February 15, 2013

It's so quiet tonight, dark and quiet, except for the heater running, there is silence, no birds, no cars in this middle-of-the-night hour.  When the heater stops running, the quiet makes your ears ring just to have something to listen to.  And it's so dark, no moon, low humidity, no clouds, this is as dark as it gets here, nothing to reflect back the prevalent light, so a lot more darkness.  It's odd for it to be so dark and quiet at the same time . . . 

Reading the headlines, a meteorite fell into Russia, causing windows to shatter, and a roof to collapse, and lots of video of it.  An asteroid is also passing close to earth, closer that some satellites so the scientists say.  So much excitement in one night . . . they say the meteorite and the asteroid are not related,  just coincidence.  That's a lot of coincidence for one night. 

The Mystery of Meteors 

Eleanor Lerman 

I am out before dawn, marching a small dog through a meager park

Boulevards angle away, newspapers fly around like blind white birds

Two days in a row I have not seen the meteors

though the radio news says they are overhead

Leonid's brimstones are barred by clouds; I cannot read

the signs in heaven, I cannot see night rendered into fire 

And yet I do believe a net of glitter is above me

You would not think I still knew these things:

I get on the train, I buy the food, I sweep, discuss,

consider gloves or boots, and in the summer,

open windows, find beads to string with pearls

You would not think that I had survived

anything but the life you see me living now 

In the darkness, the dog stops and sniffs the air

She has been alone, she has known danger,

and so now she watches for it always

and I agree, with the conviction of my mistakes.

But in the second part of my life, slowly, slowly,

I begin to counsel bravery. Slowly, slowly,

I begin to feel the planets turning, and I am turning

toward the crackling shower of their sparks 

These are the mysteries I could not approach when I was younger:

the boulevards, the meteors, the deep desires that split the sky

Walking down the paths of the cold park

I remember myself, the one who can wait out anything

So I caution the dog to go silently, to bear with me

the burden of knowing what spins on and on above our heads 

For this is our reward:  Come Armageddon, come fire or flood,

come love, not love, millennia of portents--

there is a future in which the dog and I are laughing

Born into it, the mystery, I know we will be saved 

It's the mystery of such occurrences that fascinates us.  I remember being home for one of the regular meteor showers, and Shawn drove us up to Trans-mountain Road to be away from much of the light.  We watched them flicker in and out, the motion of the light catching our eye for the briefest of moments, like the shower of sparks that fall when you brush against a lit cigarette, sparks out before they hit the earth.  Mystery is a good thing, if we knew everything the world would be a much narrower place.  It's what we don't know that keeps us going, the marveling, the discoveries, the wonder which we all need.  It's what saves us, all that we don't know, the questions we still have, answers yet to be found.

February 13, 2013

Cloudy and clearing early, now about half blue the rest thinning to the gauzy curtain stage.  At school this morning, I noticed there were a lot of crows out.  Here, don't usually see so many, they appear to be fairly solitary of come mostly in pairs, but this morning one of the bare trees across the road was festooned with crows, and they were very noisy.  When the students came in this morning, they had a LOT in common with the crows, about the noise level anyway.  They are working on cards in the style of one of their favorite artists.  It seems to require a lot of discussion.  I believe a lot of the kids only know one artist . . . Van Gogh.  Out of sixteen at least six are doing cards in the style of this artist . . . it should be interesting!  Last year it was Monet.  I'm surprised no one did Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or even Georgia O'Keefe.  One student has a father who is an artist, and she chose to work in his style, and unusual choice but understandable.  It's always fascinating to see what they choose and how they approach doing cards in the style of their artist. 

Van Gogh painted two chairs:  one chair in the daylight, his chair, one in the night, Gaugain's. 

Two Chairs 

Your chair in the sunny day

the light everywhere bright and full

the straw of the seat, wood frame,

red tile and oceanic walls,

simple pleasures

rest and a pipe

a blue door to open

escape to beauty 

Gaugain's chair, dark and rich,

deep brown, with blue curves

brooding green seat

wide and comfortable

novels stacked up

candle and gaslight

no sunshine   no door

no escape here 

S. Crowson 

There are many ways to interpret any work of art.  When I look at these two paintings, I see they are as different as day and night, portraits of the artists, and their work.  Given the stormy relationship the two artists had you can still see it was important to Van Gogh, that he was trying to come to some understanding.  I don't know if he ever did, but the work was undoubtedly a way to make that relationship visible. 

I look forward to seeing how my students make their relationship with the artist and the art visible.

 

Now the clouds are vanished and the sky is full of light.  Too soon the dark will come, and still I will see Van Gogh lighting up the starry night!

 

See the two paintings at www.vggallery.com

 

February 11, 2013

A blustery, chilly gray day with intermittent rain, some of it hard and some no more than a sprinkle.  There is sound filling the morning, pine trees and wind chimes, with the cane sounding like some large animal is rooting around in there, who knows, one could be.  As I was headed to school this morning, I almost collided with a small herd of deer that forgot to look both ways.  A small buck and several does leaped from the thicket lining Youpon.  If they had come from a yard on the right, I could not have stopped in time, but because I saw the flash of them out the driver's side window I had time to stop before I hit them.   I am sure they were as startled as I was, though I know there are more deer roaming around the neighborhood than there used to be.  Too much concrete, too few trees left, and I noticed down the low end of Toddville they are clearing more. <sigh>  They cleared a lot of trees from that huge lot before you get to Meyer, but have done nothing with the lot for the last year or so.  And I don't know why they are cutting the trees down again, a mystery that will be solved at some future time. 

It's Monday, and feels like Monday, the sort of Monday they write cartoons about.   I have been saving this haiku for just such a day! 

Let's put up the net

and make a green world of pretend

in the house. 

Buson 

I would like to pretend that it's some day besides Monday, and some weather besides what we've got.  I would like to pretend that wind from the north never gives me a rotten headache, and that I love gray gloomy days, and the wind.   I will have to pretend sunshine until there is some.  It seems that even my students today would rather be home and sleeping as well.  Today is the first day I have seen them try to paint with their heads pillowed on their arms at the tables.  There was a 5th grad tour and half the class was out for band, or orchestra, or drama or chorus.  Perhaps things will be better Wednesday.  It will almost have to be by definition, it won't be Monday! 

So until it isn't Monday, have a nice green pretend that it's some other day <smile>!

February 8, 2013

Ah . . . sunshine again!  The day is so beautiful that I wish I could share it with all the people expecting blizzard conditions today.  For a severe lack of sleep, I am thinking that the sunshine and blue skies today are what is keeping me functioning.  Tomorrow cloudy again and Sunday a good chance of severe storms, and then weather more like winter.  I am hoping no freezes as the little fruit trees are popping out with fuchsia and white flowers, and the maple tree plans on helicopter seeds any day now.  Things are beginning to look very spring like and I would not want all that tender new growth to get a icy surprise! 

The daily tasks make up our lives; we often don't remember them years later, maybe not even the character of the days, much less the particulars.  I think poets are sometimes trying to save what the ordinary is like, what the days are made up of, the ordinary, the routine . . . 

Song 

I'm about to go shopping.

It rained in the night.

The cat is asleep on a

clothes hamper.  The roses

are moldy.  Humidity.

The sun goes in and out.

I have a letter to answer.

Postcard won't do.  This

time, God willing, I'll

remember the Ivory Snow. 

James Schuyler 

Going to the market, getting groceries, buying what's necessary, and sometimes what isn't.  There have been several nights of rain lately, wind and the sound of water dripping off our non-existent eaves.  The back yard cat sleeps on Michael's old sailboat since the canoe is gone.  Roses are something that don't grow here very well, just for those reasons:  mold and humidity.  Today the sun is mostly out, tomorrow mostly will be in.  I write a letter nearly every morning and send it to people I love.  For me, email will do <smile>.  And now that I spend a fair amount of time standing in front of the cupboard or the refrigerator trying to remember what it was I opened them for, I understand the poet's prayer;  I have used it myself. 

Mikayla is off to visit the boys and it seems too quiet already . . . even though she's only been gone a couple of hours.  The silence has a different quality. 

On the cerulean (yes, I know, a poet word) sky there is one long line of puffy white cloud, like the kind made by old steam engines crossing the country back in their heyday.  Or it could be a line of a natural poem, scribbled by water and the wind.  Or it could be the beginning of a dream drifting there waiting for nightfall . . .  Whatever it is, it makes the sky more interesting and gives the imagination somewhere soft to stand . . .

February 7, 2013

Sunshine!  I'm always so glad about sunshine!  You couldn't ask for a bluer sky, it positively vibrates with blue and is cloudless.  A hawk is circling the park across the street, tilting and banking, in increasing circles.  On one of its rounds I could see the bunch of white feathers under its tail, and the shape of the wing is different from the vultures, whose wings are broader and seem flatter.  They soar too but they do a lot less flapping than a hawk, as if they don't want to put out the energy, just take advantage of heat and every breeze.  I don't see any of the vultures today, just the lone hawk, and I see them so rarely it's a treat every time.   The ground is still soggy from yesterday's rain, the striped cat cannot sleep in the sun at the end of the driveway.  I don't know where he is taking his morning nap, the leftover water will evaporate in the sun pretty soon and perhaps he can find a dry place later. 

A pair of fighter jets just streaked overhead, loud enough to wake the dead, a flash of white and they were gone.  Seems a morning for rare occurrences, hardly ever have the jets come over so far, though some big helicopters go over about once a week and for all their noise when I go out to look, it seems I never can find them, but those jets were like gleaming roaring arrows flung out against the blue of the sky, no contrails, just an excess of sound. 

There are poems about hawks but no one about morning hawks that I could find.  I'm pretty sure that was a Harris hawk and there are some pretty spectacular pictures of them on the Net.  I did find this lovely poem by Robert Penn Warren; it has some luscious language in it, from the sublime opening to the prosaic closing, bringing us back down to earth! 

Evening Hawk 

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through

Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,

Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding

The last tumultuous avalanche of

Light above pines and the guttural gorge,

The hawk comes.

               His wing

Scythes down another day, his motion

Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear

The crashless fall of stalks of Time. 

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error. 

Look!  Look!  he is climbing the last light

Who knows neither Time nor error, and under

Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings

Into shadow. 

          Long now,

The last thrush is still, the last bat

Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics.  His wisdom

Is ancient, too, and immense.  The star

Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain. 

If there were no wind we might, we think, hear

The earth grind on its axis, or history

Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar. 

Robert Penn Warren 

There are so many ways to look at anything, so many ways to describe things, that it's not surprising that each poet brings their whole life to every poem, all their experiences whether ordinary or extra-ordinary.  Today just getting to see the hawk out there hungry and hunting makes me glad I am not a rabbit or a mouse.  The hawk is gone now and all that's left is the impression of the hungry hunter on an even more blank blue sky, the emptiness more empty from being filled for those few moments with all that life.

February 6, 2013

Dark and dreary when I got up this morning and nothing much has changed, except we have both fog AND rain!  Sheesh!  You'd thing one or the other was more than enough for one morning.  The fog is fading but still hanging round some fields and near the water.  My red maple is living up to its name, thousands of little red flower line the branches, making a bright spot in the gloom.  I noticed one of the ash trees along the road is making new leaves, little tufts of vibrant chartreuse, like clusters of  closed umbrellas, that I am sure will open in a day or two.  Most of the trees still look like winter, bare branches and soggy trunks, but I think an early spring is definitely in the offing.  The cane thinks it spring already, there must be at least 50 new shoots, gleaming white stalks spearing their way up through dead leaves and the winter grass. 

The rain is only an occasional spatter now . . . but still it makes me want a poem about rain . . . 

Morning Rain 

A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light.
I hear it among treetop leaves before mist
Arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and,
Windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened

Colors grace thatch homes for a moment.
Flocks and herds of things wild glisten
Faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across
Half a mountain -- and lingers on past noon. 

Tu Fu 

It's a slight rain, but only bathed in darkness this morning, and still sprinkling.  It seems to be growing a little lighter, perhaps just a break before more rain.   Here there is nowhere near the musk of rain that there is in the desert, the smell of rain before it gets to you there is enough to take your breath away as everything of dust and pollen, blooms and rocks, gives up its scent in one grand sigh in anticipation of getting wet.  The air is dense with desert, and even after the rain finishes washing everything, there is still that heady perfume lingering until the sun finally drives it away.  The air here can sometimes approach that level of headiness but only after there has been no rain for too many days, in drought, or edging into it. 

The gloom without storm makes me sleepy, the light like dawn or twilight all day, and both those times the body wants rest and perhaps a little more sleep or a nap.  So much gray and drizzle makes me want to curl up and hibernate!

February 4, 2013

Cloudier and cloudier, from a sky thinly veiled with white cloud this morning, now it's shrouded with gray and getting darker. In this light, hard to find a bright spot, but when I came home, the buds on the maple tree are much bigger now, looking like the flowers they actually are, and the bees are out, honey bees, the first I've seen since summer. Looks like early spring no matter what the groundhog says. This morning the area temps were all around 60 to start with; it actually got warmer during the night, except for Conroe, north of Houston. I think Conroe keeps their thermometer in the shade and under a sprinkler. They are nearly always a good deal colder than places just a few miles away. This morning was not an exception to that occurrence, while everyone else was about 60, Conroe came in at an even 50, almost ten degrees lower, 15 degrees compared to some places!

Leaving school there were so many birds, an entire field of grackles, and all along the wires some tiny little birds flocking there. Some kind of finch or sparrow I think because they had yellow bellies and brownish gray backs. They were sure excited about something, the noise level from those tiny birds was tremendous! The grackles always fascinate me because they sound like they have a little electronic mechanism that makes their sounds, whistles, clacks, whirrs, they don't sing but have a huge range of sounds that make them so interesting to listen to. This morning my students were a lot like those little birds on the wire, they were so noisy, but it was a good kind of noise, mostly talking and laughing and full of high spirits. I had to remind them we were still in the library, and they mostly settled down, but I had to remind them again later. The eighth graders are doing the state tests and I reminded them to go quietly in the hall ways. I kept waiting for announcements and the bell, even though I knew they would not be doing that today so as not to interrupt the ones taking the tests. I waited until I saw kids in the halls before I dismissed mine, not knowing exactly when they were supposed to be released.

I wanted a poem about work, instead I remembered a poem about sparrows, Hardware Sparrows, ones that had taken up living in a Lowe's hardware . . .

Hardware Sparrows

Out for a deadbolt, light bulbs
and two-by-fours, I find a flock
of sparrows safe from hawks

and weather under the roof
of Lowe's amazing discount
store. They skitter from the racks

of stockpiled posts and hoses
to a spill of winter birdseed
on the concrete floor.

How they know to forage here,
I can't guess, but the automatic door
is close enough,

and we've had a week of storms.

They are, after all, ubiquitous,
though poor, their only song
an irritating noise,

and yet they soar to offer,
amid hardware,
rope and handyman brochures,

some relief, as if a flurry of notes
from Mozart swirled
from seed to ceiling,

entreating us to set aside
our evening chores and
take grace where we find it,

saying it is possible,
even in this month of flood,
blackout and frustration,

to float once more on sheer
survival and the shadowy
bliss we exist to explore.

Even the little sparrow has something we need to learn, making the best of things and still singing. I think they were clever to find a place with food, and shelter, and little danger. Yet, I wonder what the people working there thought of them, and the other customers. I have seen little birds in hardware stores and even our grocery store. At the nursery, where most of the buildings are open to the outside, they fly in and out as if it were all one big world, inside or outside, it doesn't matter. When I see them in their little flocks, and they come to the water bowl or play in the trees, they always make me smile. I can imagine people that day in the hardware store smiled as well to see such enterprising little creatures!

Spring is creeping up in buds and bees. I know it's supposed to be winter, but . . . somehow I'm not the only one who doesn't believe it.