Monday, March 12, 2012

March 12, 2012

All right, it's still overcast and gray.  The rain has stopped, but the sun is taking its own sweet time making an appearance,  The chalk light has smeared away the dark but there is nothing of brightness this morning, uniform shadow over everything.  Not a leaf stirs, nothing is moving save the occasional car around the corner.  Not even a school bus.  The new leaves hang limp and green, the little lakes in the yard have been absorbed, the only bright spot is the new cane, blinding white at the moment, shooting up from the ground like some natural fireworks, the white so startling against everything else that's green.  My stone heron is still dark with wet.  

The birds are chattering away this morning, a chorus of "cheater, cheater, cheater" and the "who . . who who who" of the mourning dove, clicks and whistles of the little birds sounding a lot like a bunch of tiny rusty doors opening and closing.  I don't see many but the cardinals and the jays, the yards usual residents, so colorful they are easy to spot.  One of the birds I think of as a lady cardinal might be something else, as I think it's got a red crest on its head, and is larger and has more orange on it than the lady cardinal.  There are so many sounds that I have no idea who makes them, one makes a persistent "pew pew pew"  Kind of reminds me of the sound generated for lasers in a game. <chuckle> 

It's warmer this morning, but still not sunny, however, I think we are filling up the drought spaces in our lakes and our trees sure a looking happier than they did last year at this time.  The maple has big leaves now, it and the sawtooth oak the first in the area to spread their leaves, though the ashes are not far behind.  Now the bald cypress is hazing over with tiny green needles, green like a mist settling over the thin branches.  The color is so vibrant, wish there were a colored pencil or marker that color! 

This poem is for after a storm, and we surely had enough storm yesterday for it to have some meaning for us, still lingering under the clouds.


Thinking of Work    

A brief storm
blew the earth clean.
 

There was much
to do: sun to put up,
clouds to put out,
blue to install,
limbs to remove,
grass to implant.
 

(The grass failed.
We ordered new grass.)
 

A limb had cracked
in half in the short storm,
short with its feeling.
 
We saw its innards,
all the hollow places.
 

Something flew out of
the window and then
the window flew out of the window.

James Shea

The aftermath, always something falls, always something to pick up, things blown around, dead wood lying in puddles.  I like . . . sun to put up/ clouds to put out,/ blue to install.  Yep, we need someone who knows something about the installation of blue, or how to put up the sun.  I love that he says "The grass failed./ We ordered new grass.)  We've done that several times, but it's the shade that keeps the grass from growing.  And I don't want to give up the trees.  Always when you see something out of place, a limb on the ground, I am astonished at how much mystery is hidden inside the places we don't usually get to see.  My curoisity is aroused by hidden things, the insides of leaves or stones, or windmills, or what lives at the bottom of the ocean or even the bay.  There are whole worlds I never get to see, except from the outside.  When you get a glimpse, it's what makes the heart lurch with new knowledge, something you could never imagine, hidden and secret, revealed in its glory.  And there are days when the window flies out of the window, out into the world, out where there are more secrets than can be shared, more to the day then you can experience!
 

Thinking of work, there are all kinds of work; today it's secrets that are working, finding their way into everyone's life.

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