October 6, 2012

Fallness . . . warm today but a chill expected tomorrow.  Looking at the weather map this morning there is this huge "U" of cold air rushing down from Canada.  All along the edges the temperatures are in the 70s and 80s, eastern seacoast, the gulf, the west coast, in the middle, most of the country, the temperatures are falling.  In the middle of the country there are 30s and 40s and 50s, the more north the colder.  Some places will freeze tonight and we will just have wonderful coolness for a few days, nothing dramatically cold, just enough for us to feel like fall.  For me, 55 will feel cold, but the reality is that we will get the mildest charge out of that "real" cold front.

There is the sheerest veil of white cloud over the fading blue of this morning.  Some days the fall sky is deep and vibrant but usually there is some quality of light that makes it appear softer and less deep, a closer more intimate sky.  In winter the sky recedes to a high hard blue that you think might just escape into space and leave us gasping for air.  Planes are roaring over head, long rumbles of sound scraping through the thin clouds.  I hear them at odd intervals, I'm sure they are more common but I just don't notice most of the time.  Sitting here I have heard half a dozen planes and helicopters so that the sky seems very busy, people scattering across the country and beyond. 

The cat has wandered through the yard, the striped one.  I have not seen the dense black jungle cat for days now.  Squirrels continue to rush about burying things, or digging them up, hard to tell which.  If there are two squirrels they are screeching at each other, if there is only one it's usually busy and silent.  They do take time to yell at the cat even if they are the only squirrel in the yard.  Yesterday at school there was a huge crow on the apex of the walkway that extends out from the school's front door.  It was so dense a black, and so harsh in its manner that it seemed ominous.  I could see why earlier people thought it a bad omen to see one crow calling.  When I came out, it was still there but had moved to the light pole across the drive way because the custodian was blowing leaves off the roof with his noisy tool.  That crow was still calling but now answered by another somewhere across the road from the school.  I hear crows here often but don't see them much.  The trees are too dense for me to see far, so if they are not in the yard or at the edge, I miss them.  Seeing that one, large and loud, in the vast emptiness of the school yard, made me have feelings that were a throwback to those earlier times.

Even haiku poets seem to know the feeling seeing a single crow gives . . .

A crow
has settled on a bare branch
autumn evening

Basho

or . . .

sitting on a mud wall
in spring rain
a crow

Masaoka

Both give that unsettled feeling of seeing something dark and mysterious in a common setting.  Basho's gives you the feeling darkness from another realm has settled in for awhile in the fading light of a fall evening, winter coming. Masaoka's gives you the same chill for the spring, darkness lingering when things are beginning to wake from winter . . .

Personally I think crows have an undeservedly bad reputation; they are curious, intelligent, mate for life, and share the raising of the chicks.  But I do understand the uneasiness that comes from seeing just one so black and harsh in a bright morning . . .