Saturday in CinCity

With kids in school the month of May becomes hectic with end of year details and deadlines. And exams. And dance productions. So, while it is a glorious day(and I do not use that word lightly, although I am a bit loose with "fabulous")with sun and soft breezes and no humidity, HoneyHaired and I will be inside a studio or at the dining room table with papers galore. She'll be the one sticking her head out the car window like a young Golden Retriever while we drive up and down Central Parkway. I will vigorously attempt to restrain myself.

Her shows are next Friday and Saturday after a week of exams, fittings and rehearsals. I have a gazillion page evaluation to be filled out by this Sunday which is difficult to start for many reasons, one being "clustershag" is not BigFatTeaching Hospital approved terminology. Such is life.

I'd like to think that you all are hiking around some beautiful nature trail enjoying this May Day, but I suspect many of you are in exactly the same boat as me. Enjoy...



Crossing the Loch

by Kathleen Jamie

Remember how we rowed toward the cottage
on the sickle-shaped bay,
that one night after the pub
loosed us through its swinging doors
and we pushed across the shingle
till water lipped the sides
as though the loch mouthed 'boat'?



I forgot who rowed. Our jokes hushed.
The oars' splash, creak, and the spill
of the loch reached long into the night.
Out in the race I was scared:
the cold shawl of breeze,
and hunched hills; what the water held
of deadheads, ticking nuclear hulls.

Who rowed, and who kept their peace?
Who hauled salt-air and stars
deep into their lungs, were not reassured;
and who first noticed the loch's
phosphorescence, so, like a twittering nest
washed from the rushes, an astonished
small boat of saints, we watched water shine
on our fingers and oars,
the magic dart of our bow wave?
It was surely foolhardy, such a broad loch, a tide,
but we live—and even have children
to women and men we had yet to meet
that night we set out, calling our own
the sky and salt-water, wounded hills
dark-starred by blaeberries, the glimmering anklets
we wore in the shallows
as we shipped oars and jumped,
to draw the boat safe, high at the cottage shore.

please note: photo by Arjun Gobinath