A Little Poetry, A Little Local Politics/Stalker Alert, A Little Rambling on This Last day of Summer

The Hungry Gap-Time
by Thomas Lux

late August, before the harvest, every one of us worn down
by the plow, the hoe, rake,
and worry over rain.

Chicken Coop confiscated by the rats and the raptors
with nary a mouse to hunt. The corn's too green and hard,
and the larder's down
to dried apples
and double-corned cod. We lie on our backs
and stare at the blue;
our work is done, our bellies flat.
The mold on the wheat killed hardly a sheaf.
The lambs fatten on the grass, our pigs we set
to forage on their own-they'll be back
when they whiff the first shucked ears
of corn. Albert's counting
bushels in his head
to see if there's enough to ask Harriet's father
for her hand. Harriet's father
is thinking about Harriet's mother's bread
pudding. The boys and girls
splash in the creek,
which is low but cold. Soon, soon
there will be food
again, and from what our hands have done
we shall live another year here
by the river
in the valley
above the fault line
beneath the mountain

art by gracie's(away)--http://www.flickr.com/photos/alreadygrace/


LOVE THIS MAN


This is the person I called first when I read an article in PEOPLE magazine years ago about Safe Harbor locations to leave unwanted babies. There had been two dead infants found recently at that time in our very own River City. I called Mr. Portune. I called the chief nursing exec at our hospital. I gave out phone numbers and copies of the magazine piece, and voila--the right folks got in touch with one another and a program was up and running in a matter of weeks.

Todd Portune has been a huge advocate for nurses and patients, and for that, I LOVE him. I have not yet begun stalking, but you just never know when the impulse control will snap, and then Bob's-your-uncle, there I'll be sitting in a non-descript rental car outside his campaign headquarters with a life-size cardboard likeness of the man sitting next to me in the passenger's seat and the police knocking on my window. Again. My poor frontal lobe has an enormous amount of work to do every day trying to keep me coloring inside the lines. It's a damn dirty job.

And on this, the last day of summer, I still have my flip-flops by the front door and refuse to acknowledge the black wooly caterpillar on our porch mat. The words "end of summer" I find morbidly depressing and prefer to stay in a state of denial as long as possible, which in the past has involved snow. Nothing good can possibly come from shorter periods of sunlight and colder temperatures, except it also happens to be the beginning of the new seasons for the Playhouse in the Park and the Ballet. We have now been to both--


Jane Austen's Emma, which is frothy and darling, involves singing and dancing about, and mutton chops on handsome men. What's not to love?

And New Works at the ballet with six premiers of newly choreographed ballets.

They are ballets without a storyline which is refreshing and mind opening. Looking at movement in terms of lines and open spaces and synchronicity and harmony. Have very little idea what the choreographers wanted to convey, although I imagine that they would be happy to hear that we have our own thoughts on the fleeting, impermanent images set before us.