Poem for Sunday and Pont du Gard

A Roman Aqueduct
By Oliver Wendell Holmes

The sun-browned girl, whose limbs recline
When noon her languid hand has laid
Hot on the green flakes of the pine,
Beneath its narrow disk of shade;

As, through the flickering noontide glare,
She gazes on the rainbow chain
Of arches, lifting once in air
The rivers of the Roman's plain;--

Say, does her wandering eye recall
The mountain-current's icy wave,--
Or for the dead one tear let fall,
Whose founts are broken by their grave?

From stone to stone the ivy weaves
Her braided tracery's winding veil,
And lacing stalks and tangled leaves
Nod heavy in the drowsy gale.

And lightly floats the pendent vine,
That swings beneath her slender bow,
Arch answering arch,--whose rounded line
Seems mirrored in the wreath below.

How patient Nature smiles at Fame!
The weeds, that strewed the victor's way,
Feed on his dust to shroud his name,
Green where his proudest towers decay.

See, through that channel, empty now,
The scanty rain its tribute pours,--
Which cooled the lip and laved the brow
Of conquerors from a hundred shores.

Thus bending o'er the nation's bier,
Whose wants the captive earth supplied,
The dew of Memory's passing tear
Falls on the arches of her pride!

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I was slightly less jetlagged on Saturday, in part because February was lost all morning and it was nearly 80 degrees so we went for a walk in the park (where there were daffodils as well as the previous crocuses etc.)...then a cold front blew in with a big windy storm in the afternoon, so I spent that time uploading trip photos and trying to figure out which ones should be in a Shutterfly book. Maddy went to work in the afternoon and we had cats very confused about the temperature change and thunder.

We're trying to decide which TV is worth catching up. I'm spoiled for Nashville and therefore done with that show. We watched the finale of The Young Pope, which was pretty great, and last week's Supergirl, which was pretty hilarious, plus the Timeless finale, which is hopefully just for the season and not the series. Not sure I'll bother with The Flash, definitely not bothering with Agents of SHIELD. Blindspot? Anyway, here are some pics from Pont du Gard's Roman aqueduct and museum:

Poem for Friday, The 100, Franklin Institute

Still Life
By Carl Sandburg

Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-office never blink an eye.
A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an eye.
A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass whispering.

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Thursday was a day of bright blue skies interspersed with high winds and snow squalls -- nothing stuck, but a couple of times it was coming down so hard that it looked like heavy fog had surrounded us and was spitting out flakes. Maddy went with Alice to get manicures while I tested Kindle video apps, then I went to meet them at Starbucks for brunch while Paul had lunch with former colleagues. Later, we went to Giant and CVS together.

My neighborhood has had several Valentine Lickitungs and I need only five more Jigglypuffs to get my fairy gold medal. Maddy went to dinner and a movie with friends; I had a bunch of work to catch up on after dinner (leftover Indian), then we watched this week's Nashville, which was so meh I don't even remember what happened, and The 100, which was completely awesome in that Marcus and Abby went to bed together! From the Franklin Institute:

Poem for Friday and Brookside Conservatory

Ceremonies For Candlemas Eve
By Robert Herrick

Down with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the misletoe;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.

The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineer,
Until the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easter's eve appear.

Then youthful box, which now hath grace
Your houses to renew,
Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew.

When yew is out, then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside,
Both of a fresh and fragrant kin,
To honour Whitsuntide.

Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,
With cooler oaken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments,
To re-adorn the house.

Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.

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Thursday was one of those days where I couldn't keep on top of things I needed to get done to save my life. I had not backed up my new computer since I got it and due to my inability to understand the new Syncback instructions, I inadvertently deleted hundreds of thousands of files from the backup from my old computer and had to do a lot of rescuing. Maddy wanted to go to the mall to study and stay for dinner and a movie with friends, so we dropped her off, then went to Brookside Gardens to enjoy Imbolc/Groundhog Day and see geese and greenhouse flowers:















On the way home we stopped at Petco for kitty litter and Giant for various food items, then Paul made crepes for Candlemas (cheese and chocolate both). We watched this week's Nashville, which is better on CMT in that Rayna's life is not all about Deacon and Luke and there are a lot more African-American characters but I am nervous about Juliette's planned gospel album (sure, let's just appropriate the culture of that woman who saved your life). Then we watched the Bones about the gymnast with Mckayla Maroney, which was sad!

Poem for Friday and Brookside in Summer

Elegy for a Year
By Joseph Fasano

Before I watched you die, I watched the dying
falter, their hearts curled and purring in them

like kitfoxes asleep
beside their shadows, their eyes pawed out by the trouble

of their hunger. I was
humbling, Lord, like the taxidermist’s

apprentice. I said
yes, and amen, like the monk brushing

the barley from the vealcalf's
withers, the heft of it

as it leans against his cilice.
Winter, I have watched the lost

lie down among their bodies, clarified
as the birdsong

they have hymned of.
I have heard the earth sing longer than the song.

Come, I said, come
summer, come

after: you were the bull-elk in the moonlight
of my threshold, knocking off the mosses from its antlers

before it backed away, bewildered, into foliage.
You were thin-ribbed, were hawk-

scarred, were few.
Yes, amen, before I heard you giving up

your singing, you were something stumbling hunted
to my open door; you were thinning with the milkweed

of the river. Winter, Wintering, listen: I think of you
long gone now

through the valley, scissoring
your ancient way

through the pitch pines. Not waiting, but the great elk
in the dark door. Not ravens

where they stay, awhile, in furor,
but the lost thing backing out

among the saplings, dancing off the madness
of its antlers. Not stone, not cold

stone, but fire. The wild thing, musk-blooded, at my open
door, wakening and wakening and

wakening, migrations
in the blindness of its wild eyes,

saying Look at them, look at how they have to.
Do something with the wildness that confounds you.

--------

Fasano tells Poets.org that he wanted to "speak, after some months of silence, directly to the particularly tumultuous year that had passed, as though it were some strange wild thing that had paid its visit."

It was not as warm on Thursday as it was on Wednesday, but it was still a good day for getting out. I got to take a long walk, and I also spent a long time at Target with Maddy, where she was getting everything from school supplies to clothing to bathroom decorations while I was getting valentines and shoes with memory foam. Meanwhile Paul had lunch with a former co-worker to discuss possible job leads.

Since we are now caught up, we watched the new Nashville, which had a lot of WTF stuff going on that did not line up the way I thought it was going to, and we were finally up to the Bones wedding episode, which was sweet but I see why a lot of people thought it was a letdown based on what Brennan always said she believed. Here are outdoor flowers from last summer at Brookside, since I need some cheer:

Lyrics for Wednesday, Moana, Oscars, Longwood Lights

We Know the Way
By Opetaia Foa'i and Lin-Manuel Miranda

We read the wind and the sky
When the sun is high
We sail the length of the seas
On the ocean breeze
At night we name every star
We know where we are
We know who we are, who we are

Aue, aue
We set a course to find
A brand new island everywhere we roam
Aue, aue
We keep our island in our mind
And when it's time to find home
We know the way

Aue, aue
We are explorers reading every sign
We tell the stories of our elders
In a never-ending chain
Aue, aue
Te fenua, te malie
Na heko hakilia
We know the way

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I had a bunch of chores to do on Tuesday but I had a pretty nice day around them. Maddy had an appointment in the morning and work in the afternoon, but around that I managed to see Moana, which I enjoyed from the opening goddess to the concluding girl power. Oh, everything in it reminded me of something else, the first song is very Pocahontas, the second song is very Mulan, they all sound vaguely like things from Hamilton, and there's an island that looks like it's from POTC, a tower that looks like Saruman's, the Galaxy Quest mini-monsters, an Improbability Drive...I can see why Polynesian people are so frustrated by it, it has lots of Disney cliches thrown around, but its sins are minor compared to a lot of princess movies and Dwayne Johnson is hilarious.

Oh and speaking of movies, and the Oscar nominations came out. Look, I liked La La Land as fluffy Hollywood musicals go, but the massive L.A. masturbatory self-congratulation surrounding it is more irritating than any New York "greatest city in the world" overpriced overblown Broadway number could ever be, particularly since movies are and should be accessible to so many more people. Emma is starting to have the stink of Gwyneth -- first she does two terrible Woody Allen movies, then she gets a nomination that should belong to Taraji P. Henson for a role that half a dozen equally famous actresses could have acted and sung better than Emma does. Why is Viola a supporting rather than a lead actress? And did Hidden Figures or Denzel's Fences direct themselves?

I can't even bring myself to root for Viggo after his summer of Jill Stein evangelism because Clinton=Trump; it's Denzel all the way. We had faux fried chicken for dinner, plus we watched the return of The Flash, which needs to let Iris control her own fate more but I love Draco Malfoy's crush on Barry and I like Caitlin's storyline, and in any case it's SO much better than the painful nonsense that is Agents of SHIELD this season (hey, I'm a shipper! I love when shows start pairing characters off, the return of bubblegum soap opera Nashville makes me happy! but oh my god stop the random stupid relationship drama and wrap up this idiotic May storyline!). Here are some photos from the Klip Collective's Nightscape at Longwood Gardens last fall:

Poem for Friday and Brookside Chrysanthemums

Flowers
By Thomas Hood

I will not have the mad Clytie,
Whose head is turned by the sun;
The tulip is a courtly queen,
Whom, therefore, I will shun;
The cowslip is a country wench,
The violet is a nun; -
But I will woo the dainty rose,
The queen of everyone.

The pea is but a wanton witch,
In too much haste to wed,
And clasps her rings on every hand
The wolfsbane I should dread; -
Nor will I dreary rosemary
That always mourns the dead; -
But I will woo the dainty rose,
With her cheeks of tender red.

The lily is all in white, like a saint,
And so is no mate for me -
And the daisy's cheek is tipped with blush,
She is of such low degree;
Jasmine is sweet, and has many loves,
And the broom's betrothed to the bee; -
But I will plight with the dainty rose,
For fairest of all is she.

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I spent most of the Thursday work day working on a Voyager review, though when I went looking for graphics for the banner, I got distracted and ended up looking up the clothing Janeway's and Seven's were based on, which was very fun. We all went to the pet store to get kitty litter and to MOM's for various foodstuffs.

Nashville returned -- well, was reincarnated on CMT after being canceled by ABC -- and picked up pretty much exactly where it left off, with all the couples kind of together but kind of having couples problems and the gay guys not doing nearly enough making out. Here are some photos from Brookside Gardens' fall chrysanthemum show:

Poem for Thursday, Nashville, Lake Whetstone

Turtle, Swan
By Mark Doty

Because the road to our house
is a back road, meadowlands punctuated
by gravel quarry and lumberyard,
there are unexpected travelers
some nights on our way home from work.
Once, on the lawn of the Tool

and Die Company, a swan;
the word doesn't convey the shock
of the thing, white architecture
rippling like a pond's rain-pocked skin,
beak lifting to hiss at my approach.
Magisterial, set down in elegant authority,

he let us know exactly how close we might come.
After a week of long rains
that filled the marsh until it poured
across the road to make in low woods
a new heaven for toads,
a snapping turtle lumbered down the center

of the asphalt like an ambulatory helmet.
His long tail dragged, blunt head jutting out
of the lapidary prehistoric sleep of shell.
We'd have lifted him from the road
but thought he might bend his long neck back
to snap. I tried herding him; he rushed,

though we didn't think those blocky legs
could hurry-- then ambled back
to the center of the road, a target
for kids who'd delight in the crush
of something slow with the look
of primeval invulnerability. He turned

the blunt spear point of his jaws,
puffing his undermouth like a bullfrog,
and snapped at your shoe,
vising a beakful of-- thank God--
leather. You had to shake him loose. We left him
to his own devices, talked on the way home

of what must lead him to new marsh
or old home ground. The next day you saw,
one town over, remains of shell
in front of the little liquor store. I argued
it was too far from where we'd seen him,
too small to be his... though who could tell

what the day's heat might have taken
from his body. For days he became a stain,
a blotch that could have been merely
oil. I did not want to believe that
was what we saw alive in the firm center
of his authority and right

to walk the center of the road,
head up like a missionary moving certainly
into the country of his hopes.
In the movies in this small town
I stopped for popcorn while you went ahead
to claim seats. When I entered the cool dark

I saw straight couples everywhere,
no single silhouette who might be you.
I walked those two aisles too small
to lose anyone and thought of a book
I read in seventh grade, "Stranger Than Science,"
in which a man simply walked away,

at a picnic, and was,
in the act of striding forward
to examine a flower, gone.
By the time the previews ended
I was nearly in tears-- then realized
the head of one-half the couple in the first row

was only your leather jacket propped in the seat
that would be mine. I don't think I remember
anything of the first half of the movie.
I don't know what happened to the swan. I read
every week of some man's lover showing
the first symptoms, the night sweat

or casual flu, and then the wasting begins
and the disappearance a day at a time.
I don't know what happened to the swan;
I don't know if the stain on the street
was our turtle or some other. I don't know
where these things we meet and know briefly,

as well as we can or they will let us,
go. I only know that I do not want you
--you with your white and muscular wings
that rise and ripple beneath or above me,
your magnificent neck, eyes the deep mottled autumnal colors
of polished tortoise-- I do not want you ever to die.

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It was actually hot on Wednesday! My morning was mostly work, which included watching Voyager's "Blood Fever" -- an episode a lot of people like because it gets Paris and Torres together, and I despise because I can't get past the casual date rape themes -- then after lunch Adam and I went to Kohl's and Target to get him bathing suits and stuff for his weeks working in Texas, though I have to go back to Kohl's to pick up the stuff there tomorrow because my %$@#& coupon isn't good until then.

Adam had plans with friends after dinner so we had our meatloaf and scalloped potatoes (two of his favorites) on the early side. Then he went out while we watched the Arrow season finale (too little Barrowman, too much violence) and the Nashville series finale (nearly every storyline wrapped up neatly, in most cases by vilifying one woman so another could have her redemption; the only storyline I cared about was Will's, and that, at least, ended well). Here's Lake Whetstone during gosling season:

Poem for Saturday, Coda, Gattaca, Longwood

Love's Body
By Jonathan Wells

Love gives all its reasons
as if they were terms for peace.
Love is this but not that
that but not this.
Love as it always was.

But there is no peace in the mountain
cleft where the fruit bats scatter
from the light.
There is no peace in the hollow when
the heat snuffs night’s blue candle.

The outline of brown leaves on
the beach is the wind’s body.

A crow is squawking at the sun
as if the screech itself is dawn.
Let me hear every perfect note.
How I loved that jasper morning.

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My Friday morning was taken up with finishing a review of "Coda", the Voyager episode that made us so happy then broke all our hearts so many years ago. Then, while I was working on graphics for the review, we caught up on the season finale of The 100 -- extremely satisfying in almost every way -- and the penultimate episode of Nashville -- can't say the same, but maybe they'll have had a plan to wrap it up in case of cancellation and I'll love next week's.

We had dinner at my parents' house -- Thanksgiving food, since Adam likes tofurkey -- then came home and decided to watch Gattaca on Amazon Prime since somehow none of us had seen it. I really enjoyed it; it's a bit exposition-heavy especially at the beginning, but it's so nice to see a sci-fi movie with almost no gore and not one gratuitous fight scene. It's dated in terms of the uses of genetics, but it's visually striking and I like the soundtrack. Flowers from Brookside Gardens months ago: