There Is a Certain Challenge in Being Humane to Hornets But Not Much

We did our will before vacation. We signed nothing - the lawyer gathered information. The drafting, the signing, the notarizing, takes weeks. The lawyer called yesterday: What happens to the money if I die, Earthgirl dies, our daughter Planet dies simultaneously. Who gets the money?

Two choices occurred that I proposed to Earthgirl: the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club and the Humane Society of America. She chose HSA, I googled HSA to get the donation info.

Every other internet ad I see now I see now I see now a desperately hungry, mangy dog asking if I'll save him. Of many reasons I don't watch TV is fear I'll see a HSA donation commercial.

I give money to the Humane Society, their donation commercials catapult me into Dark faster than anything but photos of fatfucks smirking over animals they paid stupid money to Easy Kill. So yay me, every couple of minutes online, fine metaphor abounding myself with sharp fuckmees of Dark.

• Not that my flight hadn't been booked before the will story.
• And it's not even that decent a grade of Dark anyway anymore.
• The Vedic Fibre.
• Another biography of Neoliberalism, a not vomit-flavored reburp.
• Trump and Crispy.
• His stupid thoughts on a stupid list of best dystopian novels.
• Verily - Death to Helmetball! Helmetball is number one metaphor for the American disease.
• Motherfucking humans.
• UnDarkener: I'm told Elric and the Weather Stark are getting married and Earthgirl will officiate the ceremony, so yay.

BURIED AT SPRINGS

James Schuyler

There is a hornet in the room   

and one of us will have to go   

out the window into the late   

August midafternoon sun. I

won. There is a certain challenge   

in being humane to hornets   

but not much. A launch draws   

two lines of wake behind it   

on the bay like a delta

with a melted base. Sandy   

billows, or so they look,

of feathery ripe heads of grass,   

an acid-yellow kind of

goldenrod glowing or glowering   

in shade. Rocks with rags   

of shadow, washed dust clouts   

that will never bleach.

It is not like this at all.   

The rapid running of the   

lapping water a hollow knock

of someone shipping oars:   

it’s eleven years since   

Frank sat at this desk and   

saw and heard it all   

the incessant water the   

immutable crickets only   

not the same: new needles   

on the spruce, new seaweed   

on the low-tide rocks   

other grass and other water   

even the great gold lichen   

on a granite boulder   

even the boulder quite   

literally is not the same

      II

A day subtle and suppressed   

in mounds of juniper enfolding   

scratchy pockets of shadow

while bigness—rocks, trees, a stump—

stands shadowless in an overcast   

of ripe grass. There is nothing   

but shade, like the boggy depths   

of a stand of spruce, its resonance   

just the thin scream

of mosquitoes ascending.

Boats are light lumps on the bay   

stretching past erased islands   

to ocean and the terrible tumble   

and London (“rain persisting”)   

and Paris (“changing to rain”).   

Delicate day, setting the bright

of a young spruce against the cold

of an old one hung with unripe cones   

each exuding at its tip

gum, pungent, clear as a tear,   

a day tarnished and fractured   

as the quartz in the rocks

of a dulled and distant point,   

a day like a gull passing

with a slow flapping of wings   

in a kind of lope, without

breeze enough to shake loose   

the last of the fireweed flowers,

a faintly clammy day, like wet silk   

stained by one dead branch   

the harsh russet of dried blood.