On Friday, coming back from the beach
we passed through Huntington where the historical society was preparing for a little festival --very end of summery/hint of fall.
Then home to the city under terror alert. Earthquake, hurricane, floods and then people zooming about on large motorcycles trying to express whatever was impossible to express about this weekend's sad anniversary.
We are alert to a plane very high up above a building! A World War Two plane travelling so very slowly. The weekend over
the light, so clear and bright, makes complicated patterns everywhere.
Even the chain link fence looks abstracty and artsy.
Our apartment floors sanded and sealed, a storage cabinet built, walls painted. Everything cleared and clean and ready to make something new.
In the meantime, I dug up a very old poem about my cereal bowl.
Villeroy and Boch
they reap the corn two centuries ago
in some hot european field
where two men stand
bent slightly over scythes
and women stoop to gather what’s been cut.
it was ever thus.
this tasteful scene
congeals beneath my weetabix
in monochrome
(bone china
dishwasher safe)
atop a polished table
the sweat! the smell!
the hours under scalding sun
I’d hate to be a peasant then
broad-fingered, ignorant and numb
to everything but aching back and shoulders’ burn
I’d long to loll beside the cows
in shade beneath the heavy trees
I wouldn’t care to look charmant
to decorate a dish
my labor turned to prettiness