Grom . . . the Russian word for thunder and there is a lot of it this morning, rumbling from far away and closer, seems the whole area is socked in with clouds and intermittent rain. In the night rain poured down on and off like someone flipping a switch, hard rain for a few minutes then a trickle, then just dripping off the leaves, and then hard rain again and the cycle repeats. I sort of imagined a line of rain bubbles trailing over us, bursting, then emptiness until the next bubble burst. This morning even gray light and the rain-darkened leaves and branches drooping under the weight of water. The birds all sheltered somewhere else and too cool for cicadas. Even the gulls that usually come in a little from the bay are absent.
I am always looking for a poem about rain . . . one that shows some new thing that rain brings . . .
Rain
Toward evening, as the light failed
and the pear tree at my window darkened,
I put down my book and stood at the open door,
the first raindrops gusting in the eaves,
a smell of wet clay in the wind.
Sixty years ago, lying beside my father,
half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain
drummed against our tent, I heard
for the first time a loon’s sudden wail
drifting across that remote lake—
a loneliness like no other,
though what I heard as inconsolable
may have been only the sound of something
untamed and nameless
singing itself to the wilderness around it
and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father
and of good companions gone
into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain
and the soft lapping of water, and did not know
whether it was grief or joy or something other
that surged against my heart
and held me listening there so long and late.
Peter Everwine
Now it is raining again, hard, another bubble burst, and an evening darkness taking up the sky, the sounds of all the water, drumming on the canoe, splattering from the trees, even running off the roof to splash on the back porch making almost a roaring equal to the thunder. You can feel the deep thunder in your own chest, vibrating as the windows do with the bass of it. There is little wind so that sound is not added into the mix, the only movement of the leaves is the water falling on them from great heights.
We need the rain . . . the fear of drought begins to crawl into us now when there are just a few weeks without rain, the dryness edges into our sight and we begin to suspect trees are dying, and crops withering in the fields. The deep darkness of a good soaking rain is welcomed and we do not hurry the clouds away to get a glimpse of the sun. We give up the sunlight to have our continuous green, a small sacrifice, and for some, who love the rain for itself, no sacrifice at all. I just saw a blue jay plummet from an upper branch to land huddled on the smooth curve of the canoe and slide off, catch wing and vanish. I don't know whether it meant to land on the canoe and it was slippery or whether it fell out of the tree and slid off, but since it flew away, I hope it was all right.
The darkness is expanding, more rain is coming. What is it about rain that seems to make us nostalgic, or melancholy, or filled with the quiet joy the sound of it sometimes brings? It may not be the rain but what is inside us that goes out to meet it and bring it home.
Showing posts with label daily blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daily blog. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Monday, June 18, 2012
June 18, 2012
A morning of early noise, cicadas and birds, early heat, already kind of breathless out there, early light, while the sky looks full of cloud they do not seem to be hiding the sun. Later they say rain is coming, but, again, I'll believe that when it starts falling. The stealth rain was not forecast and yet watered the yard some, and often forecast rain just passes us by. There are new shoots of cane coming up through the leaf litter, spears that have not opened to leaves yet. It was a nice weekend, lots of food and family and fun. It was an opportunity for me to use my new dishes and napkins and such, bright colors and festive. It's good to have a pleasant break in the routine.
Some beautiful pictures this weekend included several pictures of rivers, a vast oxbow of water in one of them, a swiftly flowing river, a river slowly pushing out into the gulf, you could see the silt carried by it. They all reminded me of a poem I had written several years ago, mostly about getting older, but about rivers as well. The end of this week we are leaving to visit my husband's sisters and attend a whole school reunion for his high school, and after that we will go spend July fourth with the boys and see Shawn and Kaci and their boys. I guess I remembered this poem because it's a kind of looking back . . .
Natural Process
Stepping again into a river
it's never the same river
the next moment
a new river
and the next
and after that . . .
The water is clear
moving makes it so,
when it slows
toward a bigger body
it's full of . . . stuff
collected on the way.
Aging is natural
and incontrovertibly
irreversible,
inevitable as dawn
irrefutable as time
incomprehensible.
It's the stuff of life
that makes youth
irretrievable
silt of events
sift and swirl
making mud of us
in that mud
all that we are
makes food
for other lives
we pour ourselves
into more and more
until at last
we become vast
by disappearing
S. Crowson
Some beautiful pictures this weekend included several pictures of rivers, a vast oxbow of water in one of them, a swiftly flowing river, a river slowly pushing out into the gulf, you could see the silt carried by it. They all reminded me of a poem I had written several years ago, mostly about getting older, but about rivers as well. The end of this week we are leaving to visit my husband's sisters and attend a whole school reunion for his high school, and after that we will go spend July fourth with the boys and see Shawn and Kaci and their boys. I guess I remembered this poem because it's a kind of looking back . . .
Natural Process
Stepping again into a river
it's never the same river
the next moment
a new river
and the next
and after that . . .
The water is clear
moving makes it so,
when it slows
toward a bigger body
it's full of . . . stuff
collected on the way.
Aging is natural
and incontrovertibly
irreversible,
inevitable as dawn
irrefutable as time
incomprehensible.
It's the stuff of life
that makes youth
irretrievable
silt of events
sift and swirl
making mud of us
in that mud
all that we are
makes food
for other lives
we pour ourselves
into more and more
until at last
we become vast
by disappearing
S. Crowson
I hope we become vast, by giving, by sharing, by ending up part of something bigger than ourselves, part of continuing life, and knowledge, and the particular will we have to join our lives to others. In a long life, we gather up so many things, so much . . . stuff, our connections to others live in those things, are reflected in what we keep, we turn into hoarders of experience, we touch those things and remember kindnesses, and absent friend, and family far afield yet still connected to us. Every place we connect brings us more connections and on and on until we can experience being joined with the world, with what is out there, and what is inside as well.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
June 16, 2012
A stealth rain . . . lying in bed I thought I heard a bird outside rattling the bushes as they do some mornings, but after listening for a minute I decided it must be raining, and it was. A very gentle rain, collecting on the roof and dripping off, more like a trickle. This went on for a bit and over the next few minutes it began to rain a bit harder, now you could tell it was raining, but still hardly wet the porch, but the end of the driveway, out from under the trees has a few puddles. Reminded me of the quote from Shakespeare about mercy "The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath." So we got a gentle mercy of rain this morning and our place was grateful.
The pictures from one of the cameras downtown show big black clouds building up and gray streaking the early morning, though here there is more blue showing, there are enough white clouds and haze to make the yard mostly shady with occasional stripes of sunlight. The cat is making his careful way across the yard, shaking his feet off at nearly every step. He does not like to get his feet wet, but seems this morning finding out what is going on over here is worth the trouble. He has been cruising the margin of the cane for a few minutes now. I don't see anything in there, but perhaps I am not looking with the eyes of a cat. The rain was just enough to make everything quiet, no cicadas this morning and only a little bird song. and no lawnmowers . . . yet.
In the night, for several nights now, maybe a week, a frog has sung its song outside the study window, for hours, from exactly the same place each night. I have not seen it, but feel intimately acquainted with it, lying in the dark hearing its small croaking tune rise into the night, barely pausing for breath, reeling out on and on, making darkness its stage, and the night its audience. This morning its gone, sleeping in the heat of the day, even the rain not enticing it to sing again. In going through poems this morning, I though a poem about frogs and love could start the day, as the frog's song has started each night lately.
Green Frog at Roadstead, Wisconsin
It is the way of a pleasant path
To walk through white birch, fir,
And spruce on a limestone trail
Through the quiet, complacent time
Of summer when, suddenly, the frog jumps
And you jump after him, laughing,
Hopping, frog and woman, to show
The stationary world its flat ways.
Love is a Frog, I grin that greenly
To your green eyes and they leap
At me. Up, I will enter the Frog World
With you and try the leaping ways
Of the heart that we do not fail to find
The sunlit air full of leaping chances.
James Schevill
I am fairly sure our frog is black, and so tiny you could not imagine it would have such a large continuous voice if you saw it. When I go outside in the early afternoon, sometimes the little black frogs look like crickets in the grass until you realize they leap like frogs, with such perfect abandon that they come down again flat on their bellies, splat, not at all like the lightly leaping of an insect. You have to admire them, their strong legs propelling them in a leap that ends in falling so flat, yet they keep going.
The pictures from one of the cameras downtown show big black clouds building up and gray streaking the early morning, though here there is more blue showing, there are enough white clouds and haze to make the yard mostly shady with occasional stripes of sunlight. The cat is making his careful way across the yard, shaking his feet off at nearly every step. He does not like to get his feet wet, but seems this morning finding out what is going on over here is worth the trouble. He has been cruising the margin of the cane for a few minutes now. I don't see anything in there, but perhaps I am not looking with the eyes of a cat. The rain was just enough to make everything quiet, no cicadas this morning and only a little bird song. and no lawnmowers . . . yet.
In the night, for several nights now, maybe a week, a frog has sung its song outside the study window, for hours, from exactly the same place each night. I have not seen it, but feel intimately acquainted with it, lying in the dark hearing its small croaking tune rise into the night, barely pausing for breath, reeling out on and on, making darkness its stage, and the night its audience. This morning its gone, sleeping in the heat of the day, even the rain not enticing it to sing again. In going through poems this morning, I though a poem about frogs and love could start the day, as the frog's song has started each night lately.
Green Frog at Roadstead, Wisconsin
It is the way of a pleasant path
To walk through white birch, fir,
And spruce on a limestone trail
Through the quiet, complacent time
Of summer when, suddenly, the frog jumps
And you jump after him, laughing,
Hopping, frog and woman, to show
The stationary world its flat ways.
Love is a Frog, I grin that greenly
To your green eyes and they leap
At me. Up, I will enter the Frog World
With you and try the leaping ways
Of the heart that we do not fail to find
The sunlit air full of leaping chances.
James Schevill
I am fairly sure our frog is black, and so tiny you could not imagine it would have such a large continuous voice if you saw it. When I go outside in the early afternoon, sometimes the little black frogs look like crickets in the grass until you realize they leap like frogs, with such perfect abandon that they come down again flat on their bellies, splat, not at all like the lightly leaping of an insect. You have to admire them, their strong legs propelling them in a leap that ends in falling so flat, yet they keep going.
Friday, June 15, 2012
June 15, 2012
We seem to be in a lull this morning. Earlier there were lots of birds singing and chattering and carrying on, but now everything seems quiet, even the cicadas see to be slow starting. You can hear the ubiquitous sound of lawnmowers in the background but they are not close at had, which is good because today is Mikayla's day off and she is feeling under the weather. I was hoping she would get to sleep late, but in the summer you are often awakened at ungodly hours by yard crews trying to beat the brutal heat of the middle of the day. And if I did that work, I would do the same thing so there is no way you can even be annoyed by it. If we did not have the Hernandez brothers come at least every couple of weeks in the summer, our yard would look a LOT worse, because, while my husband has great intentions, the work is really just too much for him now, even though he is battling the cane because the crew, in their fifteen minute mowing and edging and blowing, just don't want to deal with it and will only trim around it, and I don't blame them for that either. Three of them do the yard so fast, one to mow, one to edge, and one to blow and bag if needed. They have that routine down to a science. In the front they use the big riding lawnmower they got last year, but in the back with so many trees they really use the weed-eater mostly, we don't have that much grass by this time in the summer . . . too much shade now.
In the summer, when we were kids, days lasted forever, even though the summer seemed to melt away fast as ice cream, each day seemed an abundance until we were called in at dusk. Sometimes, we would sit out on the trunk we used for a step and watch the fireflies slowly filter into the yard, and occasionally we'd catch them in jars to put on the dresser between our beds. And in the night, Mom would come and retrieve the jar and let them out, if she remembered we had them. Some mornings they were still there crawling around the leaves we put in for them, their long slender bodies dark in the daylight, their beetle wings closed. This morning's poem is a young girl's remembrance of summer evenings . . .
Young
A thousand doors ago
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
clover wrinkling over me,
the wise stars bedding over me,
my mother’s window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father’s window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman’s yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.
Anne Sexton
I recognize how this feels even though our circumstances probably couldn't have been more different, it's the summer, when you are beginning to know you are going to change, but before you have done it. The summer where everything is just the way it should be, even for just a little while. Where you are in that pause between seasons, both the world's and your own, where it has been summer long enough to be relaxed into it and not so long yet as to be boring, where your body is still something familiar and not changing, or full of new feelings, new changes you don't quite understand. It reminds me of a line from a song by Dessa, where she says a flat-chested, gap-toothed girl was the best thing she'd been so far. And I understood that feeling, though I am more . . . myself now that at any time except maybe that far back, maybe the two times have more in common than first appears.
The summer sky today is changing while I watch, the sky here often does, the same green land, but the never-routine sky, blue or white, gray or hazy, the elements in constant flux, something to remember, even about things that are a lot harder to see than the sky.
In the summer, when we were kids, days lasted forever, even though the summer seemed to melt away fast as ice cream, each day seemed an abundance until we were called in at dusk. Sometimes, we would sit out on the trunk we used for a step and watch the fireflies slowly filter into the yard, and occasionally we'd catch them in jars to put on the dresser between our beds. And in the night, Mom would come and retrieve the jar and let them out, if she remembered we had them. Some mornings they were still there crawling around the leaves we put in for them, their long slender bodies dark in the daylight, their beetle wings closed. This morning's poem is a young girl's remembrance of summer evenings . . .
Young
A thousand doors ago
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
clover wrinkling over me,
the wise stars bedding over me,
my mother’s window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father’s window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman’s yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.
Anne Sexton
I recognize how this feels even though our circumstances probably couldn't have been more different, it's the summer, when you are beginning to know you are going to change, but before you have done it. The summer where everything is just the way it should be, even for just a little while. Where you are in that pause between seasons, both the world's and your own, where it has been summer long enough to be relaxed into it and not so long yet as to be boring, where your body is still something familiar and not changing, or full of new feelings, new changes you don't quite understand. It reminds me of a line from a song by Dessa, where she says a flat-chested, gap-toothed girl was the best thing she'd been so far. And I understood that feeling, though I am more . . . myself now that at any time except maybe that far back, maybe the two times have more in common than first appears.
The summer sky today is changing while I watch, the sky here often does, the same green land, but the never-routine sky, blue or white, gray or hazy, the elements in constant flux, something to remember, even about things that are a lot harder to see than the sky.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
June 14, 2012
So much bird song this morning after a night full of frog song, it seems this is a noisy time of year with ever creature looking to find someone to share life with. There is one frog that over and over croaks from the same spot in the back yard and goes on for hours as soon as it's dark and for most of the night. By morning, the birds begin to sing and the frog goes to sleep, some something is always making some kind of music, and this morning the cicadas will be adding insect chorus to the other songs.
Here is a short poem, one that in this place and time is easy to understand . . .
Everything Lush I Know
I do not know the names of things
but I have lived on figs and grapes
smell of dirt under moon
and moon under threat of rain
everything lush I know
an orchard becoming all orchards
flowers here and here
the earth I have left
every brief home-making
the lot of God blooming into vines
right now then and always
Kimberly Burwick
And here, even in winter, there is . . . lush, so that the green here is the green of every place, especially the places that don't have their own green. It's the morning that does this, the new perspective, the way seeing in the morning colors the whole day. Oh, you often can't get back the serenity of the morning view, but something of it carries over, like a secret color that shines from everything. I think that's why it's almost impossible to write this later in the day, I can never seem to get back to this perspective where the "lot of God" blooms into the day and I can actually notice it. The morning is like the smell of rain, that taking up of the dust in the haze of moisture just before the downpour, it's the anticipation, and the rain is the actuality. After the downpour, there is still moisture but you can't get back that smell of anticipation, it's been overwhelmed. But the experience of every morning is the "right now then and always", something that is a brief home-making created by notice, by the brief cataloging of what is blooming in the "lot of God".
Here is a short poem, one that in this place and time is easy to understand . . .
Everything Lush I Know
I do not know the names of things
but I have lived on figs and grapes
smell of dirt under moon
and moon under threat of rain
everything lush I know
an orchard becoming all orchards
flowers here and here
the earth I have left
every brief home-making
the lot of God blooming into vines
right now then and always
Kimberly Burwick
And here, even in winter, there is . . . lush, so that the green here is the green of every place, especially the places that don't have their own green. It's the morning that does this, the new perspective, the way seeing in the morning colors the whole day. Oh, you often can't get back the serenity of the morning view, but something of it carries over, like a secret color that shines from everything. I think that's why it's almost impossible to write this later in the day, I can never seem to get back to this perspective where the "lot of God" blooms into the day and I can actually notice it. The morning is like the smell of rain, that taking up of the dust in the haze of moisture just before the downpour, it's the anticipation, and the rain is the actuality. After the downpour, there is still moisture but you can't get back that smell of anticipation, it's been overwhelmed. But the experience of every morning is the "right now then and always", something that is a brief home-making created by notice, by the brief cataloging of what is blooming in the "lot of God".
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
June 13, 2012
Shadowy morning, lots of clouds, deep shade all over the back yard. Two blue jays are chasing each other through the trees, making the little branches bounce with their takeoffs and landings. It's daylight but the kind of daylight that has no bright sun, clouds all along the bay this morning delaying the sunlight. Before dawn, the mourning doves were out with their owl like mantra, and the mockingbirds were serenading the world with stolen song. Last night after the sun went down, there was some little frog outside the window, crooning the same two notes over and over like a rough heart beat. I couldn't see it but heard it until I fell asleep, imagining it was one of those tiny black frogs with a big voice.
Most of the time when I read a poem, I get some sense of where it is going, but this morning's poem surprised me into laughing out loud!
Origin
The first cell felt no call to divide.
Fed on abundant salts and sun,
still thin, it simply spread,
rocking on water, clinging to stone,
a film of obliging strength.
Its endoplasmic reticulum
was a thing of incomparable curvaceous length;
its nucleus, Golgi apparatus, RNA
magnificent. With no incidence
of loneliness, inner conflict, or deceit,
no predator nor prey,
it had little to do but thrive,
draw back from any sharp heat
or bitterness, and change its pastel
colors in a kind of song.
We are descendants of the second cell.
Sarah Lindsay
Well, I guess we would have to be, yes? But just saying it brought in a whole wealth of conclusions besides the obvious one. Could we exist without conflict, without the concept of predator and prey? If we did, we wouldn't be . . . us. We would be some other species all together. I would like to think we could get out of that rut, but I imagine it's cell deep and there is no getting around it. We can choose how we react, how we modulate those influences, that's what civilization is . . . an attempt to moderate the "second cell" influence, to be more than just an organism responding to its environment. When you see hummingbirds at a feeder, you realize that those beautiful jeweled birds are mean! They fight over access to the feeder, over territory, but they can cooperate as when you see one lead the most aggressive off so the others can dash in an get a drink, and they take turns doing that. So descendants of the "second cell" can cooperate even on such a small scale as hummingbirds. This year in our yard, the cardinals and the blue jays both have nests somewhere in the yard and pretty much leave each other alone, only occasionally having a squabble.
Also, reading it again made me think of how many times in the old Star Trek that the crew found a planet "paradise" like the one worshipping Vaal, where everyone was virtual immortal and happy but not progressing at all and rejected it, found it unappealing, even though to ancient civilizations it would have been the equivalent of heaven. I guess we just have to deal with our heritage and make the best we can of it, use the conflict, the influence of predator and prey to make our own response, our own way in the world. Conflict or competition may be responsible eventually for getting us off planet, open new worlds, even drive changes to solve problems right here. While we might sometimes like to deny it, Sarah Lindsay is right . . . we are human, and definitely descendants of the second cell with all its trouble and glory.
Most of the time when I read a poem, I get some sense of where it is going, but this morning's poem surprised me into laughing out loud!
Origin
The first cell felt no call to divide.
Fed on abundant salts and sun,
still thin, it simply spread,
rocking on water, clinging to stone,
a film of obliging strength.
Its endoplasmic reticulum
was a thing of incomparable curvaceous length;
its nucleus, Golgi apparatus, RNA
magnificent. With no incidence
of loneliness, inner conflict, or deceit,
no predator nor prey,
it had little to do but thrive,
draw back from any sharp heat
or bitterness, and change its pastel
colors in a kind of song.
We are descendants of the second cell.
Sarah Lindsay
Well, I guess we would have to be, yes? But just saying it brought in a whole wealth of conclusions besides the obvious one. Could we exist without conflict, without the concept of predator and prey? If we did, we wouldn't be . . . us. We would be some other species all together. I would like to think we could get out of that rut, but I imagine it's cell deep and there is no getting around it. We can choose how we react, how we modulate those influences, that's what civilization is . . . an attempt to moderate the "second cell" influence, to be more than just an organism responding to its environment. When you see hummingbirds at a feeder, you realize that those beautiful jeweled birds are mean! They fight over access to the feeder, over territory, but they can cooperate as when you see one lead the most aggressive off so the others can dash in an get a drink, and they take turns doing that. So descendants of the "second cell" can cooperate even on such a small scale as hummingbirds. This year in our yard, the cardinals and the blue jays both have nests somewhere in the yard and pretty much leave each other alone, only occasionally having a squabble.
Also, reading it again made me think of how many times in the old Star Trek that the crew found a planet "paradise" like the one worshipping Vaal, where everyone was virtual immortal and happy but not progressing at all and rejected it, found it unappealing, even though to ancient civilizations it would have been the equivalent of heaven. I guess we just have to deal with our heritage and make the best we can of it, use the conflict, the influence of predator and prey to make our own response, our own way in the world. Conflict or competition may be responsible eventually for getting us off planet, open new worlds, even drive changes to solve problems right here. While we might sometimes like to deny it, Sarah Lindsay is right . . . we are human, and definitely descendants of the second cell with all its trouble and glory.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
June 12, 2012
Ah, the cicadas, must have started before dawn this morning, the temperature never got below 80 and they were the first thing I heard when I woke up, lying in the dark, the continuous chorus of the cicadas, its own jungle sounding rhythm one we can't fall into but often hear without hearing through the heat of the summer. The birds are quieter this morning but I see the gulls and terns at the edge of the trees, circling at a distance their cries lost, just silent arcs of gray and white and black tilting in the bit of breeze there is this morning. Again the sky is hazy white, no blue, covered with enough moisture to erase all color. The cat is travelling the yard, quietly stalking shadows, creeping up on the cane, paying no attention to the birds overhead travelling their own airy highways to other yards.
Okay, some mornings in going through books or websites for the poem, one strikes home right away. This morning it is the poem from Verse Daily, it made me smile in recollection:
Oracle
I believe in a future
when the tuba is what the cool
kids play and sounds not like
the fart of UPS trucks in this
dumb town, not like the loser's
last life moan, but like fog rising
up castle walls would sound
if such things were allowed
to bellow This world
will fall, its flaming guitars
marched to their graves.
The ditches full of tiny phones.
Mark Neely
Mikayla played the tuba every year in high school. The other players were all guys, crazy guys it seemed, ones who shaved their heads for homecoming and wanted her to do the same . . . yeah, right! Most of the time they played the ompahs, the notes that were the background for flashy trumpets and trombones. Every year at Christmas we went downtown so she could participate in Tuba Christmas, where every instrument was a tuba or a euphonium, and they played the melody of Christmas songs and carols. The tuba can make some hellish noises and very loudly when someone is first learning to play, and after that it's a lot of loud repetition of the notes that make up the underpinning of flashier instruments. I can see someone wanting a future where the cool kids all play the tuba, and, I got so I rather liked hearing it, there is something really primal about it, something fundamental, and it can make notes that vibrate your chest, as well as the walls of your house. At school, mostly I get the girls with violin cases, or flutes, or clarinets. I would like it if some morning while teaching I tripped over a tuba case, or a euphonium, or a bass. Seems the girls tend to stick to the smaller more delicate instruments. I admired Mikayla for choosing the tuba, for wanting to play something that would be loud and brass! Perhaps the poet wants us to have more live, fundamental music, played in connection with other musicians, rather than tiny phones, but I think there is probably room in our future for both things, phones and music both keep us connected in ways that are individual and unique. The tuba is as necessary to the band as the flute or the trumpet, all part of the balance. And those tiny phones that do so much now, especially for young people, keep them in touch with even old fogey parents, and all are part of that balance leaning toward a future no one knows.
Okay, some mornings in going through books or websites for the poem, one strikes home right away. This morning it is the poem from Verse Daily, it made me smile in recollection:
Oracle
I believe in a future
when the tuba is what the cool
kids play and sounds not like
the fart of UPS trucks in this
dumb town, not like the loser's
last life moan, but like fog rising
up castle walls would sound
if such things were allowed
to bellow This world
will fall, its flaming guitars
marched to their graves.
The ditches full of tiny phones.
Mark Neely
Mikayla played the tuba every year in high school. The other players were all guys, crazy guys it seemed, ones who shaved their heads for homecoming and wanted her to do the same . . . yeah, right! Most of the time they played the ompahs, the notes that were the background for flashy trumpets and trombones. Every year at Christmas we went downtown so she could participate in Tuba Christmas, where every instrument was a tuba or a euphonium, and they played the melody of Christmas songs and carols. The tuba can make some hellish noises and very loudly when someone is first learning to play, and after that it's a lot of loud repetition of the notes that make up the underpinning of flashier instruments. I can see someone wanting a future where the cool kids all play the tuba, and, I got so I rather liked hearing it, there is something really primal about it, something fundamental, and it can make notes that vibrate your chest, as well as the walls of your house. At school, mostly I get the girls with violin cases, or flutes, or clarinets. I would like it if some morning while teaching I tripped over a tuba case, or a euphonium, or a bass. Seems the girls tend to stick to the smaller more delicate instruments. I admired Mikayla for choosing the tuba, for wanting to play something that would be loud and brass! Perhaps the poet wants us to have more live, fundamental music, played in connection with other musicians, rather than tiny phones, but I think there is probably room in our future for both things, phones and music both keep us connected in ways that are individual and unique. The tuba is as necessary to the band as the flute or the trumpet, all part of the balance. And those tiny phones that do so much now, especially for young people, keep them in touch with even old fogey parents, and all are part of that balance leaning toward a future no one knows.
Monday, June 11, 2012
June 11, 2012
Everything is up early this morning! The birds are going about making song and calling out, the cicadas are whirrin' an' chirrin' since it's nearly 80 degrees already, even at this hour. The air is shifting around through the leaves and the early cobalt color of the sky has faded to a hazy white with some brighter yellow east over the bay. That little group of dogs, four of them, two large and two small, just rounded the corner, trotting along, heads held high, tails beating the air, just looking around. They remind me of the group of bicyclers that occasionally comes by early on the weekends, two guys and two ladies usually riding slowly, all talking together, just out enjoying the morning.
Some mornings things are not what they seem, the little bird with the big voice is not a sparrow but a titmouse, the gray I thought was the cat turned out to be a raccoon trundling along the edge of the cane, the shadow that caught my eye . . . a squirrel, rather two squirrels coming down I think to drink. And when I was looking for a poem, this poem turned out not to be what I thought it was, or . . . was it? (sometimes I cant tell if I pick the poem or the poem picks me)
Aliens
When they appeared on the terrace soon after daybreak
high above the sea with the tide far out I thought at first
they were sparrows which by now seen to have found their way everywhere
following us at the own small distances arguing over
pieces of our shadows to take up into their brief flights
eluding our attention by seeming unremarkable
quick instantaneous beyond our grasp as they are in themselves
complete lives flashing flashing from the beginning each eye bearing
the beginning in its dusty head and even their voices
seemed to be at first the chatter of sparrows half small talk half bickering
but no when I looked more closely they were linnets the brilliant
relatives the wanderers out of another part of the story
with their head the colors of the end of days and that unsoundable
gift for high delicate headlong singing that has rung
even out of vendors' cages when the morning light has touched them
W. S. Merwin
I don't believe we are in the range for linnets, they seem to be European, or Asian, or North African, but the linnet's song has been extolled in several famous poems and they were often kept in cages for their lovely singing. They are grayish or perhaps brownish but the males in the spring have russet breasts and on their heads, the color of sunset. What tickled me, when I looked them up, is their scientific name Carduelis cannabina and yes, that's just what it sounds like. They were known for eating the seed from the hemp plant, perhaps that's what made them sing so happily! <chuckle> And the common name linnet comes from their fondness for flax seed as well. So, I am not the only one for whom things are not what they seem, and knowing that Merwin has lived for years in Hawaii the linnet would be alien to that environment. Still when I started reading the poem, I was not thinking of birds but what I guess is more commonly thought of when you read the word aliens, those that are not of this planet, far from home, or in a strange place. Yet, the linnets were obviously strangers to that place, telling their own story in song far from their usual haunts. William Wordsworth mentions them in his poem The Tables Turned:
May you have surprises today, pleasant ones, when something common turns into something extraordinary!
Some mornings things are not what they seem, the little bird with the big voice is not a sparrow but a titmouse, the gray I thought was the cat turned out to be a raccoon trundling along the edge of the cane, the shadow that caught my eye . . . a squirrel, rather two squirrels coming down I think to drink. And when I was looking for a poem, this poem turned out not to be what I thought it was, or . . . was it? (sometimes I cant tell if I pick the poem or the poem picks me)
Aliens
When they appeared on the terrace soon after daybreak
high above the sea with the tide far out I thought at first
they were sparrows which by now seen to have found their way everywhere
following us at the own small distances arguing over
pieces of our shadows to take up into their brief flights
eluding our attention by seeming unremarkable
quick instantaneous beyond our grasp as they are in themselves
complete lives flashing flashing from the beginning each eye bearing
the beginning in its dusty head and even their voices
seemed to be at first the chatter of sparrows half small talk half bickering
but no when I looked more closely they were linnets the brilliant
relatives the wanderers out of another part of the story
with their head the colors of the end of days and that unsoundable
gift for high delicate headlong singing that has rung
even out of vendors' cages when the morning light has touched them
W. S. Merwin
I don't believe we are in the range for linnets, they seem to be European, or Asian, or North African, but the linnet's song has been extolled in several famous poems and they were often kept in cages for their lovely singing. They are grayish or perhaps brownish but the males in the spring have russet breasts and on their heads, the color of sunset. What tickled me, when I looked them up, is their scientific name Carduelis cannabina and yes, that's just what it sounds like. They were known for eating the seed from the hemp plant, perhaps that's what made them sing so happily! <chuckle> And the common name linnet comes from their fondness for flax seed as well. So, I am not the only one for whom things are not what they seem, and knowing that Merwin has lived for years in Hawaii the linnet would be alien to that environment. Still when I started reading the poem, I was not thinking of birds but what I guess is more commonly thought of when you read the word aliens, those that are not of this planet, far from home, or in a strange place. Yet, the linnets were obviously strangers to that place, telling their own story in song far from their usual haunts. William Wordsworth mentions them in his poem The Tables Turned:
- "Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
- Come, hear the woodland linnet,
- How sweet his music! on my life,
- There's more of wisdom in it."
May you have surprises today, pleasant ones, when something common turns into something extraordinary!
Sunday, June 10, 2012
June 10, 2012
A very noisy morning, the birds seem to be gathered up and all conversing with each other, several pairs of cardinals, and a pair of blue jays, a tiny flock of small ones, too fast to identify, and, of course, cicadas louder than the birds and more constant. It's such a typical summer morning you almost couldn't ask for anything more . . . summery. Just close your eyes and think beautiful summer morning, and you will have the same experience: blue sky, white fluffy clouds, trees all leafed out and getting to be that deeper green, lawnmowers, small planes overhead, occasionally the deep thrumming of a distant cigarette boat on the bay, and as many birds as you could want, and the cicadas, even a light breeze to keep the air from stagnating and stifling.
Sunday and the blessing . . . this poem depends on how you see it, and so does the world, light or dark, half-empty, half-full, which ever way you choose.
The House of Belonging
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light.
David Whyte
Some mornings are like that, we wake up not only to light in the world outside but to light inside us, to moments when we are filled with it, even though we know it's tenuous and things change and that not every change is going to be something we want to experience. I think of those mornings as . . . full of grace, as in the prayer. I don't know what creates them, but only know that my mornings looking for a poem to send, watching the same things outside my window, thinking about connections between us, friends and family and the world outside, all these things seem to make more of them, and for that I am grateful. I think of this time as that quiet pathway of light the poet sat up into. This is my pathway of light, not just today when I think of it as a blessing, a connection to God, to the foundations of love, but every morning, even the mornings when I wake up grumpy and out of sorts, this part of the morning makes a kind of light that blesses my whole day.
Sunday and the blessing . . . this poem depends on how you see it, and so does the world, light or dark, half-empty, half-full, which ever way you choose.
The House of Belonging
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light.
David Whyte
Some mornings are like that, we wake up not only to light in the world outside but to light inside us, to moments when we are filled with it, even though we know it's tenuous and things change and that not every change is going to be something we want to experience. I think of those mornings as . . . full of grace, as in the prayer. I don't know what creates them, but only know that my mornings looking for a poem to send, watching the same things outside my window, thinking about connections between us, friends and family and the world outside, all these things seem to make more of them, and for that I am grateful. I think of this time as that quiet pathway of light the poet sat up into. This is my pathway of light, not just today when I think of it as a blessing, a connection to God, to the foundations of love, but every morning, even the mornings when I wake up grumpy and out of sorts, this part of the morning makes a kind of light that blesses my whole day.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
June 5, 2012
It's hot, and going to get hotter. Yesterday when Mikayla and I were out, the temperature sign at the Kemah City Hall said 99 degrees at 4pm. And today seems like it will be as hot. Tomorrow there's a chance for rain, and I'll believe that when I see it, though this is the anniversary of Tropical Storm Allison, which caused as much damage through flooding as any hurricane. Already two named storms this year before hurricane season even started on June 1st. As I said before, going to be a long hot summer, I believe. We've been running the air conditioning on and off since April, mostly on through the month of May. We keep it set pretty high but it does seem to run a lot lately. The birds sure are enjoying the water bowl, this morning mostly blue jays and an occasional cardinal. I saw a couple of grackles in the grass this morning, I know they live in the area but we seldom see any. They make the weirdest calls, electronic sounding, you'd think they were mechanical birds. I notice the cane has sprouted up again, a nice little fence like line of white shoots. You just have to admire something that persistent!
This morning a friend called from Vermont, he's back home from a trip to New Jersey and he told me about a poem that made him smile. So, I looked it up, a poem about numbers, and the easy companionship of math in our lives, well, easy for some . . .
Numbers
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition—
add two cups of milk and stir—
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.
There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
Mary Cornish
This poem has a host of ordinary observations that seem to just remind me of things that make me smile: eight dancers dressed as swans brings to mind a scene in Funny Girl where they are doing swan lake, and Barbra Streisand comes down on wires and says, "Whatdaya gonna do, shoot the swans, these lovelies?", the nightly making of dinner, some days harder than others, and so very . . . nightly <smile>, or the sparrows that come and go in the trees here with their little chatter and lively bounces, fish caught when we were young, and Dawm always caught the most, the fortune cookie Donna got that only said, "Soon, in good company", the most enigmatic fortune ever told, and, of course, the perpetual odd remainder, the one sock that isn't anywhere you look, that's got to be so ordinary by now no one is even surprised anymore when you get to the end of folding a basket of clothes and you have that perennial odd sock. We always talk about tiny black holes that suck them up and spew them out into someone else's universe and there they also marvel at how one sock turns up over and over.
I like that poem and all its little connections that make me even feel friendly to math, a real accomplishment since I have a problem with numbers, not the concepts of math, just the directionality and placement of the actual numbers, which are tricky things that never seem to be in the place they are meant to go.
The clouds have been building up at the horizon, looking like whipped cream almost thick enough to stand on. They look pretty fair-weather to me, and not likely to produce any rain, but if they keep piling up, who knows? At the moment, it's hot and humid and summer, with the sound of jets and lawnmowers and cicadas.
This morning a friend called from Vermont, he's back home from a trip to New Jersey and he told me about a poem that made him smile. So, I looked it up, a poem about numbers, and the easy companionship of math in our lives, well, easy for some . . .
Numbers
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition—
add two cups of milk and stir—
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.
There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
Mary Cornish
This poem has a host of ordinary observations that seem to just remind me of things that make me smile: eight dancers dressed as swans brings to mind a scene in Funny Girl where they are doing swan lake, and Barbra Streisand comes down on wires and says, "Whatdaya gonna do, shoot the swans, these lovelies?", the nightly making of dinner, some days harder than others, and so very . . . nightly <smile>, or the sparrows that come and go in the trees here with their little chatter and lively bounces, fish caught when we were young, and Dawm always caught the most, the fortune cookie Donna got that only said, "Soon, in good company", the most enigmatic fortune ever told, and, of course, the perpetual odd remainder, the one sock that isn't anywhere you look, that's got to be so ordinary by now no one is even surprised anymore when you get to the end of folding a basket of clothes and you have that perennial odd sock. We always talk about tiny black holes that suck them up and spew them out into someone else's universe and there they also marvel at how one sock turns up over and over.
I like that poem and all its little connections that make me even feel friendly to math, a real accomplishment since I have a problem with numbers, not the concepts of math, just the directionality and placement of the actual numbers, which are tricky things that never seem to be in the place they are meant to go.
The clouds have been building up at the horizon, looking like whipped cream almost thick enough to stand on. They look pretty fair-weather to me, and not likely to produce any rain, but if they keep piling up, who knows? At the moment, it's hot and humid and summer, with the sound of jets and lawnmowers and cicadas.
Friday, June 1, 2012
June 1, 2012
Such a lovely morning . . . sunny, breezy, the sound of a small plane playing overhead, shadow striping the yard. Birds were out early this morning, all singing some kind of song, screeching blue jays, sleepy mourning dove whoos, mockingbirds carrying on a musical conversation with themselves, even the tiny ones peeping and cheeping, must be one of those morning when everyone has something to say!
This poem gave me a smile and a chuckle . . .
A Yorkshire Parable
I went to see the wisest man in the world-
he lived above a shop in Cleckheaton.
A nice man, he offered me tea and biscuits
before we got down to business.
Is there an omniscient being? I asked him,
one who shares an intimate
relationship with each and every one of us?
I wouldn’t really know, he said.
Well, do you believe in an afterlife?
A heaven, perhaps: or maybe reincarnation?
It would be nice, he mused-
pushing over the chocolate eclairs.
Realising I was getting nowhere with this,
I wandered over to the window
and watched as cold November light
set fire to the trees across the road.
Nice day, I ventured.
Now you’re getting somewhere, he replied.
Mike Di Placido
I just had to chuckle, kind of reminded me of a lot of the sort of Zen stories with the wise one and the student, and the student keeps trying to get the wise one to say something . . . well, something true, I guess, or something they can use, or something they can be sure of. And the wise one keeps talking about crickets, or the moon, or the full cup, keeps getting the student to sweep the floor or clean out the stable or do some other work that needs to be done. Sometimes the student finally gets the idea, sometimes they get angry and leave, sometimes they sit down next to the wise one and watch the sun set in flames over a line of trees. All the unanswerable questions are a matter of . . . faith. You believe about them what you believe, there is no proof. You might just as well live your life as honestly as you can, do what's necessary, and accept the joy and beauty of the world, along with all its heartache and sorrow, because you will never have any proof only belief, only faith. It's what you believe in, what you actually do in the world that determines the state of your . . . soul.
Nice day, isn't it?
This poem gave me a smile and a chuckle . . .
A Yorkshire Parable
I went to see the wisest man in the world-
he lived above a shop in Cleckheaton.
A nice man, he offered me tea and biscuits
before we got down to business.
Is there an omniscient being? I asked him,
one who shares an intimate
relationship with each and every one of us?
I wouldn’t really know, he said.
Well, do you believe in an afterlife?
A heaven, perhaps: or maybe reincarnation?
It would be nice, he mused-
pushing over the chocolate eclairs.
Realising I was getting nowhere with this,
I wandered over to the window
and watched as cold November light
set fire to the trees across the road.
Nice day, I ventured.
Now you’re getting somewhere, he replied.
Mike Di Placido
I just had to chuckle, kind of reminded me of a lot of the sort of Zen stories with the wise one and the student, and the student keeps trying to get the wise one to say something . . . well, something true, I guess, or something they can use, or something they can be sure of. And the wise one keeps talking about crickets, or the moon, or the full cup, keeps getting the student to sweep the floor or clean out the stable or do some other work that needs to be done. Sometimes the student finally gets the idea, sometimes they get angry and leave, sometimes they sit down next to the wise one and watch the sun set in flames over a line of trees. All the unanswerable questions are a matter of . . . faith. You believe about them what you believe, there is no proof. You might just as well live your life as honestly as you can, do what's necessary, and accept the joy and beauty of the world, along with all its heartache and sorrow, because you will never have any proof only belief, only faith. It's what you believe in, what you actually do in the world that determines the state of your . . . soul.
Nice day, isn't it?
Thursday, May 31, 2012
May 31, 2012
Dark morning, clouds thick and not much sun making it through them. The air is so wet that even a small puddle made by the hose yesterday is still there this morning. I was surprised, I thought it would have vanished by now. A far off jet drags its own thunder behind it. People are out walking, with and without dogs. Since there is no breeze, everything is still and getting hotter. It's quiet, either the birds are sleeping in or they are gone out somewhere, too far for me to hear their notes.
Honey glued the bird's water bowl again, and is filling it up, carefully placing the pumice rock in it so the little birds can drink and won't drown. The surface has settled and is like a mirror of the leaves above it, there is no wind to ripple it. There has been no rain for weeks now, though we get clouds, they carry the rain off to other places, leaving us to wonder just how far out of the drought we can remain if this goes on. The water stays in the bowl so it must have worked, at least for the moment.
Someone hit our mailbox, pushing it over, now he's gone around with the truck to see if he can pull it upright again. The letters slide too far back for the mail carrier, usually a lady, to reach. There is always something, even something minor, that needs fixing, or adjusting, or painting, something always needs to be done.
Now the cicadas start their chorus, now the clouds part occasionally and let down the sun, now there is the invisible hand of the wind carressing the leaves. An ordinary morning, every day something to learn . . .
Mindful
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
Mary Oliver
Can you learn something from looking out the window and reading the words other people use to tell their stories? I don't know, but I keep looking out and seeing new things, hearing songs, the variety of light and the lack of it. The poet's words can make me see the ordinary in not so ordinary ways. Sometimes I wonder if there is ever any such thing as ordinary, or is everything, every moment unique and precious. There are days nothing seems ordinary and days when everything is. Some mornings all the words in the world seem distant and hard to fathom, and I take my meaning from just watching, and doing what is needed, and comfort in that routine. Though I can't help wonder this morning, what prayers my thinning grass will make, and if those clouds, dark and not so distant now, will rain down more than a quick sprinkle, and keep us from sliding back into drought.
Honey glued the bird's water bowl again, and is filling it up, carefully placing the pumice rock in it so the little birds can drink and won't drown. The surface has settled and is like a mirror of the leaves above it, there is no wind to ripple it. There has been no rain for weeks now, though we get clouds, they carry the rain off to other places, leaving us to wonder just how far out of the drought we can remain if this goes on. The water stays in the bowl so it must have worked, at least for the moment.
Someone hit our mailbox, pushing it over, now he's gone around with the truck to see if he can pull it upright again. The letters slide too far back for the mail carrier, usually a lady, to reach. There is always something, even something minor, that needs fixing, or adjusting, or painting, something always needs to be done.
Now the cicadas start their chorus, now the clouds part occasionally and let down the sun, now there is the invisible hand of the wind carressing the leaves. An ordinary morning, every day something to learn . . .
Mindful
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
Mary Oliver
Can you learn something from looking out the window and reading the words other people use to tell their stories? I don't know, but I keep looking out and seeing new things, hearing songs, the variety of light and the lack of it. The poet's words can make me see the ordinary in not so ordinary ways. Sometimes I wonder if there is ever any such thing as ordinary, or is everything, every moment unique and precious. There are days nothing seems ordinary and days when everything is. Some mornings all the words in the world seem distant and hard to fathom, and I take my meaning from just watching, and doing what is needed, and comfort in that routine. Though I can't help wonder this morning, what prayers my thinning grass will make, and if those clouds, dark and not so distant now, will rain down more than a quick sprinkle, and keep us from sliding back into drought.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
May 29, 2012
Monday on Tuesday, back to routine, sometimes you wonder if a break in the routine is worth trying to get back into the routine at the end of it <smile> I think summer has arrived, it's hot this morning, and the sky is the summer sky, blue all around broken only by the white clouds coming and going. There is more breeze this morning, and the sun strobing in and out leaving long streaks of light and shadow across the yard. The smooth wood of the crepe myrtle glows, painted with sunlight, and the wind chimes make flashes of reflection. It's hot enough for the cicadas to be calling to each other already, the sound of summer, cicadas and lawnmowers. Each morning, early just after sunrise or in the long cool of just about dark, someone is mowing, all summer long. I don't think we would recognize summer without those two sounds. Mourning doves are adding their own plaintive protest to the late starting week . . .
It's the day after a long weekend, and we all need something to wake us up a little . . .
Thomas Transtormer
We are not serving it out of doors this morning, but yes, coffee is welcome, and sometimes the inspiration to get up and get moving. I'm about half for coffee, the other half is tea. Some mornings, coffee seems too . . . aggressive. I just want a nice cup of tea, want to wake up gently and warm. The smell of coffee is its best attribute, that alone can wake you up, sometimes the taste is a pale ghost of that smell. Tea on the other hand generally tastes more intense than it smells, something you have to get close to actually enjoy. Coffee is a bully, it reaches out with that great and powerful smell and knocks you up the side of the head with it, and then, when you drink it, imparts the caffeine in a wallop . . . the salutary push! Go! While tea wheedles . . . aw, come on, get closer, inhale the aroma, feel your soul settle, now sip and slide into the day. In my world there is a place for both attitudes!
Settle back into the routine . . . it will be a short week . . .
It's the day after a long weekend, and we all need something to wake us up a little . . .
Espresso
The black coffee they serve out of doors
among tables and chairs gaudy as insects.
Precious distillations
filled with the same strength as Yes and No.
It’s carried out from the gloomy kitchen
and looks into the sun without blinking.
In the daylight a dot of beneficent black
that quickly flows into a pale customer.
It’s like the drops of black profoundness
sometimes gathered up by the soul,
giving a salutary push: Go!
Inspiration to open your eyes.
Thomas Transtormer
We are not serving it out of doors this morning, but yes, coffee is welcome, and sometimes the inspiration to get up and get moving. I'm about half for coffee, the other half is tea. Some mornings, coffee seems too . . . aggressive. I just want a nice cup of tea, want to wake up gently and warm. The smell of coffee is its best attribute, that alone can wake you up, sometimes the taste is a pale ghost of that smell. Tea on the other hand generally tastes more intense than it smells, something you have to get close to actually enjoy. Coffee is a bully, it reaches out with that great and powerful smell and knocks you up the side of the head with it, and then, when you drink it, imparts the caffeine in a wallop . . . the salutary push! Go! While tea wheedles . . . aw, come on, get closer, inhale the aroma, feel your soul settle, now sip and slide into the day. In my world there is a place for both attitudes!
Settle back into the routine . . . it will be a short week . . .
Monday, May 28, 2012
May 28, 2012
A beautiful morning, sunny, warm, a bit of a breeze, my favorite sky, blue with white fair weather clouds, that build up and vanish while you watch them. Kids are out on bicycles, riding in groups with dogs trailing after them. Cars with boat behind them rounding the corner headed down toward the bay, people wanting to be on the water. How many picnics will there be today? How may family get-togethers? How many will remember those who helped secure our freedoms at the cost of their lives or their health or simply missing their children and spouses for months at a time, sometimes for years?
Memorial day . . . I am sending this poem about the people who go to war, and what happens for those left behind. It's about a distant war, but there are really no distant wars, they are all connected, they are all won or lost by the soldiers fighting them for a cause, and there are always causes, and the people in power who send the soldiers, even by the families left behind, and the people those soldiers are fighting for, all are connected, and live with the victory or the defeat and the aftermath of both. We have our freedoms as a result of sacrifice, of the will of the country to keep our freedom and our way of life. We need to honor that will and those sacrifices. We need to remember . . .
Memorial day . . . I am sending this poem about the people who go to war, and what happens for those left behind. It's about a distant war, but there are really no distant wars, they are all connected, they are all won or lost by the soldiers fighting them for a cause, and there are always causes, and the people in power who send the soldiers, even by the families left behind, and the people those soldiers are fighting for, all are connected, and live with the victory or the defeat and the aftermath of both. We have our freedoms as a result of sacrifice, of the will of the country to keep our freedom and our way of life. We need to honor that will and those sacrifices. We need to remember . . .
Edouard
Edouard shall we leave
tomorrow
for Verdun again
shall we set out for the great days
and never be the same
never
tomorrow
for Verdun again
shall we set out for the great days
and never be the same
never
time
is what is left
shall we start
this time in the spring
and they lead your cows out
next week to sell at the fair
and the brambles learn to scribble
over the first field
is what is left
shall we start
this time in the spring
and they lead your cows out
next week to sell at the fair
and the brambles learn to scribble
over the first field
Edouard shall we have gone
when the leaves come out
but before the heat
slows the grand marches
days like those
the heights and the dying
at thy right hand
sound a long horn
and here the bright handles
will fog over
things will break and stay broken
in the keeping of women
the sheep get lost
the barns
burned unconsoled in the darkness
when the leaves come out
but before the heat
slows the grand marches
days like those
the heights and the dying
at thy right hand
sound a long horn
and here the bright handles
will fog over
things will break and stay broken
in the keeping of women
the sheep get lost
the barns
burned unconsoled in the darkness
Edouard what would you have given
not to go
sitting that last night by the fire
again
but shall we be the same
tomorrow night shall we not have gone
leaving the faces and nightingales
as you know we will live
and what never comes back will be
you and me
It is one of the truest things ever written, that the people who come back from war are not the people who went, they are changed by the experience, some in ways that make them stronger, some in ways that haunt them the rest of their lives, and either way, those are the sacrifices we need to remember. "What would you have given not to go" but they went and fought for what they believed in, and some lived to come home, and some did not, but even the living were changed, and their families were, and the country was changed by them. And today we remember all of them, we have this day to say that we remember . . . that we might not understand all they sacrificed, all the ways they were changed, but that we honor them by remembering . . .
not to go
sitting that last night by the fire
again
but shall we be the same
tomorrow night shall we not have gone
leaving the faces and nightingales
as you know we will live
and what never comes back will be
you and me
W. S. Merwin
It is one of the truest things ever written, that the people who come back from war are not the people who went, they are changed by the experience, some in ways that make them stronger, some in ways that haunt them the rest of their lives, and either way, those are the sacrifices we need to remember. "What would you have given not to go" but they went and fought for what they believed in, and some lived to come home, and some did not, but even the living were changed, and their families were, and the country was changed by them. And today we remember all of them, we have this day to say that we remember . . . that we might not understand all they sacrificed, all the ways they were changed, but that we honor them by remembering . . .
Saturday, May 26, 2012
May 26, 2012
A half and half morning, half of me want to go back to bed, half of me wants to start now and just do stuff, stuff I have been putting off or stuff I have been wanting to do. I match the outside, half cloudy, half sunny, half something in between. Yeah I know . . . too many halves but it really depends on the way you mark the halves, so many ways that there are always more halves than you suspect. Ladies are out running with their dogs this morning, in neon shorts and white tank tops, dogs, big ones, black and golden brown, just trotting along side, looking at everything. The cat sped through the yard and up close to the house, then it disappeared down the driveway.
The cane is winning again! There is a whole forest of little white sprouts, some a foot tall now, lavish and lush growing where Honey had cleared it all out. It's just amazing stuff, and I am sure y'all are tired of hearing about it but, it's just such a vote for continuing in the face of adversity, of thriving in spite of everything, of the persistence of life that I can't resist it. Down on Toddville every year someone cuts a whole huge square of that cane down to the ground, and in a month its six feet tall again and turning green. By the end of summer it looks just as thick and lively as ever.
This morning a poem about . . . poetry, well, and other things. There are all kinds of silences, even as noisy as our lives are, so many devices with so many sounds, there are times when we have silence inside and out.
Silences
for Elizabeth
1
Poetry is a weapon, and should be used,
though not in the crudity of violence.
It is a prayer before an unknown altar,
a spell to bless the silence.
2
There is a music beyond all this,
beyond all forms of grievance,
where anger lays its muzzle down
into the lap of silence.
3
Or some butterfly script,
fathomed only by the other,
as supple fingers draw
a silent message from the tangible.
John Montague
Poetry as prayer at an unknown altar; a lot of poems seem like that, wanting to send a prayer into the world, a prayer for the noticing of things, for what is in our hearts, and questions in our minds. So much anger in the world, most headlines scream with it, and for this few days, when I have not been listening to the news, the silence of ignorance has been a blessing, though I know that all that rage and fear and anger is not lying its muzzle in the lap of silence, I am having an indulgence of silence. Every poem, someone is writing script that the poet and reader share, the messages are between the lines and in the connections, and the poet is someone who starts the connection but neither the poet nor the reader know where it will go, or what meaning will arrive, even after years, new things will be discovered in a poem because a new reader is reading it, you bring new vision to it, a re-vision of it.
Every moment this morning has been a sort of reading between the lines, lines of cloud and sun, of shadow and deeper shadow. Between the notes of mockingbird and mourning dove there is silence, "the beauty of innuendoes" and in that silence what I hear are my own thoughts pulsing, and then outside the rhythm of cicadas.
The cane is winning again! There is a whole forest of little white sprouts, some a foot tall now, lavish and lush growing where Honey had cleared it all out. It's just amazing stuff, and I am sure y'all are tired of hearing about it but, it's just such a vote for continuing in the face of adversity, of thriving in spite of everything, of the persistence of life that I can't resist it. Down on Toddville every year someone cuts a whole huge square of that cane down to the ground, and in a month its six feet tall again and turning green. By the end of summer it looks just as thick and lively as ever.
This morning a poem about . . . poetry, well, and other things. There are all kinds of silences, even as noisy as our lives are, so many devices with so many sounds, there are times when we have silence inside and out.
Silences
for Elizabeth
1
Poetry is a weapon, and should be used,
though not in the crudity of violence.
It is a prayer before an unknown altar,
a spell to bless the silence.
2
There is a music beyond all this,
beyond all forms of grievance,
where anger lays its muzzle down
into the lap of silence.
3
Or some butterfly script,
fathomed only by the other,
as supple fingers draw
a silent message from the tangible.
John Montague
Poetry as prayer at an unknown altar; a lot of poems seem like that, wanting to send a prayer into the world, a prayer for the noticing of things, for what is in our hearts, and questions in our minds. So much anger in the world, most headlines scream with it, and for this few days, when I have not been listening to the news, the silence of ignorance has been a blessing, though I know that all that rage and fear and anger is not lying its muzzle in the lap of silence, I am having an indulgence of silence. Every poem, someone is writing script that the poet and reader share, the messages are between the lines and in the connections, and the poet is someone who starts the connection but neither the poet nor the reader know where it will go, or what meaning will arrive, even after years, new things will be discovered in a poem because a new reader is reading it, you bring new vision to it, a re-vision of it.
Every moment this morning has been a sort of reading between the lines, lines of cloud and sun, of shadow and deeper shadow. Between the notes of mockingbird and mourning dove there is silence, "the beauty of innuendoes" and in that silence what I hear are my own thoughts pulsing, and then outside the rhythm of cicadas.
Friday, May 25, 2012
May 25, 2012
Last day of school for this year, everything done and finished, left early to make final copies and take next year's first class's supplies to be stored at school! Hooray! Purchase orders all done, grades turned in, surprises for the girls, and final farewells. That was the most fun class I have ever done, though tons of work and kind of scary to start with. All the girl's were talking about how much time they would have over the summer to do beading, several were already thinking of things they could make to sell at their churches and in their neighborhoods. I was glad to see them so excited, and pleased that they enjoyed it enough to continue to do it.
There were all kinds of birds out when I left this morning, mourning doves, and cardinals predominated. I don't know where all the morning doves are coming from, as I usually don't see so many. You might hear them but I have certainly seen a bunch this week. We always have cardinals and blue jays, and little wrens or sparrows, but mourning doves and the big woodpeckers, and the egrets both tall and small are more rare.
It's Friday of a holiday weekend, and because I was hurrying around yesterday and this morning doing all the final stuff, I thought about how full my head was of bits and pieces of things I need to do and things I want to do and so on. So here is an end of the week poem if I have ever read one. Actually, of all the people I send this note to, I am sure Mikayla will laugh the hardest and understand it the most!!
There are Days
for Lawrence Sullivan
There are days when
one should be able
to pluck off one's head
like a dented or worn
helmet, straight from
the nape and collarbone
(those crackling branches!)
and place it firmly down
in the bed of a flowing stream.
Clear, clean, chill currents
coursing and spuming through
the sour and stale compartments
of the brain, dimmed eardrums,
bleared eyesockets, filmed tongue.
And then set it back again
on the base of the shoulders:
well tamped down, of course,
the laved skin and mouth,
the marble of the eyes
rinsed and ready
for love; for prophecy?
John Montague
Yes, I think there have been a lot of times in my life when that would have been such a welcome skill to have, just clear everything out to the walls, empty the brain, refresh everything, and see the world with new eyes, and be read for anything that would come from all that scouring and cleaning things out!
So there it is for the end of the week and for me the end of one more year of classes. I did not realize how long I have been doing this. since 1997 I think, or !996, and how much I look forward to doing it again next year. Hope you have a lovely Friday and that there were be joys both great and small to brighten the end of your week, and that a long weekend will find you having fun in good company!
There were all kinds of birds out when I left this morning, mourning doves, and cardinals predominated. I don't know where all the morning doves are coming from, as I usually don't see so many. You might hear them but I have certainly seen a bunch this week. We always have cardinals and blue jays, and little wrens or sparrows, but mourning doves and the big woodpeckers, and the egrets both tall and small are more rare.
It's Friday of a holiday weekend, and because I was hurrying around yesterday and this morning doing all the final stuff, I thought about how full my head was of bits and pieces of things I need to do and things I want to do and so on. So here is an end of the week poem if I have ever read one. Actually, of all the people I send this note to, I am sure Mikayla will laugh the hardest and understand it the most!!
There are Days
for Lawrence Sullivan
There are days when
one should be able
to pluck off one's head
like a dented or worn
helmet, straight from
the nape and collarbone
(those crackling branches!)
and place it firmly down
in the bed of a flowing stream.
Clear, clean, chill currents
coursing and spuming through
the sour and stale compartments
of the brain, dimmed eardrums,
bleared eyesockets, filmed tongue.
And then set it back again
on the base of the shoulders:
well tamped down, of course,
the laved skin and mouth,
the marble of the eyes
rinsed and ready
for love; for prophecy?
John Montague
Yes, I think there have been a lot of times in my life when that would have been such a welcome skill to have, just clear everything out to the walls, empty the brain, refresh everything, and see the world with new eyes, and be read for anything that would come from all that scouring and cleaning things out!
So there it is for the end of the week and for me the end of one more year of classes. I did not realize how long I have been doing this. since 1997 I think, or !996, and how much I look forward to doing it again next year. Hope you have a lovely Friday and that there were be joys both great and small to brighten the end of your week, and that a long weekend will find you having fun in good company!
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
May 23, 2012
A late start, school this morning, and then before I though of it, starting to grade their final exams, and now I need a break and a poem. It's summer outside, hot and sticky and blindingly bright! There is only one part of that I don't like . . . sticky! The heat in the car when I got out of class just soaked into my bones and was the first time I really felt warm since last summer <smile>! Nobody seems to understand that the real heat in a closed up car really does feel like it's soaking down through the skin to warm up your bones. I have never minded the heat but sometimes our humidity can be very oppressive, like trying to breathe soup, the air tends to move sluggishly in and out of your lungs, and your skin seems to condense water out of the air, leaving your clothes sticking to that dampness. This is the time of year I miss the desert most, when it's just beginning to get hot. There the heat is so different that sometimes you have a hard time imagining it's from the same source.
There were a dozen mourning doves on the driveway as I left this morning, usually I only see one, maybe two. This morning the driveway was awash with cooing that sounds like a little owl, a sad little owl at that. They all flew up in a gray cloud when I started the car and vanished in seconds.
Today, longing for the desert, I'm going to send a poem I wrote while living there. Kind of like a way to both acknowledge the longing and ease it a little.
Desert
There is something
about the land
I cannot condense
and pour into your ear
or lay at your feet.
Sometimes the air
blooms up the mountainside
like fine white flour.
A raven's stellar eye
stalks the fractured earth
for an absence of motion.
Wind waves of sand
crash against the glass
howling at separation.
Seldom rains
clatter down on plants
living a stone's life.
There is something other
and the other
cannot be named,
but can be felt
through the skin
like the slow numb
blade of a knife.
All those desert things seem so alien here, where we are surrounded by so much green and water in every form, creek, bayou, bay, gulf. Rainfall here would be a deluge in the desert, though we verge on drought, the desert never lives expecting rain, it celebrates when it arrives and then lets it go. Things bloom in an instant, even small shrimp in Death Valley suddenly come out of . . . hiding and flourish briefly in the shallow brackish puddles. A few days after a rain, there is green in so many unexpected places, and in the spring carpets of flowers, or arbors of tiny fragrant pink roses in the canyons. Still, here it's hard to imagine this country as dangerous, though it certainly has its share, but when you live in the desert, you know it can kill you, you understand that on some fundamental level you never forget or fail to recognize. One year in the desert, it did not rain the entire year, and yes, that was not normal, but things went on pretty much as they always had; here an entire year without rain, which I don't think has ever happened, and it's catastrophe, things die all over, lakes dry up, and houses crack, and that happens when there is still rain, just not as much as we are used to. Both places are home to a variety of people and creatures who live there. Here, life is perhaps easier, perhaps more gentle. but not any more beautiful, just a different kind of beauty in both places, both under the same sky, both at the mercy of circumstances, weather, and civilization. Both feel like home to me.
There were a dozen mourning doves on the driveway as I left this morning, usually I only see one, maybe two. This morning the driveway was awash with cooing that sounds like a little owl, a sad little owl at that. They all flew up in a gray cloud when I started the car and vanished in seconds.
Today, longing for the desert, I'm going to send a poem I wrote while living there. Kind of like a way to both acknowledge the longing and ease it a little.
Desert
There is something
about the land
I cannot condense
and pour into your ear
or lay at your feet.
Sometimes the air
blooms up the mountainside
like fine white flour.
A raven's stellar eye
stalks the fractured earth
for an absence of motion.
Wind waves of sand
crash against the glass
howling at separation.
Seldom rains
clatter down on plants
living a stone's life.
There is something other
and the other
cannot be named,
but can be felt
through the skin
like the slow numb
blade of a knife.
All those desert things seem so alien here, where we are surrounded by so much green and water in every form, creek, bayou, bay, gulf. Rainfall here would be a deluge in the desert, though we verge on drought, the desert never lives expecting rain, it celebrates when it arrives and then lets it go. Things bloom in an instant, even small shrimp in Death Valley suddenly come out of . . . hiding and flourish briefly in the shallow brackish puddles. A few days after a rain, there is green in so many unexpected places, and in the spring carpets of flowers, or arbors of tiny fragrant pink roses in the canyons. Still, here it's hard to imagine this country as dangerous, though it certainly has its share, but when you live in the desert, you know it can kill you, you understand that on some fundamental level you never forget or fail to recognize. One year in the desert, it did not rain the entire year, and yes, that was not normal, but things went on pretty much as they always had; here an entire year without rain, which I don't think has ever happened, and it's catastrophe, things die all over, lakes dry up, and houses crack, and that happens when there is still rain, just not as much as we are used to. Both places are home to a variety of people and creatures who live there. Here, life is perhaps easier, perhaps more gentle. but not any more beautiful, just a different kind of beauty in both places, both under the same sky, both at the mercy of circumstances, weather, and civilization. Both feel like home to me.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
May 22, 2012
A strong breeze is coming from the west this morning, everything moving especially the cane. The clouds have dissolved into sheer white over the blue, making the sunlight softer. The yard is quiet, no manic mockingbirds this morning, just a lot of shadows and and some smaller birds cheeping in the crepe myrtle. Perhaps all the other birds have found mates by now and are quietly nesting.
Some days don't start with a smile and something in the very air makes you feel jumpy and cross. Whatever it is, I have no patience this morning. I'm going directly to find a poem and see if that won't make a difference.
Mind Wanting More
Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.
But the mind always
wants more than it has --
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.
Holly Hughes
Some days don't start with a smile and something in the very air makes you feel jumpy and cross. Whatever it is, I have no patience this morning. I'm going directly to find a poem and see if that won't make a difference.
Mind Wanting More
Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.
But the mind always
wants more than it has --
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.
Holly Hughes
It does seem this morning that my mind wants more of something, I just wish I knew what it was, something dramatic would be good, or one more hour to come up with some better words, or perhaps the egret to come back and bring its white peace into the morning. I don't know, some days are just restless and aching for something that I can't even identify. Some days the cicada's sound is not a pleasant background to the heat of the day, but an annoying buzz kind of like one cricket that gets in and sings its one-note song loudly and for hours in the dead of night. Even my eternal fascination with how fast the cane grows this morning finds nothing but uneasiness in that, as if its constant search for territory is something dreadful.
All right, there are enough joys strewn around to make a difference. It is sunny, not raining or gloomy, there are small birds out there making the rounds of their day. The cat is lying in the sun, without a care in the world, warm and sleepy. People are still going to work, all the school buses have gone now with their loads of restless kids here near the end of school. Mikayla will be home today and we are going out, out to errands, and to the craft store, just out! Perhaps we will go by the nursery and get a new bird bowl! The day will go on with it's unnerving out-of-sortness and joys will be discovered and even things out <chuckle> Well, I can hope, yes? <grin>
All right, there are enough joys strewn around to make a difference. It is sunny, not raining or gloomy, there are small birds out there making the rounds of their day. The cat is lying in the sun, without a care in the world, warm and sleepy. People are still going to work, all the school buses have gone now with their loads of restless kids here near the end of school. Mikayla will be home today and we are going out, out to errands, and to the craft store, just out! Perhaps we will go by the nursery and get a new bird bowl! The day will go on with it's unnerving out-of-sortness and joys will be discovered and even things out <chuckle> Well, I can hope, yes? <grin>
Monday, May 21, 2012
May 21 2012
You can tell it's close to our summer, the days grow humid and hot, everything is bathed in sunlight, the clouds line up for a chance at afternoon showers, and the flowers have mostly all bloomed by now, and the green has matured. The birds have been . . . squirrelly lately, probably the last few males wanting to hitch up to one of the last available females, and the desperation making them short tempered and squally. Until late afternoon there is a lot of shade on the ground and sun in the tops of trees, only after noon does the light start creeping over the thinning grass.
This is the last week of school and I am finishing up making the ring pattern for Friday. I had promised them something fun to do on the last day and the way this ring is turning out it's bound to appeal to them, I hope <smile>. They have been a good class as a whole and some of them have really blossomed and experimented with the patterns and stitches. I can't wait to see their final exams, two bracelets they had to make from a pattern they altered. They could not make it the way it was written, so basically they had to figure out two new patterns using different shapes and sizes of beads and create their own clasps. It should be great to see what they come up with.
And, I got the best compliments this morning, something I overheard as I was going around looking at what they were doing. One of the eight grade girls was talking about how she would miss mini-courses next year in the ninth grade. She told her friend before she started taking mini-courses she had to have a rubric, a step by step plan of what was expected and how it would be graded, but the mini courses taught her to make her own plan and do her own evaluation. And she said she was glad the parents had so little say in what mini courses contained, or which ones they took because some of the mini courses she took that her parents thought were a waste of time, like beading, taught her the most about how do figure things out for herself. I had to restrain myself from going over there and giving her a great big hug for just about making my whole entire nine weeks, but I try not to react to things they are discussing among themselves, unless they invite me into the conversation, and I was not at her table. But I felt like maybe all this work was worth something if even one of the girls got that much out of this course! Hooray! <chuckle>
from "Tweets"
White gull glissando
& minor cormorant notes
Wild keyboard
Turkey vulture floats above
The littered highway
Waste management
Marie Harris
When I was out this morning, I almost ran into a flock of turkey vultures, having a breakfast of armadillo around the corner down the street from us, a blind corner. When I drove round it, three or four vultures suddenly flapped up barely skimming the windshield and one just hopped over to the other lane. These were all black, and the skin of the armadillo gleamed oily silver in the sun. It scared me so bad I was still shaking when I got to the corner to make the turn on Toddville. They are huge black apparitions that you know are around, that you see on telephone poles and street lights, in dead trees and, like this morning, on the road. Lately, they seem to be more reluctant to move, even if they see you coming, but this morning the surprise was on both sides, a moment frozen in a heartbeat and then over, danger averted, and I could see them settle down again at their meal before I got to the end of the road. This haiku recalled their purpose, waste management, and they were doin' a fine job of it!
At the library, where I went to discuss this month's book, you could see sea gulls in the air above the bay, like white strokes of ink on the blue paper sky. They sure do make a racket when there are a bunch of them together. They are as loud and abrasive in their own way as the crows are some mornings, the black and white of rough voices.
The clouds are still lining up and up, perhaps they will condense to rain, but I think maybe the sun will win this round, too much blue, too much light
This is the last week of school and I am finishing up making the ring pattern for Friday. I had promised them something fun to do on the last day and the way this ring is turning out it's bound to appeal to them, I hope <smile>. They have been a good class as a whole and some of them have really blossomed and experimented with the patterns and stitches. I can't wait to see their final exams, two bracelets they had to make from a pattern they altered. They could not make it the way it was written, so basically they had to figure out two new patterns using different shapes and sizes of beads and create their own clasps. It should be great to see what they come up with.
And, I got the best compliments this morning, something I overheard as I was going around looking at what they were doing. One of the eight grade girls was talking about how she would miss mini-courses next year in the ninth grade. She told her friend before she started taking mini-courses she had to have a rubric, a step by step plan of what was expected and how it would be graded, but the mini courses taught her to make her own plan and do her own evaluation. And she said she was glad the parents had so little say in what mini courses contained, or which ones they took because some of the mini courses she took that her parents thought were a waste of time, like beading, taught her the most about how do figure things out for herself. I had to restrain myself from going over there and giving her a great big hug for just about making my whole entire nine weeks, but I try not to react to things they are discussing among themselves, unless they invite me into the conversation, and I was not at her table. But I felt like maybe all this work was worth something if even one of the girls got that much out of this course! Hooray! <chuckle>
from "Tweets"
White gull glissando
& minor cormorant notes
Wild keyboard
Turkey vulture floats above
The littered highway
Waste management
Marie Harris
When I was out this morning, I almost ran into a flock of turkey vultures, having a breakfast of armadillo around the corner down the street from us, a blind corner. When I drove round it, three or four vultures suddenly flapped up barely skimming the windshield and one just hopped over to the other lane. These were all black, and the skin of the armadillo gleamed oily silver in the sun. It scared me so bad I was still shaking when I got to the corner to make the turn on Toddville. They are huge black apparitions that you know are around, that you see on telephone poles and street lights, in dead trees and, like this morning, on the road. Lately, they seem to be more reluctant to move, even if they see you coming, but this morning the surprise was on both sides, a moment frozen in a heartbeat and then over, danger averted, and I could see them settle down again at their meal before I got to the end of the road. This haiku recalled their purpose, waste management, and they were doin' a fine job of it!
At the library, where I went to discuss this month's book, you could see sea gulls in the air above the bay, like white strokes of ink on the blue paper sky. They sure do make a racket when there are a bunch of them together. They are as loud and abrasive in their own way as the crows are some mornings, the black and white of rough voices.
The clouds are still lining up and up, perhaps they will condense to rain, but I think maybe the sun will win this round, too much blue, too much light
Friday, May 18, 2012
May 18, 2012
Some mornings start with a bang some with a whimper, this morning it was two very different birds, the mockingbird right outside in the holly bush and an egret just passing through. The mockingbird decided to start singing while it was still pitch black dark, the clock said 4:17 and he kept it up, the same series of songs over and over until I got up at 5:30. I think as I sat down here to start this note, he moved around to the back yard and started singing again, mostly cardinal songs with occasional mourning dove, and the added spice of blue jay. The egret flew in between the trees to land just under the maple and begin a careful inspection of the grass between the trees: not one of the cattle egrets but one of the taller common egrets, with a wing span of maybe four feet or so. After a little bit, it moved elegantly down the driveway and out into the quiet street, its head bobbing with its long stride and occasionally looking left or right. Then it vanished past the shed and the yard seemed a lot emptier than it had been only moments before. Still, the mockingbird is out there, singing, and the bird that calls "cheater, cheater, cheater" is too. It could be that one is another mockingbird and they are having a duel.
For light and the white wings of the egret . . .
From "The Hours of Darkness"
it is the light
that appears to change and be many
to be today
to flutter as leaves
to recognize the rings of trees
to come again
one of the stars is from
the day of the cowrie
one is from a time in the garden
we see the youth of the light
in all its ages
we see it as bright
points of animals
made long ago out of night
how small the day is
the time of colors
the rush of brightness
W. S. Merwin
That egret was like a star, like a constellation of brightness in the shadowed morning under the trees with their silent rings. Its presence made the day seem wider, more open, white riding its wings like the shine of those stars in the night. I suppose if you live where the night sky is full of the depth of stars that the day might seem smaller, but here, lit up by so many artificial stars, and usually clouded, the night sky is a lid you could sometimes reach out and touch. It takes the shining of birds in the daylight to raise it up and make it more distant.
For light and the white wings of the egret . . .
From "The Hours of Darkness"
it is the light
that appears to change and be many
to be today
to flutter as leaves
to recognize the rings of trees
to come again
one of the stars is from
the day of the cowrie
one is from a time in the garden
we see the youth of the light
in all its ages
we see it as bright
points of animals
made long ago out of night
how small the day is
the time of colors
the rush of brightness
W. S. Merwin
That egret was like a star, like a constellation of brightness in the shadowed morning under the trees with their silent rings. Its presence made the day seem wider, more open, white riding its wings like the shine of those stars in the night. I suppose if you live where the night sky is full of the depth of stars that the day might seem smaller, but here, lit up by so many artificial stars, and usually clouded, the night sky is a lid you could sometimes reach out and touch. It takes the shining of birds in the daylight to raise it up and make it more distant.
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