April 30, 2012

Last day of April, supposed to be the cruelest month, probably because sometimes it promises spring and then throws winter at you.  For us, it's been spring just about all month, a spring we don't usually get in quite such abundance, usually it's three days then bang it's summer.  This has been very pleasant, while  in other parts of the country, it's been soft spring, then snow or hail, then back to spring, a few cycles like that and no one believes in th spring when it comes, they just take it one day at a time and if they get snow, well, it will get to be summer perhaps before it has been spring for very long.

 There have been a lot of day of sun lately, today it's mostly clouds with just some sun, even an occasional sprinkle.  I found a poem for the last day of April, by David Young from Earthshine.

From "The Light Show"

Today the April light is fizzing.
The wind is blowing chunks of it around:
it oils pine needles, runs up tree trunks,
and spreads in clumps across the grass.
The grackles struggle darkly to resist it,
but it glosses their necks with purple and green
and slicks their beaks. I too
feel misery start to slip away – against my grain
I’m hoisted up into this giant light-machine
and swept away. My silver pen
skates on the yellow paper, my fingernails glow,
my eyes glisten with tears and pleasure.
A huge willow has fallen in my yard,
victim of wind. But today the other trees
are holding themselves up like song into a sky
that is blue with a radiance no one could imagine.

David Young

I know how he feels about being lifted up in the giant light-machine, I feel buoyed up when there is an abundance of sunlight.  Everything seems better, brighter, more centered in its shine.  It's the deep summer sky that's the blue I can't imagine, and a couple of day in fall when it's just beginning to be cooler.  The light the other morning sure made the crow's feathers shine with that oily slickness, I half expected to see rainbows bursting forth from them to banish their darkness.

So let there be light to fill up the day, wispy or substantial, let it brighten up the beginning of the week.

April 29, 2012

Sunday morning, end of the week, or the beginning, depends on your point of view.  Today mostly clouds with the occasional spot of sun.  The birds have been quietly noisy, so many out, they sound like a lot of children playing in the distance, mostly glad sounds. There is still grass growing though I am thinking today it could use some water.  Nothing is quite as dusty as it was last year, and there is a lot more green a lot earlier this year.  The ligustrum is bloomed out now, the flowers fallen in a small shower of white onto the dirt beneath them.  The cane this morning looks more yellow than white and is still getting greener.  There is a breeze that is making everything sway gently but not hard enough to make any of the chimes sing.  One of the squirrels is lying on a branch surveying its kingdom, its head swiveling to see as much as it can.

This morning the poem is a strange kind of blessing, one of being nearly old.  One of my friends was complaining about older women being invisible, and Dawn was talking about the difference in attitude people have at her work between older men and older women.  There is something different about being an older woman.  Men don't try nearly as hard as women to erase the fact that they are getting older.  Look at actors, very few women can do much acting past their middle years, it takes a really strong will and a lot of talent, where men seem to get off easier.  If you don't believe me, just compare how many men actors get parts well up into their 70s or 80s with the women who are still making movies at that age.  I believe you will find a rather large gap there.  It could be the writer's fault, but mostly I think it's cultural.  And who knows, it may shift over time, but it will be some time coming I think.   Anyway, there is the poem:

The Joy of being nearly old

A poet who died
still loving it all, a poet
my age exactly, who died this year
on a table in a hospital in Texas
while they were jump-starting
his heart;

he said in the end that poetry
changes nothing in the world,
only poetry. But poetry, he told me,
is everything: your country,
your loves, your coffee cup,
the color of almond blossom,
the indelible touch of a lover,
the sky at the end of your street.
And then his heart gave out,
that tender muscle: it was poetry,
needed a lighter touch.

He said, all sleepers are babies,
in our sleep we become young again.
I watch you sleep, then ardent upon the stairs,
going down fast like a young man,
carrying your fragile heart out into the street
like a blown rose.

The world can’t see us.
We are too old to be noticed:
nobody watches us pass.
The nearly old live cloaked in privacy.
A man and woman old enough to be
grandparents. A poet who died
broken hearted and joyful.

Alone again in a corner of a café,
invisible, crazy with joy. Oh, the taste
of coffee! The sunlight
of this morning, this one day,
Sunday, when the dancers are all
out in the street;
what can I say but that it’s huge,
the joy of the nearly old.

Rosalind Brackenbury

And yes, no one notices, we live cloaked in privacy, the young pass us by on the way to their lives.  Poetry is nothing, and everything for what else do poets have to write about but everything in the world, all of it, the terror and the beauty, the extraordinary and the daily life, one extreme and another, and all the things we see every day.  I really do not need the notice of the world, if I continue to notice the world itself.  For me, I hope when I go I go in that manner, broken hearted and joyful.  That I will die living my life the way I wanted to live it, that the joy will have never ceased, that it will still be huge and filling up every day with all that is ordinary and sweet.  So, I think this is as good a blessing as Sunday can get, someone writing with love about a friend, about sunlight in the morning, about all the huge joys of being nearly old!  And living to tell of it!

April 28, 2012

Sun and shadow, the days lately have been full of both, clouds and blue skies creating such a patchwork, and the strobe of spots of sun causing you to wonder which will eventually dominate.  This morning, it's been a draw, some moments dark as evening, some bright as noon, some between the two.  A single blue jay woke me this morning with its crow-like voice, calling and calling, then vanishing.  The silence that came after seemed deeper by contrast.  It was still dark and too early for most other birds.  There are some mourning doves out this morning, I can hear them but don't see them yet.  The wind has died down to fitful, or restless, as the air heats later I am sure it will rise up again.

Here is a poem that reminds me of this morning, when the jay woke me.

Horses at Midnight Without a Moon

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

Jack Gilbert

But there's music in us . . . yes there is, even in waking to the scream of a blue jay, there are worse things that could awaken you.  It does not pay to start right in of a morning reading the news, danger and suffering do surround us.  And it is the singing that surprises, even the . . . singing of the jay in the dark.  We do persist, and not just persist, we persist and sing.  Hope does fly up, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, we believe in people, we believe in the morning, in the fact that after this one, there will be another, that contrary to notions of gloom and doom, there is still singing to be done, still the rough music of the human heart out there, walking through the mixed sun and shadow, smelling the flowers, or in my case watching the cane grow white and abundant, its leaves stripes of white changing over to green, now getting greener every morning, not yet blooming but thickening towards that day, new shoots breaking out at every joint.   The horses in the dark are a comfort, like the birds, something warm and alive out there living its own life.  Now, in this moment, it's the squirrel, racing up the tree, its cheeks bulging with food, pecans probably, looking for a place to make a stash, believing in another season, its mouth too full of now to scold the cat lying under the shed.

April 27, 2012

A mixed bag for today, sun, clouds, wind, air so heavy it leans against the skin wanting to melt into you.  Slowly a gray sheet is covering the blue, tattered, and thin enough to dim the light and make me wonder if they will thicken and make evening of the middle of the day.   The yard is not busy this morning, green and shadowed, with only an occasional bird, and the cats, both of them, somewhere else.  Earlier I heard the pileated woodpecker's hooting laugh and rapid tattoo of its hunt for bugs beneath bark, but now it's eerily quiet.  A dark car rounded the corner, a spot of sun glinting of its chrome, throwing thin spears of light out, engine humming and then gone.  In a yard in the distance, a lawnmower begins its uneven traveling back and forth, the sound wobbling along its path, soon there will be the roaring of the leaf blower, they are like Siamese twins of sound lately, rarely one without the other.

This poem talks of the untranslatable song, how everyone needs one, what do you think?

Untranslatable Song    

          "Everyone needs one untranslatable song."
                     --Juarroz

On hearing the striped contralto of guinea fowl,
its mock opera quivers the parsley atop its head--

The song makes its imprint
in the air, making itself felt,
a felt world. Here, there,
the stunned silence
of knowing I will not remember
what I heard;

futures
that will never happen,
a fluidity we cannot achieve
except as a child
creating possibility.

This is the untranslatable song
hidden in the earth.

Claudia Reder

This morning, it was the "song" of the woodpecker, the only recognizable one early on, and its laugh and rapid stutter of noise.  I write it here so I will remember, so I will have it another day, in the future when I look back to see what I can't remember, what a morning in April was like in this year.  Children do create possibilities, but I am not willing to give up my own creation of possibilities, not willing to think only children have that fluidity that means opening those doors we are willing to walk through into some different place, a different choice.  So what is that untranslatable song that is hidden in the earth?  Perhaps it's the mystery of answers we will never know, perhaps all those questions that reverberate in our minds and have us chasing them down the intricate halls of meaning.  Perhaps it's all those lives we can never know, every life but our own, and I am not so sure about that one either.  I think there are probably enough untranslatable songs for each of us to have our own hidden in the earth, hidden in our own lives.

April 26, 2012

Clouds have returned, gray and darker gray, piling up on the floor of the sky like dirty laundry.  The sun will probably bleach them out white later, but for now they are drab and dull.  Two crows are having an argument about something really important right outside the window.  I can see their dark silhouettes against the lighter sky.  Their beaks opening and closing, and their wings ruffling, they are so agitated you can almost feel heat pouring off them, as they take turns voicing their vehement opinions.  I hear no other birds, perhaps they are all listening to the crows' argument.  The air is still, nothing is even twitching, nothing but furious crows.  There is no sunlight in the yard yet, just the deep shadow making everything look distant and dark.

Crows

Again in the morning
arguing
black against gray dawn
your voices loud
your anger trembling
through your slick feathers

starting the day
with opinions
which cannot be given up
which must be shouted
to a world not ready to listen
sleeping and just waking

your beak opens
black tongue raised
and from your throat
that fury opens
you tell what you know
when there is no knowing

and the other crow
objects   knowing
what it knows is
the only knowing
and nothing will come
of what you know

and it goes on
louder and more harsh
wings beginning to lift
with each phrase until
bursting with what you know
you both fly up into morning

and silence is the conclusion

S. Crowson

And so there is quiet now, the crows have gone, and far off in other yards I begin to hear other birds, birds with songs, just beginning to greet the day.  I wonder what crows know that they are so willing to argue over, it has all the cadence and fury of desperation, and I wonder what can be so important tp them or are they, like some old married couples, just arguing to be arguing, to have a little excitement in their morning.  They are certainly loud about it, either way.

The cane is making little white spikes, so bright against the dark ground, so persistent, so wild.  In the cave of stalks and leaves, one of the cats is prowling, noisily, certain to catch no rabbit making all that rattling.  Sunlight is just beginning to creep into the yard and light up the tops of the cane; the clouds are bleaching to white.  Silence is fading to more song now in the calm after crows.

April 25, 2012

There is a fitful breeze this morning, it touches everything like a curious child, moving from one leaf to another.  So much shade by this time, early there is an abundance of sun but now the sun has risen enough not to be able to shine through all the new leaves.  When I got out of the truck yesterday, I was so surprised by how green the bald cypress is, the tiny needles almost glow, and cast so many shadows that there is no uniform green color, just shades and shades, some shining chartreuse, some darkened by those above it, some that green that you think of when you think of Ireland. I just stood there looking up, wishing I had the skill to paint all those shades of green, and the delicacy of those needles.  The small round seeds I guess are just beginning to form their small balls filled with the world's stickiest sap! The sap is clear and pungent with an almost cedar aroma, but once it gets on something it's the very devil to get off, soap and water just will not do it.  Where it gets tracked in the house, only the steam cleaner gets it up.  There should be something they can use that stubborn cling for, something useful <chuckle>.

The little tallow tree that is growing by itself in the park across the street has gotten about as big as it is going to get.  They don't grow all that tall, and usually because so many of them grow together in one place they rarely get to make a pretty shape.  This one is even on all sides and the branches curve up and carry their freight of leaves on lovely rounded bundles.  We have been watching it since it was tiny, and now it has not gotten much taller in the last several years, about 15 feet, the height of a two story building.  It's not as "tree-y" as an ash but surely as nice as the oaks that it shares the park with, and much more spectacular in the fall with its fiery gold and deep burgundy and bright orange leaves, one of the few trees here that has any color except brown when it turns.

It's a quiet morning in the yard, just the occasional jay or mockingbird.  I have not seen the cardinals or the mourning doves today.  But I can hear the crickets and the early cicadas, must be the right temperature for them.  Not as much racket as there will be in the height of summer, but noisy already.  And in the background the angry buzz of the leaf blower and the ever-present hum of lawnmowers.

The Black Jewel

In the dark
there is only the sound of the cricket

south wind in the leaves
is the cricket
so is the surf on the shore
and the barking across the valley

the cricket never sleeps
the whole cricket is the pupil of one eye
it can run it can leap it can fly
in its back the moon
crosses the night

there is only one cricket
when I listen

the cricket lives in the unlit ground
in the roots
out of the wind
it has only the one sound

before I could talk
I heard the cricket
under the house
then I remembered summer

mice too and the blind lightning
are born hearing the cricket
the cricket is neither alive nor dead
the death of the cricket
is still the cricket
in the bare room the luck of the cricket
echoes

W. S. Merwin

Once in awhile a cricket will come into the house and make its one sound in some hidden corner, and over and over that sound will be so loud in the night it chases away sleep and you lie there listening only to the cricket.  The sound stitches the night and there is no way to escape it.  You just lie there awake in the dark listening, thinking you would like to get up and find that cricket and put it out side, but there is no hope for that, it's inside now and it's going to stay.  Some people think a cricket in the house is lucky and they make small cages for them and keep them for the luck.  For me, they are only luck if they find their way out and sleep can find its way in.  This morning, they are out there, making that one sound that blends with lawnmowers and cicadas, leaf blowers and jays, to make the sound of spring in the yard.

April 24, 2012

This is a rerun day, rerun of the beautiful day we had yesterday, bright sunlight, cool dry air, a real rarity, and to have it twice in a row a real blessing.  The big black dog from our neighbor behind has been exploring the yard, chased off the stiped cat, and greeted my heron statue with his wet black nose.  I think he was intrigued by it as he circled it several times before touching its stone beak with his nose.  When there was no response, he went on to other things, just relieving himself on a tree, and wandering around.  Eventually he wandered out to the road and disappeared.  He always looks so . . . full of himself, slick and black and bursting with life.

There has been a bunch of birds out; they must enjoy this weather as much as we do.  The blue jays and the cardinals seem to be most abundant, but there have been sparrows, tiny fluffs of brown with cheepy voices, and mourning doves as well, so smooth and gray, they waddle down the driveway looking left and right as if checking for cross-traffic, making their sleepy "who-ing".  Bees have settled in the ligustrum this morning, weighing down the bursts of flowers when they land to drink of their sweetness.

I found a poem by Merwin that surprised me, I thought it would be about one thing, and it turned into something else.

Apples

Waking beside a pile of unsorted keys
in an empty room
the sun is high

what a long jagged string of broken birdsong
they must have made as they gathered there
by the ears deaf with sleep
and the hand empty as waves
I remember the birds now
but where are the locks

when I touch the pile
my hand sounds like a wave on a shingle beach
I hear someone stirring
in the ruins of a glass mountain
after decades

those keys are so cold that they melt at my touch
all but the one
to the door of a cold morning
the colors of apples

W. S. Merwin

I have a small glass jar of keys, bought at an estate sale, some old keys, long and heavy with scalloped tops and the flat part with notches cut for the turning.  Some are small, stamped with numbers that mean nothing to me, some are triangular, some rounded, some look like keys from old houses, whose doors now will never open, some like keys to cars that have long ceased to exist except in dreams.  I would like to find a key into the room of memory, the one that remembers what I did daily when I was six or nine or twelve, to the memory that escapes me, fleeing down dark corridors when I try to capture it, escaping at last.  I want a morning the colors of apples, red sun, green trees, yellow warming the wood of the crepe myrtle.  Oh, perhaps it's this morning, perhaps there will be a key for this morning, slotting it into memory, keeping it locked until a future time when I will need this sunlight, this hum of bees, this yard full of birds and a dog.

April 23, 2012

The yard this morning is in full shade, the trees finally all leafed out which generally spells the end of the grass, though it still gets light in the early morning.  All the shadows are moving, the light, golden and bright, winks in the wind.  The two cats are each lying in different sun spots, and the squirrel is giving somone hell, that is such a weird noise they make when doing that, I have mistaken it for a harsh bird call several times only to see the fluffed up, enraged squirrel in some tree, it's tail twitching with fury.

This morning I was thinking about camping up at Kennedy Meadow, a spot we loved, high in the Sierras.  It was one of our favorite places to camp, with a river close by, wide open spaces surrounded by hills and even further by the mountains themselves.  We camped there a lot, in the spring and summers when the kids were small.  It was a special place and we were always glad to go.  We didn't do much family camping after we moved here.  And now . . . I'm too old and creaky for a tent and we don't have the camper any more.  Still on days like this, I would like to go again, to be out in the country, or in the mountains, just seeing someplace else, where there would be other things to notice.  One of the things I remember is the smell of that place, sweet, green, hay-like, with just a tang from the pines, and in some seasons you could pick flowers and smell those, though they had trouble grwoing up there, we generally left them alone and admired from a distance, leaving them for other people to notice.  My kids brought me rocks instead of flowers, some really gorgeous ones, in friendly competition with each other.  I still have a jar of them.

 

I guess when looking for a poem this morning, I was still thinking about camping.

 

When We Sold the Tent

 

When we sold the tent
we threw in the Grand Canyon
with its shawl of pines,
lap full of cones and chipmunks
and crooked seams of river.

 

We let them have the
parched white moonscapes of Utah,
and Colorado's
magnificat of flowers
sunbursting hill after hill.

 

Long gentle stretches
of Wyoming, rain outside
some sad Idaho
town where the children, giddy
with strange places, clowned all night.

 

Eyes like small veiled moons
circling our single light, sleek
shadows with pawprints,
all went with the outfit; and
youth, a river of campfires

 

Rhina P. Espailat

 

I've never been to Wyoming or Idaho, I'm sure they have their own special places of beauty.  We did visit Rhyolite in Nevada, an old ghost town with a neat house made out of all kinds of bottles, but mostly beer, and a railroad car there.   It was empty mostly when we visitied, I don't think there was another soul in the place, just our family.  Some skeletal buildings and abandoned mining equpment.  Now I hear there is a sculpture garden there and they fixed up the old house to use in a movie.  I think perhaps I liked it better empty.  I would like some of those old bottles though <smile>.  I think that youth went with the old camper, our version of the tent, and all its memories. 

April 22, 2012

Less wind, more sun today, bright and cool and lovely.  Sitting here in the quiet, I was suddenly startled by a mourning dove flying into the window, clutching the thin metal strip that divides it, and looking about as panicked as I was.  So loud a bang in such quiet, so unexpected, then it fluttered a second, falling, then righted itself and flew out of sight across the window.  That gray shadow of a bird sings such a mournful song, always wondering "who who" and never finding the answer,sounding like an owl lost in the day, wondering who left it.  The bicyclers are out this morning, that's the third time I've seen their bright colors flash past the corner, they must be doing some kind of rally and this is a quiet neighborhood, pretty to ride through.  The lady with the two big dogs just jogged past, she always looks so full of energy, but not nearly as energetic as her dogs who can hardly contain themselves on the leashes, but strain and look back at her as if wondering why she can't keep up <smile>
Sunday, and the day for the blessing or gratitude or both.

Light

In the first morning of the world created,
on the skin of water reflected,
is the spread of a sun,
and the sun, like God, is a power
you cannot see.
Only what it lights on,
only what it touches with warmth,
and yet it always has a shadow at its feet.

Then there is the sea, the sheer weight of it,
but the lightness of its creatures,
some silver as they leap above it,
and those at the bottom
making their own light
in what would of been
night infinite, as if the sea carries no
shadows at its feet.

Then there is the light of the wood decaying
out by the stagnant pond,
where the eyes of the prey nearby,
shine in the dark, betrayed
when the deer stares one last time
to see the hunter still follows
out in the shadow of living trees.

And bodies of men at war, they say,
give off light.
One I knew fished the sea
and told me of the silver fishes falling
from the mouth of the netted one.
As if in the last breath
perhaps we give back all the swallowed,
all the taken in, and it is light, after all,
first and last, we live for, die for.
We fly toward it
like those who return from it say.

But for now, for here, we fly without will
toward it, drink a glass of it,
see it through green leaves.
There, walk toward it.
Lift it, it has no weight.
Carry it, breathe it, cherish it.

You want to know why God is far away
and we are only shadows at his feet?
Tell me, how long does it take a moth
to reach the moon?

 Linda Hogan

It's the light I see every morning, or the lack of light if it's that early, or the sliding presence of light just beginning to arrive, that heart-stopping blue before.  It never occurred to me that you can't really see light, only what it touches, you think you do but if you could it would so dazzle us that we would not see anything else, and shadows such a part of light, the brighter the light the deeper the shadow.  "Whoever does truth comes into the light" one of my favorite verses from the bible.  That all those who strive for truth, who do good, come to the light.  Sunlight is indiscriminate, it shines on everyone just like God's light, sinner and saint alike, that we may all shine and come to recognize that light.  This is a morning that is easy to be grateful for light in all its forms, God light, sunlight, knowledge, passion, love, gratitude, every virtue, easy to see the world would be a much darker place if so many people did not move toward the light, cherish it, breathe it, carry it.  In the deepest dark there is a glimmer of light, and we move toward it, we crave it, we need it.  So this morning, in this blessing of brightness, I am glad to come to such light, to see it touching everything and making the world bright.

April 21, 2012

A restless night with wind at every window, the sound of it piling higher and higher, branches scraping, and the occasional bang or thump from something loosened and too near the house.  The sky is harsh with it this morning, clouds blowing up from the edge of the world, expanding impossibly then slowly vanishing as they move off to oblivion.  There is the excitement of motion everywhere, the cane, top heavy with new growth nods and dances, each long leaf like a scarf fluttering in time to music wind is making among them.  Most of the yard in shadow, the orange cat stepping carefully though the grass to sit up on the hidden boat and watch for rabbits, grooming, and waiting.  Sunspots appear at random to fade out like a dying fire, down to embers one moment, then bright as cloud moves aside, then shadow again.

This poem is full of the moment, the moment water runs down from one place to another taking us with it, full of the moment, in a day full of them.

Gravelly Run

I don't know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
 of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:

the swamp's slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge:

holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars' gothic-clustered
spires could make
green religion in winter bones:

so I look and reflect, but the air's glass
jail seals each thing in its entity:

no use to make any philosophies here:
I see no
god in the holly, hear no song from
the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter
yellow in the pines: the sunlight has never
heard of trees: surrendered self among
unwelcoming forms: stranger,
hoist your burdens, get on down the road.

A. R. Ammons

And so each moment makes its own story, no use to make any philosophies here, the moments just keep making their way down time's slip, so just go along with you, take all those beauties and get on down the road <smile>.  Some mornings it's just beauty passing by, like sunlight coming and going, and I just watch, making nothing of it but what it is, something lovely to look at, time spent watching it all and glad of it.

April 20, 2012

My favorite time of morning, just before full light when the sky fades into that deepest blue, almost black but not quite.  Though it's early, there are birds already awake, crooning for love, or just joy, making clear sweet sounds in the almost dark.

Friday, end of the week, and this has seemed to be longer than most.  Is it not strange how time can be so . . . flexible.  Yes, we all have the same physical hours, but I am sure that they don't all feel the same, and this last week has felt like a very long one.  I also believe that the older you get time seems to pass faster, as on of the secretaries at school claimed.  She said her childhood summers seemed now to have lasted forever, and the last two weeks of school an eternity.  I agree with her, time has seemed to speed up, which is why this is so unusual, and worth nothing.  There is no figuring out why this week has seemed more like two, but the feeling is there.

There is something quiet and fragile about this poem yet it runs as deep as the dreams it tells about, and though the dream world is fleeting, how often does it color the morning, even far into the day, with glimpses of things barely conceived or imagined.

My Clothes Lie Folded for the Journey

Dreamed some rain so I could sleep.

Dreamed the wind left-handed
so I could part its mane and enter
the dance that carries the living, the dead, and the unborn
in one momentum through the trillion gate.

Dreamed a man and woman
in different attitudes of meeting and parting

so I could tell the time,
the periods of the sun,
and which face my heart showed,
and which is displayed to a hidden fold.

Dreamed the world an open book of traces
anyone could read who knew the language of traces.

Dreamed the world is a book.  And any page
you pause at finds you
where you breathe now,

and you can read the open
secret of who you are.  As you read,

and other pages go on turning, falling
through the page before you, the sound of them the waves
of the waters you walk beside
in your other dreams of the world
as story, world as song, world
you dreamed you were not dreaming.

Dreamed my father reading out loud to me,
my mother sewing beside me, singing
a counting song,

so I wouldn't be afraid to turn
from known lights toward the ancestor of light.

~ Li-Young Lee ~ 

World you dreamed you were not dreaming, and which world is that?  What is the world but a dream we all agree to inhabit, to find the meaning of it, to notice it and keep on noticing it.  The comfort of someone who loves you and shares that dream, the father reading, the mother sewing and singing, fear held beyond the door so that we can sit there in the light, safe and full of that ordinary peace.   The ordinary morning becoming filled with light, the crows flying past, calling out in their hoarse voices, the tiny sounds of wrens or sparrows just outside the window beginning their hunt for food, for safety.  The sky streaked with cloud, dark against the pale sunrise, is deepening to hold all that it must hold.  And again time is carrying me, or I am carrying it off into the day, where it's passing will seem unsteady but beat like the metronome, set to it's own pace, and mine just trying to keep up  . . .

April 18, 2012

Spring is settling in for a long stay it seems; today the rain is gone, and the morning is mild, dry cool air and an abundance of sunshine.  Everything gleaming with color, deep greens just beginning to show in the new leaves, flowers along the verge of the road, white scraps of evening primrose, bright orange indian paintbrush, deep blue-purple of the occasional late blooming bluebonnet.  The oleanders have begun their summer long bloom, so many different colors from starkest white to deepest lavendar purple, and about every shade of pink, coral, red, with the occasional purple.  Dawn's pink one is the deepest pink of any I have seen.  And my favorites are the ones that are cherry red, and the ones that border on burgundy.  They smell like licorice, which I don't find a pleasant smell, but will forgive them that for thier crisp bright flowers that last so long in the heat and their long cool green leaves that are such a nice contrast to the vividness of their flowers.

The poem this morning is kind of like looking out the window, or driving through this spring, seeing things for just a few moment, or even seeing things in your own backyard you have not noticed before.  There can be love that encompasses that feeling of expanding universes of beauty, that hugs all the loveliness in a day.

Aimless Love

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

 Billy Collins

It's odd, that he should mention soap, even falling in love with soap.  One of my little luxuries is the wonderful Zum soap that comes in so many delicious scents.  It makes a joy out of something as simple as washing your face.  I know just how he feels, and sometimes am reluctant to put it back in the dish, so I stand there turning it and making a thick, slick lather of it until I have to rinse it off, then I put the soap back, but the smell of it lingers on my skin, tea tree and tangerine this week.   It doesn't have to be a big thing to bring joy, the green and white leaves of my fitonia on my desk, the light at the moment, all dappled and flickering from the breeze in the leaves, all things I can fall in love with, all things that make me sigh with their quiet beauty!

April 17, 2012

Though it's still gray with cloud this morning, you can feel the sun behind it slowly, inexorably, making those clouds vanish, the brightness beginning to seep through, and the heat.  After so much rain, when the sun finally breaks out, the water will begin to rise again, drying up puddles, and return to the sky, humidity and mosquitoes left in the wake.

The birds are certainly glad its not raining this morning, seems we have been visited by flocks of them, noisy with joy, and even the breeze making a soft rustle through the cane as back ground to their song.  A pair of cardinals and the pair of blue jays both out there in separate trees, tiny sparrows, and finches, and the ever-present mockingbirds singing everyone's song.

The ligustrum is laden with its tiny white flowers and big sweet scent, and we have grass still because it has not been so hot.  Crickets and cicadas have begun their summer music as well as the tiny black frogs that sound like birds peeping.   So this morning there is lots of sound, to make up for the lack of the multitude of songs the rain and thunder made yesterday.  High off, unseen, this morning jets make their own distant thunder.

This poem combines the thoughts of rain with our stories, and all coming to a new light . . .

To Light

At the spring
we hear the great seas traveling
underground,
giving themselves up
with tongue of water
that sing the earth open.

They have journeyed through the graveyards
of our loved ones,
turning in their grave
to carry the stories of life to air.

Even the trees with their rings
have kept track
of the crimes that live within
and against us.

We remember it all.
We remember, though we are just skeletons
whose organs and flesh
hold us in.
We have stories
as old as the great seas
breaking through the chest,
flying out the mouth,
noisy tongues that once were silenced,
all the oceans we contain
coming to light.

 Linda Hogan

Water is so common and so vital, I like to think of it carrying our stories from the past into today.  The rings of trees tell the whole story of their existence, lean years and fat, drought and flood, all can be told by seeing what the rings have recorded.  Being a woman, it makes me think of how many centuries our stories were silenced, that what was written was written mostly by men, that the daily lives of women and what they saw and considered, their stories were largely unrecorded.   And now women all over the world, sit at their windows and type their lives into the lives of others, or write poems in secret and share them with sisters, or others in their lives, that breaking though the chest and flying out the mouth are all those stories that were never told before, all those oceans coming to light!

Today after the rain, light is breaking out, and making everything washed clean shine with color.  The birds are telling tales, the insects, and even the mothers, the woman down the street, the one in India, or Nigeria, or New Zealand are all telling stories, and what was hidden is coming into the day.

April 16, 2012

Well, it certainly was a noisy night, thunder in myriad forms, long slow rollers, sharp cracks, echos down empty halls, some high-pitched and stuttering, some bass with growls.  I don't think I have heard such a variety of thunders in a long time, and pretty much constant as well.  Usually the thunder lasts only a little while, once it starts raining it seems to slowly vanish, but tonight . . . thunder all night, with the sound of steady rain, not a downpour just steady, constant sound water dripping off everything, the spatter against the windows, and into the water already standing making a pleasant sound.

Yesterday, we had a sunshower!  Just before sunset there was a break in the clouds and it was bright sunny, I mean like a summer day sunny, then it was raining!  A pretty hard rain, and the sun still finding a way through some spot so the rain was lit up like jewels.  I'm sure there was a rainbow somewhere but we could not see it for all the trees.  I looked up sunshower, which was the name of a book written by a friend in San Diego.  There are various words for it all over the world, and lots of stories about them, most involving, for some reason, marriage.  I guess the marriage of opposites, sun and rain.  They are called foxes' wedding, or monkey's wedding. or the devil's wedding where he beats his wife, too sad an image for me of such a rare and lovely thing! In Hawaii, it's called a ghost rain, perhaps the lover's ghost appearing briefly to comfort the living.

Today, it's just thunder and rain, all day, brief spots of quiet, but brief.  The rain continues to come down steadily, and make a thousand tiny noises into one long sound of wet and dripping, and the thunder keeps rolling over head, not moving on to some other place as it usually does, just hanging around, not even being too dramatic about it, kind of background noise thunder.

Rain

All day the sky
busy with storms
has rolled long breakers
of cloud from horizon
to a more distant horizon,
and the sound of thunder,
so many waves of voice,
crashes in its own rhythm,
the surf of it overhead
breaking the air
splitting it with heat,
cracking the high cold
like a glass bell,
water spilling over the edge
silent in its fall
striking a different
note from every surface,
ten thousand things
vibrating with its touch,
and we keep listening.

S. Crowson

I'm not sure why it seems I can never find a rain poem that tells the story of the rain I hear, or see falling past my window.  Maybe it's to make me want to make my own story, the dark sky, the sounds, the mirrors of water on every flat place.  Even dark as evening in the middle of the day, rain makes you look up, makes you actually look at what is happening, and hear all the notes played from the softest drip to the roar of the downpour, how everything has its own wet sound, and all day it's been changing its tune and it just keeps on playing.

April 15, 2012

I did not get started until late this morning, and so I am just now doing the poem and the note.  It's Sunday and the day for the blessing.  Last weekend was Fletcher's birthday and it got me thinking about when I had kids that were little, and their birthdays, and what it was to have them when they were little, how much I enjoyed them, and, yes, three birthdays in one month sometimes was a little much, it seemed that they all really enjoyed, not just the presents, but the cake, whatever shape they chose, and they chose some dillies, and it being their special day, with whatever they wanted for dinner, and friends, and fun.  I think we still do a pretty good job of birthdays! 

But the part I also remembered was all the little things that kids notice that grown ups don't, and their ways of exploring the world that often doesn't include any kind of inhibition on what they notice or on how loud that is, and the drive of their curiosity, they practically dance with it.  Fletcher can ask some of the same kind of questions my kids asked, and he wants answers the same way too, immediate and in great detail!  I found this poem this week and saved it for today, because having a little kid in your life is a blessing.  It can be exhausting, frustrating, maddening, all the permutations of those words, but . . . mostly it's a blessing of getting to see the world again in a new way.  Getting to be part of that discovery, that excitement.  If you have little ones, you see the world differently, it's a scarier place, but a brighter one too, so much joy packed into those little bones, that sketch of flesh over them, still becoming the person they will be and living the person they are.   This poem really reminded me of that as much as thinking about all the babies and little ones of the people I love, friends and family alike.  So this is the poem that reminded me of early days when everything was new, and old at the same time . . .

"Canyon de Chelly"

Lie on your back on stone,

the stone carved to fit

the shape of yourself.

Who made it like this,

knowing that I would be along

in a million years and look

at the sky being blue forever?

      My son is near me. He sits

and turns on his butt

and crawls over to stones,

picks one up and holds it,

and then puts it into his mouth.

The taste of stone.

What is it but stone,

the earth in your mouth.

You, son, are tasting forever.

      We walk to the edge of a cliff

and look down into the canyon.

On this side, we cannot see

the bottom cliffedge but looking

further out, we see fields,

sand furrows, cottonwoods.

In winter, they are softly gray,

The cliffs’ shadows are distant,

hundreds of feet below;

we cannot see our own shadows,

The wind moves softly into us.

My son laughs with the wind;

he gasps and laughs.

     We find gray root, old wood,

so old, with curious twists

in it, curving back into curves,

juniper, pinon, or something

with hard, red berries in spring.

You taste them, and they are sweet

and bitter, the berries a delicacy

for bluejays. The plant rooted

fragilely in a sandy place

by a canyon wall, the sun bathing

shiny, pointed leaves.

My son touches the root carefully,

aware of its ancient quality.

He lays his soft, small fingers on it

and looks at me for information.

I tell him: wood, an old root,

and around it, the earth, ourselves.

Simon Ortiz 

An unconventional blessing perhaps, but a true one nonetheless.  I like the father knew the son was not going to die of putting a rock in his mouth, that he was just doing one more kind of exploration.  Everything in this poem is bursting with flavor, and smells, and color. with distance and things right at hand, with growth and the old root.  I'm glad I got to stand on that cliff and look out, and down into the valley, and down into the earth where the root begins.  One of my greatest pleasures to this day is when one of my grown children comes in and says, "Mom, you've got to see this!"  and I go out and we look . . .

April 14, 2012

There is wind this morning, making a rushing sound outside the window, falling silent then building up to that rush again, as if it were irregular waves on some ragged shore.  The new leaves, just now dark against the deepest blue, rattle against neighboring twigs, little clicking sounds of them clashing together when the wind is full of itself, the branches gesturing like Italian mommas scolding their kids, arms and hands, graceful and fluid, emphasizing their words, you can tell from across the street what mood grips them from their eloquent hands.  The wind this morning seems fitful and restless, unable to blow steadily, reminding me of the black dog who lives behind, who rushes into the yard when let out and, nose to the ground, hurries around doubling back and forth to smell everything, to chase the lingering scent of rabbit or squirrel, to lie down finally and roll in the grass as if smelling it where not enough, as if the only way to satisfy his nose is to bathe in the tantalizing smells.  There is something about dogs that is so earthy, that makes us smile at them, they take such unadulterated joy in things.  Their tongues lolling out of silly grins as they just run around taking in the world and it makes them happy just to be doing what they are doing.  Did you ever see a cat like that?  It's the domain of dogs I think just to enjoy the world, to be exuberant and joyful, and try to share that joy with everyone they meet.

I had picked another poem to send this morning, but the dog entered and stole my intent and substituted a poem of his own . . .

Over And Over Tune 

You could grow into it,
that sense of living like a dog,
loyal to being on your own in the fur of your skin,
able to exist only for the sake of existing. 

Nothing inside your head lasting long enough for you to hold onto,
you watch your own thoughts leap across your own synapses and disappear --
small boats in a wind,
     fliers in all that blue,
          the swish of an arm backed with feathers,
a dress talking in a corner,
          and then poof,
     your mind clean as a dog's,
your body big as the world,
     important with accident --
          blood or a limp, fur and paws. 

You swell into survival,
     you take up the whole day,
you're all there is,
     everything else is
not you, is every passing glint, is
     shadows brought to you by wind,
          passing into a bird's cheep, replaced by a
                         rabbit skittering across a yard,
a void you yourself fall into. 

You could make this beautiful,
     but you don't need to,
living is this fleshy side of the bone,
     going on is this medicinal smell of the sun --
            no dog ever tires of seeing his life 

keep showing up at the back door
even as a rotting bone with a bad smell;
feet tottering, he dreams of it,
wakes and licks no matter what. 

Ioanna Carlsen

Your mind clean as a dog's, yep, I'd like that for awhile, nothing but the moment's joy, nothing but what the senses bring, to take up the whole day!  When next I see that black dog, I will have to thank him for his joy, which I am sure he would not understand, knowing no other way, knowing only his own loves, his own world at the end of his nose.  Still, it's a good thing to practice a little gratitude even to a dog for showing that joy that is so infectious, that makes us smile seeing it, quivering beneath the fur, shivering with such tail-wagging delight!

April 12, 2012

It's a quiet morning, slow to start, even the birds asleep, and the wind.  The color outside is just the darkest blue, the black trees barely visible.  There must be something awake, but I fear it is not me.  My mind this morning just wants to run in circles, looking for something, anything to settle on.  It's one of those mornings where every poem I read seems to have a smooth oiled surface that I can find no way through, I just slip and slide.  Since it is still effectively dark, there is not even the least inspiration from outside either.

So, at last, I find a poem I can relate to even on this slow dark morning.  Though I have never poisoned my family, and 95% of what is in my refrigerator is edible, (there's always that stray margarine tub full of something we meant to eat), Mikayla is always asking if this or that thing is still good.  I don't think she believes in expiration dates, she must have the theory that things just suddenly spoil and become something dangerous.  She asks so often that it's become a family funny, and we all smile and tell her it's good to eat or drink, that it will not contaminate her or make her ill.  Jane Hirshfield is one of my favorite poets, and yes, I have a lot of them.  But here she gives a whole new meaning to . . . perishable, or perhaps it just goes back further to the original meaning!

Perishable, It Said

Perishable, it said on the plastic container,
and below, in different ink,
the date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed.

I found myself looking:
now at the back of each hand,
now inside the knees,
now turning over each foot to look at the sole.

Then at the leaves of the young tomato plants,
then at the arguing jays.

Under the wooden table and lifted stones, looking.
Coffee cups, olives, cheeses,
hunger, sorrow, fears—
these too would certainly vanish, without knowing when.

How suddenly then
the strange happiness took me,
like a man with strong hands and strong mouth,
inside that hour with its perishing perfumes and clashings.  

Jane Hirshfield

It's one of the things that creates beauty, being perishable, being fleeting, having an expiration date.  Birdsong is lovely because it's occasional, the beauty of sunrise because it's fleeting, swiftly turning into day, as twilight into night.  There will be another tomorrow, but never the same as the one today, only there for a brief moment, to be appreciated for that.  I understand her strange happiness, the joy of coffee, of green growing things, of being hungry and filling that hunger, of being melancholy and finding solace, of being afraid and finding peace.  That old wise expression . . . the wisest one in the world I sometimes think . . . This too shall pass.  So that there is comfort in knowing things have their own time, their own season, and will come and go as they always have, as we will, and, you know, it's probably a good thing we are not labeled with an expiration date.  It's rather nice not knowing, we will just have to enjoy the world as we have it, one moment at a time.

April 11, 2012

The mad mockingbird is up, now, in the dark!  Who is he trying to impress?  Every lady bird is asleep, head tucked under wing, perched safe in the oh so early morning.  There is nothing to crow about in this hour, it's empty, the street, the yard, the sky, black and clouded over so even the stars sleep.  Yet he is out there singing as if there were flocks of females for his audience.  I wish him luck.  He reminds me of the blue jays, whose harsh voice and raucous song does not seem it would inspire romance at all, more like the drunken suitor bawling out bad opera in the middle of the night beneath his lady love's window.  Still, it must work; every year there are baby blue jays!

The news talked about how such an early spring as the country seems to be having makes the farmer's nervous for early blooming things like apples, and apricots, and for tender shoots like asparagus.  If the frost comes again, it could take a whole year's worth of crop in a few nights.  Here, I don't think we have to worry about that, it's spring and there's not going to be any frost this late, but I can see how in more northern places that would be such an uncertainty.  They still could have snow up there, they have sleet, and freezing rain, but their spring is slower as well, so perhaps it is a balancing act that you can only endure until you're sure.  It's got to be a different experience to depend so deeply on something out of your control.

Gather    

Some springs, apples bloom too soon.
The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick
to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,
pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty
and quiet. No reason for the bees to come.

Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples
glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,
the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit.

You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.
You could say, Some years, there are apples.

Rose Mclarney

I guess that's what the people who grow those tender crops that feed us have to say, Some years, there are apples.  If you didn't look at it that way, you couldn't trust your life to something so chancy, it would not be possible to take the frost-killed years as part of the whole, as just what comes.  You would get another life, auto mechanic, physicist, grade school teacher, though, if truth be told, there are insecurities in those lines of work as well, any line of work.  Nothing much is certain, no one escapes alive, and we all just put one foot in front of the other and try to deal with what is before us.  I hope this year, there are apples for everyone.

April 10, 2012

Some mornings are so iconic, like this one, balmy temperatures, blue skies, bright sun, a little breeze, a perfect spring morning.  Even the cat is lying out on the drive way, stretching and just enjoying the sun.  The cardinals are in the tree, making bright splashes of color, and everything is jus lovely.  The ligustrum bush is making its cone shapes of tiny white flowers, attracting both bees and butterflies, and if I were outside the smell would drench the air in sweetness.  The one thing I miss is garden flowers, having a not-so-green thumb there are not any flowers except the paper iris in the back yard and they have not bloomed yet, and may not because they froze and are sort of thin this spring.  Still the white of the new can is a pretty as any flower and later the crepe myrtles will bloom and rain down pink and white petals.

Since I have no big flowers in the yard, I think I will imagine some . . .

Peonies

Heart-transplants my friend handed me:
four of her own peony bushes
in their fall disguise, the arteries
of truncated, dead wood protruding
from clumps of soil fine-veined with worms.

"Better get them in before the frost."
And so I did, forgetting them
until their June explosion when
it seemed at once they'd fallen in love,
had grown two dozen pink hearts each.

Extravagance, exaggeration,
each one a girl on her first date,
excess perfume, her dress too ruffled,
the words he spoke to her too sweet—
but he was young; he meant it all.

And when they could not bear the pretty
weight of so much heart, I snipped
their dew-sopped blooms; stuffed them in vases
in every room like tissue-boxes
already teary with self-pity.

Mary Jo Salter

You have to be glad there are people in the world who can see flowers in that way!  Make up stories about them, give them personality, and meaning!  My favorite line "but he was young; he meant it all."  Peonies are mother's favorite flower; she tried and tried to grow them in Virginia, and they just never flourished or bloomed.  I personally think she worried them to death.  Now she has that print of the bowl full of peonies above the sofa, a beautiful old print full the luscious blossoms.

For today the idea of such gorgeous flowers in the world all pink and rufflely and sopping with dew is enough for me!  Pink hearts to open in the sun and last just long enough for someone to make a story of them!

April 9, 2012

It's Monday, after a holiday, hard to get started, to settle down and work.   This morning when I left the sun was rising just above the horizon, dark red, condensed, thick as tomato soup, with swirls of dark blue cloud racing across the face of it.  As I watched it rise, mostly in the rearview mirror, it lightened, fading and fading to a pale sherbet orange, then an even paler yellow, and all the color in the sun leached out into the clouds, dyeing them so many shades of red, orange, and pink, all those color words that are so much fun to say . . . cerise, magenta, puce, tangerine, carnation,  amarillo, said in Spanish, ama-ree-oh, yellow, to me a nice golden yellow with a whiff of orange.   Then I noticed the moon was still up, the waning moon still nearly full, a pale ghost against that riot of color, then also fading, white vanishing into blue.   I don't get to see both the sun and the moon in the same sky often, too many trees, but driving out by the port, so much flat space where they have cut down all the trees, you can see a long way.  And the timing has to be right, early enough in the morning to see both before one is lost to the brightness of the other.

Over the weekend when looking up something else, I found again one of my favorite poems and thought I would send it to start the week.  I made me laugh out loud the first time I read it and I still smile each time.  One of the most . . . zen . . . poems I have ever read.  Many people think zen a very serious subject, but if you read zen poems or koans, so much humor in them all, such acknowledgment of how human we all are.

The Three Goals

The first goal is to see the thing itself
in and for itself,  to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
                   No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
                   In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.
                   Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

David Budbill

Okay, so sometimes I have met the first goal, though often a little symbolism creeps in no matter how hard I try to avoid it.   The second goal I have come to in a flash, once, standing on a street corner, in San Diego, waiting to cross.  I don't know why there, but I felt almost physically part of every other thing in the universe, for just a moment I could feel motion through space, atoms of my being connected, vibrating, joined with every other atom.  It could have been what I was reading at the time, a lot of books about physics, and philosophy, and religion.  Still, a very powerful and heady experience, not repeated again for years, and never in quite the same gut-wrenching way.  Now the third goal, I will send you a note when I get that one.  <smile> I think it would be sort of like that vase puzzle, where it's black and white and you see either the faces facing each other, or the vase.  Sometimes, I can almost see both at once but as soon as I think that happens, they switch.  It's almost like your brain has to choose, it must hate ambiguity.  Wonder how many decisions we make simply because the brain wants to choose?  In physics it's called the superposition of states, and Schrödinger's cat is the example.  Once you open the box, a choice is made, by that opening and the observation of the cat.  Kind of scary when you think that the whole universe is run on that principle <chuckle>, particle or wave, or both at once until something collapses the state.

So, if you get that third goal, let me know!  I want to know how you did it and can you do it again!

The world is a place of constant astonishments, and that's what I notice, that I am constantly being amazed at what is here and what the world offers us, like the sun and the moon, at the same time!

April 8, 2012

The birds are having their own sunrise service this morning.  I haven't heard so many birds so early in a long time, mockingbirds, blue jays, cardinals, mourning doves, and crows all making a joyful noise, loud and joyful!  It started with the one mockingbird, and ended with the crows making so much noise the others moved on to other yards.  Now, it's quiet, the blush of sunrise appears through the trees, slowly rose and lavendar are showing up, chalk gray, the deepest blue washing out to something softer and more distant.  Trees silhouette against all those colors, as daylight enters they will begin to take on form and the leaves will be more than black lace against the sky.  The lone mockingbird is back making his long song of other birds.

Now that this sky has taken up clouds of fire at the horizon pushing them into the pale blue overhead, making a glorious riot of colors slowly spreading and fading, I am thinking of what resurrection means, why we celebrate it, why in the spring when from the blankness of winter, leafless trees, the world wakes again to longer days and a more crowded life, green again in its silent explosion bringing back birds from their winter homes to make all this joyful noise, people out walking early in the soft cool morning.  It seems in the spring it's easier to have . . .

Hope

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
   
 Lisel Mueller

It's in this day, where miracles seem possible, where what we know of God makes us believe in them, where the black dog out running through the yard is wagging his tail and sniffing for every interesting smell.  Everything seems to be so full of hope it cannot be contained but must, over and over, make all this new green, all these white blossoms, white cane exploding from the dark earth.  What else is this about but the hope of continuing?  At the end of short dark days, warmth and more sunlight, more of everything we love, so much that we feel our hearts thawing as well, swelling and remembering gratitude, for all these blessings.

Happy Easter!

April 7, 2012

There's a cardinal outside singing and another answering it.  Are they rivals?  Or just company in the dark?  Hard to tell if your not a cardinal, I suppose.  It's just beginning to get light, that deep-as-a-well blue is beginning to show the shadows of trees.  I think a mockingbird just joined the cardinal mimicking its song and starting on others.  It just made that hooting laugh of the woodpecker and I know that woodpecker is not up yet, besides it sound smaller, less volume coming from the mockingbird.  There are so many sounds the birds make, the mockingbird has a lot to choose from and this morning he sounds like he is not choosing but rather making them all in a long expanse of song.  I wonder if that "beep-beep-beep" even and mechanical sounding is someone's alarm clock or car alarm.

I found a poem this morning from the Knopf Poem-a-day for this month, poetry month, a poem from Edward Hirsch, who often writes poems that seem to take up residence in my mind or heart or both and grow there for awhile.

Green Figs

I want to live like that little fig tree
    that sprouted up at the beach last spring
        and spread its leaves over the sandy rock.

All summer its stubborn green fruit
    (tiny flowers covered with a soft skin)
        ripened and grew in the bright salt spray.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good
    and Evil was a fig tree, or so it is said,
        but this wild figure was a wanton stray.

I need to live like that crooked tree—
    solitary, bittersweet, and utterly free—
        that knelt down in the hardest winds

but could not be blasted away.
    It kept its eye on the far horizon
        and brought honey out of the rock.

Edward Hirsch

The fig tree, hardy, grows even in the desert, sweetness from sand.  I don't really want to live solitary, or bittersweet, though there are days that seem to be both, but utterly free . . . Can we ever be thus, utterly free?  Even the fig tree is not, rooted, bound to the ground, dependent on rain and soil.  So are we all bound, to choices, to history, to our place in the life we have made.  It's good to face all the harsh winds that can blow against us, to keep our eyes on the horizon, to make something sweet out of our lives, but utterly free, how could we do that?  It takes roots and connections to make that sweetness, sunlight, rain, everything, even the stuff of stars without which there would be no elements.  I like all those connections, all those ways everything interacts.  I like the idea that the fig tree seed was probably dropped there by a passing bird, and that in the richness of waste, it began to grow in a hard place, and kept growing even in strong wind, even in soil not so good for it.  From the tree of knowledge perhaps that's what Adam and Eve learned, they learned about choices and connections and how to face strong wind and grow in a lot of places unsuited to an easy life.  They learned they would have history, they would struggle, they would die, but that even in that there would be sweetness in their life, honey out of rock to make their exile bearable.

Now the sky is pink with dawn's light, the blue so far above, the birds silent for the moment, in the shadows the cat is creeping along the cane, almost vanishing, striped cat, striped cane, only movement makes seeing him possible.  There is not breath of air, everything still and quiet, no traffic, no joggers, no dogs.  An empty morning except for the cat and the sun rising.

Have a day blessed by all our connections, all the ways people bring honey out of the rock.

Thanks for sending the computer parts, I'm going to order them and Kayla will pay for them as she can.  It was kind of you to do all that work and let us take advantage of your knowing that kind of thing!

April 6, 2012

This morning it's the birds that woke me, the "cheater, cheater, cheater" bird and the crows.  You would think scoundrels like the crows would sleep later, but no, here they are, virtuous as any song bird, croaking and cawing enmasse in the maple tree.  Their black bodies invisible in the dark but you don't need to see them to know they are there.  They make themselves known with their harsh intemperate voices.  As soon as they started cawing and raising a ruckus, the other birds all fell silent.  It's like having a rowdy gang of boys calling names and talking smack just outside your window, they aren't doing anything bad just being loud and full of life.  I can't help wondering if they are gathering together to go harass the owls in the neighborhood.  I have seen them chase the little owls from their roost in the day time.  They certainly can make noise, and some mornings their cousins the blue jays are as bad.  The crows bring to mind Huginn and Muninn, Odin's ravens, Thought and Memory.  He sends them out each day to bring him news of the world.  I would like that, send the ravens out and have them tell me secrets when they return, yet, you have to wonder what kind of things birds like ravens or crows would notice and what they would choose to tell. 

The crows outside this morning do not seem like old crows, but brash younglings full of boast and bluster!

About Crows

The old crow is getting slow;
the young crow is not.
Of what the young crow does not know,
the old crow knows a lot.

At knowing things, the old crow is still
the young crow's master.
What does the old crow not know?
How to go faster.

The young crow flies above, below, and rings
around the slow old crow.
What does the fast young crow not know?
Where to go.

John Ciardi

Maybe there is something us old crows can teach young ones still . . . maybe the only way to show the young crows where to go is by example.  They can learn best from what you are, and each old crow has something to teach.  When you look around you see them doing it every day, old crows that went to work every day, even when they did not feel like it, even when they would rather have stayed home, they went and didn't complain.  Other old crows managed a lot of daily things, work that rarely gets noticed, but is necessary, the work of being available.  Together the old crows, not quite as loud or as boisterous as young crows, slower and more deliberate, with the experiences of most of a lifetime, can at least point the way for young crows who inevitably will have to make their own mistakes, have their own experiences.  It seems human beings often just can't learn from someone else's mistakes or triumphs, they never think those circumstances will occur to them, no matter how the old crow caws, young crows will have to discover their own route, their own roost.  This is not a bad thing, just the way the world works I think.  Still, you can only show them what you have lived and let them take from it what they will.  Nothing else works, you just can't make them roost in your tree.

The crows are gone now, having moved off with their noise, even before it was light so I never did get to see them.  Sunlight has arrived, gold and bright, lighting up white cane and smooth tree trunks.  In the little breeze that has sprung up there is no bird song at the moment, everything is quiet and peaceful.  Kind of makes you miss the lively crow chatter!