Two squirrels are having a tussle this morning, almost before it's light, the yellow only reaching just past the horizon. One chased the other down the trunk of the maple and across the yard and up the chaste tree then they both leaped down to the ground and started wrestling, flipping over and over in the grass, chittering and hissing and generally sounding irate and nasty. After a few moments of this they sprung apart, like magnets and just sat staring at each other across two feet of air, not making a sound. I watched to see what would happen, and I'm not sure what would have happened between them but the striped cat showed up at the edge of the driveway and the squirrels leaped up in the air, and vanished up separate trees, one shooting up the maple tree and out of sight, the other flowed up the crepe myrtle and after a moment I could hear it running along the edge of the roof, then nothing. The cat sat down in the middle of the yard and groomed his shoulders, his tail, long and fluffy, twitching against the grass. Then he came over and curled up on the canoe and it looks like he's taking a nap, or perhaps just reinforcing his claim to the space. The squirrels have vanished and the light is just beginning to be bright enough to make stripes of shine on the top of the cane and on the curve in the road.
Sometimes watching something like the squirrels, I wonder what they are thinking, if we would look as foolish or as mysterious to outsiders, to aliens even, as those squirrels did to me. I have no idea what moves them, why they are rolling around the grass in the dawn light, or why the cat suddenly turns up much earlier than usual just in time to move them hastily into trees. It's no surprise to me cats are a mystery, but it seems kind of like squirrels should be an open book, but they're not. Even the smallest bird's life is too mysterious to fathom. So, this morning a poem about mystery, about seeing something familiar from a new perspective, known but alien.
Science Fiction
Here, said the spirit,
is the Diamond Planet.
Shall I change you into a diamond?
No? Then let us proceed
to the Red Planet,
desert star,
rocks too young to know
lichens. There's plenty
of room. Stay as long
as you like. You don't like?
Then let us go forth to
the Planet of Mists,
the veiled bride,
the pleasures of losing and finding,
the refinement of symbols.
She's all yours.
I see you looking at that blue planet.
It's mostly water.
The land's crowded with
creatures. You have mists
but they rain, diamonds
but they cost. You have
only one moon.
You have camels and babies and cigars
but everything grows up
or wears out.
And on clear nights
you have the stars
without having them.
Nancy Willard
How would you describe the earth? The blue planet, and so much more, a little of everything from other planets, deserts, oceans, mountains, canyons, but here it's babies and camels and cigars, too. And the stars are out there, and from the looks of things lately, likely to remain so, out there beyond our reach, visited only in poems and stories. A vast cosmos of mysteries that we will explore from out back yard, though telescope and imagination. It's a good thing we have so much imagination, is it not?
Yes, they grow up, and things wear out. We have rain and diamonds are costly and there is only one moon, but it's moon enough for me. I would only be distracted by more than one, it would dilute something of the wonder of it, I think. I like the rain, and don't even own a diamond, though I have a moonstone that captures the clear blue of a summer sky with its white translucent clouds. I am content with what is here, and not likely to want more world than I have.
Where else can you see a pair of mockingbirds conspire to annoy the cat by dive-bombing his head and then sit in the tree and make fun of it in song? Or this morning's squirrels, or such light as slowly climbs down the trees as the sun climbs up? I'll keep my little world and cherish it.
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