June 8, 2012

Everything in the yard is moving this morning, wind is rattling through branches and dancing up the cane.  In the night, we got the promised rain, so much lightning and cracking thunder but not a downpour, just steady rain for awhile.  The blue-white lightning broke open the night and momentary radiance struck out from the black-on-dark clouds, followed shortly by the sound of that break.  Last night there was little rolling thunder, most of it was short sharp cracks, and when the storm was right overhead, the light and sound appeared at almost the same instant.  For awhile the noise was almost constant, but it moved off fairly quickly and the shine of light got softer and so did the thunder, then it was dark again, and far off you could hear the grumble of that distant thunder.

The tiny birds have come to the water bowl this morning, they grab a drink and vanish.  I don't know why they have come now, as it rained last night, but they are here, at least for a moment, then in a flash of dark they disappear.  You can hear so many birds this morning and the cicadas are working to drown out even the bird song.  Everything looks brighter, dust washed off, and leaves plumped up.  The wind is turning up the undersides of leaves and the backs of the cane.

Kind of Blue

 Because most stars were born more than six billion
years ago, the average color of the universe has changed
since that bluer period when there were more young stars.
—The Cosmic Spectrum and the Color of the Universe

So the universe is not blue
after all, not even green

but beige because the stars are
older than we thought. But is it

sad, even sadder than
we knew? Describe the sound

of doves — is it coo, coo
coo or who who who? The French

would say it's rue rue rue
and in Italy it would be summer,

morning, already brocade,
Cecilia Bartoli gargling. And the throats

of doves, are they beautiful
or true in their blue and pink

embroidery? Young stars burn
hot and blue but those near death

are red. Did your father believe
in God? and the deer leaped

so high above the road I believed
it had been hit by a car. Dear falling

note, intention, dear
no more, dear rain,

give it up. What remains and need
not be mentioned we'll call

what have you, musica ficta: not
what's written down but what's

been played. What if
you paused for a minuet

instead of a minute? The dark
might sky, the blue might

star, the always
could open, the close

might earth. The doves
are just around

the corner, like a train
before it turns into

view. Miles Davis was
right: there will be fewer

chords but infinite possibilities
as to what to do with them. The doves

are coming, true,
true true.

Angie Estes

All right, this is a strange poem, but I liked the part about music, musica ficta, not what is written down, but what is played.  Kind of like the morning note, not really what is written down but what is outside the window.  There are doves out there, mourning doves, and I always thought the sound they made was . . . who, who, who on a rising note, but now I kind of like the idea of rue rue rue and even the true true true.  We often have to avoid deer leaping across the road, falling into the woods at a bound, and then gone.  The starlight moving away from blue, toward the warmer red, but never beige, I won't believe that, they shine as much in the memory as in actuality and our memory of them will never be beige.   Infinite possibilities of what to do with . . . everything, how many ways there are to see, to hear, to experience the same things, as many as there are people, as many as there are senses, all senses even ones that do not belong to people.  And the stars, the blue might star, dancing their own minuet, all night long . . . 
 
This weekend there will be a bake sale for NASA, a sort of protest against cutting the budget by 300 million dollars.  A bake sale . . . it seems it has come to this, that those wishing to know things, to explore the universe, to discover new technologies in the service of that exploration, are reduced to bake sales.  Surely, the richest, most powerful nation in the world can find money to fund these discoveries, this research that has given us so much and is made freely available to the people, or perhaps not.  Perhaps now it is time for other countries to do the discovering, to reap the benefits of exploration.  We can only hope they will be as generous with the products of their research as we have been.