Welcome

[rejectomorph]

So we got some rain, October's first gift this year. From noon or so it was only sprinkles, and the sun insisted on returning now and then, but late this afternoon as I was shopping in the last store I was to visit a more serious rain began. I emerged to a steady fall of fat drops, and by the time I got home a furious cloudburst arrived with thunder and lightning and sleety hail. It was quite splendid.

I managed to get the groceries into the house without drowning, then settled down to enjoy the fury. It didn't last long, though, and I was soon able to go back outdoors and see the sunlight emerge, along with the feral cats.

Tonight there are clouds with occasional stars peeking through them, and from the mountains now and then a flash of lightning rushes across the dark sky, but it is always too far off for the thunder to be heard. It is a very relaxing scene— so relaxing that I stayed outside watching it for much too long, and now it is late. I must heat some soup for dinner and watch English people probably not kill one another on television, as the current offering is not a mystery. I guess I can do without the slaughter, as the soup is pretty good.




Sunday Verse

On the Problem of Remembering Your Face

by Cilla McQueen


Old sailors with their
celestial navigation knew
the trick: not to look straight
at, but past, catching
your star deviously
(a delicate business, this,
like remembering a dream)
in the corner of the eye

Continually you elude me;
I'm having trouble with
this obliquity -
there is, for example, this
mouth above my forehead, this
shoulder beyond my cheekbone, a
familiar gesture of yours,
somewhere, only just
out of vision -

Each time, naively, I
forget about the old
sailors adn look, directly, to
see you disintegrate in
mocking ripples, then
reassemble gradually your
familiar fragments as a hand, an
eyebrow, a bone beneath the skin
just beyond the corner of
my eye

It is the plight of
Orpheus, who in the
moment of turning sent
his beloved
exploding in splinters
outwards into darkness
- instantly to reassemble
into a perfect image of
herself, always
henceforth
(a dream of shadow
slipping through fingers)
just beyond his field of vision -

I could remember you, easily,
if you didn't fly
apart all the time,
like this.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

What kind of soup? How was the show? I haven't watched anything for the longest time.

Interesting poem. I like it.

[rejectomorph]

A can of Progresso steak and vegetable. I got telera rolls at Safeway for twenty cents each, and they go well with soup.

The show was episode two of the second season of Poldark, a costume drama set in late 18th century Cornwall. I do enjoy it, and interestingly enough there was an attempted murder on this episode. BBC did an earlier series based on Winston Graham's Poldark novels,decades ago, and apparently PBS ran them but I never saw any. Probably just as well, as Graham hated the way it was done that time. Graham died in 2003 and isn't around to judge this series, but I suspect he might prefer it to the earlier one.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

Oh, that stars lovely Aidan Turner, right? He was the prettiest of the hobbits in that more recent series of Peter Jackson movies. I remember that Poldark was v. popular years ago, but I didn't watch it either.

[rejectomorph]

Yes, Turner plays the title role. I haven't seen the Hobbit movies, and have a hard time picturing him as a dwarf. He seems more the elf type to me.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

They are some really handsome dwarfs, though! Richard Armitage plays Thorin Oakenshield, e.g.

Photos of Turner as Kili:
pretty dwarf