August 10, 2012

The restless sky is sending down gusts of wind and getting darker now instead of lighter.  The trees are restless, their branches reaching, stretching, and flinging their leaves in masses of motion.  What was sunny and bright is growing sullen now, gray with cloud and cooler than earlier, an unexpected reversal.  There may be rain on the way, or perhaps every part of a storm but the rain.  Now there is shadow and deeper shade and nothing bright, the crepe myrtle is sending down a shower of petals, drifting down so if you did not know about the heat you might mistake them for snow, but we do know about the heat and are not surprised.

It's Friday and I found a great poem for Friday, though I think it would have been better for last Friday when I was just home again, still I remember the glad feeling of being home and this poem recalls that feeling so that today I have it again, glad to be home, glad to have love, glad it's Friday.

Completely Friday   

By the detergents and dish soap

by the orderly books and broom on the floor,

by the clean windows, by the table

without papers, notebooks or pens,

by the easy chairs without newspapers,

whoever approaches my house

will find a day

that is completely Friday.

That is how I find it

when I go out into the streets

and the cathedral has been

taken over by the world of the living

and in the supermarket

June becomes a bottle of gin,

sausages and dessert,

fan of light in the kiosk

of the flower shop,

city that undresses completely Friday.

As does my body

which recalls the memory of your body

and foretells your presence

in the restlessness of all it touches,

in the remote control for the music,

in the paper of the magazine,

in the ice melted away

just as the morning melts away

completely Friday.

When the front door opens

the icebox divines what my body knew

and suggests other titles for this poem:

completely you,

morning of the return, good love,

good company.

by Luis Garcia Montero

translated by Katie King 

Completely Friday, the last day, time to put away at the end of the day the busy work of the week, the making of living, and live the weekend.   I love the anticipation presented here, and I know how I felt last Friday when I was so glad to be home, so ready to have everything familiar, the return, good love, good company, and even the routine.  Somehow I would have thought I was not so fond of routine, and often tease Honey about it when he is being particularly hidebound, but I found I enjoy my particular routines, a framework for hours, for work, for enjoying the day.  Even the habit of joy has to start somewhere, and is helped along by the routine appreciation of so many simple things.  Bottles on my desk, wind outside my window,  books, and mementos, and even the sight of things waiting to be done, dust and the broom <smile>.  So, this is my completely Friday, the day I don't have to cook, the day that is darkening into storm, making its own dark cathedral of green inhabited by mockingbirds and blue jays, and in the distance, a single crow calling for company.