It's been a few years since I posted some Shakespeare on his birthday, but I am tired so have one of the most famous poems in the Western canon:

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
By William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

*

I was all excited that it's Thursday, thinking about how there'd be a new episode of The Pitt until I remembered, alas, that there will be no new episodes until next January. Sigh.

I keep meaning to post my thoughts here and not doing it, so in brief, my thoughts on the season 2 finale of The Pitt: ( spoilers )

I guess this sounds like I had a lot of complaints but I really loved this season - I just thought the writing fell down a little sometimes, for some characters.

*

Today's poem:

Pyrocumulus
by Arthur Sze

Peony shoots rise out of the earth;

at five a.m., walking up the ridge,

I mark how, in April, Orion's left arm

was an apex in the sky, and, by May,

only Venus flickered above the ridge

against the blue edge of sunrise.

In daylight, a pear tree explodes

with white blossoms—no black-

footed ferret slips across my path,

no boreal owl stirs on a branch.

At three a.m., dogs seethed and howled

when a black bear snagged a shriveled

apple off a branch; and, waking out

of a black pool, I glimpsed how

fire creates its own weather

in rising pyrocumulus. Reaching

the ditch, I drop the gate: it's time

for the downhill pipes to fill,

time for bamboo at the house

to suck up water, time to see sunlight

flare between leaves before

the scorching edge of afternoon.

***

Happy Wednesday!

I'm taking search offline sometime today to upgrade the server to a new instance type. It should be down for a day or so -- sorry for the inconvenience. If you're curious, the existing search machine is over 10 years old and was starting to accumulate a decade of cruft...!

Also, apparently these older machines cost more than twice what the newer ones cost, on top of being slower. Trying to save a bit of maintenance and cost, and hopefully a Wednesday is okay!

Edited: The other cool thing is that this also means that the search index will be effectively realtime afterwards... no more waiting a few minutes for the indexer to catch new content.

I logged off yesterday around 4:30 and started the process of making whipped ganache, and as per usual, the amount of time it takes to get the temperature of the ganache down to 75°F is RIDICULOUS even when I put the bowl on the window sill with the window open (there is a screen) and a cold breeze coming in. I guess the one good part about how long it took was that I was able to make and eat dinner in the middle of it, so I didn't have to do the whole thing hungry. Then I loaded those dishes into the dishwasher and started separating eggs to make vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. And got some yolk in with the whites so had to start over. And then cracked an egg and it was frozen, so unusable for my purposes.

I did eventually get 4 egg whites in a bowl with a cup of sugar and set it over the pot of simmering water so I could whisk it until it heated to 160°F because aside from my own fear of salmonella, the whole point here was to celebrate my pregnant co-worker so I absolutely needed to make sure everything was safe. It's always amazing to me how they double in size as you whisk and heat them and eventually they hit the temp, so I whipped them into stiff peaks (not by hand), which took about twice the amount of time it normally does (physics! always working against me!), but did eventually happen. All was well as I added in the butter, but then I added the vanilla bean paste (gotta have the specks!) and it curdled. So I had to reheat it to melting, chill it, and whip it while adding another 1/4 cup of butter, but it did eventually whip up beautifully. Both frostings piped like a dream, too, since they were not cold. Pics are here. And they were much appreciated by my co-workers! At the end of the day, when I went into the lunchroom to put the leftovers in the fridge, I found someone packing them up to take home. She was like, did you want them? And I was like, no, I was just going to put them in the fridge for tomorrow. I'm pretty sure she did not know I was the person who made them, but that's okay.

Work itself was fine - we spent most of our team meeting eating cupcakes while everyone else talked about their cats - but I was 3/4 of the way there this morning when I realized I'd left my ID badge in my old bag (I got a new bag for work recently, and used it for the first time today, and I think I like it. It is quite large but the strap is the perfect length for a large crossbody, imo), but thankfully they have guest ID cards so I was able to go about my day without interruption. I did make myself a note to remember my ID card next month when I go in. (well, unless there is a LIRR strike, but there probably won't be.)

***

Today's poem:

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

—Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love, 2002.

***

There was some good hockey over the weekend, though given some of the match-ups, I am rooting for teams I have never rooted for before. It's very disconcerting! I mean, some of it is just, I guess I hate this team less than that team (e.g., Pens vs Flyers, and I guess it's cool that Crosby is making what may be his final Cup run but ugh, Pittsburgh; otoh, the only thing the Flyers have going for them is Gritty, and that is not enough, considering everything else about them) or I hate this team so much more than I hate that team (I am rooting for Montreal, my friends. The Habs! I don't even know who I am anymore! But Ryan McDonagh notwithstanding, I do not like the Bolts at all). And as much as I'd like to see Kreider win (a hilarious rebuke to Drury and Dolan), I can't root for Joel Quenneville (and also Anaheim is not making a run).

In some cases, the choice is easy (I still have not forgiven the Kings for 2012 and I have a fondness for the Avs; I root for Dallas because of angelgazing, and also because while I'd love to see Mats Zuccarello win a Cup, Bill Guerin can go fuck himself, as can VGK and Carter Hart, so Mammoth all the way, there - plus the ZAMMOTH (or the Mammboni, if you're nasty)).

Overall, I would like to see Buffalo win it all, and I enjoyed their game, but if it has to be a Canadian team, at this point, I would pick Montreal over Ottawa (disqualified due to Brady Tkachuk) or Edmonton (ugh, McDavid's vibes are rancid, imo). At least I like Martin St. Louis, and their kids seem fun and their game was also entertaining.

And as I said on bsky last night, Henrik Lundqvist looked like an ANGEL in his silver suit. He just gets more handsome every time I see him. *dreamy sigh*

Anyway!

Today's poem:

White Noise
by Alice Pettway

I ordered silence online,
from the makers

of that robot vacuum,
the one that terrifies cats.

They claim it will ricochet
through my life, siphoning

the mewling of the computer
in its dark cubby, the shiver

of leaves, even the snap of fish beaks
against coral, the air conditioner

accelerating endlessly
around its distant track.

I asked customer support
if there was an attachment

to suck the cacophony
out of my head. For this,

I said, I would pay extra,
whatever they asked, really.

No response came.
I lay on the rug. The machine

ran along my legs, the side
of my face. I imagined

as loudly as possible, waiting
for the indicator to switch on,

for the whir and pinch of suction.
The room is quiet now.

Even the stuffing in the couch
does not exhale beneath my weight.

*

Another year has gone by! It's meme time.

First up, ordered by hits.

( Annual AO3 Meme )

As is traditional to say: no huge movement. Every fic in my top 10 had fewer hits this year than it had the year before, with MCU having the steepest drop-off. H50 continues to be popular to an extent that quietly baffles me. Maybe one day that silly Suits ficlet will drop out of the top 10.

I realize I never followed up on the vanilla cupcakes and they did stay moist for 4 days in an airtight container and didn't get that weird texture where you can tell they're going bad, nor did they dry out, so. A++ on the hot milk method. So I am making them today, as well as my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe (it is actually a cake recipe but it makes 40 mini cupcakes as written) and then tomorrow I will make whipped ganache for the vanilla and vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream for the chocolate, and bring them to work on Tuesday, since one of my attorneys is pregnant, and this is likely the last time she'll be in the office with us until the fall. She was all, "no need to make a fuss!" but my boss was like, "Cupakes? :D :D :D" so of course, I was also like, "Cupcakes! :D :D :D"

*

Today's poem:

Mother, Kitchen
By Ouyang Jianghe
(Translated from the Chinese by Austin Woerner )

Where the immemorial and the instant meet, opening and distance appear.
Through the opening: a door, crack of light.
Behind the door, a kitchen.

Where the knife rises and falls, clouds gather, disperse.
A lightspeed joining of life and death, cut
in two: halves of a sun, of slowness.

Halves of a turnip.
A mother in the kitchen, a lifetime of cuts.
A cabbage cut into mountains and rivers,
a fish, cut along its leaping curves,
laid on the table
still yearning for the pond.

Summer's tofu
cut into premonitions of snow.
A potato listens to the onion-counterpoint
of the knife, dropping petals at its strokes:
self and thing, halves of nothing
at the center of time.
Where gone and here meet, the knife rises, falls.

But this mother is not holding a knife.

What she has been given is not a knife
but a few fallen leaves.
The fish leaps over the blade from the sea
to the stars. The table is in the sky now,
the market has been crammed into the refrigerator,
and she cannot open cold time.

***

Under the Circumstances
ER | Carter, Gen | ~1100 words | Episode coda for 4.15. Thanks to sheafrotherdon for audiencing.

(Also on AO3)

( 'And then,' Carter said, beaming, 'the fire captain told me that I personally did okay! Under the circumstances!' )

Today's poem:

A Certain Kind of Eden
by Kay Ryan

It seems like you could, but you can't go back and pull
the roots and runners and replant.
It's all too deep for that.
You've overprized intention,
have mistaken any bent you're given
for control. You thought you chose
the bean and chose the soil.
You even thought you abandoned
one or two gardens. But those things
keep growing where we put them—
if we put them at all.
A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.
Even the one vine that tendrils out alone
in time turns on its own impulse,
twisting back down its upward course
a strong and then a stronger rope,
the greenest saddest strongest
kind of hope.

*

enough for you to be open wide
The Pitt | Santos/Mel | ~2700 words | Episode tag for 2.15. Thanks to sheafrotherdon and trinityofone for audiencing.

(Also on AO3)

( 'Do you like karaoke?' Trinity asked, which wasn't a question that Mel could answer in a particularly empirical manner. Mel generally found bars and clubs to be intimidating. But maybe that might be different if she went into one of them with a friend? )

Just woke up from an unexpected 2 hour nap, so thoughts on The Pitt finale will have to wait. Here's today's poem:

Materials for a Gravestone Rubbing

I have long wanted to be starlight in spring
and the late snow that lingers there, coming down
at Harpers Ferry over the river or gathered
on a windowsill on third street in Brooklyn
when I was twenty-two — the potpourri
of sky the wind carries after a storm.
The gray darkening on a far ridge. If you are reading this
there is still a way. I can take your smooth palm in mine
and lead you toward a distant city and a night
when you were on the mountain and dreaming of the other world
and we can walk together past the pre-war homes
converted now to low-rent apartments for college students
or workers come in from long days on a road crew,
coveralls draped over the backs of kitchen chairs
and the light swaying just so. We can go on —
along the cracked sidewalks above the train tracks
that can't exist again even as the grasses come up between them
and look through a fog and a single pair of headlights
making definite beams in the material cold.
No moonlight to get netted up in on the surface of the water
no traffic at this hour just the scraps of paper blown
into gutters and the electric hum of streetlights,
a few voices, which almost walk like footfall down alleys
overgrown with briars and creeping vines, their crude
latticework against the brick and the exhale
of a bartender on a smoke break and the smoke
which still drifts. Now it must be all worn through
but then it was barely remarkable though I stop
to look back at the homes and at snow melt on roads
the flat glitter on the black road, the moiré pattern
yet to be captured by language — and for a minute believe
in something as my stepfather believed in the smell of fire
whenever he left in the middle of the night
and returned before dawn and spoke to no one, didn’t
wake anyone up. Sometimes I feel that alone,
that pure, as if looking back at myself
through the scrim of time and you are there
standing in our kitchen at this hour and I can almost
hear you and the first singing caught-up there in the back
of your throat. Lately I've stopped worrying about the end.
Each day my hand is smaller on your shoulders. New birds
still return and the hillsides green all around, the stars
have traveled over the horizon and in the blink
of an eye you are here — grape-vine charcoal in your hand;
little hyphen I have become.

--Matthew Wimberley

*

You know it's been a Capital W Week when one of the least draining parts of it was that you had to sit at home one day from 9am waiting for the guy to show up to repair your washing machine and he didn't show until 6:20pm. And that issue did in fact involve a drain pump! Insert rimshot here.

( The Pitt, 2.15, 9:00P.M. )

Almost forgot to post!

Shoulders
by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

*

I knew Isa Briones was on Broadway, but I had never heard her actually sing until yesterday when I saw this on tumblr: Isa Briones sings "Who's Sorry Now" from JUST IN TIME | Now on Broadway. What a set of pipes!

*

Today's poem:

Fire

a woman can't survive
by her own breath
               alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night winds
who will take her
into herself

look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am the continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the mountains
a night wind
who burns
with every breath
she takes

—Joy Harjo

*

Today's poem:

A Dictionary Names the Wind in the Trees
by Susan Cohen

Psithurism because
what else would we call sound embedded
with leaf mold and breath
zithering just below the daily drone
of power saws and chippers,
eons of air shifting
like an old Chevy through leaves,
riffling papery corn fields
and the eucalyptus,
stuttering through windbreaks,
jittering an aspen
in a beam of breath,
lisping nothing pins me down
in the language of the Huron,
in Olmec, in Sanskrit, chittering
all its unpronounceable names,
its tunes with the shiver of pine needles
and the moves of a river?
Psithurism comes as close
to the clash of wind and trees
as orgasm comes to the friction
of muscles, nerves, bodies,
which is to say when so many words
cannot catch it,
those of us always searching
for just the right one may
as well stop speaking
and lift our heads
like mule deer, ears twitched
for the smallest sound.

*

Today's poem:

Eurydice
by Carol Ann Duffy

Girls, I was dead and down
in the Underworld, a shade,
a shadow of my former self, nowhen.
It was a place where language stopped,
a black full stop, a black hole
Where the words had to come to an end.
And end they did there,
last words,
famous or not.
It suited me down to the ground.

So imagine me there,
unavailable,
out of this world,
then picture my face in that place
of Eternal Repose,
in the one place you'd think a girl would be safe
from the kind of a man
who follows her round
writing poems,
hovers about
while she reads them,
calls her His Muse,
and once sulked for a night and a day
because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns.
Just picture my face
when I heard –
Ye Gods –
a familiar knock-knock at Death's door.

Him.
Big O.
Larger than life.
With his lyre
and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize.

Things were different back then.
For the men, verse-wise,
Big O was the boy. Legendary.
The blurb on the back of his books claimed
that animals,
aardvark to zebra,
flocked to his side when he sang,
fish leapt in their shoals
at the sound of his voice,
even the mute, sullen stones at his feet
wept wee, silver tears.

Bollocks. (I'd done all the typing myself,
I should know.)
And given my time all over again,
rest assured that I'd rather speak for myself
than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc.

In fact girls, I'd rather be dead.

But the Gods are like publishers,
usually male,
and what you doubtless know of my tale
is the deal.

Orpheus strutted his stuff.

The bloodless ghosts were in tears.
Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years.
Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers.
The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears.

Like it or not,
I must follow him back to our life –
Eurydice, Orpheus' wife –
to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes,
octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets,
elegies, limericks, villanelles,
histories, myths...

He'd been told that he mustn't look back
or turn round,
but walk steadily upwards,
myself right behind him,
out of the Underworld
into the upper air that for me was the past.
He'd been warned
that one look would lose me
for ever and ever.

So we walked, we walked.
Nobody talked.

Girls, forget what you've read.
It happened like this –
I did everything in my power
to make him look back.
What did I have to do, I said,
to make him see we were through?
I was dead. Deceased.
I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late.
Past my sell-by date...

I stretched out my hand
to touch him once
on the back of the neck.
Please let me stay.
But already the light had saddened from purple to grey.

It was an uphill schlep
from death to life
and with every step
I willed him to turn.
I was thinking of filching the poem
out of his cloak,
when inspiration finally struck.
I stopped, thrilled.
He was a yard in front.
My voice shook when I spoke –
Orpheus, your poem's a masterpiece.
I'd love to hear it again…

He was smiling modestly,
when he turned,
when he turned and he looked at me.

What else?
I noticed he hadn't shaved.
I waved once and was gone.

The dead are so talented.
The living walk by the edge of a vast lake
near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

*

Care and Feeding
The Pitt | Gen | ~750 words

(Also on AO3)

( Jack does not have a cat. )

I feel like I've probably oversold this post as well-put-together meta when it is mostly a lot of bullet points with me going "WTF? WTF?," which I guess is basically the Dungeon Crawler Carl experience in a nutshell. Anyway! It's a month until Parade of Horribles comes out, so I figured I'd better post before the post was obsolete. *g*

This is mostly stuff that I've picked up on in reading/rereading and am wondering what will be resolved (and when, given that there's supposedly 3 more books, and ( spoiler ) I also wanted to do a little speculation about endings. Because despite people on reddit being very vocal about Dinniman being a horror writer and how it's not going to end happily and everyone will die, I don't believe that to be the case, necessarily, based on my reading of the books. (I mean, is it likely? Sure. Do I want that ending? Nope!)

The first, less salient, point in my favor is that the books open with Carl telling the story in a way that sounds like he's looking back on it, that he's been through it and lived to tell the tale. This is typical in novels written in first person past tense; however, ( spoilers )

The second, more important, point, to me, is the theme of the story that's being told – one of resistance and revolution, anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism – and having that be snuffed out in favor of late stage capitalism and status quo antebellum being restored is just...I don't see it (especially not now). I guess even if everyone dies, the changes Carl et al. have forced on the galaxy will linger, at least for a while, but I am not sure anymore that even Carl dies at the end (I would have said 98% yes he does, but I read some interesting meta on tumblr that made me wonder if he will in fact survive and why, rooted in his own past trauma to make it make sense).

I do think a lot of our favorites will die, probably horribly, but I also think Donut will make it out alive. I cannot imagine killing the cat at this point. It would be interesting and somewhat surprising to make Carl live in the new world too. (I am not just saying this because he's my blorbo, but that might be a major factor in it.) Though how – given his primal race – could be as something new and different (or its own horror, given the givens), which might as well be death in some ways? Metamorphosis, at least. Idk.

Anyway, I've wrestled with how to organize this – by character? by theme? – and decided to go with *drumroll* location! It seemed to make the most sense to me, anyway.

There's spoilers for all 7 books (I am not a member of the Patreon so I haven't read any excerpts from book 8 or the extra material from the print versions of the books) from here on out.

We'll start wide with ( the galaxy )

Which brings us to ( earth's surface )

And then, the most important location, ( the dungeon )

I'm sure there are things I've forgotten/missed/am making too much or too little of, but there is just so much going on that I needed to track it all somehow, and so here we are. If you've read the books, what do you think?

*I said this on tumblr, but I do hope someone makes a Carl vid to Springsteen's Trapped - it's definitely #1 on the Carl playlist I did not actually make but which lives in my head while I contemplate inchoate fic ideas I will never write.

***

Today's poem:

July
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

The figs we ate wrapped in bacon.
The gelato we consumed greedily:
coconut milk, clove, fresh pear.
How we'd dump hot espresso on it
just to watch it melt, licking our spoons
clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat,
the salt we'd suck off our fingers,
the eggs we'd watch get beaten
'til they were a dizzying bright yellow,
how their edges crisped in the pan.
The pink salt blossom of prosciutto
we pulled apart with our hands, melted
on our eager tongues. The green herbs
with goat cheese, the aged brie paired
with a small pot of strawberry jam,
the final sour cherry we kept politely
pushing onto each other's plate, saying,
No, you. But it's so good. No, it's yours.
How I finally put an end to it, plucked it
from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth.
How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don't, and to get it anyway.

***

I caught up on Abbott Elementary last night and ( spoilers )

***

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

Yesterday, after I logged off work, I made these banana blueberry muffins, which used up the last of all the fruit that I got last week in the wrong grocery order (well, the raspberries got moldy before I could use them, so they just got thrown out, but I used the strawbs, the bluebs, and the bananas in the end). They're good!

Then this afternoon, I tried out this vanilla cupcake recipe, which I had originally planned to make for Easter. As written, it makes 40 mini cupcakes, so if I make it next weekend to take to work on Tuesday, which is what I am thinking, I will double it. And make that KAB whipped ganache frosting. I might do that tomorrow, just because I can, once the last of the ground meat I received last weekend is thawed and used to make meatballs. I have ravioli in the freezer so I can free up even more space (I used the frozen tortellini last night). Anyway, I want to see if these vanilla cupcakes really do stay moist for a few days. I already replaced vanilla with funfetti for Christmas, but I feel like you should always have a good vanilla cupcake recipe in your back pocket, and the one I like for cake was never the best for cupcakes.

Now I've got a chicken roasting in the oven and it smells so good.

Anyway, here's today's poem:

Hurry
by Marie Howe

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.
Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.
And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

***

Saw My Colours
The Pitt | ~1500 words | Duke, Gen | Episode fic for 2.14.

(Also on AO3)

( Time was, Duke had a lot of firsts on Fourth of July weekends. )

Today's poem:

The Other Woman

as I picture her
she has no basil
no cumin
no sun-hardened hyssop
nor sage around her eyes

she never catnips
but laughs comfrey
tansy with a primula smile

as I think of her
she's angelica
foxglove and jasmine
somewhat peppermint
not letting you see
all her saffron at once

one day I’ll meet her
that rue woman
that wild indigo teasel
somewhere neutral
free of woodruff and of dropwort
some summer savory

she's the nose
set to lavender
eye full of sesame
ear ringing rosemary

she's wind
through wild thyme

--Twyla M. Hansen

*