I finished “While I Was Gone
Category Archives: Diversions
The stuff that didn’t fit elsewhere.
Chicago
I finally managed to download the pictures from our trip to Chicago. We started the day at Shedd Aquarium and finished it up at Wrigley Field.
The aquarium was alot of fun — Poppy seems to be a big fan of the water. She loved the penguins, the dolphins and the beluga whales. I was very impressed with the whales, too. They’re so pretty!
By the time we finally found the El station (or whatever they’re called) and got to Wrigley, the Cubs were already losing 3-0. The Reds got hit after hit, homerun after homerun. Poppy was having a blast, though. She’s very much a people person. She was getting pretty tired by the 7th inning, and the Cubbies weren’t showing any signs of turning things around, so we went back to the car for the long, long, long drive home.
‘What We Need’
American Life in Poetry: Column 055
By Ted Kooser
U.S. poet laureate
A circus is an assemblage of illusions, and here Jo McDougall, a Kansas poet, shows us a couple of performers, drab and weary in their ordinary lives, away from the lights at the center of the ring.
What We Need
It is just as well we do not see,
in the shadows behind the hasty tent
of the Allen Brothers Greatest Show,
Lola the Lion Tamer and the Great Valdini
in Nikes and jeans
sharing a tired cigarette
before she girds her wrists with glistening amulets
and snaps the tigers into rage,
before he adjusts the glimmering cummerbund
and makes from air
the white and trembling doves, the pair.From “Dirt,” Autumn House Press, Pittsburgh, 2001. Copyright (c) 2001 by Jo McDougall, whose most recent book is “Satisfied With Havoc,” Autumn House Press, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.