Goldenrod Brighten the Margins of the Woods

Your Washington Post publishes a hit-piece on evil foreign shitlords. Said evil foreign shitlords are not hindered by the peasant-appeasing TAX SHACKLES! that hamper Our noble shitlords' money laundering laws and those dastardly foreign shitlords take advantage of their lack of TAX SHACKLES! to beat Our noble shitlords in shitloard ladder matches, the evil bastards, (not that Our noble shitlords, led by the Grand Poobah of Our noble shitlords, the owner of the Washington Post, are complaining, mind, or are both begging that their TAX SHACKLES be forever removed and forever be attached to evil foreign shitlords, that would be ignoble)

Peak goldenrod season, above Rachel Carson yesterday.

In case there's anyone out there: I got a text from our cousin Jennifer, her dad, my mother's sister's husband, my Uncle Wayne, who took us fossil hunting in southwest Pennsylvania including once where we could watch the multiple freight trains do the big curve near Altoona and my cousin Eric found a trilobyte, died early Saturday morning past, this two week's after she'd texted me, our first communication since I texted her my mother died, Jennifer now a grandmother! she texted me! I asked her to tell him I said hi and she said she did, Wayne, rest in peace, a good guy

Hawlings River, Rachel Carson, yesterday

Yesterday was Lindsey Buckingham's 72nd birthday, there will be no cascade this year, and while I am still stupid for his music I'm not *as* stupid as once, this happening everywhere with everything but hiking with Earthgirl

Fresh hell		The year public health lost its soul				Soccer and tribalism
Capitalism without capitalists
Continuum of intervention
The living dead Pax Americana
Shitlord rage grows at private jet shortages!
There will never be a woke US military
When hope is a hindrance
Amazing coincidence		Maggie's weekly links				Thom Gunn's letters
Sebald (by Lerner) for those of you who do
Jaeggy again		{ feuilleton }'s weekend links				Baby please don't go
Richard Dawson & Circle? I'm in

THREE SONGS AT THE END OF SUMMER

Jane Kenyon

A second crop of hay lies cut   

and turned. Five gleaming crows   

search and peck between the rows.

They make a low, companionable squawk,   

and like midwives and undertakers   

possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,   

parting before me like the Red Sea.   

The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned   

to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.   

Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone   

suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,   

fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.   

The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod   

brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;   

water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.

*

The cicada’s dry monotony breaks   

over me. The days are bright   

and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today   

for an hour, with my whole   

body, the way babies cry?

*

A white, indifferent morning sky,   

and a crow, hectoring from its nest   

high in the hemlock, a nest as big   

as a laundry basket ...

                                    In my childhood   

I stood under a dripping oak,

while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,   

waiting for the school bus

with a dread that took my breath away.

The damp dirt road gave off   

this same complex organic scent.

I had the new books—words, numbers,   

and operations with numbers I did not   

comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled   

by use, in a blue canvas satchel

with red leather straps.

Spruce, inadequate, and alien   

I stood at the side of the road.   

It was the only life I had.