zirconium

I was trying to string together something to do with garnets and gannets, thanks to this thread over at M'ris's LJ. But there was also this...

Nobody ever talks about the Amazons returning to Capistrano. Hmph.
— Marissa Lingen (@MarissaLingen) 4 Mars 2014

... so I'll have to give the gannets their due some other night. No, I don't understand my brain either. But stuff like this does have a history of happening after I eavesdrop on M'ris and Elise. (I will also add that some years ago Elise sent me some garnets as part of a gift from Dichroic, the other part being this poem. The world, it teems with treasure...)

The month has started under water --
a sense of too much to shove at or swallow:
sprawling projects, tax returns ...
To wield a spear like an Amazon,
to hammer antique fears into a gleaming bow ---
these aren't skills I can list on my present

résumé, but what's needed at present
is something like. To get out of the water --
to haul my soggy rear back into the bow,
spluttering out what I couldn't help but swallow --
it isn't pretty, training to be an Amazon.
I'm told such pangs will yield happy returns

but some days I think of all the sad returns
I boxed up back in the warehouse -- this unwanted present,
that unhelped self. My wishlist at Amazon
changes by the week, like flavors of water
from a sportsdrink sales rep's cooler. Swallow
this magic pill. Now take your bow

~~on the Wonderland stage.~~ in the Wonderland court. Tied up with a bow,
neatly wrapped -- low risk, low returns.
I know that, but the truth's still tough to swallow
when the press of my weariness outweighs the present.
I have to remember how petrels pierce the water,
scaring off sharks with the skill of an Amazon.

I've never longed to sail down the Amazon
but then I never expected each night to bow
my head with such thanks for running water,
schooled by floods and droughts. The returns
of every field, I now regard as a present.
I've watched dying people, how they can't even swallow

the thinnest dribble of water. Oh, when the swallow
nests again by the bell, will we see the Amazon
gliding into harbor as well? Will it present
a dazzlement of gems -- the gold-bright bow,
a garnet-studded scabbard? What returns
isn't always what was cast upon the water --

in some of my dreams, men in swallow-tails bow
to Amazons as their equals. But waking returns
me back to the present. I plunge back into the water.

- pld

ETA 8:40 pm: It never fails -- an edit making itself obvious after I press "post"...