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.