Family matters

Two Peas in a Pod

I have to admit it: When I first saw what this week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt was, my immediate thought was of Two Peas in a Bucket, a Web site dedicated to scrapbooking.

But then I glanced over at the bed in this hotel room in Terre Haute, Indiana. My husband and my daughter. Poppy with one hand on the day’s first bottle and the other playing with her father’s ear, her hair sprouting up from the top of her head. Rockford dozing off just a little with his arm firmly wrapped around his girl.

I don’t have time to say more. But I don’t really need to, either.

They’re my most favorite peas.

Flotsam / Jetsam

Friday Night Shuffle No. 2

If the iPod were being really clever, it would’ve put Flint (For the unemployed and underpaid) on here, because that’s where I’m going (close, anyway), and that’s what I am (and was! ha!). And as of tomorrow, I’ll be homeless, too!

Ha! Ha! Hee. Ha. Oh.

Oh. Great googly moogly.

(keepittogether keepittogether KIT keepittogether)

Anyway …

  1. Inside Moby
  2. I’ll Fly Away Allison Kraus and Gillian Welch
  3. Shut Down The Beach Boys
  4. Take Me to the River Talking Heads
  5. Wild Night Van Morrison
  6. I’ve Been Everywhere Johnny Cash
  7. Stringman Neil Young
  8. Until You Came Along Golden Smog
  9. A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You The Monkees
  10. Homegrown Neil Young
Reading

"The Copper Beech"

American Life in Poetry: Column 066

By Ted Kooser,
U.S. poet laureate, 2004-2006
Some of the most telling poetry being written in our country today has to do with the smallest and briefest of pleasures. Here Marie Howe of New York captures a magical moment: sitting in the shelter of a leafy tree with the rain falling all around.

The Copper Beech

Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,

with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to where

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.
One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell
darkening the sidewalk.

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,
I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

watching it happen without it happening to me.

Reprinted from “What the Living Do,” W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Copyright (c) 1997 by Marie Howe. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.