Wallace Stevens Day

There were call-ins over the weekend so I picked up a double-time shift. Woopity-doo. Beats coal mining. At least so I hear.

Some nurses work their 12-hour shifts "all in a row." Personally I feel that this makes me increasingly stupid as the days go on, so that by the end of such a string my faculties are wasted somewhat in the manner of that state of mind obtained by many college freshmen. And women. I prefer instead to work no more than two days at a time. It's tiring enough.

I guess I just don't do stupid well.

And on my days off I practice and cook things that are fun to make and eat.

But not today.

While I was making mucho dinero Sunday the Young One Who Has Memorized The Score Of Salome By Richard Strauss and who also persuaded me to purchase for them their very own four-inch chef's knife when they were six years old ended up in the Emergency Department with nothing.

Phone call from spouse:

Above-mentioned child has sore throat, headache, and can't move their neck without hurting. Of course, as a nurse, I am sort of between ownership of home thermometers. "Are they hot?" is answered by "Whaa?"

Residents on the ward suggested lumbar puncture. "That's what I'd want for my kid," said one of my faves. (I wish I could name here here. She is the best resident ever. And she also likes things like this." So we have this understanding.

I bought a stuffed kitty for The Young One Who Thinks She's Leaving Home Is The Saddest Song Ever and in an hour or two they were discharged without incident. No tap or even bloodwork. Trauma-free ED visit. Go home. Come back when you're really sick. And give us a few hundred bucks just to call it even.

Monday was typical. Busy as all get-out. But no get-out. All my assigned folks stayed.

So today is poetry day.

In college I had a radio show. Unformatted, but mostly I played classical and far-out jazz. That's where my brain is.

I'd read stuff occasionally between album cuts. We had those way back when.

Like this:

"Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs."

Man, that's cooler than Miles and Coltrane.

Time for chamomille tea. And scales. And slur studies.