Orion

In the Fall sky you leap out at me
the only constellation I find immediately.
(The Big Dipper still hides)
The one my mother showed me
standing on a dock
on the shore of Maine.

The waves lap at our feet
rocking our base
our hips flung apart to balance the sway
of our unsteady legs
wide hips, straight knees braced
a warrior's stance.

See the belt?
The sword?
Three and three
a triumvirate:
God and Man and the Holy Ghost
Three in One

Years later my aunt
my mother's little sister
took me up to the roof of her barn,
fear of sliding off the tilt onto the rock below,
horses crunching on hay below us,
eating a pulse of life to fill the night
with the warm comfort of contentment.

See the belt?
The sword?
Three and three
The triumvirate:
Family and Fear and Familiar
Three in One

I am as old now as my aunt
long dead
was the night on the roof
the night she tried to show me the details
the green stars, the red.
To make her proud
I lied to say I could see colors

And early this morning
I stepped out of my house with the trash
bacon and paper and coffee
and there you were, Orion.
balancing just above the sour can

burned by the glow of so many porch lights
the street lamps shining against your shoulders
dimming all the stars around you
swimming in an orange sulfur sky

headless you showed me only your belt, your sword
and your knees
flung apart as a warrior stands
fighting the tide of distraction
cars and kids and trash

find me
remember me

you're fading, Orion
dipping into a fog
calves thrashing against the undertow
yet your sword
your one sandaled foot

kick me into remembering
the waves
and the hay
and the night
when in silence women said
look at the stars

aren't they the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?
and
I love you.

Middle School

Who says my daughter's bored in "Computer Power"? Who?

This is an elective which fills part of the year. She's really interested in the other half, which is a multi-media art class. But for right now, I keep hearing stories about how boring it is to be learnng about cut-and-paste, filling in field data, and other fairly elementary stuff.

Judging from the cover of her "Computer Power" folder, reproduced below, there's not much going on in class. (But I like her dragons--she's a Naomi Novik fan now too.) (COOL! Check out the website--the series has been optioned by Peter Jackson!! Yay!)

News Headline

Along the lines of Ms. Kate Rothwell's discovery of the zoophilia instructional page: Animal Cruelty case

Sheriff's Deputies Make Bizarre Arrest
Wednesday September 6, 2006
Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies come across a bizarre encounter at La Purisima Mission in Lompoc.

Around midnight they found a 69-year-old Huntington beach man naked and covered in oats.

Deputies say the man had covered himself in olive oil, rolled around in oats and allowed the horses at the mission to lick him clean.

He apparently told deputies this has always been a fantasy of his and drove up from the Los Angeles area to play it out.

Alfred Thomas Steven was cited and released for trespassing, animal cruelty and sexually assaulting an animal.

So, emm, just thinking out loud here: wouldn’t teeth be involved in this endeavor? And, really, sexually assaulting a horse? What, the horse thought about it later and decided that his dignity had been assaulted and his reputation impugned, so the horse pressed charges? Very, very odd.