Good morning everyone! Still sniffling, but feeling much better today. I hopefully will even make it to dance class today...
New and exciting -- I'm buying a bicycle today! :-) Just something to get around town in -- figure it'll be convenient and fast and good exercise. I'm a little nervous about riding it on city streets -- I haven't really ridden a bicycle since I was a little kid (though I was fearless back then -- there's this HUGE hill next to my parent's house in Connecticut, and I can't count the number of times we raced down it (it was a neighborhood of boys at that time, and I was a reckless tomboy and loved it), defying death (and collecting quite an assortment of scraped elbows and knees, which I bore manfully (hmmm...I could go off into a feminist rant on that, but I'm not in the mood right now :-)) to achieve that gorgeous adrenaline rush...)
It's a beautiful day today. A little cold, but sunny and I think it'll warm up. A great day for capture-the-flag....oh, I don't want to be inside the office today, even if it's a very nice office, which mine is. Here's a poem I've just added to the 1993 poems...writing this paragraph reminded me of it, and I thought I'd add it to the list. I spent a couple of months once working on a survey of high school students, and at one point was filling out piles of terrible forms at someone else's desk in Brookline, MA (which has an excellent high school, btw, with very socially-aware students).
Trapped.
New England spring comes calling
come sing
come dance
come lie in sunlight with your love on grassy hills; dogwood petals
fluttering down and wind teasing laughing calling
oh come!
Chained.
Chained to this desk with stacks of papers and hours more of meetings with
grumpy, angry people who yearn to drink in sunlight, chained to
their duty
their debts
their desk.
Then a careless wind comes calling
so my papers all go flying
and suddenly I am laughing
leaning back into my chair
smelling lilacs on the wind
as my officemates come peering
through the door, slightly smiling...
*****
M.A. Mohanraj
Brookline, Massachusetts
May 7, 1993
(btw, I finally finished Might and Magic III the other night. The answer to that riddle I asked a couple of weeks ago was 'secret'. I am resisting the temptation to go out and buy the next game in the series).