Misty Evening Potpourri

Misty Potomac

*Freeway Blogger emails me that he is about to post his thousandth sign. He rocks.

Freeway Blogger

*We’ve had a few misty days here in Columbia’s District — slippery fog and the kind of rain that my mother used to call “spritzing.” This evening, as the earlier-and-earlier dark was closing in, I drove past the Potomac’s Three Sisters, shrouded in shifting mist rising up from the river. If we’re willing to pay attention to our landbase, it will communicate with us. And mine was clearly suggesting that I go home, slip into soft, warm clothes, and allow myself to be comforted and held by the dark.

This time of year always makes me think of the Yeats poem, The Stolen Child. There are two lovely musical versions of it. Close your eyes and listen to both of them. Which do you like best?

*Play your favorite again and spend a few minutes with these perfect (but perhaps NSFW) images.

*Do you know Caroly Kizer‘s poems? You should.

Fearful Women

Arms and the girl I sing – O rare
arms that are braceleted and white and bare

arms that were lovely Helen’s, in whose name
Greek slaughtered Trojan. Helen was to blame.

Scape-nanny call her; wars for turf
and profit don’t sound glamorous enough.

Mythologize your women! None escape.
Europe was named from an act of bestial rape:

Eponymous girl on bull-back, he intent
on scattering sperm across a continent.

Old Zeus refused to take the rap.
It’s not his name in big print on the map.

But let’s go back to the beginning
when sinners didn’t know that they were sinning.

He, one rib short: she lived to rue it
when Adam said to God, “She made me do it.”

Eve learned that learning was a dangerous thing
for her: no end of trouble would it bring.

An educated woman is a danger.
Lock up your mate! Keep a submissive stranger

like Darby’s Joan, content with church and Kinder,
not like that sainted Joan, burnt to a cinder.

Whether we wield a scepter or a mop
It’s clear you fear that we may get on top.

And if we do -I say it without animus-
It’s not from you we learned to be magnaminous.

Picture found here.