Pinion & Pink

Day 227 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and I am reading Pinion: An Elegy, a book of poems by Claudia Emerson, borrowed from the same woman who let me read her copy of Late Wife by the same poet.  Beautiful, beautiful work.  And perfect for Ginny, my friend, who grew up among tobacco farmers, who feature in Pinion.

The cover is a gorgeous bird wing, but the actual poem "Pinion" is about a man pinioned by a tractor, during an accident with a tree stump.  It's a riveting poem.  He gets to see the world, to understand something about it, and death, and life all around, and the river bank into which he's fallen allows him to breathe, because it, made of earth, wet earth, can give, where the tractor, a machine made of metal, can't.  There's lots more in "Pinion," but that gives you a hint.

I blog tonight after Volley for the Cure, three exciting matches at a local high school, everyone wearing pink.  My daughter played, my husband coached.  There was much cheering and clapping.  Funds were raised to fight breast cancer.  We did it early, as October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I don't fool myself that wearing a pink t-shirt and a pink bracelet actually helped anyone, but I appreciate that gymful of moral support.

Two powerfully moving things:

1) The moment of silence.

2)  The group singing of the national anthem.

Neither was fake or showy.  The silence was real.  The singing was together.