altverses

Today's poem:

The Five Stages of Grief
by Linda Pastan

The night I lost you
someone pointed me towards
the Five Stages of Grief.
Go that way, they said,
it's easy, like learning to climb
stairs after the amputation.
And so I climbed.
Denial was first.
I sat down at breakfast
carefully setting the table
for two. I passed you the toast—
you sat there. I passed
you the paper—you hid
behind it.
Anger seemed more familiar.
I burned the toast, snatched
the paper and read the headlines myself.
But they mentioned your departure,
and so I moved on to
Bargaining. What could I exchange
for you? The silence
after storms? My typing fingers?
Before I could decide, Depression
came puffing up, a poor relation
its suitcase tied together
with string. In the suitcase
were bandages for the eyes
and bottles of sleep. I slid
all the way down the stairs
feeling nothing.
And all the time Hope
flashed on and off
in defective neon.
Hope was my uncle's middle name,
he died of it. After a year I am still climbing,
though my feet slip
on your stone face.
The treeline
has long since disappeared;
green in a color
I have forgotten.
But now I see what I am climbing
towards: Acceptance,
written in capital letters,
a special headline:
Acceptance,
its name in lights.
I struggle on,
waving and shouting.
Below, my whole life spreads its surf,
all the landscapes I've ever known
or dreamed of. Below
a fish jumps: the pulse
in your neck.
Acceptance. I finally
reach it.
But something is wrong.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.

***

I have not yet been able to gather my thoughts about The Pitt's season finale, but serrico has some great thoughts here and siria has some here.

I also have a bunch of links (spoilers everywhere!):

+ The Pitt’s Noah Wyle & Co. Talk Taking Robby to the Very Edge in Finale and ‘Getting Mentally Healthy’ in Season 2

+ The Pitt’s Shawn Hatosy Loved Abbot at First Sight

+ ‘She Just Needs Therapy and a Hug.’ The Pitt’s Isa Briones doesn’t need you to like Dr. Santos but hopes you can empathize with her.

+ The Pitt Season 2 Premise [spoiler] and Premiere Month Confirmed

+ ‘We Try to Keep the Sensationalism to a Dull Roar’ As The Pitt shuts down season one, the next shift is taking shape for creator R. Scott Gemmill.

+ The Pitt’s Next Shift

I really need to get some icons for this show.

***

And today's poem:

Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild

after Matthew Olzmann

Oh button, don't go thinking we loved pianos
more than elephants, air conditioning more than air.

We loved honey, just loved it, and went into stores
to smell the sweet perfume of unworn leather shoes.

Did you know, on the coast of Africa, the Sea Rose
and Carpenter Bee used to depend on each other?

The petals only opened for the Middle C their wings
beat, so in the end, we protested with tuning forks.

You must think we hated the stars, the empty ladles,
because they conjured thirst. We didn't. We thanked

them and called them lucky, we even bought the rights
to name them for our sweethearts. Believe it or not,

most people kept plants like pets and hired kids
like you to water them, whenever they went away.

And ice! Can you imagine? We put it in our coffee
and dumped it out at traffic lights, when it plugged up

our drinking straws. I had a dog once, a real dog,
who ate venison and golden yams from a plastic dish.

He was stubborn, but I taught him to dance and play
dead with a bucket full of chicken livers. And we danced

too, you know, at weddings and wakes, in basements
and churches, even when the war was on. Our cars

we mostly named for animals, and sometimes we drove
just to drive, to clear our heads of everything but wind.

--JP Grasser

***

Today's poem:

NASA Video Transmission Picked Up By Baby Monitor

Instead of her little one nestled between the purple
elephant from Aunt Meg and the blanket knitted
by Tricia, the new mother glances up to see a space
station—tattooed by a meteorite—
now plummeting toward Hamtramck, Michigan.

Maybe she feels the same terror I felt when I sat
in a theater as a child. A man in a black tuxedo
staggered across the stage, removed his gloves
and tossed them into the audience, gloves as black
as piano keys that shrieked above us, became
two fuming ravens that flapped around the room
and circled the chandeliers. Plato says
we live in a cave and stare at a wall of shadows
cast by the light outside. We name the shapes
and believe them real. Turn around and the sun
blackens the pupil. I've known people, afraid of the sun,
who opened their eyes to God, but found only
a wine cellar lit by a guttering lamp. There's so much
to be afraid of, so much to gaze at and be wrong about.

How many shadows are left to name? Logophobia
is the fear of words. Keraunothnetophobia
is the fear of falling man-made satellites. Imagine
how a woman might walk out and look to heaven
for the sky lab plunging down on her—
wires everywhere, bolts loosening, metal body in flames.
But, she sees only blue, endless blue, the color
of a baby's new blanket, cloaking everything.

--Matthew Olzmann

***

As I may have mentioned, I love pretzel rolls, so I decided to take a stab at this recipe since her peasant bread recipe is so easy, and the rolls are good! (pics) But the timing is so weird. First of all, using cold water instead of warm is odd, and I guess contributes to the EIGHT TO TEN HOUR first prove. On the counter, not in the fridge. I mixed up the dough last night around 10 pm, and set my alarm for 8 am so I would be up in time to set it up for the second rise, which takes FOUR TO FIVE HOURS. (then I went back to bed for a couple of hours.)

I'm not sure why I think the timing is so weird - I guess a 12 hour/overnight proof in the fridge would make sense and also be fine timing-wise - you could do it at 9 pm and get up at 9 am without worrying, because the fridge is going to inhibit the rise enough that it won't overprove. But 8 to 10 hours means starting at 8 am means you don't start the second rise until 4pm and then they have to prove for another 4 hours at least? I guess it's meant for people who get up earlier than me. Idk.

Otherwise it was easy enough, except for getting the dough balls neatly out of the tray and into the water, so I couldn't keep them the nicely round shapes. Since they're just for me, and like the recipe author's kids, I can't be bothered to make sandwiches when I can eat them on their own or with butter, I don't really care, but it would be nice for once if something I made looked as good as it tasted. *hands* I'll probably go back to the King Arthur recipe I've used previously, though - it takes much less rising time.

One thing I will recommend, if you are someone who makes a lot of bread but doesn't always use a mixer, is a dough whisk. I'm not a huge fan of single-use kitchen gadgets, but I find this weird-looking thing really good for mixing up dough and getting it to come together without having to use the mixer or my hands.

***