Feast or Famine
Jul. 15th, 2012 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rejectomorphI didn't get to the store today, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to reschedule. There's plenty of food for me, but I'm going to be short of of cat food tomorrow morning. The cats will not be pleased. They're all chubby enough to live on their fat for a few days at least, but kitties hate to miss a meal. I'm going to have to endure disapproving glares and plaintive mews until I can get more food for them. And the local birds had better take cover.
But then the delay means I get to go shopping on a somewhat cooler day, whatever day that turns out to be— well, as long as it's early this week. It will get hot again, of course. It always does in July. In August, one never knows for sure. There will be a peak, and then the drift into winter begins and you don't even know it has begun. That's the way everything goes, really, but it's probably best not to think on it too long.
It's like when you end up wondering where your meal is, not knowing your last was your last. I think I'll check my cupboard for a can or two of tuna. I don't want to be that guy to the cats.
Sunday Verse
by Marvin Bell
Late at night, I no longer speak for effect.
I speak the truth without the niceties.
I am hundreds of years old but to do not know how many hundreds.
The person I was does not know me.
The young poets, with their reenactments of the senses, are asleep.
I am myself asleep at the outer reaches.
I have lain down in the snow without stepping outside.
I am frozen on the white page.
Then it happens, a spark somewhere, a light through the ice.
The snow melts, there appear fields threaded with grain.
The blue moon blue sky returns, that heralded night.
How earthly the convenience of time.
I am possible.
I have in me the last unanswered question.
Yes, there are walls, and water stains on the ceiling.
Yes, there is energy running through the wires.
And yes, I grow colder as I write of the sun rising.
This is not the story, the skin paling and a body folded over a table.
If I die here they will say I died writing.
Never mind the long day that now shrinks backward.
I crumple the light and toss it into the wastebasket.
I pull down the moon and place it in a drawer.
A bitter wind of new winter drags the dew eastward.
I dig in my heels.
But then the delay means I get to go shopping on a somewhat cooler day, whatever day that turns out to be— well, as long as it's early this week. It will get hot again, of course. It always does in July. In August, one never knows for sure. There will be a peak, and then the drift into winter begins and you don't even know it has begun. That's the way everything goes, really, but it's probably best not to think on it too long.
It's like when you end up wondering where your meal is, not knowing your last was your last. I think I'll check my cupboard for a can or two of tuna. I don't want to be that guy to the cats.
Sunday Verse
Why Do You Stay Up So Late?
by Marvin Bell
Late at night, I no longer speak for effect.
I speak the truth without the niceties.
I am hundreds of years old but to do not know how many hundreds.
The person I was does not know me.
The young poets, with their reenactments of the senses, are asleep.
I am myself asleep at the outer reaches.
I have lain down in the snow without stepping outside.
I am frozen on the white page.
Then it happens, a spark somewhere, a light through the ice.
The snow melts, there appear fields threaded with grain.
The blue moon blue sky returns, that heralded night.
How earthly the convenience of time.
I am possible.
I have in me the last unanswered question.
Yes, there are walls, and water stains on the ceiling.
Yes, there is energy running through the wires.
And yes, I grow colder as I write of the sun rising.
This is not the story, the skin paling and a body folded over a table.
If I die here they will say I died writing.
Never mind the long day that now shrinks backward.
I crumple the light and toss it into the wastebasket.
I pull down the moon and place it in a drawer.
A bitter wind of new winter drags the dew eastward.
I dig in my heels.
