There is a glow to this morning, pale pink deepening to rose with just enough cloud at the horizon to reflect early light. Two dogs ran down the road this morning, a golden retriever type and some little terrier, they stopped right at the corner to sniff around the neighbor's mailbox, then ran off their tails beating the air with their joy. It's very still out, not a leaf moving, except where the squirrel passed through bending the branches. They move so quickly and so smoothly that watching them amazes me, and they can leap quite a long way. Sometimes I hear them on the roof right above my window, when they jump from the trees.
When I was out yesterday, I noticed the oleanders are in full bloom now, and some of them reach an astonishing height. They come in such a variety of color, while I like the sort of magenta purple ones, the white ones are very showy and the blossoms look brighter against the dark leaves. That something so pretty is deadly poison seems to be one of those weird contradictions built into the world.
The yard started out with stripes of sun but now is all shadow as the clouds build up, one of those mornings where the sun rises and the heat builds up the clouds at the horizon, and soon they tower up and perhaps flatten out to make a brief thunderstorm, though the weather people said it was not likely, as a matter of fact we are slated to have boring weather for at least a week, high 80s for the day time, low 70s for the night and no rain except what they love to call pop-up showers. From the clouds gathering to great heights this morning, I would say we might get lucky.
For the poem this morning, a series of snapshots of what must be a familiar place for the poet:
Anima
On wet sand the tracks of deer, geese,
gulls, raccoons, all appeared alien, unreadable,
until: a single set of boots.
Who is to say the watersnake was not a god?
Flies adored the heads of stones half-submerged.
In the flying shadow of a dove, the catfish flexed
her whiskers, turned in her silty pool.
There were too many birds overhead to count.
Sun pressed down, a great skin over the whole river.
The smallmouth bass were voracious,
sending enormous ripples through flat shallows.
Gulls congregated on the shoals, shrieking and singing.
Something blue in the sand: lid from a jar of olives.
Something black in the air: first and last crow of evening.
There came a moment when the traffic
could not be heard, the houses could not be seen,
and I had to grasp, for awhile, at what I was.
The trees and the light crashing of their leaves—
outdone by the current's ceaseless song.
Daniel Rzicznek
So many colors and motions, and the confronting of yourself in a place so familiar, are the same for me, my connection to the poem. Some mornings are quiet like that moment, where there is no wind, no birds, no squirrels, a caesura in the noise of the day where you are confronted with looking inside yourself for something, for a quiet that matches that moment. This morning there are too many noises: birds making their customary songs and complaints, and the dog next door barking softly at something, the school bus rounding the corner with a touch of the brakes hissing, the loud rush of the air conditioner and the background of the morning's freight of dreadful news. If light could make a sound, there would be the uneven rhythm of it stiking all the tiny drums of leaves, then silence in the shadows as the clouds reach higher. This morning with no wind, you cannot hear the bay, which is probably flat as a mirror hanging at high tide under the still sky. Heat is already pressing against the windows, summer is sauntering in, spring eclipsed early by its sultry sister, and from now on it will only get more and more . . . sultry! <chuckle>
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