February 28, 2013

When technology works right, it is such a blessing, when it's not working right . . . ohhhh the frustration!!!  For some reason my MS Word seems to want to give me a window that cannot be moved or closed, disappears my editing tool bar, and puts this big wide sidebar on my blank document page.  <BIG SIGH>  I was having such a hassle with it, I decided not to deal with it for a few days so I could approach it in a more rational manner.  Yelling and beating my keyboard tray brought no efficacious solution. 

Today I did something, and no, don't ask me what because I don't know, and I can move the window and my husband said I could make it so I couldn't see the distracting side bar by just making it really tiny.  So, I'm going to try this and see if I can actually get through this note without having a stroke or anything similar. 

Wednesday when I came out of school, it sounded like an electronic orchestra was tuning up in the field next to the school.  There is a flock of grackles that are there most mornings, but, except for an occasional whistle or electronic note, they are pretty quiet.  Well, yesterday they sounded like an electronic orchestra tuning up, runs of whistles, clicks, chirps, all sounding like they were made using a Moog synthesizer.  I stood there on the sidewalk just amazed at what I was hearing.   I find myself doing that a lot, stopping in amazement at something weird or wonderful.  Some of it sounded like the birds were cooperating to make cool lines of melody, though I suspect, with what I know about birds, that it was some kind of competition.  Never mind the cause the sounds were just fascinating.  I love the songs the birds make, so many mimic other birds or sounds in the environment.  We used to have a crow that called out "ow, ow, ow!!" because that's what it heard every morning when I brushed Mikayla's hair.  And a mockingbird that made our electronic alarm clock's sound at 4 am for weeks on end. 

I'm sure everything growing thinks it's spring whether the forecasters think it is or not,  ash trees are getting their fresh green leaves, the oaks are blooming and getting leaves at the same time, the bald cypress is hazed with green, and some little tree we saw yesterday on the median on Bay Area boulevard was awash with purpley pink flowers, no leaves yet just flowers.  My maple is covered with ripening seeds, still very red but now drying out so they have a little less red and a little more orange from the ones that are close to ripe, the tan-in-the-middle ripeness they get before they let go.  If they were ripe already, they would have been stripped off by the wind we have been getting lately.  What's missing today and the last few days is the soft humid warm air that is the hallmark of spring here.  A front has moved down and dropped both the temperature and the humidity.  Last time I saw the news, our humidity was 19% and that is certainly dry for here.  The low humidity coupled with the wind has made trying to get my hair up a real challenge.  Every strand want to repel every other strand until it stands out like a corona when I brush it. 

This poem is sort of what I felt like, standing there on the edge of that field of shiny black and brown grackles, surrounded by their wild and weird music: 

And For No Reason

And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.

And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the Sun's mouth
And dissolve.

And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their
Cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.

And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!

When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I Am. 

Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Though I don't think I could manage skipping like a child, I can still feel like doing it!  The birds choosing my head for a conference table, and passing their cups of wine and their songbooks, well, that was very close to the experience yesterday!  I love it when the world just smacks you up the side of the head with beauty and wonder and you get that dazed feeling of gratitude and gladness just to be alive!

February 25, 2013

This has been a very strange day for weather.  When I got up, before I even looked outside, I knew it was foggy because several places and ships were doing their foghorns, and when it finally got light enough to see the weather, sure enough, it was very foggy.  When I left for school, it was one of those fogs that was so thick you couldn't see too far ahead and it was worse over water and bridges.  When it's cold and we get fog, it's bad over open fields, dense and low to the ground.  When it's warm, water and bridges seem to exhale the fog as if they were relieved for it to be warmer.  Today they were VERY relieved!! 

Then we had a couple of brief showers, more like sprinkles really, and the temperature started to drop and the wind started to blow as a cold front moved through the area, no snow, but you could feel the temperature falling, and the clouds are gone now, oh, there is a stray white puffy cloud but it's sunny and most of the sky is the color you think of when you say "sky blue".  It's quiet a wind and will only get windier as the day goes on.  And if nothing changes we could get down to freezing by the weekend, at least at night, but I don't think we will get that low . . . too close to the water here.  It is true, if you don't like Texas weather, just hang around awhile, it changes quite often and quiet dramatically. 

I noticed a whole raft of things had changed over the weekend, there are many more red maples that have bloomed and are going to seed.  The ash trees are getting more and more leaves, that thin bright chartreuse.  The little volunteer magnolia is making fist sized buds,  hard smooth and green, and a fan of new golden green leaves at the end of each branch.  Mikayla will be happy because I believe this is the first year it may bloom!  The cane, what's left of it, is whipping around in a frenzy, the longer stalks bending close to the ground and then springing up with what's left of last year's tassels when there is a momentary lull.  They're top heavy and you wonder how they can stand upright with their heavy heads!  I love it when there is sunlight on that crepe myrtle, that has got to be the prettiest golden wood, smooth now that all the bark is shed.

Everything seems to be blooming, so I hope we don't get that freeze.  The little fruit trees that make the white flower are already starting to look like a popcorn explosion. 

The contrast between this morning and this moment is just amazing, makes you shake your head in awe over how quickly things can change! 

Still 

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own: 

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is 

magnificent with existence, is in 
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me: 

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up 

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe: 

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place: 

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being! 

 A. R. Ammons 

Well, he would find nothing lowly about today either, wind, cloud, fog, sunlight, grackles, chimes, blossoms, and new leaves, not a lowly thing among them.  So, is there nothing lowly in the universe, I think not. Everything comes together to make the day, and the night, though you know some of those planets you can see are rock and dust, nothing lowly about where they are, and how they appear to us at such a distance.  Especially today, everything seems to be bursting with existence, or magnificent with being, even me! 

February 24, 2013

I feel like singing "Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day"!  The sky is so blue and clear, you can hear birds, lots of birds, there is a gentle breeze, every thing is conspiring to make it one of those rare mornings that seem just about perfect.  It isn't even cold . . . I bet the lady out power walking her big fluffy dog is thinking it's a terrific morning as well, perhaps even the dog is having equivalent thoughts! 

Since it's the morning for the blessing, and this morning I feel particularly blessed . . .  

Prayer for Another Sunday 

For all that changes

Seasons, a glad morning,

Sliver of moon, red sun

Give thanks

 

For all that changes

Silence, shifting clouds,

Squabbling jays, white iris

Give thanks 

For all that changes

Wind sound of the bay

Cut grass, cheeky squirrels

Give thanks 

For all that changes

The everyday heart

The mind of questions

Give thanks 

For all that changes

Is everything we have

All we want  all we are

Give thanks

For all that changes. 

S. Crowson 

That's what this is . . . a glad morning, and I know even the most perfect morning can change and still be perfect.  In Richard Bach's book Illusions there is a point where he asks "Have you ever seen the sky when it's not perfect?"  And you know, I haven't, even when it's cloudy and gray and gloomy, it's the perfect sky for that moment.  What would you do to change it?  Still, this glad morning I'm glad for this bright sky, the wind chimes softly ticking, the pair of blue jays that visited the golden bare branches of the crepe myrtle for just a moment, and the lady walking that impossibly fluffy dog . . . The lovely world that exists, like the sky, perfect in every moment, always changing to we can have a different perfection, a unique blessing for which we can give thanks.

February 22, 2013

We've had some interesting weather lately, not dreadful as some areas of the country, just interesting.  Today has to be one of the most unusual skies I have ever seen.  It looks like someone spilled a bag of cotton balls in various shades of gray across the sky then pushed them into long narrow rows, with some openings to let a silver white light shine through.  Some rows are a little darker and some almost white, but they all look so soft and fluffy, you'd like to sleep on them.  There is a little wind and the temperatures are on the mild side, right around 60 in most of our area.  I have great sympathy for all those digging out of so much snow, and such cold weather.  Listening to NPR this morning they interviewed some people about the storms.  After several telling how terrible the storm had been, one dairy farmer had something different to say.  He said it made work more difficult but they were in drought and looking out over all that snow, all he could see was better grass than he had last year!  So silver linings for even the worst kind of weather. 

Our weather report was not much help after the temperature, he said mostly cloudy, patches of sun, possible showers, and it sounded to me as if his predictions were about evenly divided among all the possibilities.  My students chose the theme of storms for this week, and it seemed perfectly appropriate.   Next week they are going to do rainbow things, perhaps we'll get a rainbow or two. 

I found a poem about a tree, a sycamore, like the one down at the end of the street, one I can barely see, but I have see other trees in the same condition, and people too. 

The Sycamore 

In the place that is my own place, whose earth

I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,

a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.

Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,

hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.

There is no year it has flourished in

that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it

that is its death, though its living brims whitely

at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.

Over all its scars has come the seamless white

of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history

healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection

in the warp and bending of its long growth.

It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.

It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.

It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.

In all the country there is no other like it.

I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling

the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.

I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,

and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

Wendell Berry 

Sort of like the farmer . . . no year that has not harmed the farm but it continues and looks forward in the snow to the grass of spring.  All the scars we have, all the accidents, all the injuries, are gathered into some purpose we may never know or understand, but our lives are the sum total of our experiences, all of them, the easy beautiful ones, and the stark tragic ones as well.  In all the world there is not another one of us, we are all unique in our suffering and in our blessings, we are fed and fed upon, there is no other way to be, we cannot escape the native life we own, it makes us who we are.

February 20, 2013

Such an unsettled day, gray and the wind making it feel a lot colder than it is.  So much gray that it's hard to imagine it was hugely sunny and cheerful yesterday.  It's almost like the birds know something is up, the storm they are predicting they can predict as well from feather and bone and the turning wind.  At school, the grackles were everywhere, on every line, the empty field, the parking lot.  After I got into the truck, I could hear a couple on the roof hopping around.  Sitting here I saw the biggest mockingbird, gray like the sky the white bars at the edges of its wings proclaiming the species just as its song does.  It bounced about three hops across the yard and flew away, off past the window where I could not longer see it.  Big as a crow, it just seemed astonishing. 

The day grows darker and darker like traveling in reverse, soon it will travel so far back it will seem like the hour before dark, already we are back to just after dawn.  This light makes everything seem to shiver in the dull finish of the clouds, as if there were reason to believe the sunlight will not return, that something essential is missing and will never be found.  People like me, the solar powered ones, tend to slow down and want to sleep, or weep in equal measure.  Since it was sunny yesterday, I am not to the weeping stage yet! 

A few years ago I sent a poem that has the perfect title for today! 

NIGHTMORNINGSKY 

I'd like to see the tree as it once stood

before me, childhood, the branch and leaf

a single form of transport, ecstasy

shaking my body I give to the leaves,

the leaves return, my stare all interchange.

 

But that was when I had a sky to name

since I had a belief in constancy

like everyone. The sky was my background,

the drama of the tree and me, one act,

then three, then five, a Shakespearean play script.

some tragic flaw in hero, heroine,

yet to be discovered

                             But now the sky

clouds even dawn with a black mist that falls

from all things and all imaginings. 

The tree in my backyard is caught in this.

When I look for the sky it is still there

but now a matter of my memory

or prophecy.

 

                 Where is the root, bough, stem

set clearly against a morning, clearing? 

Peter Cooley 

The bare trees look so different when the sky is this dark.  The crepe myrtle's lovely golden trunk is today dark and gray streaked with ocher.  The light has stolen its gold and left behind the smooth wood but devoid of its usual loveliness.  A flock of the tiny birds, wrens maybe, just swirled up the tree as if wind-tossed and the bright spark of a cardinal ignited for a moment then went out like a light, I did not see where it went. 

I want to see the morning, clearing, but I fear tomorrow will be worse than today.  I can't even complain about rain or gray days because so much drought is fresh in my memory, making rain the gift it truly is.  The drama of the maple tree, now it's branches heavy with the winged seeds not ready to let go yet, is unfolding and every day it changes, and soon there will be a raft of seedlings that will grow for awhile then die, sprouting some place lethal or from lack of water.   the maple does not defend its territory like the oaks, perhaps that's why I have such love for its gentle beauty.

February 18, 2013

All day it's been trying to rain, sunny in patches, but mostly gray and windy and getting colder.  We've had the darkest gray, almost to thundery black, and sunlight for a minute or two before being extinguished by flat smooth cloud cover again.  It's almost ludicrous for sunlight that traveled 93 million miles to be blocked by some random water vapor creation.  We do not often get clear nights, too much of that water vapor, too many lights, but Saturday when we were out, Brian remarked on how clear the night was and how many stars we could see, and he was right.  You could see a lot more stars than usual.  And it made me think of Marianne's idea for her next class, star stories, telling the stories associated with the constellations, and having the students pick stars for constellations and make up their own stories, or stories about constellations we recognize already.  I bet she gets some terrific stories.  I find that letting the students make up their own stories about familiar things really tends to fire up their imagination.  If you don't give them some place to start, like a constellation, they tend to flounder with too many ideas or not enough.  They need an . . . anchor; adults may be able to create things off the top of their head, but I find children often do not have enough experiences yet to be able to make up something out of whole cloth as it were, but give them a prompt, a jump start, and they do great. 

For today, when we are unlikely to see stars tonight, a poem about stars . . . 

Stars 

I sit and rock my son to sleep.  It rains

and rains.  Such as we are

both asleep, we swim past the stars,

bad stars of disaster, good stars of the backbone 

of night.  We know these stars as they are

and as we'd wish them to be, Milky Way,

Dog and Bear, hydrogen and helium, the 92

elements which make all we know of beauty.

 

We know nothing of angular size or

of the inverse square law of the propagation

of light, and swim through a cold, thin

gas, between and among stars, 

which swim likewise between two creations

like children who know sleep intimately.

                   *       *     * 

First the collapse of the interstellar gasses,
then the final collapse of the luminous stars

like eyes turning backward in their sockets

returning the atoms they have synthesized 

back into space, to dust, back to what they were.

We look from some kind of opening to nothing.

We locate the red giant and the dwarf star

for nothing.  They are going away -- 

their explosions from within and their luster,

their mixed-up views on time and space.

I know that those I love are some

of the falling objects, and those dark waves

rise toward us from the past, dark

that falls with any particle of light. 

Ralph Burns 

It's that line that reminds me of today, "dark/ that falls with any particle of light" like the sunlight dimmed by clouds, like how often a tiny annoyance will dim the radiance of a perfectly lovely day.  I like how there were two kinds of stars, "bad stars of disaster, good stars of the backbone/ of night."  And how we wish the stars into constellations, and don't have to know the science of them to know their beauty, but it's nice if you know a little about them, just makes them more wondrous.  Every culture has star stories, not one missed looking up at the stars and wanting to know them.  We are all falling objects, all in orbit, all falling through gravity, personal, planetary, and universal, all swimming though space spangled with stars of all kinds, all those stars making everything we are.

February 17, 2013

Beautiful Sunday morning, clear and crisp, sunny and still.  When I look out, there is sunlight everywhere, light striping the grass, illuminating the wood of mostly bare trees, shining off the chrome of occasional cars.   After the wind of the last couple of day, this stillness seems so peaceful.  The bald cypress is blooming its long thin flowers, looking like little bottle brushes, gold and brown.  The helicopters of the maple are emerging from the red flowers, the red fading now mixed with tan and orange of the maturing seeds.  A lot of mockingbirds are in the trees and thrashing leaves and twigs in the grass.  The backyard striped cat is on his morning patrol, visiting all his favorite places, the water bowl, the old boat, the sunny end of the driveway.   A pair of cardinals, the bright male almost the color of maple seeds, are snuggling in the crepe myrtle, leaning against each other, the perfect example of "billing and cooing"! 

When we went out to dinner last night, Brian had researched the prospects for a new restaurant, some place we had never been.  So we went to the Main St. Bistro, and were very pleasantly surprised.  A friendly place, small, maybe 15 tables, the walls a warm red and hung with posters ranging from famous paintings like "The Scream" to ones for old concerts and art shows.  The food was delicious and presented in a lovely fashion, elegantly but not overly fussy, and everyone enjoyed the meal, from stuffed mushrooms to their chosen entree, and we even had desert and great coffee!  We all decided we don't go out often enough and made plans to change that.  It had been at least 15 years since just the four of us had gone out together, usually it's a bigger group, some variation of kids and/or friends added.  It was such a pleasant evening, that we all want to repeat it.  Now Honey and I will have to see if we can find someplace as nice for our next dinner! 

It's Sunday, a day to realize all our blessings.  After the dinner last night, I thought to acknowledge that a feast is not just for the body but for the heart and soul as well.  It's nice to be reminded that relishing the world of the senses is both a natural and a holy experience. 

For the Senses 

May the touch of your skin

Register the beauty

Of the otherness

That surrounds you. 

May your listening be attuned

To the deeper silence

Where sound is honed

To bring distance home. 

May the fragrance

Of a breathing meadow

Refresh your heart

And remind you you are

A child of the earth. 

And when you partake

Of food and drink,

May your taste quicken

To the gift and sweetness

That flows from the earth. 

May your inner eye

See through the surfaces

And glean the real presence

Of everything that meets you. 

May your soul beautify

The desire of your eyes

That you might glimpse

The infinity that hides

In the simple sights

That seem worn

To your usual eyes. 

John O'Donohue 

Food prepared by hands that seem to take such pleasure in tastes and textures and beauty of the meal seem to consecrate the meal and remind us that such bounty and beauty is a blessing.  I find that my every morning visit to my window on the world is also a blessing and one that never seems worn to my usual eyes. It's a continuous, constant source of joy, even on days when there are clouds and gloom and rain, as a contrast to remind me of the more light-infused days.  All our senses remind us of the world which is the ultimate gift and blessing.

February 15, 2013

It's so quiet tonight, dark and quiet, except for the heater running, there is silence, no birds, no cars in this middle-of-the-night hour.  When the heater stops running, the quiet makes your ears ring just to have something to listen to.  And it's so dark, no moon, low humidity, no clouds, this is as dark as it gets here, nothing to reflect back the prevalent light, so a lot more darkness.  It's odd for it to be so dark and quiet at the same time . . . 

Reading the headlines, a meteorite fell into Russia, causing windows to shatter, and a roof to collapse, and lots of video of it.  An asteroid is also passing close to earth, closer that some satellites so the scientists say.  So much excitement in one night . . . they say the meteorite and the asteroid are not related,  just coincidence.  That's a lot of coincidence for one night. 

The Mystery of Meteors 

Eleanor Lerman 

I am out before dawn, marching a small dog through a meager park

Boulevards angle away, newspapers fly around like blind white birds

Two days in a row I have not seen the meteors

though the radio news says they are overhead

Leonid's brimstones are barred by clouds; I cannot read

the signs in heaven, I cannot see night rendered into fire 

And yet I do believe a net of glitter is above me

You would not think I still knew these things:

I get on the train, I buy the food, I sweep, discuss,

consider gloves or boots, and in the summer,

open windows, find beads to string with pearls

You would not think that I had survived

anything but the life you see me living now 

In the darkness, the dog stops and sniffs the air

She has been alone, she has known danger,

and so now she watches for it always

and I agree, with the conviction of my mistakes.

But in the second part of my life, slowly, slowly,

I begin to counsel bravery. Slowly, slowly,

I begin to feel the planets turning, and I am turning

toward the crackling shower of their sparks 

These are the mysteries I could not approach when I was younger:

the boulevards, the meteors, the deep desires that split the sky

Walking down the paths of the cold park

I remember myself, the one who can wait out anything

So I caution the dog to go silently, to bear with me

the burden of knowing what spins on and on above our heads 

For this is our reward:  Come Armageddon, come fire or flood,

come love, not love, millennia of portents--

there is a future in which the dog and I are laughing

Born into it, the mystery, I know we will be saved 

It's the mystery of such occurrences that fascinates us.  I remember being home for one of the regular meteor showers, and Shawn drove us up to Trans-mountain Road to be away from much of the light.  We watched them flicker in and out, the motion of the light catching our eye for the briefest of moments, like the shower of sparks that fall when you brush against a lit cigarette, sparks out before they hit the earth.  Mystery is a good thing, if we knew everything the world would be a much narrower place.  It's what we don't know that keeps us going, the marveling, the discoveries, the wonder which we all need.  It's what saves us, all that we don't know, the questions we still have, answers yet to be found.

February 13, 2013

Cloudy and clearing early, now about half blue the rest thinning to the gauzy curtain stage.  At school this morning, I noticed there were a lot of crows out.  Here, don't usually see so many, they appear to be fairly solitary of come mostly in pairs, but this morning one of the bare trees across the road was festooned with crows, and they were very noisy.  When the students came in this morning, they had a LOT in common with the crows, about the noise level anyway.  They are working on cards in the style of one of their favorite artists.  It seems to require a lot of discussion.  I believe a lot of the kids only know one artist . . . Van Gogh.  Out of sixteen at least six are doing cards in the style of this artist . . . it should be interesting!  Last year it was Monet.  I'm surprised no one did Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or even Georgia O'Keefe.  One student has a father who is an artist, and she chose to work in his style, and unusual choice but understandable.  It's always fascinating to see what they choose and how they approach doing cards in the style of their artist. 

Van Gogh painted two chairs:  one chair in the daylight, his chair, one in the night, Gaugain's. 

Two Chairs 

Your chair in the sunny day

the light everywhere bright and full

the straw of the seat, wood frame,

red tile and oceanic walls,

simple pleasures

rest and a pipe

a blue door to open

escape to beauty 

Gaugain's chair, dark and rich,

deep brown, with blue curves

brooding green seat

wide and comfortable

novels stacked up

candle and gaslight

no sunshine   no door

no escape here 

S. Crowson 

There are many ways to interpret any work of art.  When I look at these two paintings, I see they are as different as day and night, portraits of the artists, and their work.  Given the stormy relationship the two artists had you can still see it was important to Van Gogh, that he was trying to come to some understanding.  I don't know if he ever did, but the work was undoubtedly a way to make that relationship visible. 

I look forward to seeing how my students make their relationship with the artist and the art visible.

 

Now the clouds are vanished and the sky is full of light.  Too soon the dark will come, and still I will see Van Gogh lighting up the starry night!

 

See the two paintings at www.vggallery.com

 

February 11, 2013

A blustery, chilly gray day with intermittent rain, some of it hard and some no more than a sprinkle.  There is sound filling the morning, pine trees and wind chimes, with the cane sounding like some large animal is rooting around in there, who knows, one could be.  As I was headed to school this morning, I almost collided with a small herd of deer that forgot to look both ways.  A small buck and several does leaped from the thicket lining Youpon.  If they had come from a yard on the right, I could not have stopped in time, but because I saw the flash of them out the driver's side window I had time to stop before I hit them.   I am sure they were as startled as I was, though I know there are more deer roaming around the neighborhood than there used to be.  Too much concrete, too few trees left, and I noticed down the low end of Toddville they are clearing more. <sigh>  They cleared a lot of trees from that huge lot before you get to Meyer, but have done nothing with the lot for the last year or so.  And I don't know why they are cutting the trees down again, a mystery that will be solved at some future time. 

It's Monday, and feels like Monday, the sort of Monday they write cartoons about.   I have been saving this haiku for just such a day! 

Let's put up the net

and make a green world of pretend

in the house. 

Buson 

I would like to pretend that it's some day besides Monday, and some weather besides what we've got.  I would like to pretend that wind from the north never gives me a rotten headache, and that I love gray gloomy days, and the wind.   I will have to pretend sunshine until there is some.  It seems that even my students today would rather be home and sleeping as well.  Today is the first day I have seen them try to paint with their heads pillowed on their arms at the tables.  There was a 5th grad tour and half the class was out for band, or orchestra, or drama or chorus.  Perhaps things will be better Wednesday.  It will almost have to be by definition, it won't be Monday! 

So until it isn't Monday, have a nice green pretend that it's some other day <smile>!

February 8, 2013

Ah . . . sunshine again!  The day is so beautiful that I wish I could share it with all the people expecting blizzard conditions today.  For a severe lack of sleep, I am thinking that the sunshine and blue skies today are what is keeping me functioning.  Tomorrow cloudy again and Sunday a good chance of severe storms, and then weather more like winter.  I am hoping no freezes as the little fruit trees are popping out with fuchsia and white flowers, and the maple tree plans on helicopter seeds any day now.  Things are beginning to look very spring like and I would not want all that tender new growth to get a icy surprise! 

The daily tasks make up our lives; we often don't remember them years later, maybe not even the character of the days, much less the particulars.  I think poets are sometimes trying to save what the ordinary is like, what the days are made up of, the ordinary, the routine . . . 

Song 

I'm about to go shopping.

It rained in the night.

The cat is asleep on a

clothes hamper.  The roses

are moldy.  Humidity.

The sun goes in and out.

I have a letter to answer.

Postcard won't do.  This

time, God willing, I'll

remember the Ivory Snow. 

James Schuyler 

Going to the market, getting groceries, buying what's necessary, and sometimes what isn't.  There have been several nights of rain lately, wind and the sound of water dripping off our non-existent eaves.  The back yard cat sleeps on Michael's old sailboat since the canoe is gone.  Roses are something that don't grow here very well, just for those reasons:  mold and humidity.  Today the sun is mostly out, tomorrow mostly will be in.  I write a letter nearly every morning and send it to people I love.  For me, email will do <smile>.  And now that I spend a fair amount of time standing in front of the cupboard or the refrigerator trying to remember what it was I opened them for, I understand the poet's prayer;  I have used it myself. 

Mikayla is off to visit the boys and it seems too quiet already . . . even though she's only been gone a couple of hours.  The silence has a different quality. 

On the cerulean (yes, I know, a poet word) sky there is one long line of puffy white cloud, like the kind made by old steam engines crossing the country back in their heyday.  Or it could be a line of a natural poem, scribbled by water and the wind.  Or it could be the beginning of a dream drifting there waiting for nightfall . . .  Whatever it is, it makes the sky more interesting and gives the imagination somewhere soft to stand . . .

February 7, 2013

Sunshine!  I'm always so glad about sunshine!  You couldn't ask for a bluer sky, it positively vibrates with blue and is cloudless.  A hawk is circling the park across the street, tilting and banking, in increasing circles.  On one of its rounds I could see the bunch of white feathers under its tail, and the shape of the wing is different from the vultures, whose wings are broader and seem flatter.  They soar too but they do a lot less flapping than a hawk, as if they don't want to put out the energy, just take advantage of heat and every breeze.  I don't see any of the vultures today, just the lone hawk, and I see them so rarely it's a treat every time.   The ground is still soggy from yesterday's rain, the striped cat cannot sleep in the sun at the end of the driveway.  I don't know where he is taking his morning nap, the leftover water will evaporate in the sun pretty soon and perhaps he can find a dry place later. 

A pair of fighter jets just streaked overhead, loud enough to wake the dead, a flash of white and they were gone.  Seems a morning for rare occurrences, hardly ever have the jets come over so far, though some big helicopters go over about once a week and for all their noise when I go out to look, it seems I never can find them, but those jets were like gleaming roaring arrows flung out against the blue of the sky, no contrails, just an excess of sound. 

There are poems about hawks but no one about morning hawks that I could find.  I'm pretty sure that was a Harris hawk and there are some pretty spectacular pictures of them on the Net.  I did find this lovely poem by Robert Penn Warren; it has some luscious language in it, from the sublime opening to the prosaic closing, bringing us back down to earth! 

Evening Hawk 

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through

Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,

Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding

The last tumultuous avalanche of

Light above pines and the guttural gorge,

The hawk comes.

               His wing

Scythes down another day, his motion

Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear

The crashless fall of stalks of Time. 

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error. 

Look!  Look!  he is climbing the last light

Who knows neither Time nor error, and under

Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings

Into shadow. 

          Long now,

The last thrush is still, the last bat

Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics.  His wisdom

Is ancient, too, and immense.  The star

Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain. 

If there were no wind we might, we think, hear

The earth grind on its axis, or history

Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar. 

Robert Penn Warren 

There are so many ways to look at anything, so many ways to describe things, that it's not surprising that each poet brings their whole life to every poem, all their experiences whether ordinary or extra-ordinary.  Today just getting to see the hawk out there hungry and hunting makes me glad I am not a rabbit or a mouse.  The hawk is gone now and all that's left is the impression of the hungry hunter on an even more blank blue sky, the emptiness more empty from being filled for those few moments with all that life.

February 6, 2013

Dark and dreary when I got up this morning and nothing much has changed, except we have both fog AND rain!  Sheesh!  You'd thing one or the other was more than enough for one morning.  The fog is fading but still hanging round some fields and near the water.  My red maple is living up to its name, thousands of little red flower line the branches, making a bright spot in the gloom.  I noticed one of the ash trees along the road is making new leaves, little tufts of vibrant chartreuse, like clusters of  closed umbrellas, that I am sure will open in a day or two.  Most of the trees still look like winter, bare branches and soggy trunks, but I think an early spring is definitely in the offing.  The cane thinks it spring already, there must be at least 50 new shoots, gleaming white stalks spearing their way up through dead leaves and the winter grass. 

The rain is only an occasional spatter now . . . but still it makes me want a poem about rain . . . 

Morning Rain 

A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light.
I hear it among treetop leaves before mist
Arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and,
Windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened

Colors grace thatch homes for a moment.
Flocks and herds of things wild glisten
Faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across
Half a mountain -- and lingers on past noon. 

Tu Fu 

It's a slight rain, but only bathed in darkness this morning, and still sprinkling.  It seems to be growing a little lighter, perhaps just a break before more rain.   Here there is nowhere near the musk of rain that there is in the desert, the smell of rain before it gets to you there is enough to take your breath away as everything of dust and pollen, blooms and rocks, gives up its scent in one grand sigh in anticipation of getting wet.  The air is dense with desert, and even after the rain finishes washing everything, there is still that heady perfume lingering until the sun finally drives it away.  The air here can sometimes approach that level of headiness but only after there has been no rain for too many days, in drought, or edging into it. 

The gloom without storm makes me sleepy, the light like dawn or twilight all day, and both those times the body wants rest and perhaps a little more sleep or a nap.  So much gray and drizzle makes me want to curl up and hibernate!

February 4, 2013

Cloudier and cloudier, from a sky thinly veiled with white cloud this morning, now it's shrouded with gray and getting darker. In this light, hard to find a bright spot, but when I came home, the buds on the maple tree are much bigger now, looking like the flowers they actually are, and the bees are out, honey bees, the first I've seen since summer. Looks like early spring no matter what the groundhog says. This morning the area temps were all around 60 to start with; it actually got warmer during the night, except for Conroe, north of Houston. I think Conroe keeps their thermometer in the shade and under a sprinkler. They are nearly always a good deal colder than places just a few miles away. This morning was not an exception to that occurrence, while everyone else was about 60, Conroe came in at an even 50, almost ten degrees lower, 15 degrees compared to some places!

Leaving school there were so many birds, an entire field of grackles, and all along the wires some tiny little birds flocking there. Some kind of finch or sparrow I think because they had yellow bellies and brownish gray backs. They were sure excited about something, the noise level from those tiny birds was tremendous! The grackles always fascinate me because they sound like they have a little electronic mechanism that makes their sounds, whistles, clacks, whirrs, they don't sing but have a huge range of sounds that make them so interesting to listen to. This morning my students were a lot like those little birds on the wire, they were so noisy, but it was a good kind of noise, mostly talking and laughing and full of high spirits. I had to remind them we were still in the library, and they mostly settled down, but I had to remind them again later. The eighth graders are doing the state tests and I reminded them to go quietly in the hall ways. I kept waiting for announcements and the bell, even though I knew they would not be doing that today so as not to interrupt the ones taking the tests. I waited until I saw kids in the halls before I dismissed mine, not knowing exactly when they were supposed to be released.

I wanted a poem about work, instead I remembered a poem about sparrows, Hardware Sparrows, ones that had taken up living in a Lowe's hardware . . .

Hardware Sparrows

Out for a deadbolt, light bulbs
and two-by-fours, I find a flock
of sparrows safe from hawks

and weather under the roof
of Lowe's amazing discount
store. They skitter from the racks

of stockpiled posts and hoses
to a spill of winter birdseed
on the concrete floor.

How they know to forage here,
I can't guess, but the automatic door
is close enough,

and we've had a week of storms.

They are, after all, ubiquitous,
though poor, their only song
an irritating noise,

and yet they soar to offer,
amid hardware,
rope and handyman brochures,

some relief, as if a flurry of notes
from Mozart swirled
from seed to ceiling,

entreating us to set aside
our evening chores and
take grace where we find it,

saying it is possible,
even in this month of flood,
blackout and frustration,

to float once more on sheer
survival and the shadowy
bliss we exist to explore.

Even the little sparrow has something we need to learn, making the best of things and still singing. I think they were clever to find a place with food, and shelter, and little danger. Yet, I wonder what the people working there thought of them, and the other customers. I have seen little birds in hardware stores and even our grocery store. At the nursery, where most of the buildings are open to the outside, they fly in and out as if it were all one big world, inside or outside, it doesn't matter. When I see them in their little flocks, and they come to the water bowl or play in the trees, they always make me smile. I can imagine people that day in the hardware store smiled as well to see such enterprising little creatures!

Spring is creeping up in buds and bees. I know it's supposed to be winter, but . . . somehow I'm not the only one who doesn't believe it.

February 3, 2013

Such a quiet morning.  Pale blue sky streaked with gray and white, not even a breeze.  The birds are still asleep.  The truck that brings the paper is the loudest thing I've heard so far.  Even inside, no heater, no refrigerator, but the ever-present hum of the computer is still with us, and keys tapping.  Cats are quiet, at least the striped one is, as he makes his morning rounds of the yard.  It's unusual for it to be so very quiet and such a contrast to the last couple of days. 

Saw my niece's new baby yesterday, a sweet little Claire, and had forgotten how warm and snuggly babies are, and so small!  When your children are all grown, it's hard to remember they were once so small and so vulnerable!  You think you remember, until you are confronted with a real baby, and you realize that they are a lot smaller than you recall, still, my babies were all rather . . . large, nine pounds or over and so maybe they weren't quite so . . .delicate as Claire looks.  But she's a bright one, noticing everything, especially the ceiling fan, but for only seconds at a time, too many things to notice in a room full of people.   Fletcher came in from helping his grandfather fix Winonah's car, the battery needed replacing, and said "I'm filthy, I need a shower" and he was pretty dirty, and he does love their new big shower.  He sang and talked to himself and made laser sounds all through it and came out all clean and tidy.  So full of energy that you would like to be an energy vampire and steal a little as he would never notice! 

Today is the day for the blessing, and though I do not see them at the moment, I know the sparrows are out there, singing, and that I will hear them again. 

The Beautiful, Striped Sparrow 

In the afternoons,

  in the almost empty fields,

     I hum the hymns

        I used to sing 

in church.

  They could not tame me,

     so they would not keep me,

        alas, 

and how that feels,

  the weight of it,

      I will not tell

         any of you, 

not ever.

  Still, as they promised,

     God, once he is in your heart,

         is everywhere -- 

so even here

  among the weeds

     and the brisk trees.

         How long does it take 

to hum a hymn?  Strolling

   one or two acres

      of the sweetness

         of the world, 

not counting

  a lapse, now and again,

     of sheer emptiness.

        Once a deer 

stood quietly at my side.

  And sometimes the wind

      has touched my cheek

         like a spirit. 

Am I lonely?

   The beautiful, striped sparrow,

       serenely, on the tallest weed in his kingdom,

          also sings without words. 

Mary Oliver 

Mary Oliver is not the only poet to have church outside of church, Emily Dickinson, e. e. cummings, also wrote poems about worshiping in the outdoors.  Perhaps it's the wildness that appeals to them, perhaps they just feel closer to God among nature.  I only know that if God is everywhere I don't think it matters where you worship, that there is enough grace pouring down on us for us to be thankful anywhere in any season.  When reminded by new babies that grace comes to us in so many ways, you can pray anywhere, and every thought you have of gratitude and praise is a prayer, not confined to place or day or time, but any time and anywhere you lift up your heart in joy or sorrow or gratitude, that is a place of worship. 

Even in the quiet this morning, the sky evening out to a pale clouded blue, there is grace in seeing the new life budding among the maple branches, and song in the quiet, echoes of all the birds that have come and will come to bring us pleasure.  Make your prayer anywhere, and give worship any time you can, Sundays, or any other moment.