Fall

We covered the U.S. health care system in class this week so I've been corresponding with my aunt about her experience as am ICU nurse. (She calls the US system the "sickcare" system.) But she also happened to mention the walnut tree in her backyard. Every few days, she says, the tree decides that it wants to shed, and so for one day it seems like it is snowing leaves. The days in Hong Kong have turned chilly again, so even though we don't have any fall foliage, it's easier to imagine all the yellows, reds and oranges fluttering around the Northern hemispheres of the world. The picture above is from a park that Naomi and I visited in Belgium last month. My fall has been marked by my new apartment and kitchen, I'm cooking at home again after three years, hence the vanity shot at the bottom. My new place has really sustained me through an non-stop couple of months-- the GRE and a stats exam most recently, and readings for my health systems class, as well as regular hours at the office have meant that I've had to cut back on yoga and been rushing home from work to study. I'm finally finding my groove though--I feel like I'm surfacing from weeks of struggling with a hectic schedule, new concepts and vocabulary. But things are falling into place, and it feels good.

Before I move to a poem from the American Life in Poetry Column, there are two sites that I want to share, the poems in the Writer's Almanac this past week was particularly enjoyable, and the Kaiser Family Foundation's Election website is particularly engaging. I've been listening to podcasts of Hillary and John Edwards outlining their health care plans, but there's also a feature where you can select 4 candidates from either party to create a table that compares their health plans.



American Life in Poetry: Column 136

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Here's a fine seasonal poem by Todd Davis, who lives and teaches in Pennsylvania. It's about the drowsiness that arrives with the early days of autumn. Can a bear imagine the future? Surely not as a human would, but perhaps it can sense that the world seems to be slowing toward slumber. Who knows?


Sleep

On the ridge above Skelp Road
bears binge on blackberries and apples,
even grapes, knocking down
the Petersens' arbor to satisfy the sweet
hunger that consumes them. Just like us
they know the day must come when
the heart slows, when to take one
more step would mean the end of things
as they should be. Sleep is a drug;
dreams its succor. How better to drift
toward another world but with leaves
falling, their warmth draping us,
our stomachs full and fat with summer?


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Todd Davis. Reprinted from "Some Heaven," by Todd Davis, published by Michigan State University Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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