March 26, 2012

It's one of those morning when everything is so gorgeous and so familiar you wonder how you can get used to such beauty.  When I got home from school, the yard is full of bees.  We had trouble with them last year wanting to set up a new hive behind the cedar shakes near my window.  They must have found some other place after the guys poisoned them several times.  I hate to poison bees, but, being allergic to their stings, I don't want them setting up inside the walls.  Still, their droning hum filled the air, several big carpenter bees buzzed past, the whirring of their wings vaguely mechanical.  There is a gentle breeze, and you can see pollen floating in the air.  Everything is still covered with its yellow dust.  All the pine trees are blooming, and we have a lot of them, long stiff yellow blooms and the breeze shakes them like some alien musical instruments, and pollen is the notes floating out.

I found this poem over the weekend.  Wallace Stevens, I like how he can turn something ordinary into a mystery that hangs in the air and gets absorbed through the skin.

Of the Surface of Things

I
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
        hills and a cloud.

II
From my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
Reading where I have written,
"The spring is like a belle undressing."

III
The gold tree is blue,
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.

Wallace Stevens

I find the world beyond my understanding quite often.  Even knowing the one little patch of green I see every morning, there are enough questions for a lifetime right there, and not nearly enough answers.  Good thing answers are not a requirement for me.  I just like questions, if answers come along, that's always a bonus.  Today there are no clouds and here there are never any hills.  There are few flatter places on the planet.  The 15 foot rise to the land here is called Red Bluff, but you know you actually see no bluff, it's just the land slopes a slow rise to this point then sort of trails off into the bay.  The lower end of Toddville is really low, caught between the pond and the bay, even a high lunar tide causes minor flooding there.  However, we do have yellow air today, and I would say the belle is pulling on a dress of so many greens, with sprigs of bluebonnets and evening primrose, and all those tiny flowers that no one knows to name, blue ones, and white, and yellow. 

My golden-trunked crepe myrtle grows blue with shadows in the evening, and yes, even here, we can still see the moon.  Several nights this week birds have been singing in the dark.  I never remembering hearing so many of them singing at night, but mockingbirds, and the mourning doves, and the occasional cardinal have all been awake and running through their songs under the moon, a sliver but waxing, thickening with each night.

Such a day as is out my window this morning is one of the pleasures of living here in this place; it may be hot in the summer but no one has more beautiful springs!