A countdown and a poem

3: days this week I have left work at the end of the day in a pretty good mood (I'm still picking up a few loose ends from my old job, but for the most part it's behind me; several major parts of my new job have not yet fallen onto my plate; therefore, I've had time every day to do long-neglected stuff like clean out email files, clean out paper files, catch up on work-related listserv mail, and other stuff that makes me feel both more organized and far more relaxed -- I am probably as "caught up" as I've been in the past three years, and as "caught up"as I am likely to be anytime in the foreseeable future, and it feels really nice.)

2: new poems I drafted a couple of evenings ago after not having written anything for about a month (Also, this filled up the composition book I started using on the first day of my workshop last summer in Provincetown, so I get to start a brand-new poetry notebook just two weeks before this summer's workshop, which just feels like some kind of providence.)

1: rejection slip in today's mail (oh well.)


Found this here and loved it:

Explaining Relativity to the Cat

Imagine, if you will, three mice.
Contrary to what you have heard,
they are not blind
but are in a spaceship
traveling near the speed of light.
This makes them unavailable
for your supper, yes.

So these mice, traveling near
the speed of light, appear
quite fat, though there is
no cheese aboard. This is
simply a distortion of mass,
because the mass of a mouse
is nothing more than a bundle
of light, and vice versa. I see
how this might imply mice
are in the light fixtures,
undoubtedly a problem, so
let me try again.
If two people attempted
to feed you simultaneously,
no doubt a good situation,
but you were on a train
traveling near the speed
of light, the food would
appear unappetizing, falling
to the plate in slow motion,
an extended glob of protein
that never smelled good,
if you ask me, train or no.
The affinity of the food
for the plate, what we call
gravity, is really just
a stretch in the fabric
of a space-time continuum,
what happens when you
have sat in a seat too long,
perhaps on this very train.

Oh kitty, I know how you hate
to travel and the journey must
have made you tired. Come now,
lick your coat one more time
and let us make haste
from this strange city
of light and fantastic dream.

---Jennifer Gresham, from Diary of a Cell