February 25, 2013

This has been a very strange day for weather.  When I got up, before I even looked outside, I knew it was foggy because several places and ships were doing their foghorns, and when it finally got light enough to see the weather, sure enough, it was very foggy.  When I left for school, it was one of those fogs that was so thick you couldn't see too far ahead and it was worse over water and bridges.  When it's cold and we get fog, it's bad over open fields, dense and low to the ground.  When it's warm, water and bridges seem to exhale the fog as if they were relieved for it to be warmer.  Today they were VERY relieved!! 

Then we had a couple of brief showers, more like sprinkles really, and the temperature started to drop and the wind started to blow as a cold front moved through the area, no snow, but you could feel the temperature falling, and the clouds are gone now, oh, there is a stray white puffy cloud but it's sunny and most of the sky is the color you think of when you say "sky blue".  It's quiet a wind and will only get windier as the day goes on.  And if nothing changes we could get down to freezing by the weekend, at least at night, but I don't think we will get that low . . . too close to the water here.  It is true, if you don't like Texas weather, just hang around awhile, it changes quite often and quiet dramatically. 

I noticed a whole raft of things had changed over the weekend, there are many more red maples that have bloomed and are going to seed.  The ash trees are getting more and more leaves, that thin bright chartreuse.  The little volunteer magnolia is making fist sized buds,  hard smooth and green, and a fan of new golden green leaves at the end of each branch.  Mikayla will be happy because I believe this is the first year it may bloom!  The cane, what's left of it, is whipping around in a frenzy, the longer stalks bending close to the ground and then springing up with what's left of last year's tassels when there is a momentary lull.  They're top heavy and you wonder how they can stand upright with their heavy heads!  I love it when there is sunlight on that crepe myrtle, that has got to be the prettiest golden wood, smooth now that all the bark is shed.

Everything seems to be blooming, so I hope we don't get that freeze.  The little fruit trees that make the white flower are already starting to look like a popcorn explosion. 

The contrast between this morning and this moment is just amazing, makes you shake your head in awe over how quickly things can change! 

Still 

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own: 

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is 

magnificent with existence, is in 
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me: 

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up 

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe: 

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place: 

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being! 

 A. R. Ammons 

Well, he would find nothing lowly about today either, wind, cloud, fog, sunlight, grackles, chimes, blossoms, and new leaves, not a lowly thing among them.  So, is there nothing lowly in the universe, I think not. Everything comes together to make the day, and the night, though you know some of those planets you can see are rock and dust, nothing lowly about where they are, and how they appear to us at such a distance.  Especially today, everything seems to be bursting with existence, or magnificent with being, even me!