Poem for Saturday, Initiations, Kung Fury, Brookside Butterflies

Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms
By Hayan Charara

The trees alongside the fence
bear fruit, the limbs and leaves speeches
to you and me. They promise to give the world
back to itself. The apple apologizes
for those whose hearts bear too much zest
for heaven, the pomegranate
for the change that did not come
soon enough. Every seed is a heart, every heart
a minefield, and the bees and butterflies
swarm the flowers on its grave.
The thorn bushes instruct us
to tell our sons and daughters
who carry sticks and stones
to mend their ways.
The oak tree says to eat
only fruits and vegetables;
the pine says to eat all the stirring things.
My neighbor left long ago and did not hear
any of this. In a big country
the leader warns the leader of a small country
there must be change or else.
Birds are the same way, coming and going,
wobbling thin branches.
The warblers express pain, the crows regret,
or is it the other way around?
The mantra today is the same as yesterday.
We must become different.
The plants must, the animals,
and the ants and worms, just like the carmakers,
the soap makers before them,
and the manufacturers of rubber
and the sellers of tea, tobacco, and salt.
Such an ancient habit, making ourselves new.
My neighbor looks like my mother
who left a long time ago
and did not hear any of this.
Just for a minute, give her back to me,
before she died, kneeling
in the dirt under the sun, calling me darling
in Arabic, which no one has since.

--------

Even though I spent all morning working on a review of Voyager's "Initiations", a lot of my Friday felt like a Saturday, in part because Paul worked from home so we were chatting on and off throughout the morning and in part because Adam was here until he went out running with a friend around lunchtime. In the afternoon, we all went to Kohl's together to take advantage of their sale and coupons while our state is having its tax-free shopping week before school starts.

We had dinner with my parents, and when we came home, Adam insisted that we should watch Kung Fury, the Swedish martial arts comedy about "Kung Fuhrer" Hitler versus dinosaurs, Thor, and I can't even explain this movie just go to YouTube and watch it! Then we watched an episode of Inspector Lewis and now we're half-watching the Seahawks-Broncos game. Here are some of the butterflies we saw the weekend before last at Wings of Fancy at Brookside Gardens:

Poem for Friday and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Sleepy Hollow
By William Ellery Channing

No abbey’s gloom, nor dark cathedral-stoops,
No winding torches paint the midnight air;
Here the green pines delight, the aspen droops
Along the modest pathways, and those fair
Pale asters of the season spread their plumes
Around this field, fit garden for our tombs.

And shalt thou pause to hear some funeral bell
Slow stealing o'er thy heart in this calm place,
Not with a throb of pain, a feverish knell,
But in its kind and supplicating grace,
It says, Go, pilgrim, on thy march, be more
Friend to the friendless than thou wast before;

Learn from the loved one's rest serenity:
To-morrow that soft bell for thee shall sound,
And thou repose beneath the whispering tree,
One tribute more to this submissive ground?
Prison thy soul from malice, bar out pride,
Nor these pale flowers nor this still field deride:

Rather to those ascents of being turn,
Where a ne'er-setting sun illumes the year
Eternal, and the incessant watch-fires burn
Of unspent holiness and goodness clear?
Forget man's littleness, deserve the best,
God's mercy in thy thought and life confest.

--------

Among other familial disasters last weekend, Daniel broke his phone screen at Molly's Bat Mitzvah, so on Thursday we took it to be repaired -- there's a local place that agreed to replace the screen for a reasonable price -- so since Daniel needs driving practice, we drove all around the area, stopping at Best Buy to get him a case and taking various back roads just to get some mileage in. Meanwhile, Adam went to track practice at school with college friends to visit high school friends. It was very bright and sunny, though cold -- a nice day to be out.

We tried to watch Los Miserables, the Spanish-language modern soap opera adaptation of Les Mis on Telemundo, but we couldn't get the translation subtitles to work and none of us speaks Spanish well enough to follow the dialogue. I must find a subtitled version! Instead we watched a bit of the Critics' Choice Awards, which were virtually identical to the Golden Globes in major categories (and it's going to be an Oscar season of glorifying white men as usual) before Elementary, where I wanted more cloning. From Sleepy Hollow Cemetery last weekend:

Poem for Tuesday and National Cathedral Creatures

Beauty Supply
By Lee Ann Brown

Sheaves of wheat in cement relief
Supply the beauties of Archer Ave.

Past the scaffolded brick church spire
We turn on the vacant corner lot

Through winds worthy of Hopkins (Gerard M.)
New words -- Alexus -- Everything must go

"Include everything in poetry"
Even the things you think are nothing

Like the way the new white snowflake
Decoration waves its wild tentacles
     against the high blue sky

    loop and angle
Black graffiti palimpsests the
    yellow official sign of Danger
in bus stairwell

She stares at me unsmiling
    with cold Northface
Notices me writing but says nothing
    with her eye

The corner lot I used to chart or cheat in its 'vacancies'
Configures new blown trash and walk through paths

Subjected to random search

Has grown a mouth of gravel
Constructed in a cone
Surrounded by temporary fence
    Of blue nailed board

Now on Roti Avenue
Cutlery & Wang Quai

Amalgam of chairs,
Jamaica Island Center  

--------

My computer and I are having a bit of a disagreement at the moment, so I will keep this post brief. My whole day was work and chores, anyway. Adam reports that he ran a 5k over the weekend to raise money for cancer research, and came in fourth despite not having run for many weeks and despite the fact that he still has a cast on, so I was very impressed with that news. Plus, huzzah Supreme Court for butting out!

We are relieved that the Nationals won, though they have to win two more to advance. Tonight we watched Gotham, which I wish I was enjoying for more than two minutes of Selena each week, and Sleepy Hollow, which justifies my love every week with things like -- tiny spoiler -- Abbie thinking Ichabod is scandalized by a gay couple holding hands in public, only to discover that it's gentlemen wearing hats indoors that troubles him, since he knew men who loved men in his own era and he has since watched the finale of Glee. Makes it easy to overlook the Dan Brownisms for things like Benedict Arnold and Judas. National Cathedral gargoyles:

Poem for Thursday and Chipmunk

Blue Dementia
By Yusef Komunyakaa

In the days when a man
would hold a swarm of words
inside his belly, nestled
against his spleen, singing.

In the days of night riders
when life tongued a reed
till blues & sorrow song
called out of the deep night:
Another man done gone.
Another man done gone.

In the days when one could lose oneself
all up inside love that way,
& then moan on the bone
till the gods cried out in someone's sleep.

Today,
already I've seen three dark-skinned men
discussing the weather with demons
& angels, gazing up at the clouds
& squinting down into iron grates
along the fast streets of luminous encounters.

I double-check my reflection in plate glass
& wonder, Am I passing another
Lucky Thompson or Marion Brown
cornered by a blue dementia,
another dark-skinned man
who woke up dreaming one morning
& then walked out of himself
dreaming? Did this one dare
to step on a crack in the sidewalk,
to turn a midnight corner & never come back
whole, or did he try to stare down a look
that shoved a blade into his heart?
I mean, I also know something
about night riders & catgut. Yeah,
honey, I know something about talking with ghosts.

--------

Have I mentioned that I really do not like extreme heat? Even -- especially -- before the summer solstice? Wednesday, which was also my parents' anniversary and the birthday of my niece and cousin, was painfully, ridiculously hot. Adam went for a run early hoping that it would not be too intolerable, after which I took him out for frozen yogurt. Then I did a bunch of work while he went for a bike ride.

I did have a lovely evening -- my good friend Karen from college is in town from North Carolina for a conference of women cantors, so we got to have dinner at Tara Thai with her and one of her college roommates who's a professor at Montgomery College. Go Penn Quakers '88! There's a pic below the cut, plus the chipmunk who lives around the corner from us and hides in the drainpipe when a dog or bunny is near:

Poem for Saturday, Far Beyond the Stars, Free Enterprise, Longwood Cats

California Prodigal
By Maya Angelou

FOR DAVID P—B

The eye follows, the land
Slips upward, creases down, forms  
The gentle buttocks of a young  
Giant. In the nestle,
Old adobe bricks, washed of  
Whiteness, paled to umber,
Await another century.

Star Jasmine and old vines
Lay claim upon the ghosted land,  
Then quiet pools whisper  
Private childhood secrets.

Flush on inner cottage walls  
Antiquitous faces,
Used to the gelid breath
Of old manors, glare disdainfully  
Over breached time.

Around and through these  
Cold phantasmatalities,  
He walks, insisting
To the languid air,
Activity, music,
A generosity of graces.

His lupin fields spurn old
Deceit and agile poppies dance
In golden riot.   Each day is
Fulminant, exploding brightly  
Under the gaze of his exquisite  
Sires, frozen in the famed paint  
Of dead masters. Audacious  
Sunlight casts defiance
At their feet.

--------

I have both my boys home at the moment, albeit briefly, since Adam is leaving for beach week on Saturday morning and spent Friday morning getting himself ready while I worked on a review of Deep Space Nine's legendary episode "Far Beyond the Stars". Then we had lunch with Paul before Adam went to run a Burrito Mile with friends -- run a mile to Chipotle, eat a burrito, run back -- and the rest of us went to pick up Daniel from his summer job in College Park.

I briefly saw a bunny, but my plan to take a longer walk was disrupted by my tablet insisting on running a bunch of updates that required reboots and new passwords and things that took until dinner was ready. We all ate together, then we all watched Free Enterprise because the kids had not seen it and we all love The Shatner. It's pretty sexist but no worse than many more contemporary nerd culture celebrations. Cats we saw at Longwood Gardens last month:

Poem for Thursday and Lake Whetstone Goslings

On Arranging a Bowl of Violets
By Grace Hazard Conkling

I dip my hands in April among your faces tender,
O woven of blue air and ecstasies of light!
Breathed words of the Earth-Mother, although it is November,
You wing my soul with memories adorable and white.

I hear you call each other:
"Ah, Sweet, do you remember
The garden that we haunted--its spaces of delight?
The sound of running water--the day's long lapse of splendor,
The winds that begged our fragrance and loved us in the night?"

--------

We spent Wednesday recovering from graduation. Adam slept late, went running with a friend, then played tennis with my father, who was celebrating his birthday. I did a bunch of work, washed a bunch of clothes, answered a bunch of mail and exciting things like that. Paul worked from home after dropping off the van to have its side mirror repaired, and we all went out for a late lunch -- Indian food at Minerva.

In the afternoon I did a bunch more chores, went for a walk looking for bunnies, and worked on some jewelry projects. We went over to my parents' to have birthday cake with my father, then we came home and watched The Big Lebowski, which Adam had watched half of recently and wanted to see the rest. And Daniel got his grades --straight As! Here are the geese at Lake Whetstone earlier this month:

Poem for Tuesday and School Track Banquet

Flush or Faunus
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

You see this dog. It was but yesterday
I mused, forgetful of his presence here,
Till thought on thought drew downward tear on tear;
When from the pillow, where wet-cheeked I lay,
A head as hairy as Faunus, thrust its way
Right sudden against my face,--two golden-clear
Large eyes astonished mine,--a drooping ear
Did flap me on either cheek, to dry the spray!
I started first, as some Arcadian
Amazed by goatly god in twilight grove:
But as my bearded vision closelier ran
My tears off, I knew Flush, and rose above
Surprise and sadness; thanking the true Pan,
Who, by low creatures, leads to heights of love.

--------

Another quickie because we were out till 10 p.m. at the outdoor track banquet, the last high school sports banquet I am likely to attend, well, ever. So although the speeches were as usual mostly too long and potluck was as usual not my very favorite foods, it was pleasantly nostalgic. Adam got another varsity letter button, a team captain pin, and a scholar-athlete certificate because he's had straight As while participating on the team, plus he got cookies, school sunglasses, and an award for being part of a trio of senior airheads:


Paper plate award to the Three Stooges.


The senior men eating together.


Adam making his senior farewell speech...


...and receiving his varsity letter button and captain's pin.


The seniors were given cookies and sunglasses...


...so they could look cool, or whatever the cool word for "cool" is these days.


The seniors posed for photos...


...as did everyone who earned a varsity letter.

Otherwise my day involved a trip to Michael's for inexpensive stopper beads, a walk to see the bunnies (for several days I have only seen one of the babies, which worries me, though I have seen the mom in several different places), leftover Mexican food from Sunday for lunch, and a cat stealing and chasing a twisty tie all over the house. Plus I had to attempt to decrypt Hugh Jackman's latest cryptic tweets about naughty things he's been doing. Will have to catch up on Warehouse 13 on Tuesday, and the Nats are in the 15th inning!