Really Good Poem

While I'm still trying to get my writing schedule figured out, and my travel schedule, and my physical therapy appointments booked (my stiff neck has begun to scream like a banshee now that I can't ignore it for paper grading), I'll put up this poem by John Poch. Hope you like it. Just the first two lines are amazing all by themselves.



5 AM

People want four things. The first three
are easy: to love, to know, to be.
The fourth is for the rooster atop
the bush outside my window to stop
its lonely crowing. For sleep's sake,
even the cat thinks what will it take
to figure his pretty hen is dead.
Shredded feathers and fluff were spread
across the yard outside the back door
like a shuttlecock factory floor.
From darkness, he calls her nonetheless,
till the stars have faded in the west.
Some morning soon I might take him
by the old comb and beak and shake him,
look him in the eye and say, She won't
be back, not now, not noon, so don't,
just don't. But then, I allow the blame
of betrayal is better than the shame
of silence. I get up, crow along,
singing some forlorn morning song
while poaching eggs. Silence comes
with eating. I throw the few toast crumbs
of what's left over into the back yard
along with last night's corn and Swiss chard,
and who comes barreling over to look
but this dumb bird who daily crooks
his neck to crow when he sees the sun
like a distant yolk not quite a son,
not quite a god, when he lifts his praise
to mystery and emptiness.

In the Research Paper I Just Graded...

"He was later convicted of the lesser crime of carless driving."

While I'm Still Grading Final Papers, I Bring You This:

The other day, we had a very, very 21st century moment in our house.

Scott and I were hugging and as he walked away, he looked down at the front page of a newspaper that was sitting on the coffee table. He paused for a moment.

"Oh man," he said. "I was just seeing if that front page had updated since the last time I looked at it."

Our brains, our poor, suckered human brains are being altered by all this freakish technology. Not long ago I was walking across campus and heard a conversation on the Quad. This flamboyant, Glee-tastic guy was flailing his arms around and saying how happy he was.

"I'm like, so frickin' happy I need to hug something," he chirped. "I like, need to hug a mountain. Right this minute..."

As the conversation continued, and I didn't have time to linger to hear more, I thought "Oh, I can google it later."

The Final Season

I went to Indiana to spend 4 days with my family, and Scott showed up Sunday morning to surprise us. It was a really, really good surprise. I missed him like mad, and my mom hadn't seen him in a couple months because of a new job he started. He's being an uber-geek at a local TV station, doing camera work, "master control," and all things geek. He is enjoying the pressure of pushing the right button at the exact right time and trying to not to turn off the entire station.

The bad thing is that it's an ABC affiliate and he works in the evenings, AND he works the evening that "Lost" is on! This is our favorite show to watch together and he can't avoid watching it while he's at work. Because he is such a smart man, he's asked for May 23rd off. That's the series finale of "Lost." Some friends of ours actually had the ridiculously bad idea of having a "Lost" party, where we'd all get together and watch the last episode together. No. NO NO NO!!! This is a sacred episode and no humans may speak during it except the ones on the screen. I barely even trust Scott enough to allow him into the room to watch it with me. Once, a few years ago, there was an "incident." It involved the end of a fantastic movie, which turned out to be the best ending of any movie I'd ever seen. And someone ruined it. I won't say anything more, except that there is a bit of a trust issue now. Because one of us waited until the last two minutes of the movie and did something about as distracting as setting off a nuclear missile in our living room while tap dancing and shaking some maracas and butchering a cow at the same time. I didn't mean to say anything more, but I just did, didn't I? Maybe that's because to this day I cannot even speak the name of the movie without screaming and pulling out fistfuls of my hair and setting something on fire.

Anyway, we are already mourning the loss of "Lost." Best show EVER.

May 23rd? Pajamas, popcorn, and an off-screen silence in our house that will rival the core of the Earth.