Poem for Tuesday and Chihuly in the Garden

Travel
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,
    And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day
    But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by,
    Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
    And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
    And better friends I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
    No matter where it’s going.

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I had plans to get a lot of work done on Monday, but after doing some of it in the morning, I went out at lunchtime to run a couple of errands, noticed there was a Lugia raid in Cabin John Park, and spent the next hour bonding with strangers from GroupMe and Discord while we waited for enough people to arrive to battle said Pokemon, which we defeated and I caught!

So yes, I had a very grownup afternoon. Angela came over when she got off work, I showed off my Thor and playbills, and we ended up getting Lebanese Taverna and watching the musical episode of Once Upon a Time because she hadn't seen it and it remains the best thing they did over the course of the past four years, especially the Charmings.

We watched the beginning of the Orioles game with Adam (poor Wilson Ramos!), then Will: The Velvet Goldmine Episode (I'm sure it has another title but that's how I'll remember it -- Marlowe's coat!), then the Orphan Black we missed (I can never decide whether I feel sorry for Rachel or want her to die). Some more Chihuly from the New York Botanical Garden exhibit:

Poem for Tuesday and Washingtonian Goslings

Instructions on Not Giving Up
By Ada Limón

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I'll take it all.

--------

"It was a hard winter...but right as the world feels uninhabitable, something miraculous happens: the trees come back," Limón told Poem-a-Day. "I wanted to praise that ordinary thing as a way of bringing myself back too."

Paul had lunch plans with a former co-worker with whom he's been talking about possible future jobs, so I got him to drop me off at Washingtonian Lake, where I meant to shop and maybe get Starbucks but I got distracted because I found two families of goslings, whom I fed (fish food from the machines, nothing illegal) with the help of a couple of small children who were happy to toss food while I photographed the geese. So I only briefly made it into Charming Charlie and back to Pier 1 where the Easter stuff is now 90% off, though the adorable bunny glass etchings now on sale for $4 are impossible not to ruin while removing the styrofoam packed behind the glass -- I am very irritated I scratched up a bunny even if I got it 90% off, and I broke a little glass penguin while moving it to put up a witch ball, woe.

















It was so gorgeous out (and forecast to be so hot the rest of the week) that after Paul came to meet me and took me home to grab a late lunch, we went to Cabin John Park to walk before a stop at Home Depot because we discovered that we'd left our electric screwdriver at older son's apartment when we moved him out to Seattle and assembled various IKEA items. When we got home we started assembling our new kitchen chairs and did various other household chores. After dinner, we watched Supergirl, which was utterly fantastic as it had Lynda Carter, Teri Hatcher, Brenda Strong, AND Calista Flockhart in addition to the usual awesome women, followed by the season finale of Once Upon a Time, which wrapped up the past six years' character arcs in a reasonably satisfying manner (two Reginas forever! Whoo!).

Poem for Monday, Brunch, Bazille, Shopping

The Drunken Boat
By Arthur Rimbaud
Translated by Wallace Fowlie

As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.

I was indifferent to all crews,
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons
When with my haulers this uproar stopped
The Rivers let me go where I wanted.

Into the furious lashing of the tides
More heedless than children's brains the other winter
I ran! And loosened Peninsulas
Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub

The storm blessed my sea vigils
Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves
That are called eternal rollers of victims,
Ten nights, without missing the stupid eye of the lighthouses!

Sweeter than the flesh of hard apples is to children
The green water penetrated my hull of fir
And washed me of spots of blue wine
And vomit, scattering rudder and grappling-hook

And from then on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent,
Devouring the azure verses; where, like a pale elated
Piece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks;

Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, delirium
And slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres,
The bitter redness of love ferments!

I know the skies bursting with lightning, and the waterspouts
And the surf and the currents; I know the evening,
And dawn as exalted as a flock of doves
And at times I have seen what man thought he saw!

I have seen the low sun spotted with mystic horrors,
Lighting up, with long violet clots,
Resembling actors of very ancient dramas,
The waves rolling far off their quivering of shutters!

I have dreamed of the green night with dazzled snows
A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea,
The circulation of unknown saps,
And the yellow and blue awakening of singing phosphorous!

I followed during pregnant months the swell,
Like hysterical cows, in its assault on the reefs,
Without dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could constrain the snout of the wheezing Oceans!

I struck against, you know, unbelievable Floridas
Mingling with flowers panthers' eyes and human
Skin! Rainbows stretched like bridal reins
Under the horizon of the seas to greenish herds!

I have seen enormous swamps ferment, fish-traps
Where a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes!
Avalanches of water in the midst of a calm,
And the distances cataracting toward the abyss!

Glaciers, suns of silver, nacreous waves, skies of embers!
Hideous strands at the end of brown gulfs
Where giant serpents devoured by bedbugs
Fall down from gnarled trees with black scent!

I should have liked to show children those sunfish
Of the blue wave, the fish of gold, the singing fish.
—Foam of flowers rocked my drifting
And ineffable winds winged me at times.

At times a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea, whose sob created my gentle roll,
Brought up to me her dark flowers with yellow suckers
And I remained, like a woman on her knees...

Resembling an island tossing on my sides the quarrels
And droppings of noisy birds with yellow eyes
And I sailed on, when through my fragile ropes
Drowned men sank backward to sleep!

Now I, a boat lost in the foliage of caves,
Thrown by the storm into the birdless air
I whose water-drunk carcass would not have been rescued
By the Monitors and the Hanseatic sailboats;

Free, smoking, topped with violet fog,
I who pierced the reddening sky like a wall,
Bearing, delicious jam for good poets
Lichens of sunlight and mucus of azure,

Who ran, spotted with small electric moons,
A wild plank, escorted by black seahorses,
When Julys beat down with blows of cudgels
The ultramarine skies with burning funnels;

I, who trembled, hearing at fifty leagues off
The moaning of the Behemoths in heat and the thick Maelstroms,
Eternal spinner of the blue immobility
I miss Europe with its ancient parapets!

I have seen sidereal archipelagos! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to the sea-wanderer:
—Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep and exile yourself,
Million golden birds, o future Vigor? –

But, in truth, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.
Acrid love has swollen me with intoxicating torpor
O let my keel burst! O let me go into the sea!

If I want a water of Europe, it is the black
Cold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilight
A squatting child full of sadness releases
A boat as fragile as a May butterfly.

No longer can I, bathed in your languor, o waves,
Follow in the wake of the cotton boats,
Nor cross through the pride of flags and flames,
Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships.

--------

I had very lovely, very full Sunday starting with brunch downtown with my parents plus my father's brother Mickey and his wife Lesley, who were in town because she had a work conference. We ate at Juniper in the Fairmont and my eggs benedict were delicious. Afterward, we sat in the beautiful lobby and caught up until they had to leave for their plane, at which point we went with my parents to the National Gallery of Art, where I asked to see the Bazille exhibit in the East Wing. The early Impressionist paintings are lovely and it's fascinating to see the contortions of the curators not to address the obvious homoerotic images in the paintings. We also got to see Hahn/Cock, the giant blue rooster on the roof, and the newly renovated Rothko gallery along with Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross series.

















Late in the afternoon, Paul and I did a bunch of fun shopping: Pier 1, which was having a sale on their outdoor lighting so I got a Moroccan lantern for $16, then REI, where I got the hiking boots I have long wanted, and since we were in Rockville, we went to the Big Greek Cafe which recently opened as an offshoot of the one near Olney. Then we came home for the Once Upon a Time musical, which I loved except that I was hoping Emma would come to her senses and NOT marry Hook (the best part was Josh and Ginnifer singing to each other as husband and wife, plus everything Regina and Zelena do). Sadly, Madam Secretary was not a musical, but it was still good, as was Elementary, and we just finished this week's awesome John Oliver rant about saving net neutrality!

Poem for Monday and Meadowlark Gardens

Turtle
By Mary Oliver

Now I see it--
it nudges with its bulldog head
the slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble;
and now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal

who is leading her soft children
from one side of the pond to the other; she keeps
close to the edge
and they follow closely, the good children--

the tender children,
the sweet children, dangling their pretty feet
into the darkness.
And now will come--I can count on it--the murky splash,

the certain victory
of that pink and gassy mouth, and the frantic
circling of the hen while the rest of the chicks
flare away over the water and into the reeds, and my heart

will be most mournful
on their account. But, listen,
what's important?
Nothing's important

except that the great and cruel mystery of the world,
of which this is a part,
not to be denied. Once,
I happened to see, on a city street, in summer,

a dusty, fouled turtle plodded along--
a snapper--
broken out I suppose from some backyard cage--
and I knew what I had to do--

I looked it right in the eyes, and I caught it--
I put it, like a small mountain range,
into a knapsack, and I took it out
of the city, and I let it

down into the dark pond, into
the cool water,
and the light of the lilies,
to live.

--------

We got up at 5:30 to drive Maddy to BWI, said our goodbyes for now, then came back home and fell back asleep from around 8-10 so I've been kind of groggy all day! After we finally got up and showered, we had lunch, picked up my mother (my father has a cold and stayed home), then picked up Alice (whose husband and son both had homework) and went to Meadowlark Gardens which isn't far from where the latter lives. The cherry blossoms and tulips for which the park is famous were gone, but there were still plenty of azaleas and we saw many turtles, frogs, geese, koi, tadpoles, red-winged blackbirds, and other wildlife as we walked through the wetlands and Korean bell gardens.

















It was nicely overcast, so not as horrendously hot as the forecast. After we took Alice home and visited her family for a few minutes, we stopped at Tara Thai to pick up food and went back to my parents' house for dinner, where my father was in a good mood after watching the Nationals' 23-5 victory over the Mets (when we got there he was concerned that the Yankees were going to beat the Orioles in extra innings, but the Os came back and won). In the evening we watched the very annoying Once Upon a Time (Belle's compulsive self-erasure is unwatchable, I almost hope Gold kills her as a cautionary tale instead of glorifying their "love") and the always enjoyable Madam Secretary.

Poem for Monday and Mount Vernon Farm

Grace Darling
By Algernon Charles Swinburne

Take, O star of all our seas, from not an alien hand,
Homage paid of song bowed down before thy glory's face,
Thou the living light of all our lovely stormy strand,
Thou the brave north-country's very glory of glories, Grace.
Loud and dark about the lighthouse rings and glares the night;
Glares with foam-lit gloom and darkling fire of storm and spray,
Rings with roar of winds in chase and rage of waves in flight,
Howls and hisses as with mouths of snakes and wolves at bay.
Scarce the cliffs of the islets, scarce the walls of Joyous Gard,
Flash to sight between the deadlier lightnings of the sea:
Storm is lord and master of a midnight evil-starred,
Nor may sight or fear discern what evil stars may be.
Dark as death and white as snow the sea-swell scowls and shines,
Heaves and yearns and pants for prey, from ravening lip to lip,
Strong in rage of rapturous anguish, lines on hurtling lines,
Ranks on charging ranks, that break and rend the battling ship.
All the night is mad and murderous: who shall front the night?
Not the prow that labours, helpless as a storm-blown leaf,
Where the rocks and waters, darkling depth and beetling height,
Rage with wave on shattering wave and thundering reef on reef.
Death is fallen upon the prisoners there of darkness, bound
Like as thralls with links of iron fast in bonds of doom;
How shall any way to break the bands of death be found,
Any hand avail to pluck them from that raging tomb?
All the night is great with child of death: no stars above
Show them hope in heaven, no lights from shores ward help on earth.
Is there help or hope to seaward, is there help in love,
Hope in pity, where the ravening hounds of storm make mirth?
Where the light but shows the naked eyeless face of Death
Nearer, laughing dumb and grim across the loud live storm?
Not in human heart or hand or speech of human breath,
Surely, nor in saviours found of mortal face or form.
Yet below the light, between the reefs, a skiff shot out
Seems a sea-bird fain to breast and brave the strait fierce pass
Whence the channelled roar of waters driven in raging rout,
Pent and pressed and maddened, speaks their monstrous might and mass.
Thunder heaves and howls about them, lightning leaps and flashes,
Hard at hand, not high in heaven, but close between the walls
Heaped and hollowed of the storms of old, whence reels and crashes
All the rage of all the unbaffled wave that breaks and falls.
Who shall thwart the madness and the gladness of it, laden
Full with heavy fate, and joyous as the birds that whirl?
Nought in heaven or earth, if not one mortal-moulded maiden,
Nought if not the soul that glorifies a northland girl.
Not the rocks that break may baffle, not the reefs that thwart
Stay the ravenous rapture of the waves that crowd and leap;
Scarce their flashing laughter shows the hunger of their heart,
Scarce their lion-throated roar the wrath at heart they keep.
Child and man and woman in the grasp of death clenched fast
Tremble, clothed with darkness round about, and scarce draw breath,
Scarce lift eyes up toward the light that saves not, scarce may cast
Thought or prayer up, caught and trammelled in the snare of death.
Not as sea-mews cling and laugh or sun their plumes and sleep
Cling and cower the wild night's waifs of shipwreck, blind with fear,
Where the fierce reef scarce yields foothold that a bird might keep,
And the clamorous darkness deadens eye and deafens ear.
Yet beyond their helpless hearing, out of hopeless sight,
Saviours, armed and girt upon with strength of heart, fare forth,
Sire and daughter, hand on oar and face against the night,
Maid and man whose names are beacons ever to the North.
Nearer now; but all the madness of the storming surf
Hounds and roars them back; but roars and hounds them back in vain:
As a pleasure-skiff may graze the lake-embanking turf,
So the boat that bears them grates the rock where-toward they strain.
Dawn as fierce and haggard as the face of night scarce guides
Toward the cries that rent and clove the darkness, crying for aid,
Hours on hours, across the engorged reluctance of the tides,
Sire and daughter, high-souled man and mightier-hearted maid.
Not the bravest land that ever breasted war's grim sea,
Hurled her foes back harried on the lowlands whence they came,
Held her own and smote her smiters down, while such durst be,
Shining northward, shining southward, as the aurorean flame,
Not our mother, not Northumberland, brought ever forth,
Though no southern shore may match the sons that kiss her mouth,
Children worthier all the birthright given of the ardent north
Where the fire of hearts outburns the suns that fire the south.
Even such fire was this that lit them, not from lowering skies
Where the darkling dawn flagged, stricken in the sun's own shrine,
Down the gulf of storm subsiding, till their earnest eyes
Find the relics of the ravening night that spared but nine.
Life by life the man redeems them, head by storm-worn head,
While the girl's hand stays the boat whereof the waves are fain:
Ah, but woe for one, the mother clasping fast her dead!
Happier, had the surges slain her with her children slain.
Back they bear, and bring between them safe the woful nine,
Where above the ravenous Hawkers fixed at watch for prey
Storm and calm behold the Longstone's towering signal shine
Now as when that labouring night brought forth a shuddering day.
Now as then, though like the hounds of storm against her snarling
All the clamorous years between us storm down many a fame,
As our sires beheld before us we behold Grace Darling
Crowned and throned our queen, and as they hailed we hail her name.
Nay, not ours alone, her kinsfolk born, though chiefliest ours,
East and west and south acclaim her queen of England's maids,
Star more sweet than all their stars and flower than all their flowers,
Higher in heaven and earth than star that sets or flower that fades.
How should land or sea that nurtured her forget, or love
Hold not fast her fame for us while aught is borne in mind?
Land and sea beneath us, sun and moon and stars above,
Bear the bright soul witness, seen of all but souls born blind.
Stars and moon and sun may wax and wane, subside and rise,
Age on age as flake on flake of showering snows be shed:
Not till earth be sunless, not till death strike blind the skies,
May the deathless love that waits on deathless deeds be dead.
Years on years have withered since beside the hearth once thine
I, too young to have seen thee, touched thy father's hallowed hand:
Thee and him shall all men see for ever, stars that shine
While the sea that spared thee girds and glorifies the land.

--------

Sunday was gorgeous -- cool and rain-free -- so we had brunch early and went to Mount Vernon, mostly to see the lambs and piglets, though we walked through most of the farm and gardens (we ran out of time for the gristmill). There were a lot of tour groups waiting to get into the house, so we skipped that tour this time. We still got to see an osprey nest just off the wharf, the threshing barn, hundreds of tulips and irises, and most of the crops George Washington planted (though still not hemp, which he did grow).

















All our shows were on this Sunday so we had to make decisions about what to watch -- the Orioles had already lost to the Red Sox, the Nationals were playing the Mets (they won) and the Capitols had a crucial game against the Maple Leafs but we'll only watch hockey if they might win the Stanley Cup! We watched Once Upon a Time (meh but at least a lot of Zelena), Madam Secretary (not entirely believable but I love this cast), and Elementary (if nothing else, not predictable). Now John Oliver is eviscerating Jared Kushner!

Poem for Tuesday, Frantz, Damp Brookside

Advice to Myself
By Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

--------

Cheryl came to visit on Monday, braving rain and traffic to get here, so that we could have lunch at Cava and go see Frantz with Paul. It remains excellent on a second viewing, in some ways more so after knowing where the unexpected things will appear. By the time we were finished, the rain had stopped, so we went to Brookside Gardens to see the azaleas, tulips, wisteria, turtles, geese, snakes, and amphibians (spot the hiding toad in the pics):

We came home late in the afternoon and watched some Robin of Sherwood -- apparently I am the last person in the world to figure out that the Mark Ryan on the show is also the Mark Ryan who created the fantastic Greenwood Tarot, though I can't figure out which deck was used in "The Inheritance"! Then Cheryl had to go home, so Paul and I caught up on Billions (so much ugliness) and Once Upon a Time (if only Charming and Snow could have stayed asleep!).

Poem for Wednesday, Daniel and Cat

Potpourri
By Lola Ridge

Do you remember
Honey-melon moon
Dripping thick sweet light
Where Canal Street saunters off by herself among quiet trees?
And the faint decayed patchouli—
Fragrance of New Orleans
Like a dead tube rose
Upheld in the warm air …
Miraculously whole.

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I got up early Tuesday because we needed to drop the van off for servicing, but apart from trips back and forth to retrieve it and to take Maddy to work, plus a few minutes walking in the park where I watched Georgetown's baseball team practice, it was not a very eventful nearly-80-degree day. We did go to Dunkin Donuts for lunch because Maddy had a coffee coupon and that put us in the mood for food there, and we drove around the neighborhood looking at the fabulous crab apple blossoms. In the evening we tried to catch up on Once Upon a Time and watch Agents of SHIELD, but it's hard to say which one felt more tired, contrived, and recycled, probably the latter because so many of the female characters are written so badly. So now we have Fantasy Boyfriend Ward and Skye plays Captain America in elevators yet can be beaten up by May's goons? Aida whinges about love while Agnes is silent and two men talk and talk about them? Ugh.

I'm super distracted tonight trying to import communities to Dreamwidth while researching places I could host photos that will crosspost to Blogger and a couple of other journaling sites if LiveJournal disappears. I agreed to the new terms of service because I still don't see how my refusing to use the service helps LGBTQ people in Russia or anywhere else -- I fully understand why many people would rather leave than agree not to post certain things, but I "agreed not to post" certain things when 6A ran LiveJournal and didn't always follow the TOS and LJ survived. My only concern is that if LJ does start cracking down on journals in English, I could lose photos in my Scrapbook, and though those are all backed up elsewhere, they'll vanish from every journal currently showing them. Because he's not here for Passover, here are some photos of Daniel with Katniss "helping" him do work and eat when he was here earlier in the year: