I drove back to Portland on Wednesday after a brief sojourn into the wilderness of Central Oregon. Okay, so really, I was chaperoning for my son’s school trip to Bend. I had a wonderful time, grateful for the opportunity to spend so much time with only him and grateful for the friends and family who took care of getting my daughter to and from school, bathed and fed. The drive home was truly ‘me time’, something rare in my life. I spent four hours alone in my car, sometimes with radio reception, sometimes with only the sound of my car.
As I drove into the Mt. Hood National Forest, NPR came back into clarity and they had Billy Collins on, talking poetry as he does so well. He shared a half-dozen of his favorites, including The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost and one that I hadn’t heard–never even heard of the poet before, in fact–that I immediately fell in love with. The emotion that he captures between a married couple and the child their love created. I don’t know why it strikes me so, being single and my experience in marriage being devoid of the feelings he captures, but this is what poetry is about, in my opinion: After Making Love We Hear Footsteps. I am in love with this crafter of words; another name to add to my “read books written by” list.
In other news, I finally got the opportunity, while in Bend, to watch Vertical Ray of the Sun. A lovely movie, set in HaNoi, that I wholeheartedly recommend for so many reasons, not the least of which would be the beautiful colors that Tran Anh Hung manages to capture on film.
