Maybe it is all magic

 

If you need a little light, I can offer the goldfinch.

If you need a little hope, the first young cardinal has visited.

Surprise? Dragonflies have paused their mad flight;

are posed by the garden, balanced on slender bamboo poles.

Their wings filter the Cosmos, softening the fire of orange.

Maybe it is all magic, wonder, grace. Or just the turn summer

takes. Last night a slice of moon, engraved

with the jumping horse, glowed in the angry sky

and cicada music swung through the warm air.

A song in need of tuning, but loud and vibrant.

Before the last rain, the last deluge, a few

exoskeletons hung on the bark of the lonely pine

amber shells strangely emptied; life broken out

for a brief reign.

Look, just now, the squirrel has shooed sparrows

off the feeder and is busily eating,

grooming and mocking the groundhog, Otto, who loves

the sunflowers too, but must wait for whatever

falls. And, on the roof, shadow shows me

that another squirrel is running down

the eaves, her tail flicking wildly the whole journey.

If you need a little light, I can offer this:

every movement is a dance, a chance to claim

what must be done. Get up and go.

Eadweard Muybridge motions

 

An older piece of something I found today while I was working on some fiction. Well it is fiction as well, I can't remember why I wrote it, but I remembered looking at these photos. 

Muybridgean Reanimation

 “Muybridge’s stop-motion technique was an early form of animation that helped pave the way for the motion-picture industry, born a short decade later.”

The work horse was Daddy’s favorite, that’s why he let that man take the pictures. The horse wasn’t just Daddy’s favorite horse or Daddy’s favorite animal on the farm. The horse was his favorite of anything in the world: me, Mama, the farm. When the man came with the camera, Daddy took the horse out and brushed him ‘til his dappled hide looked like marble. He even took his Sunday handkerchief, the one Mama washed and ironed, and wiped the horse’s nose. Mama cried when I brought it back to the house and told her what he did.

When the man asked Papa to put the collar on the horse and work him, Papa smiled, winked at me and started telling the man what a good horse he had. I stood in the background, breathing in the stale warmth of the leather and how when Daddy put the bit in the horse’s mouth his tongue made the snaffle click like gooseberries hitting the pail. The horse turned to look at me, like he was saying, “Hey, what do you do around here?”

I knew I didn’t do much, Mama said the fever hurt my heart and I needed to stay out of the sun and stay cool and not strain too much. Daddy didn’t like me because I couldn’t work, and he thought less of Mama ‘because she couldn’t give him boys. The horse was his worker and his son. He sometimes stayed the night in the barn when Mama talked too much, her loneliness driving him away.

The man with the camera asked Daddy to walk the horse across the barn. He rigged lots of lights and then started taking picture after picture. Daddy was a smiling monkey, if he’d had a tail he would have swung over the beams and hooted; he would move us out of the house and the horse in if he could. The man with the camera said. “That’s all I need” and he told Daddy to take the horse back outside.

While he was gone the man with the camera looked at me. “What’s your story?” he asked, like girls my age shouldn’t still be at home or at least not hanging out in a barn, watching their father parade his plow horse as if it was Joe Cotton. I dipped my head and told him I was too sick to work, too sick to marry. He asked if I wanted my picture taken, make an impression that would last forever. This like I was important. I guess I nodded, okay.

He had props: dresses, fans, hats and a parasol. He tells me I can pick what I want. I step into the granary and change into a long white gown, it feels like sugar, it’s lighter than cheesecloth and swishes and waves as I walk. When I return, the man with the camera takes the mop of my hair in his hand, up close he smells like cumin and lye. He twists my hair over my head, and somehow, it stays in place. Then he tells me to walk.

I start to walk, holding the dress on one side, to keep from tripping and I don’t want the dress dragging where the cows walk every day. It’s hot and the flies follow me, even in the new outfit. The man tosses me a fan, I walk and wave the fan over my head, a one-armed bird. That’s when Daddy returns, his horse on the lead behind him and they both startle at me in the white dress. The man with the camera stops taking pictures, turns to him and says, “These will be an important addition, thousands of people will see these pictures.”

So that’s how it happened, that years after we both have died, I’m stuck with the big, dumb horse walking through the barn over and over again; stuck in eternity with my father’s favorite.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside *

It’s been rainy and hot here. Summer. But it’s compounded with the knowledge of all that is burning. The west, when I look at the maps, I see the places and people I love surrounded by fire and flame; then there is the pandemic, COVID going along its merry way mutating and spreading like a spark to dry timber.

This morning started with a poem -- a balm -- from Naomi Shihab Nye, Kindness:

“Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.”

Which I’ve read before, and forgotten, and now have come back to, so it feels doubly important.

Then I see on Blackstory1619, a picture of Amelia Boynton, with an Alabama State Trooper standing over her after having been beat unconscious at Selma. And I think of the fire and flame that is torching voting in the US. I wonder of the cowardice of all those “representatives” and if any of those writing these laws have an inkling of what people have gone through to vote; are going through.

“…how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.”

After lunch, the lawn had dried and the breeze was blowing the hot air around, we went out to mow, I do the edging and trim work, Jerry cuts the lawn; it takes less than an hour. It was very humid, but the wind felt good. By the front door I found a dead hummingbird. I didn’t tell Jerry; it would make him sad; sometimes I wield a secret as shield.

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside*,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”

Funerary

 At first, it’s just an outline, a weird pattern on the walk
a perfect fold from the begonia leaf that has at last dropped.
Then a shadow, something on the skylight over the porch
maybe a toy glider that has been carried from the neighbor’s
yard like the Cosmo petals littering the lawn, fallen stars.
But stepping close I see it, the glitter of the web wrapped
about the faded green, the tiny trip-hammer heart stilled, that beak
pointing east, wings silent. In the workings of calamity
it is not much. I touch its ruby throat, wrap the minute
carcass in cloth say a short good-bye and lower it away,
away into a cool grave.

Let mortal tongues awake

I’ve been reading a lot lately about Critical Race Theory (CRT), folding it into wider thoughts of race and privilege, class and history, history and truth. To see CRT played out so perfectly through Nikole Hannah-Jones ordeal certainly makes it real and (now) not just theory. It’s these real-life moments and insight that lead to “wokeness” for some. And then there are whole collections of instances that lead me to despair, but not the despair of constant ignorance, hatred, or indifference some face as they walk through life. (Imagine wondering if any place was a safe place? Your home, your car, your neighborhood etc.,) I don’t see those things. I know them, know of them, witness them but I don’t have a lifetime of the aggressive and the passive aggressive insult or the simple colossal moments of, I see you and I will ignore you. Yesterday while I was looking at Instagram, I saw a picture from my “hometown” paper, The Wallowa County Chieftain, and I was shocked by it. It’s an innocent enough picture from the 4th of July parade, but the implication that no one at the paper would have thought to not put this picture up is what concerns me. Yes, Wallowa County is low on the diversity scale as far as population goes, but there are a lot of people there that (must) know what is insulting and what is not, what is culturally inappropriate and what is not, what is racist and what is not. I am encouraged that the comments seem to be that the child in the photo did nothing wrong, but it doesn’t make the costume right. And those commenting are trying to educate those who are using what has become the cliché argument against: bullying, snowflake, leftist, wrong-headed, woke. As though being woke, in all its iterations, is something to be ashamed of – I know I am constantly waking and reawakening, being shaken. It’s a process.

And then there is Texas. Still fighting the Alamo and history. This article from the Austin-American Stateman is a nice summing up of the whole hypocrisy of who owns history and how we think about what not teaching that history does. I think that the quote late in the article, “The Texas story and the Mexican American history taught in schools hinges on the old narrative about the Alamo. “It says who counts and who made Texas the wonderful place it is,” González said. "And for most of this time, the answer has been, ‘Not you, not Mexican Americans, not your family … If anything, you’ve been a problem.””

“It says who counts.” That continues to be a powerful and needed aside, as it has been for years, but it needs to be taken from the ones who see only themselves (as the counted) and their hurt feelings and their fears in these truths need to be put aside. Truth. The truth shall set you free. Let freedom ring.

Just one day out of life, Holiday!

Otto the groundhog (O’Fallon Otto!) is out grazing in the yard, popping clover blooms into his face like popcorn. Whenever anything out of the ordinary moves he runs back to cover, a fur coated slinky. Then he’ll be out again, gobbling. Two days ago, the neighbor’s cat was out chasing Otto, they are about the same size so I’m not sure what her master plan is; he ran from her but not in the save your life kind of way. They both share the same shade of brown, a rich chocolate, but the cat has a fine variations and wears stripes. When glanced from the edge of your vision you’re never sure if it is cat or groundhog. I’m sure somewhere the cat overlords are incensed that this would ever cause confusion. And somewhere the groundhog oversight committee will be sending hate mail as well, “We look nothing like cats, madame, thank you very much. Take it back or your tomatoes are in danger!”

Speaking of tomatoes, two of the cherry tomatoes of my heart came over for the weekend: the girl and her betrothed, drove their brand-new to them car from Ohio and we had a fabulous visit: walking in the parks, an hour at our local “farmer’s market”, grilling some flesh and plant-based sausage, eating out and outside at a fun restaurant in Saint Louis and (and!) a mini art crawl. Oh, and we also celebrated Ian’s birthday early...hugs galore and too much ice cream. The only one not thrilled with this event was Zora, but she’s already recovered from this perceived indignity.

 

You may have the universe if I may have Italy

Garganelli

A man is making pasta, a volcano of flour
is filled with a dozen yolks sprinkled with salt.
He whisks these until every egg is broken and blended
into a smooth golden cream and then the sides
of the cone are folded into this center. Once
every dry ingredient has become moist he kneads
the mass smooth.  He forms the dough into a ball,
cuts a third of it away and feeds it into a pasta press.
These he refeeds until he has a
saffron sheet that looks like fine cloth. From here
he works like a seamstress, cutting equilateral
squares no more than two inches per side.
The blend of sciences then become art as he
takes a corner, spools it around a dowel
and then rolls it across a board
called a comb that creates grooved
tube of pasta. And like that he has food. 

Science, magic, precision. Mangia!

I was reading a travel article today from the New York Times about Capri and Procida. Capri holds a special place in my heart because that's where Jerry and I went on our first date. In 2015 we went back and spent a weekend to mark the 30th anniversary of that date. Procida, I never visited but I sent a money order there every month for our first year in Formia as that's where my landlady lived.

The article mentions Ischia, which was an island I also visited a number of times. During one of the best visits, my friend, Kathy and I, stayed in a hotel that was run by a couple born in Italy, then they went to the states and spent forty years and then returned to Ischia and ran this very small hotel and trattoria. They were fantastic. Their son was a Marine and so they were very happy to have two sailors stay. The first morning we were there (we’d come in late the night before on a small boat full of German tourists) they woke us early so we wouldn’t miss any beach time. And when we came back from the beach, they had lunch ready – and finally we were able to get some sleep during riposo.  We spent that evening talking to them on their balcony, even though the father, call me Papa, was trying to get us to go out dancing (no, not with him!) because we were young and in Italy and the local boys were so nice. But we never went out dancing, we went for gelato, we listened to some families singing, we went and slept well before Papa came to get us: the sun is up, the beach is waiting, the sea is calling!

By morning I was charred

Yesterday, at dusk, under the huge umbrella of the maple, fireflies tangoed, intense and bright. Then as I walked through the house closing curtains and blinds, I noticed that over on my neighbor’s lawn a whole disco ball had exploded and the shimmy and shine was fantastic. Highlighted, at the edge, in one of the raised beds, was a Cosmo just opened. Fiery orange it caught the eye like a struck match, a flare against the fading light. These bright hues held me. It’s like when the Ruby-throated hummingbird sits on the fence around the sunflowers, a guardian preening, flashing scarlet, stop and go as it turns. There is always a second hummingbird near that is zipping just above, a mad pendulum making that racket that only that little zealot makes, a high chirp that could be used to crack truth from spies.

This morning at 0435 the highlight of the fireworks, the Grand Finale, arrived: lightning struck the Lonesome Pine in the front yard. When it hit, when it crashed us awake, our Ring security system called “Motion Detected at the Front Door”, already the rain was lashing the house in a deluge and so as I looked out the window all I could see was the flash of water. It wasn’t until later in the morning that I reviewed the App video and saw the moment the tree was hit and the shower of sparks. The upper reaches of the tree are still incased in the dead vines of ivy and we’re curious if helped the tree during the strike, the rain certainly had its way with any fire.

We went out this afternoon when the sun came out and walked around the tree touching its great trunk, noted some burns and a place where sap is spilling out. Some of the vine remnants have a definite char. Poor old tree I said. It survived the ivy, it survived its partner tree dying, it branches and roots untangled from the other, now I will have to wonder if it will survive this as well.

I had to hunt for this old poem from Klamath about another lightning strike, that certainly held worry in another way. One that worries me (always) about the west and its massive drought.

Lightning Strike

The fire never quite made it over the hill
boiling smoke hid the tree line
and bloodied the sun.

All night the scent of burning pine crackled
through the window and into
my dreams, by morning I was charred,
and dusted with ash.