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.
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