Poem for Wednesday and Copperhead Camouflage

The Imagined Copperhead
By Andrew Hudgins

Without intending to hide,
the imagined copperhead
hid on the path ahead,
unseen on bronze leaves, unheard,
and a mortal likelihood   
at every step. This was childhood,
mine, the wood’s jihad   
against a boy who’d
intruded among monkshood,
wasp, tick, and nettles haired
with needles. Scrub brush abhorred
him with a horde
of  welts, bites, and stings, but he’d
never seen a copperhead,
though he’d looked hard
taking, as he’d been ordered, heed.
The snake wasn’t a falsehood,
though, to him. Dread
was his nature, and he hared
through sunlight and shade, head
swiveling for the copperhead
he’d begun to covet, the ballyhooed
killer a camouflaged godhead
on which his inborn faith cohered,
and his priesthood.

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Tuesday was quiet, nice weather, I sent texts on behalf of Biden-Harris for National Voter Registration Day and watched the squirrels and chipmunks chase each other on the deck, plus some bluejays, a woodpecker, and some little yellow finches. We saw a murder (the crow variety) too, when we took a walk in the afternoon, plus deer, the cul-de-sac bunny, and a baby bunny in the yard two doors down that I'm not sure we've seen before, though it could be one of the ones from a different cul-de-sac showing up here. 

My Voyager fan friends from over 20 years ago and I started our rewatch in the evening and that was huge fun -- we'd forgotten details from "Caretaker" and it's just awesome to be able to message through the whole thing with people I knew through the whole craziness of that era. I also saw the Nationals walk-off victory and some of the miserable Orioles-Red Sox game before I put on Due South because I could not stomach the news. These pics are mostly the baby copperhead from Black Hill Park, just so you're warned!

Poem for Tuesday and Downtown Squirrels

The Decorative Airport Fern Is Not What It Pretends to Be
By Jennifer L. Knox

and it takes me a triple-take to realize its scanning
me, or something near my ear—that must be it. No plant’s
ever complimented my perfume—wait—there it goes
again. Did you see that? [Time passes, drinks] "Sure, I
remember when I thought you were a fern but you were!
Who could blame me?" I tell the what’s now a magnificent
purple tetrahedron, eggplant-sized cilia straining at its corners, just
a hint of ferniness remains in its fingertips—enough to blush.
We hug goodbye. The scent of flowers lingers around me
the next day. Flying home, a decorative airport fern that really
is a decorative airport fern says, "You smell nice." I don’t
believe it, but it's still a happy
ending.

--------

After weeks of delays because she had car issues, I finally got to see Dementordelta! We debated going out to lunch or out to the movies, but we ended up picking up samosas and crepes in the mall after a bit of girly shopping and coming home for a Paul Gross day -- first Passchendaele, which was a lot grittier than I expected (I'd read a review somewhere that the love story was cliched, which I didn't think was the case at all; my only issue was with the heavy handed religious imagery during the battle), then Gunless, which was hilarious (and I didn't even know Callum was in it, that's how uninformed I am).

It snowed all afternoon, though we had only rain forecast and the temperature never got anywhere near freezing -- it only stuck on plants and mulch, not on the street, but though it looked lovely, we got a little nervous late in the afternoon based on the sheer amount that seemed to be falling. However, I convinced Delta to stay and we decided we really needed a New Year viewing of The King's Speech. I would like to report that it is still awesome. In the evening we watched the Windsor Castle episode of The Queen's Palaces on PBS, then the BCS Championship Game. I did not actually care who won the Alabama-LSU game; Alabama is generally one of my least-favorite college teams, but I'm not particularly an LSU fan, they had a home team advantage, and I like things that make the BCS rankings a mess!


We saw several squirrels while we were downtown over the weekend.


Adam stopped to photograph one...


...and promptly found himself being begged for food.


Clearly these squirrels had no fear of humans...


...as apparently even our garbage is a constant food source for them.


Though it looked like they had plenty buried in the mulch...


...and did not mind getting food on their faces.


And look how adorable.

Poem for Wednesday and Back to the Renaissance

South
By Jack Gilbert

In the small towns along the river
nothing happens day after long day.
Summer weeks stalled forever,
and long marriages always the same.
Lives with only emergencies, births,
and fishing for excitement. Then a ship
comes out of the mist. Or comes around
the bend carefully one morning
in the rain, past the pines and shrubs.
Arrives on a hot fragrant night,
grandly, all lit up. Gone two days
later, leaving fury in its wake.

For Susan Crosby Lawrence Anderson

--------

My father took Daniel out for lunch and mini golf on Tuesday while I did some work and made a bunch of necessary doctor appointments -- Daniel has to see the oral surgeon, dermatologist, ophthalmologist, et al before college -- and folded laundry (watching Due South because I was really in the mood for it). Daniel showed me some of the E3 Expo. Then I took Adam to tennis and spent an hour in Cabin John Park with many chipmunks, squirrels, and songbirds -- no snake this week but many people were walking their dogs and I saw a deer fleeing at one point, plus geese near the neighborhood pond.

After dinner we watched this week's Sanctuary, which was awfully reminiscent of Deep Space Nine "Children of Time" (not one of my favorites, more for reasons of characterization than plot). Adam has spent the past two hours tearing the house apart looking for his Chinese textbook, which is supposed to be returned to the school tomorrow, and the cats have paced upstairs and downstairs following this action (he still hasn't found the book). Here are a last batch of photos from the Virginia Renaissance Faire a couple of weekends back:

Poem for Thursday and Balloon-Swallowing

A Light Says Why
By Karen Volkman

    A light says why. From all the poor prying. Again we attain a more regal posture -- small bird accompanying slips between our whim. Where will we flicker, loose as two feathers from a wren's back? Gone, do not brood for all the hands that miss you. They hardly hold. Don't wait, one who thought a dark eye could save you, like night with its black paws curled and gone to sleep. There are only two names to remember, Loss and Pleasure, crossed in this field like no man's borrowed light. Call the far-sighted foxes to the launching. Call the small deer scattered in the back brush, swift as flit. Contingency has arms and hands and wasted faces. And a body, shrunk and scurvy, built to burn.

--------

I had to get routine fasting blood tests this morning -- early but not early enough, since I was fasting -- and the receptionist sent me upstairs to the wrong lab, since there are three in the building and each variety of my insurance (HMO, PPO, POS) has different forms and different requirements, so by the time I figured out where I needed to be and got the blood drawn, I was hungry, tired, cranky, and working on a headache that didn't quite go away all afternoon. I consoled myself with the Due South soundtracks (with the help of a friend who shall not be named for privacy's sake but who is very much appreciated) and leftover babaganoush from Lebanese Taverna.

Daniel is happy to be back in robotics, and Adam is applying to the Arts Academy at his high school, meaning he'll have to take more arts classes than are usually required for graduation (which is fine with him since he's taking both theater and photography) but will also give him access to some special programs and facilities. He was working on his essay while we were watching Monty Python tonight and the conversation degenerated into hilarity and I'm too tired now to remember all the things that were making me laugh. In that vein, here are some photos from the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire of sword swallower Thom Sellectomy swallowing a loooong balloon...

Poem for Wednesday and Local Wildlife

Across a Great Wilderness without You
By Keetje Kuipers

The deer come out in the evening.
God bless them for not judging me,
I'm drunk. I stand on the porch in my bathrobe
and make strange noises at them—
                                         language,
if language can be a kind of crying.
The tin cans scattered in the meadow glow,
each bullet hole suffused with moon,
like the platinum thread beyond them
where the river runs the length of the valley.
That's where the fish are.
                                 Tomorrow
I'll scoop them from the pockets of graveled
stone beneath the bank, their bodies
desperately alive when I hold them in my hands,
the way prayers become more hopeless
when uttered aloud.
                            The phone's disconnected.
Just as well, I've got nothing to tell you:
I won't go inside where the bats dip and swarm
over my bed. It's the sound of them
shouldering against each other that terrifies me,
as if it might hurt to brush across another being's
living flesh.
                But I carry a gun now. I've cut down
a tree. You wouldn't recognize me in town—
my hands lost in my pockets, two disabused tools
I've retired from their life of touching you.

--------

Kuipers' 2010 book is Beautiful in the Mouth, which won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize.

My kids were off from school for Maryland's primary election, so they slept later than usual and I did too. In the late morning, Dementordelta came over so I could take her out for a belated birthday lunch and give her presents -- we went to Tara Thai, which made everyone happy (one son had duck, the other pad see ew, I had panang tofu, Delta had pad thai), then we walked over to Target so Delta could get a Halloween Barbie and we could look at the other Halloween toys. Then we came home and watched many hours of Due South, culminating in the finale, which is sad because we have no more to watch -- this is the conclusion of nearly 18 months of watching Paul Gross together in various series -- but it was loads of fun, since we saw "Odds", which has hand-holding and Feds named White and Exley, and "Mountie Sings the Blues," in which Fraser sings, and "Hunting Season," in which Fraser and Kowalski go into a bathroom stall together, and both parts of "Call of the Wild," in which Kowalski tells Thatcher how he can't live without Fraser.

Paul made buttermilk pancakes with peppery scrambled eggs for dinner, since we had fresh buttermilk from South Mountain Creamery; then we walked over to the elementary school to vote in the Democratic primary, where most of the races I cared about were foregone conclusions, but I wanted to help provide a big Democratic turnout to shut up all the pundits claiming that the Democrats suffer from voter cynicism/apathy. It's the first time I've been inside the school since it was rebuilt after my kids graduated, and the floor plan is completely different, which made it kind of strange. Younger son was working on a contemporary adaptation of Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night's Dream and older son was working on multivariable calculus. We all watched Warehouse 13, which was quite enjoyable despite the cheesy Indiana Jones atmosphere -- Helena had me at, "I know a thing or two about the opposite sex; many of my lovers were men," and Pete's expression was priceless. We saw a bunny while walking back from voting, so here it is, along with our neighborhood deer:


My whole family has seen this deer family at various points along the trails near our house...


...a mother and two older fawns who still have their spots.


The mother will herd the babies away if people try to touch them, but otherwise she is fine with my husband jogging by or me taking photos.


Adam photographed them late one evening, using flash...


...and although they were suspicious, they were not particularly scared.


I get nervous about them walking across the road to follow the stream. (Adam took this photo too.)


Here is the bunny we saw as we walked home from voting at nearly 8 p.m. I am loving the cooler weather but I miss it being light out at 8 p.m.

Poem for Wednesday, Sherlock, Aviary

The Owl
By Cleopatra Mathis

How far did she fly to find
this pristine town on the edge of winter?
Crows have set up their kingdom—
a yacking flock louder than traffic
maims the morning air.
Day sends the coven screaming
in pursuit, black rags
haggling from clump to clump

of the decorous elms and oaks.
The dog's mouth hangs.
I follow his gaze through the shudder
of limbs to the still source, the center
of their flapping. The barn owl
commands a branch, the crows scatter
and aim, cutting around her
placid weight, something more of earth

than air. She stares straight ahead
as if focused on something she alone
can hear, their outrage at who she is
no more than a furious snipping,
until in one motion, she heaves upward,
her body transformed by sky.
The crows gloat, their battering
closes her path, and she misses a beat,
stumbling in the air
like a silence disrupted. The crows'
fat riot, their mine, mine, mine
rules the sky. Call the owl
sadness, the one who watches
from the other side.

--------

I got to spend the day with Dementordelta, whom I missed last week because she had a work crisis and nearly missed this week because she had a cold, but she came up here anyway! We wandered into some stores to see if they had Halloween stuff yet (Bath & Body Works has lots, Claire's and The Icing has some -- plus penguin "Best Friend" necklaces -- and Yankee Candle has a bunch but I forgot to take her there). Then we got crepes and came back to my house to watch the entire series run of Sherlock. She liked it better than I did -- I was even more irritated this time through at the frequent sexism, ethnic stereotyping, and gay jokes that had tipped by the final minutes from cute and slashy into unnervingly homophobic, though I really like the performances -- both major and minor roles -- and the chemistry among the actors.

Of course we also watched a bit of Due South while my kids came home from school and reported on their days -- Paul worked from home since his van's air conditioning is not working. Daniel has his high school's legendary math teacher for multivariable calculus and his only complaint was that the bus was overcrowded, though tomorrow I have to take him shopping for 1) gym shorts and 2) some kind of adhesive at Home Depot. Adam is still trying to switch out of the Microsoft Office class into pretty much anything else and theater is still his favorite subject, though he liked English better today because he got to talk about how much he thinks Jane Austen sucks. We all watched Warehouse 13, where I am hoping they're planning to make Wells a regular after the mid-season break; I liked getting a bit of backstory on Artie, but didn't think the episode was all that well-written, though the preview for next week looked like great fun.

Happy September! Above is another poem by Mathis, whom I can't believe I'd never heard of before two days ago; I found her first book and it's wonderful. Her most recent book, which I haven't tracked down yet, is White Sea...speaking of which, our weekend plans are on hold until Hurricane Earl decides which way it's going, though it sounds like if it hits the DC area it will be on Friday and hopefully will get rid of this Code Red air. To go with the poem, here are some more photos from the National Aviary in Pittsburgh, including a keeper feeding a bird, a sleepy tree sloth, and an owlet in the infirmary with a heart problem:

Poem for Friday and African Animals

Claustrophilia
By Alice Fulton

It's just me throwing myself at you,
romance as usual, us times us,

not lust but moxibustion,
a substance burning close

to the body as possible
without risk of immolation.

Nearness without contact
causes numbness. Analgesia.

Pins and needles. As the snugness
of the surgeon's glove causes hand fatigue.

At least this procedure
requires no swag or goody bags,

stuff bestowed upon the stars
at their luxe functions.

There's no dress code,
though leg irons

are always appropriate.
And if anyone says what the hell

are you wearing in Esperanto—
Kion diable vi portas?—

tell them anguish
is the universal language.

Stars turn to train wrecks
and my heart goes out,

admirers gush. Ground to a velvet!
But never mind the downside,

mon semblable, mon crush.
Love is just the retaliation of light.

It is so profligate, you know,
so rich with rush.

--------

From this week's New Yorker.

After having to cancel plans earlier in the week due to much of my region having no power, I finally got to see Dementordelta! Who brought me souvenirs from Infinitus and lots of leftover convention food, for which I am not sure I am grateful but my kids are! We went to the mall to get crepes and samosas, though first we sent the kids to play in the Apple store and went to be girly in Claire's and Hot Topic (we may have purchased some very blingy bracelets and seahorse keychains). Then we brought the food home and watched the Clash of the Titans remake, which I must admit I found nearly as cheesy as the 1981 version, though I enjoyed it; the women's roles were still pathetic, the dialogue ranged from bad to Zeus-awful, and I swear Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes made a bet about who could be more over the top. I think it would have been more fun if they broke typecasting and had Aslan play the evil god and Voldemort the benevolent one. My kids watched too and were less than impressed, though I note that they stayed for the whole film (of course, the fact that there was a thunderstorm and they couldn't go to the pool may have had something to do with that).

We went looking for Sherlock on BBC America On Demand, but being unable to find it, we settled for the 2009 Sherlock Holmes film. I had found it a pleasant surprise in the theater after being warned that it was kind of silly and violent; I can't argue about the silliness, since the plot isn't precisely intellectual, but the violence doesn't seem excessive to me and I still love the performances, particularly Rachel McAdams as Irene (I also love her character's story arc). Plus it's fun to see the recreation of historic London, sepia-tone at all. Naturally we also had to watch some Due South. Adam (who made this, and said of Titans, "If the writers of "And The Children Shall Lead" and Ron Moore teamed up to write a movie about a bastardization of multiple Greek myths, and then they all fell into a woodchipper and were blended together, the monstrous amalgamation of failure that came out would write this GARBAGE") eventually went to the pool and Daniel to work on his summer project. Eventually my family had Indian food for dinner and watched Futurama, which had some hilarious parodies of both The Time Machine and Planet of the Apes. Speaking of apes, some Maryland Zoo photos from the Africa region last weekend:


A chimpanzee tries to balance a ball on his nose.


Zebras unfazed by 100-degree heat.


A tiny deer called a dik-dik.


A stork marching through tall grass.


Tortoises enjoying their lunch.


A hornbill heading to the water to cool off.


The lioness settles down in the shade.


The Colobus monkey gets to live indoors with the rock hyrax, so it doesn't overheat quite so much.