Delphiniums in a Window Box
By Dean Young
Every sunrise, even strangers' eyes.
Not necessarily swans, even crows,
even the evening fusillade of bats.
That place where the creek goes underground,
how many weeks before I see you again?
Stacks of books, every page, characters'
rages and poets' strange contraptions
of syntax and song, every song
even when there isn't one.
Every thistle, splinter, butterfly
over the drainage ditches. Every stray.
Did you see the meteor shower?
Did it feel like something swallowed?
Every question, conversation
even with almost nothing, cricket, cloud,
because of you I'm talking to crickets, clouds,
confiding in a cat. Everyone says,
Come to your senses, and I do, of you.
Every touch electric, every taste you,
every smell, even burning sugar, every
cry and laugh. Toothpicked samples
at the farmers' market, every melon,
plum, I come undone, undone.
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From this week's New Yorker.
And really, that was my day, other than running out to get hummus and pie in the morning before
Children play in the cornbox (a sandbox filled with corn kernels)...
...and help strip the stiff kernels off last season's intact ears of corn.
These children -- I can't call them "kids" since there were actual baby goats -- were riding toy tractors.
A boy admires the recycling fountain. Or maybe he's just trying to keep cool.
In the barn with the sheep and alpacas, a demonstration of knitting and spinning.
4-H participants wash a newly shorn sheep. The sheep did not sound at all happy about this.
And an overview of the festival grounds, with the barns and dairy to the rear.
A friend of mine was much too close for comfort to the tragedy at Camp Liberty. At least Atlantis had a beautiful launch for its mission to save the Hubble Space Telescope.
