commemorating Champlain's 1608 departure to found Quebec, the 14th century church that is now a marine museum, and the view Monet painted that has changed little:

Poem for Friday, Lego Batman, Renfaire Kittens

You are perfect for me
By Rebecca Wolf

because you're psychic
no one else could understand me
the way you

do and

I say
Drink Me

I say it to you silently
but it calls forth in me

the water for you
the water you asked for

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I had PT on Thursday morning, which went really well because I'd taken migraine medicine the day before and my back and everything else were feeling as good as they get. Not sure it was an accurate reflection of my usual condition but now I get to do Dying Bug Squats! I spent the afternoon doing some rearranging upstairs -- now that Maddy is not here, I can put some things back in Daniel's room that had been moved, and I keep finding new things in there that need to be cleaned. I had quite a bit of feline help until the help fell asleep.

Adam needed to stop at the mall for the bank and currency exchange, so we had dinner there (he and I had hummus and falafel at Cava, Paul had a chicken club sandwich). Then we came home and watched The Lego Batman Movie since Adam had not seen it and we just got it on Blu-Ray; it's still completely delightful (and the Target package comes with a Lego minifig plus postcards). From the Virginia Renfaire, here are Feline Victory Rescue kitties for which the Borgo Medioevale vineyard raises money selling their cider and fruit butters:

Poem for Monday, Grammy Awards, Brookside Blooms

The Supremes
By Mark Jarman

In Ball's Market after surfing till noon,
We stand in wet trunks, shivering,
As icing dissolves off our sweet rolls
Inside the heat-blued counter oven,
When they appear on his portable TV,
Riding a float of chiffon as frothy
As the peeling curl of a wave.
The parade m. c. talks up their hits
And their new houses outside of Detroit,
And old Ball clicks his tongue.
Gloved up to their elbows, their hands raised
Toward us palm out, they sing,
"Stop! In the Name of Love," and don't stop,
But slip into the lower foreground.

Every day of a summer can turn,
From one moment, into a single day.
I saw Diana Ross in her first film
Play a brief scene by the Pacific--
And that was the summer it brought back.
Mornings we paddled out, the waves
Would be little more than embellishments--
Lathework and spun glass,
Gray-green with cold, but flawless.
When the sun burned through the light fog,
They would warm and swell,
Wind-scaled and ragged,
And radios up and down the beach
Would burst on with her voice.

She must remember that summer
Somewhat differently.  And so must the two
Who sang with her in long matching gowns,
Standing a step back on her left and right,
As the camera tracked them
Into our eyes in Ball's Market.
But what could we know, tanned white boys,
Wiping sugar and salt from our mouths,
And leaning forward to feel their song?
Not much, except to feel it
Ravel us up like a wave
In the silk of white water,
Simply, sweetly, repeatedly,
And just as quickly let go.

We didn't stop either, which is how
We vanished, too, parting like spray--
Ball's Market, my friends and I.
Dredgers ruined the waves,
Those continuous dawn perfections,
And Ball sold high to the high rises
Cresting over them.  His flight out of L.A.,
Heading for Vegas, would have banked
Above the wavering lines of surf.
He may have seen them.  I have,
Leaving again for points north and east,
Glancing down as the plane turns.
From that height they still look frail and frozen,
Full of simple sweetness and repetition.

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I lost all of Sunday morning to a migraine that I couldn't figure out (not MSG, not snow, not the time of month) until the storm that blew in an hour ago and I checked the air pressure over the course of the past 24 hours. I had to stay horizontal, so we didn't leave the house until afternoon, when we went to Kohl's and Target for some necessities. Then we took Maddy to work and went to College Park for more shopping with Adam, with whom we also had dinner at the Silver Diner since breakfast food was all my stomach could handle.

We got home in time for the Grammys (I saw the annoying BAFTA results and decided I didn't need to watch; good for Viola and Dev and I don't mind Damien winning but UGH ENOUGH LA LA LAND). We missed Adele's start, which I understand was more impressive than her George Michael tribute, but we saw Beyonce's fantastic performance as a goddess and Adele's thank you to Beyonce was quite moving (and she's right, Lemonade should have won album of the year). Corden should get the Oscars next. Brookside Gardens this winter:

Poem for Saturday, The Chute, The Intern, Elephants

The Elephant is Slow to Mate
By D.H. Lawrence

The elephant, the huge old beast,
     is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
     they wait

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
     slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
     and drink and browse

and dash in panic through the brake
     of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
     together, without a word.

So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
     grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
     hiding their fire.

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
     so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
     for the full repast.

They do not snatch, they do not tear;
     their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
     till they touch in flood.

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Quickie, went out to Tara Thai with my parents and watched a movie so I'm behind tonight, and I have to get up relatively early for me for a Saturday tomorrow. My morning was about fighting an apparently weather-related migraine plus writing a review of Voyager's forgot-what-a-guilty-pleasure-it-is "The Chute", an episode that barely passes the Bechdel Test yet is still a vastly more feminist, pro-woman story than the movie we watched after tonight's episode of Sleepy Hollow -- not the best, not enough Ichabbie, too many villains, still better than -- the godawful sexist nightmare The Intern.

Why would a female writer attempt to convince us that the world would be a better place under the thumb of old white guys because they know so much better than women what women want (and should be rewarded for that with younger women of their own! White women, like every single character in this nightmare vision of hip young New York!). I can't bear to analyze any further, so here to cheer me up are photos of the National Zoo elephants shortly before young male Kandula, who was born at the zoo, went to live in Oklahoma City to explore and breed with the female elephants there.

Poem for Wednesday and Amphibious Richmond

The Weed
By Elizabeth Bishop

I dreamed that dead, and meditating,
I lay upon a grave, or bed,
(at least, some cold and close-built bower).
In the cold heart, its final thought
stood frozen, drawn immense and clear,
stiff and idle as I was there;
and we remained unchanged together
for a year, a minute, an hour.
Suddenly there was a motion,
as startling, there, to every sense
as an explosion. Then it dropped
to insistent, cautious creeping
in the region of the heart,
prodding me from desperate sleep.
I raised my head. A slight young weed
had pushed up through the heart and its
green head was nodding on the breast.
(All this was in the dark.)
It grew an inch like a blade of grass;
next, one leaf shot out of its side
a twisting, waving flag, and then
two leaves moved like a semaphore.
The stem grew thick. The nervous roots
reached to each side; the graceful head
changed its position mysteriously,
since there was neither sun nor moon
to catch its young attention.
The rooted heart began to change
(not beat) and then it split apart
and from it broke a flood of water.
Two rivers glanced off from the sides,
one to the right, one to the left,
two rushing, half-clear streams,
(the ribs made of them two cascades)
which assuredly, smooth as glass,
went off through the fine black grains of earth.
The weed was almost swept away;
it struggled with its leaves,
lifting them fringed with heavy drops.
A few drops fell upon my face
and in my eyes, so I could see
(or, in that black place, thought I saw)
that each drop contained a light,
a small, illuminated scene;
the weed-deflected stream was made
itself of racing images.
(As if a river should carry all
the scenes that it had once reflected
shut in its waters, and not floating
on momentary surfaces.)
The weed stood in the severed heart.
"What are you doing there?" I asked.
It lifted its head all dripping wet
(with my own thoughts?)
and answered then: "I grow," it said,
"but to divide your heart again."

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Tuesday was not particularly a better day than Monday, other than I got to see Adam for three minutes after going to College Park to drop off his belt and some other things that he didn't pack when he left for his week as an R.A. Lots of people I know had annoying things going on, so I had no one I could whine to. I had a weather headache most of the afternoon, though I did see five bunnies when I went out to walk.

I had laundry to fold, so I watched The Nanny Diaries, which has a terrible script that Johansson, Evans, Linney, and Giamatti can't do a thing to save, so I pretended it was Captain America and Black Widow doing an undercover assignment. Then in the evening we watched I Love You, Man which was better than I was expecting -- not just Paul Rudd but it actually passed the Bechdel test! More of Richmond's Deep Run Park:

Poem for Wednesday and Frozen Great Falls

Blue Is Beautiful Amy but the Story Is So the '90s
By Farrah Field

I wanted to be the one who thought of truck bed walls.
You locked yourself in the bathroom
so I couldn't brush my teeth before bed.
Where is this going and will it be successful? I hate bullies.
She's been everywhere she even heard
the shot that killed John Lennon.
From now on I'm sticking up
for myself. My notes and to-do's have flowers.
I don't want to die. I feel scared all the time.
What you looked like as a child is clear.
The way you run from the hot tub
and throw yourself in the pool.
When they were joining the EU.
I worry about mine.
Have you ever seen your own cervix?
You're like a natural matzoh ball maker.
Why did I ever want to be in the couple
with the white walls three shoes and lots of art.
Scarves from museum shops.
I sat your kid on my counter
and we spilled food everywhere.
The nickname grandchildren give is the one you die with.
Everyone wanted to see a movie where the woman turns to stone.
They say Maria Falconetti never acted again.
The gym was impossible after I fell on my knee.
I walked up to you and cried.
Why do you treat your son better than your daughter.
Talk about something else like did anyone ever call you bro.

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"In response to Krzysztof Kieslowski's film Blue, I wonder why Juliette Binoche's character doesn't finish her masterpiece with the help of a woman," Field told Poets.org. "I consider this--women needing women--in my poem."

It was cold but clear on Tuesday, though I didn't enjoy it at all till after noon because after fighting a four-day migraine caused by accidentally slamming my head in the trunk while moving older son's laundry home last weekend, I finally took Imitrex and had to go back to bed for an hour, which pleased my cats a lot but meant I got nothing at all done in the morning.

Afternoon was work and chores and boring stuff, then Paul came home and we went to Lebanese Taverna with Karen, Jim, Angela, and Kevin, none of whom we had managed to see since last year. It was lovely, then we came home for Agent Carter and Forever which were both pretty enjoyable too. Some more Great Falls photos from Sunday: