Laboring

Happy Labor Day to all, & esp to those of us who labor away. . . Traffic was nonexistent this morning as I drove up to campus; heading down one long hill, I drove into a bank of fog: from the hilltop, it looked like a cloud resting its belly in the valley, the sun warming its back. Another reminder that the days are turning. Soon the maples will flare.
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A public Thank you to Kathy G, who not only answered my query about Randy Brieger, but mailed me a copy of his manuscript! I've been reading it in small increments, accompanied by memories and ghosts from those Houston days. . .
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I'm continuing my practice of reading a poem each day at the start of class. Not sure yet how my students feel about this, but they do sit quietly and appear to listen. Today's poem is by Lynne McMahon, from her 1993 book Devolution of the Nude:

SLOW

Do you know, the fortune-teller asked him,
that one of your children is slow? And he, stricken, said
I don’t know that yet. And it was no longer a carnival
gaiety. I can help you, she said. But nothing more
about the baby. There was still the arcade before us
and the ferry with its lights. But he had answered
yet. The still-to-come.

I’m not a believer. I’m not afraid. But I write this
anyway, as an exorcism or countermagic, that if he’s slow,
he’s slow to anger or despair, slow to see
a mortal correspondence in those heavens
where he carries water from one god to the next.