Oh, Wet, Of Course

Night brought more rain, and gray morning brought the conversations of crows. Some of the decorative impedimentia in the yard (those odd little concrete scalloped things so inexplicably beloved of suburban gardeners, for example) are all askew, undermined by the season's abundant rains. I think that, were the elevation not so high, and the land not so steep, the place would by now be drowned. Thus, this:

Sunday Verse

To A Fish

by Leigh Hunt


You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,
Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,
Gulping salt-water everlastingly,
Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,
And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;
And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be,--
Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,
Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:--

O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,
What is't ye do? What life lead? eh, dull goggles?
How do ye vary your vile days and nights?
How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles
In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites,
And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?



A few more weeks, we'll all be needing gills hearabout, I fear- elevation or no.

A Day of Fragments

There were brief minutes of sunlight this afternoon. I watched a pair of jays pecking something from the bark of the peach tree. I had no tasty snacks myself.

Now there is moonlight, from a waxing gibbous moon filtered by thin clouds. I can still hear the trees dripping, and the frogs croaking.

There was way to much to do today, and I got half of it done.

My jaw has quit hurting, for the moment- 19 days after the dental work, and only ten days before I have to go back to get stabbed all over again.

I keep thinking there's something I've forgotten to do.

The whole day has been nothing but fragments that refuse to be assembled into a coherent pattern. I think I'll ignore what remains of it.