Saddle Up!

Saturday morning we took our first bicycle ride since Robin’s fall a couple of months ago. Down to the Farmer’s Market we rolled to round up some of the finest peaches and sweet corn on the planet. Rode back home extra-carefully so as to bruise neither the fruit nor Robin.

All went well, and that’s a good thing because we’d both love to add those regular rides back to our exercise/fun schedule. Especially with the promise of cooler days in September. This summer of consistent high temperatures has definitely required some coping strategies. A lot more time indoors than we’re accustomed to.

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The Democrats have put away the party hats they never got to use, and are going about the everyday business of working toward getting their people elected. The Cluckian Party, which replaced the Republicans somewhere along the way, is gearing up for something of their own next week.

Because the stuttering young man who had been befriended by Joe Biden made such a favorable impression this past week, the Clucksters are trying hard to find someone (outside his immediate family) whose life has been bettered by contact with his Serene Orange-itude, but they are not having any success at all.

Word has it that they are willing to settle for hiring a few shills if they can find some that are convincing enough. So look next week for a line of suspicious-looking people throwing down their crutches and declaring I Can Walk! I Can Walk! after coming into the presence of P.Cluck hisself.

As for myself, I am allowed to watch only one political convention per year by order of my personal physician, Dr. Imperviosa Sanguinaria. Between us we selected the Democrats’ get-together as this year’s winner. It’s a matter of my blood pressure, she says. So whatever the Cluckians do, I’ll have to wait for the summaries a day later to find out. Or perhaps a week. Or two.

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From The New Yorker

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Several years ago I scanned some ancient photographs that Robin’s mother, Dorothy, had been keeping around in various shoeboxes. You know, the way everybody did before digital cameras came on the scene. Now I have them in our library, even though I know very few of the people in the pix, and that goes for Robin as well. I don’t quite understand it, but I enjoy studying antique photos, even when they are of people I don’t know.

Believing that everybody deserves their one day of fame and exposure, I will share a few of these vintage photographs with you.

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And lastly, this Sunday morning, something fierce. One woman’s poem chosen by another poet, and all purloined by me from the Times of New York.

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Some Girls

By Alison Luterman and Naomi Shihab Nye

This poem had already been selected when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed on the House floor her unforgettably powerful response to misogynistic insult. Now I read it with pride for brave people who speak out publicly for respect and justice, for passionate poets like Alison Luterman, for the people who live through “every kind of exile” … for all the awkwardness of trying on “new wings.” And for a country that has prided itself on being so forward-thinking without ever electing one of those girls to be even vice president, much less president. This poem feels like an anthem for “ferocious mercy” to come. Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye

Some Girls

By Alison Luterman

Some girls can’t help it; they are lit sparklers,
hot-blooded, half naked in the depths of winter,
tagging moving trains with the bright insignia of their
fury.
I’ve seen their inked torsos: falcons, swans, meteor
showers.
And shadowed their secret rendezvous,
walking and flying all night over paths traced like veins
through the deep body of the forest
where they are trying on their new wings,
rising to power with a ferocious mercy
not seen before in the cities of men.
Having survived slander, abuse, and every kind of exile,
they’re swooping down even now
from treetops where they were roosting,
wearing robes woven of spider webs and pigeon
feathers.
They have pulled the living child out of the flames
and are prepared to take charge through the coming
apocalypse.
I have learned that some girls are boys; some are birds,
some are oases ringed with stalking lions. See,
I cannot even name them,
although one of them is looking out through my eyes
right now,
one of them
is writing all this down with light-struck fingers.