I weep for wonder

Sure On This Shining Night

Sure on this shining night
Of star-made shadows round
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder wand'ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars,
On this shining night.

~James Agee

Just imagine, Samuel Barber's musical setting is as beautiful, if not more, than the words of the poem. Few sights are as precious to me as a starry sky, and good music frequently moves me to tears. So it's no wonder this song cuts so deeply.

This is one of the pieces my choir will perform at the closing ceremony for the Pride Quilt display in Kitchener on June 15.

Back to the gym

Yesterday morning I had my last visit with the surgeon. She seemed happy with my progress.

"I don't need to see you again unless you have any problems," she said.

Again, I felt a strange sense of loss. Dr. L. is a wonderful person and I bonded with her through this crisis. But now is the time to move on.

I asked her about exercise and was surprised to hear I can do whatever I want.

"If you lift weights," she said, "just start with light ones. Your body has been set back and you'll have to work up again slowly."

That was no surprise.

Now it is time to call my hot friend, Craig. He is a massage therapist, works out five days a week, and is built like a mini tank. We have had trouble connecting in time and place. But Craig lives a few houses away and told me I can get rides with him to the gym whenever I'm ready to start again.

Park fantasies

This morning on my habitual walk by the river I was startled to encounter two handsome policemen cycling through the park. They wore shorts. One was dark and beefy, the other short and dapper, chatting obliviously with his partner. No one else was there. I was too shy to take a picture.

Don't they have anything better to do than go around titillating solitary gay men in remote wooded areas? This is not a cruise park. I hope they were embarrassed by my big, blushing grin.

I also passed my first blooming lilac of the spring. It was helpless and alone. I couldn't resist touching it, pulling down a branch to smell and taking photos. Lilac is my favourite fragrance. Afterward I felt guilty and debauched for making love to someone else's vulnerable bush in a back alley. That's what happens when people like me have to live in apartments without gardens of their own. I'll blame society for cutting me off from the land, and the policemen for provoking lust.

In other park news, the toads have finished copulating. When I took my daughters for a walk on Monday morning, the river was full of amphibious couples doing nasty, disgusting, warty things. The air was full of their trills. Now the place is silent and the shallow water is full of egg strands. Slimy highways trailing around and clumping together in mounds like submerged castles.

The place is rampant with public sexuality, but no one seems to care. Those lazy officers should stop bumming around and arrest me in the undergrowth.

Uberfun: Bandit, the cedar waxwing

The most interesting and lovable pet I ever had was a cedar waxwing. I found him as a featherless nestling when I was about 16. His nest had been raided by squirrels. I picked him up, not expecting him to live. But he did, in my parents' sunporch for 14 years.

I named him Bandit for his looks, but it suited his personality, too. Waxwings are gregarious, eccentric birds. These traits carried over into the life of our family, of which he became an irreplaceable part. He was the quintessential charmer; seven inches of verve and camaraderie. He wanted to be neither above us, like a cat, nor below us, like a dog, but our equal.

I have given a fuller account of Bandit's life in a series of three articles I wrote for Suite101.com in 2000. The first is Masked bandit on the wing, Part 1. Click the "Next Article" link at the top of each to access the next.

Waxwings are nomadic creatures always searching for their preferred food, berries. They will vanish for weeks or months, then reappear unexpectedly in large numbers. They don't have much of a song, just a high, thin whistle. The sound of a flock flying overhead always brings a lump to my throat.

If I could choose any animal for a pet I would say, without hesitation, another cedar waxwing. However if I ever found a stranded nestling again I would do the right thing and deliver it to a wild bird clinic.

This post is uberdaddybear's uberfun task for the day.