First, the poem – a beauty by Mark Strand from today’s Writer’s Almanac …

My Name

by Mark Strand

Once when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass,
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become and where I would find myself,
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go.

That poem reminds me of an unforgettable moment in high school. It was a winter’s night and I had walked outside, escaping the din of whatever was going on in the house. I lay down in a pile of snow in our yard and looked up at the sky and felt more alone and more at peace than I ever had to that point.

Here I was, with the bulk of the spinning planet beneath me and the immensity of the sky and stars above. It was so quiet and I was so me in those moments 40 years ago. I carry them with me to this day.

So what’s up on our spinning planet this morning?

Well, for starters, I see that Jesse Ventura is making the rounds, calling Norm Coleman a hypocrite and speculating about what Dick Cheney might confess to, were he water boarded. Whatever you might think about Jessie, he certainly is refreshingly blunt!  There’s a second video at the link above …

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9yfMdNC6cQ

The USWNT vs. Japan games have been canceled (swine flu fears) and replaced with two friendlies against Canada.  And here’s some interesting info about one of the sponsors of the WPS – AdvoCare – a maker of nutritional supplements.  ‘Tis all so complicated, eh?!

Oh, and the Phillies, Red Sox and Celtics all won … Lakers, too.  Willie visits the vet’s this afternoon.  He’s doing better, but still will benefit from a check-up.  (Luckily, he has no idea about what’s on his horizon and is snoozing contentedly in the morning sun as I write.)

That’s it – gotta go.