What do you write about when you’ve spent all day with Wordsworth in a warm café and your brain is fried and you’re not ready to share your thoughts on his work?

His words are heady; they are muddled by the heat, and you want to taste them line by line, but your fevered notes drop off as the temperature rises.

You still write notes, questioning him on paper, confronting him, swooning, getting irritated with a line, then he writes a sentence and you’re like, oh, here we are back at the top of the admiration wheel.

More on that another time.

Word Raccoon and I are off on an early morning adventure, so we thought we’d schedule this for your reading pleasure. Do not fear, we will be back at the page and trying to brave the heat with the rest of you mere mortals within hours. You won’t even notice we’re gone.

WR is chattering, saying you will so miss us.

We offer, instead of wit, this poem inspired by a photo of Steve Martin and Gilda Radner recently shared on Facebook.  

I knew I would write about Steve when I saw the photo, because of the way he holds her, but that doesn’t take away from my admiration for Gilda. What a loss. And that red leopard dress she wears in the photo! (Google it, Ducky.)

Upon Seeing a Photo of Gilda and Steve

Seeing Steve Martin back in the day

Cradling Gilda Radner like he knew

Exactly what he held

And didn’t want to let it go.

Hell, they weren’t even lovers

But someone who holds you like that

Knows what he has in his arms.

And it says everything about him.