August 28, 2012

The light this morning is all rose gold, sheets as thin as the thought of the whole day laid out before us.  Pale blue creeps in high overhead, as more and more of rose rises up.  A breeze, tossing in its sleep, dies down only to turn the leaves again.  Nothing lasts more than a few moments, breeze, color, cloud are all on the move, already entering the day, making their own moves.  The black dog rushes about, nose to the ground, exploring the morning.  Far off, two crows call and a third answers them.  For this moment, no lawnmower growls, it must be summer's end for them to be absent even one morning.

Mist Valley

At the end of August, when all

The letters of the alphabet are waiting,

You drop a teabag in a cup.

The same few letters making many different words,

The same words meaning different things.

Often you've rearranged them on the surface of the fridge.

Without the surface

They're repulsed by one another.

Here are the letters.

The tea is in your cup.

At the end of August, the mind

Is neither the pokeweed piercing the grass

Nor the grass itself.

As Tony Cook says in The Biology of Terrestrial Mollusks

The right thing to do is nothing, the place

A place of concealment,

And the time as often as possible.

James Longenbach

At the end of August, words and tea, what better way to begin the day?  I smiled because I, too, rearrange words, on my breadbox, my refrigerator being too crowded with other things, and then to think about someone reading a book titled, The Biology of Terrestrial Mollusks . . . and getting from it the right thing to do is nothing, and the time as often as possible.  In this world of busy, perhaps we need more time to do nothing, it fills us up in a way no amount of busy can.  When I was gone, there were times I did nothing, but it was not the same kind of nothing as looking out the window, or writing this morning note.  It was the nothing of waiting, or uncertainty, or exhaustion, not the same thing as this nothing, as listening to crows, or watching the light make beauty in the sky and across the yard.  This is the kind of nothing that is the right thing to do, as often as possible, entering a place of concealment from which to observe the world, sip tea, and invite words into the day.