Poem for Monday and North Jetty Animals

Once By The Pacific 

By Robert Frost 

The shattered water made a misty din.

Great waves looked over others coming in,

And thought of doing something to the shore

That water never did to land before.

The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,

Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.

You could not tell, and yet it looked as if

The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,

The cliff in being backed by continent;

It looked as if a night of dark intent

Was coming, and not only a night, an age.

Someone had better be prepared for rage.

There would be more than ocean-water broken

Before God's last Put out the light was spoken.

-------- 

Monday was another cool, pretty day -- though it's supposed to be over 85 tomorrow, boo -- and I enjoyed it when I wasn't doing laundry, sorting photos, and similar Monday stuff. The internet is still a shitshow, so I took refuge in Tolkien memes when I wasn't reading about Sylvia Beach and catching up on entertainment news about the Emmys and Jewish celebrities who aren't apologists for antisemites (don't worry, Hannah, I'm sure they'll put you in the oven with the Good Jews, not the Israelis, and I won't miss watching the last season of Hacks). 

Kristen has work late Wednesday, so we watched the end of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes today. In the afternoon we walked to the beach, which is quiet now that the kids are back in school except for the ducks. We got home in time for the Orioles game, which they won while we ate dinner. Our evening has been mostly Miss Scarlet with a break for the new Only Murders in the Building, in which Renee Zellwegger is chewing scenery as the love child of Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow this season. Animals at Ocean Shores' North Jetty:

Poem for Wednesday and Sasquatch Shores

Sasquatch 

By Jake Arthur 

Tonight, at my dinner date,

I kept thinking about the sasquatch,

and in particular: what is it? where is it now?

It’s not that my date was hirsute.

I could tell from his chin that

he had less hair on his legs than I do in winter

so perhaps it was the hairs clinging

to the mussels in their tomato marinade

or the fact that the first peach had

fallen from the tree in the courtyard.

But re the sasquatch, I would throw

hunks of steak onto my begonias if I knew I would

be keeping a legend alive in the process,

and my garden is a patch of my soul.

Finally, I would have an act of faith!

Conversation eluded us like

the mussels did my fork

and I wanted to shrug and say:

We have different coloured tongues.

But there was a pot plant in my peripheries

that when I squinted, as I do when bored,

looked like the hair of my best friend at Kindergarten

and I chorused to myself:

Jenny McDonald!—she had

gone into a coma and woken up with a

longing to paint chrysalises—it was almost

something one could make

a conversation out of.

But nothing passed between us, not even the bread.

If you imagine the sasquatch always on the run,

you reach a point of empathy, but he

was just sitting there with his mouth closed

and I found myself hoping he would foot the bill,

or be swept up the Empire State in a silk dress

that would make the most of his pearl-bare legs.

-------- 

My Wednesday has been exhausting in the way only high-stress news days ever are -- not that I had the energy to engage on the subject of antisemitism and Israeli arts boycotts, and not that I'm capable of mourning the fascist himself though the glorification of gun violence is disturbing (and people's responses to comments that the glorification of gun violence is disturbing are even more disturbing). 

I had a nice chat with my high school friends in the morning, watched the first half of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes with Kristen, and watched too much baseball since both the Orioles and Mariners went into extra innings; at least they both won. Ocean Shores has embraced its sasquatch community, so here are some photos of the wild man of the west in the seaside town: 

Poem for Wednesday and State Fair Goats

Appeal to the Grammarians 

By Paul Violi 

We, the naturally hopeful,

Need a simple sign

For the myriad ways we're capsized.

We who love precise language

Need a finer way to convey

Disappointment and perplexity.

For speechlessness and all its inflections,

For up-ended expectations,

For every time we're ambushed

By trivial or stupefying irony,

For pure incredulity, we need

The inverted exclamation point.

For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,

For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift

Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,

Or felt love or pond ice

Give way underfoot, we deserve it.

We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,

The child whose ball doesn't bounce back,

The flat tire at journey's outset,

The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.

But mainly because I need it – here and now

As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio

Staring at my espresso and cannoli

After this middle-aged couple

Came strolling by and he suddenly

Veered and sneezed all over my table

And she said to him, "See, <i>that's</i> why

I don't like to eat outside."

-------- 

I had a long-distance social Wednesday: chat with all three of my Wednesday high school friend group in the morning, lunch and some reading, then watching the end of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay with Kristen (forever Team Katniss). Then we took a walk to the beach in surprisingly warm weather and went to see the eagles and osprey quarreling over who got to sit on which branches over the lake. 

The Orioles had a good day but yet again the Mariners did not. We ate leftovers for dinner (I got the Indian food, yay), then watched the second half of the second season of Wednesday, which has several fun guest characters, some nice girl power, and a story that feels, well, slight. The caged animals seemed none too happy to be there but we got to see many goats having fun at the Evergreen State Fair:

Poem for Wednesday and Bellevue Arts

Nude Descending a Staircase 

By X.J. Kennedy 

Toe after toe, a snowing flesh,

a gold of lemon, root and rind,

she sifts in sunlight down the stairs

with nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister

a constant thresh of thigh on thigh;

her lips imprint the swinging air

that parts to let her parts go by.

One-woman waterfall, she wears

her slow descent like a long cape

and pausing on the final stair,

collects her motions into shape.

-------- 

Wednesday was as lovely as Tuesday, though we had a weird day in the neighborhood, since the parent company that owns our apartment complex announced that it had just been sold to another company (the massive Greystar), and all the employees of the previous company were leaving as of this afternoon. We chatted with neighbors about this unexpected change, said goodbye to our wonderful handyman, and went in to meet the new staffers, who seem nice but there's obviously going to be a period of transition about everything from the online payment system to requests for maintenance. 

It was otherwise an uneventful day around here. I chatted with my high school friends in the morning while the Mariners lost to the Phillies again, had a bagel for lunch, and watched the end of the first The Hunger Games: Mockingjay movie and start of the second with Kristen. We took a walk to the park and on the dock -- no otters today -- before dinner, after which we watched all three hours of the third season of Fisk, which was very enjoyable, funny and touching at once. Here is some of the work we saw at the Bellevue Arts Fair a few weekends ago:

Poem for Wednesday and Elbe Scenic Railroad

The Kingfisher 

By Amy Clampitt 

In a year the nightingales were said to be so loud

they drowned out slumber, and peafowl strolled screaming  

beside the ruined nunnery, through the long evening  

of a dazzled pub crawl, the halcyon color, portholed  

by those eye-spots' stunning tapestry, unsettled

the pastoral nightfall with amazements opening.

Months later, intermission in a pub on Fifty-fifth Street  

found one of them still breathless, the other quizzical,  

acting the philistine, puncturing Stravinsky — "Tell  

me, what <i>was</i> that racket in the orchestra about?" —

hauling down the Firebird, harum-scarum, like a kite,  

a burnished, breathing wreck that didn't hurt at all.

Among the Bronx Zoo's exiled jungle fowl, they heard  

through headphones of a separating panic, the bellbird  

reiterate its single <i>chong</i>, a scream nobody answered.  

When he mourned, "The poetry is gone," she quailed,  

seeing how his hands shook, sobered into feeling old.  

By midnight, yet another fifth would have been killed.

A Sunday morning, the November of their cataclysm  

(Dylan Thomas brought in <i>in extremis</i> to St. Vincent's,  

that same week, a symptomatic datum) found them  

wandering a downtown churchyard. Among its headstones,  

while from unruined choirs the noise of Christendom  

poured over Wall Street, a benison in vestments,

a late thrush paused, in transit from some grizzled  

spruce bog to the humid equatorial fireside: berry-

eyed, bark-brown above, with dark hints of trauma  

in the stigmata of its underparts — or so, too bruised  

just then to have invented anything so fancy,

later, re-embroidering a retrospect, she had supposed.

In gray England, years of muted recrimination (then  

dead silence) later, she could not have said how many  

spoiled takeoffs, how many entanglements gone sodden,  

how many gaudy evenings made frantic by just one  

insomniac nightingale, how many liaisons gone down  

screaming in a stroll beside the ruined nunnery;

a kingfisher's burnished plunge, the color  

of felicity afire, came glancing like an arrow  

through landscapes of untended memory: ardor  

illuminating with its terrifying currency

now no mere glimpse, no porthole vista

but, down on down, the uninhabitable sorrow.

-------- 

Wednesday was much cooler than Tuesday, a lovely August day. I chatted with my high school friends in the morning, we had eggwiches for lunch, then I did some work and watched the first half of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay with Kristen. After that, we took a walk to the beach -- the lake still has bacteria warnings -- and watched the Orioles-Mariners game; of course, now that I'm obliged to root against the Orioles so that the Mariners can make the postseason, the Orioles manage to win. We did order dinner from Ballard Pizza, which we first ate in T-Mobile Park a couple of weeks ago, and it was excellent. 

We saw the first two episodes of Alien: Earth, which so far has interesting characters and a great "eat the rich" scene, then more Poldark, which started well but then I feel like the writers spent too much time watching Outlander and started writing it more in line with that, to the detriment of the female characters and adversaries who are anything other than one-dimensional villains. On the way to and from Mount Rainier National Park, we drove through Elbe, home to the Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad and the Hobo Inn, where people can sleep in a caboose and eat dinner in the Mount Rainier Railroad Dining Co. car: 

Poem for Monday and Tahoma Animals

Zazen on Ching-t'ing Mountain 

By Li Bai 

Translated by Sam Hamill 

The birds have vanished down the sky.

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains. 

-------- 

My Monday started on a sucky note with the news from DC about Trump, the police, and the National Guard, and did not improve any with other global news or news from my family, two members of whom currently have covid. I spent the morning uploading photos and doing laundry, then after lunch I watched the second half of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire with , who was at home with her dog who just had to have a leg amputated. 

We walked to the beach in nearly 90 degree heat -- I couldn't even put my feet in the lake, the bacteria count is so high that there are warning signs all around the park -- after which I needed a shower. Then I wrote some angry correspondence, we had veggie shortribs for dinner, and we started watching Poldark, which we never saw and figured since it's on PBS Passport we might as well. Here's some of the flora and fauna of Mount Rainier we saw yesterday:

Poem for Thursday, Alpacas and Crias

May we raise children who love the unloved things 

By Nicolette Sowder 

May we raise children

who love the unloved 

things – the dandelion, the

worms & spiderlings.

Children who sense

the rose needs the thorn

& run into rainswept days

the same way they 

turn towards sun...

And when they’re grown &

someone has to speak for those

who have no voice

may they draw upon that

wilder bond, those days of

tending tender things

and be the ones.

-------- 

I had a bunch of stuff to catch up on Thursday morning since I was out so much of Wednesday, which was not exciting. But in the afternoon I got to watch the first half of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire with Kristen, whom I missed chatting with yesterday for a variety of reasons. Then we watched the Mariners game, though when we realized it was going into extra innings, we took a walk to the beach and they won while we were out. 

We saw a bit of the first Ravens preseason game before my usual Thursday night chat. Afterward, Paul and I watched this week's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode, "Through the Lens of Time" (a little too trope-y for me from previous Treks), after which we watched a couple of episodes of Wednesday (I like the evil girls but ugh not more zombies). Crias and their moms we met at Enchanted Farms last weekend:

Greetings from Marymoor Live

Quick post after seeing Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls on the Yes We Are Tour at Marymoor Live with Paul and Chris, which was awesome. We ate dinner from the cheesesteak (in my case cheesetofu) truck Split Open and Melt and walked along the river before the concert and it wasn't as hot as predicted, so it was a lovely evening! Earlier I talked to Linda, Hildy, and Kay plus Linda's sister Alice, and Kristen and I watched the second half of the first Hunger Games movie, so most of my day was entertainment -- State Farm was even at the concert making bobbleheads of people. A few pics, more tomorrow!