It’s gloomy outside, and this feels like a good time to reminisce about Oxford.
I just gave a presentation about the English department to a group of Alumni Distinguished Scholars, and I’m feeling cheesily enraptured with ivy-covered university walls. Someday I’ll photograph the hall where I work, one of the oldest buildings on campus.
But for now, Oxford will have to do.
Think Harry Potter (the dining room at Christ College is the model for Hogwarts’ dining hall).
Think broom flying class in the quad. (Yes, those scenes in HP were filmed in Oxford.)
Think black flowing gowns of Oxford dons.
BTW, I apologize for the unsightly red date on my photos. I have not taken the time to photoshop them out. But I have changed the setting on the camera! Too late for these, I'm afraid.
a poem:
Another birthday, as a tourist
How old is old, really?
I mean, I'm not as old as Oxford,
the oldest English-speaking university
in the world, this stone
waterfall by the river.
Yet I am older than
most of its students, in fact
old enough to have parented them,
these little green fish.
I want another past
with Oxford in it, a feast
of books, black robes, steam
of intellect fogging the quad
and my glasses
the glory
of the morning, the glinting fish
swimming through it
before the sun, before
the sun goes down.
It's always this way,
something green and alive
against something old, cracked
and still.
Ruth M. 2005
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