Over the river and through the woods

 

Jerry and I spent a week (a week!) watching the light shift through the trees near the Meramac River in Crawford County Missouri, just outside Cuba. We had a charming little cabin on a hill above the river. Aside from the tornado warning on Sunday it was an uneventful week, plenty of sleep, lots of listening to the world, watching the rain. And noting that when Jerry says he wants one meal of only hot dogs with no judgment he tops out at three. Here's what else happened:

Outside the kitchen door a beetle of some variety watches me, as I move to take its picture it turns. Paparazzi not wanted here.

The Meramac River gurgles and glints; in the understory squirrels are roughing up leaves, moving that prime acorn to another hiding spot. The leaves drift down. A tufted titmouse, a chickadee, a sparrow feed. Crows and Blue Jays chat loudly not coming close enough to share their sheen. Cattle call, the long hollow sound echoes over the river. A train rumbles.

Dusk. Coyotes are still warming up, a few yips, a few barks. Truck noises carry over the hill. Looking up the tree branches are holding the perfect sky and stars just blooming. An owl tests the acoustics, I call back, silence as I listen for wings.

Overnight rain splashes through the trees, cold tries out its toes creeping around the cabin. The dog that was barking nearby is caught on the yard cam.

And wind and wind and wind and then the day wakes to mist over the river, up through the trees around the cabin. The leaves have been lazy this year, turning colors late, the season shifting to a new way.

Tuesday morning, beside the road, up the hill, the old snag is topped with sunbathers, round shouldered and shiny headed buzzards getting what warmth they can before heading out to search for carrion. One spreads its wings and turns slightly, the wing span catching light creating shadow. Later I see them far above the trees, riding currants.

A week here has been a good tune out, a good rest.

Great sadness envelopes the night

 
Empty nest and hollow sky

“Under our ribs our hearts are bloody stars.” ~~ Joy Harjo

Say you swallowed the moon like a wafer
and all the luminosity and myth is in you absorbed
through membrane into blood. The moon
in all its phases, burning through
the body with a fullness and ache.

In you, bile rises and falls pulled by new gravity;
sickness and relief in equal draw.
How this satellite rolls over your abdomen
like miniature elbows and knees. The same
intensity that a child brings in its
daily recess along the womb’s ridge.

Say the moon moves into your spleen
the sudden absence of light gnaws a hole that grows
between lung and rib, like scaffolding torn
away. Your heart becomes as lonely
as the sky, begins to miss that dedicated path,
translucent face, the dim arc of light.

Then great sadness envelopes the night,
anticipating those cold velvet depths,
reaching for a brightness that no longer
orbits your world.

~~~

Taking a Meanders break for a little meandering of other sorts. Be kind, be safe.

Those little jerks

 

It’s the end of hummingbird time. With the late sunrise and early dusk, when these beauties leave it almost seems like a personal affront. It’s not even cold yet. But flowers are wrapping up their work and the insects that sustain those little jerks are also disappearing. There’s been no activity at the feeders for at least two days. Other birds, especially sparrows and finches, are amping up their activity. Off the deck we have two lilacs where all the birds huddle and hide, flit and fly, sing and sun. Sometimes its as though the bushes themselves want to take off so many birds are in there.

The sunflowers still have seeds. Yesterday and today there has been much feasting happening out my office window. I get distracted, I’ve been working on a short story and some poems and it seems that every few minutes something requires attention:

Here’s an old poem that highlights hummingbirds. Be safe.

Theory of lightning

The bedside light lit itself, our first indication of storm.
Then a swarm of hummingbirds shadowed the screen,
flares of lacquer gleamed as lightning collided with night.
Masses of wing, red throats and green, ghostly
in the darkness, shimmering even as darkness returned.

So much commotion, that we opened the window
listened to their charges and feints, the high squeak
of defeat as they left the feeders, which flamed redder
with each flash and with each arc more
and more birds arrived. Their gathering
made our earlier disagreement shatter.
This surprise of so many hungry bodies
flooded senses, lifted the anger.

Just as swiftly the tempest broke.
Hail and wind forced the melee
to the ground, where like a magic trick
gone wrong they scattered, gone by the next burst.

I leaned back from the squall, closed
the window, your arms enclosed me,
our bodies became the cage
for those hundred, diminutive hearts.

 

Mostly I was happy

This morning as the sun was chasing long shadows across the world, a bird hit the window. I looked out and there was no small body crumpled to the ground, or flailing nearby, but on the window’s screen a wee bit of down fluttered. Whew, I wouldn’t have to go out. Not yet. Not that it was cold, or raining or in some other way a day I didn’t want to enter. Mostly I was happy no creature needed me. Not that a bird would; if it was injured, I would be obligated to ball up a towel, find a small box and set it into a nest until it felt better. There are cats slinking about, I couldn’t leave it on the ground.

When I was younger (7, 9, 11) I couldn’t leave my horses (Breyer models) in the window overnight. I wouldn’t let my stuffed animals sit lonely on a shelf, alone and uncovered; everyone got paired up or had a pod of friends. I feared for the cat when I knew it was snowing and blowing. And then too, if someone wasn’t home, or came home too late, I fretted. I couldn’t sleep as I imagined a life suddenly without them. Eventually this went away, these feelings as I realized (or felt) that no one else had these hanging over them. Of course, who did I talk to about it: no one. The worrying came back eventually, intensified when Issac was born – baby nightmares: a missing child, a car that can’t stop, handing the baby to someone who vanished like smoke – and these dreams persisted for a number of years. I blame the mess that pregnancy does to your mind and body. Your psyche goes into hyper alertness. I’m sure it is always such, for everyone. Ultimately it eases off (this dread, this limbo), I feel that people are safe. (Mostly safe, bearably safe?) I can harden my heart so it doesn’t require me to wander at 3AM into the darkness I can’t break. I can’t make nests for those who have flown. But I’m always ready. That never goes away.

Angels and Saints

Angels in hawk feathers
swoop along the Mad River.
You mouth the name Mad,
mad, mad until your body
vibrates like a wire.

You see hawks perched
on mile markers and fence posts
dining on field mice, fluffing
their feathers for warmth.

All along the highway they mock
your devotion.

Right before crossing into Ohio
a saint disguised as a three-legged coyote
limps onto a frozen stream. You stop
your car and then he stops, head low watching.
You mutter about walking on water
and a truck startles you, spooks the coyote.
He continues his sad journey through the cold.
Looking back once, yellow eyes meet yours,
a blessing, now you can go on.

What will there be when this is done

I love the intimacy of the cardinal and sunflower. It’s not just food that attracts him, he is closer. It is that nearness, the neck over the face embrace, the kiss. The sunflower knows it was made for this moment, its whole being went into this: the height, the flower, the head of soft color that comes in early fall. The sunflower has endured: the bee, the hard rain and winds, the heat (oh, the heat), the finches who tear at its halo and then this. Just in the past two days, chickadees, more finches, a tufted titmouse and then this fellow. He has looked right at me as I stood at the window, as though to ask, what will there be when this is done?

Here's an older poem that wonders the same question.

Vacancy

The cats take their places of worship
around the quilted mound of my body
and like a benevolent god I rest under
their gaze. They purr their prayers
to the shadows, slender children moving
toward sleep. The room becomes silent
I am vigilant. The house settles, a dog shakes
its collar and, in the hallway, my son’s desk lamp
finally closes the darkness. He moves one day closer
to becoming a man.

I cannot stop the night.

 

 

Sorrow-based cloth

Autumn started here much like how it did in Italy. One day summer, the calendar and earth record a day and the next day clear cool weather and a slanted light that shows new things in what had been shadow.

I was up before dawn yesterday listening to the owls. They had a long and animated talk while day got closer. Yesterday it got up to into the mid 70’s but the humidity was so low and a nice wind was blowing. This morning it was “chilly”, mid 40’s, the birds were fluffed and puffed and huddled on the deck waiting for their feeders. (I’ve put out the first suet feeder for anyone migrating and needing extra chow.) I noted a number of finches scouring the sunflowers for the last seeds; in fact, there is one there right now dining.

I spent a lot of time these past few days thinking about missing people. Not just those that are somewhere else and I miss them, though there is a lot of that. Not just those that have passed out of my life through time, neglect, hurt and silence. And of course, those gone from the world. Missing and grief go hand in hand, in many instances they wear the same sorrow-based cloth. There is the same number of words you can throw into the wind hoping it will attach itself to dust, pollen, winged things and get the words where they need to go. The type of missing people I was thinking about are all those missing through societal neglect. Because when it comes down to it, that’s what it is. As a country (though we are not the only one) we have decided who is worth saving and who is worth looking for when they have disappeared. Those women, those children and those men who “go missing” weren’t part of an overnight turn of events. America for years has been busy selecting who can live, who has worth. It’s what the country – every country? – is built on. We continue to have that striding toward our promise of a better nation, but we have grown accustomed to the pushing others aside and forgetting they exist so that when one of their loved ones, one of their precious children (we are all someone’s child) only those few who matter (to the press, to the police, to those _____ ) get seen as someone worth our thoughts and prayers and search dogs. And it continues to appear that blonde and blue-eyed missing is a tragedy beyond compare. It continues.

Missing

All night long I dreamt lost things home –
the brown pony with the yarn mane,
the girl whose brother paces the street,
my father’s voice, the school ring lost at
the homecoming game – things gone
through time, misunderstanding, inflexibility,
or neglect.

These dreams were dramatic, redemptive
like purple crocus through snow,
or the hummingbird that tasted my cheek.

On waking I ventured to the front door,
sure the rabbits had found
the transplanted asters, ready to settle
back on earth, I was greeted
by the missing dog, gone a week,
who squeezed past the entry, curled to my leg,
kissed my foot in gratitude.

Now it's dusk

 

This morning, high up in the lonely pine, finches pretending to be pine cones. I love how they go right to the top and then shuffle down blending and shifting colors. I also appreciate that they stayed while I went back into the house to get my camera.

I have a begonia plant that I’ve had for two years, I originally bought two hanging baskets and then have been cutting the plant back, repotting and at times propagating. Right now, it’s under a tree near our bedroom where it gets sun and lots of shade and water when it rains. It is also the only place I’ve seen this beauty.

Behind the house I did a quick study of the flower bed, the well picked over sunflowers and the cosmos both blooming and producing seeds – I’ve already saved a big bag full of seeds for next year. While there I was buzzed by the hummingbirds (well known jerks) and then saw the designated Monarch. I notice one a day.

But now it’s dusk, still very warm out, the cicadas are here singing their loud ‘hey baby, hey baby’ song. A small rabbit is munching clover, one of the kids who lives at the first house on the cul-de-sac is spinning around in the street, he’s probably nine, the kind of thing you should be doing on a Friday night in September. Lazy turns, arms out spinning. Over the trees the sound of a band – maybe football tonight at the local high school. My neighbors are out with their son playing, he has a little track for his scooting trike. He’s two and a half now, it’s been really fun watching him grow. The moon is almost above the trees.

I water my tomatoes and geraniums. No rain in the forecast until Monday or Tuesday.

Last night I read poems for First Draft Writer’s Series out of Pendleton. Here’s a poem I read that is full of wonder and light, kind of like what is happening outside right now.

Moonrise

horse face, horse lore in craters,
horses asleep along the shore of the Sea
of Tranquility. Imagine this:

Horses under moonlight
turning into the yard and you wake
to the shiver of the great beasts
teasing and tearing and pulling
the fine grasses of the lawn; their bulk
beneath the window causes the old
house to shudder. They sample
the globe headed peony, snorting
at the cat on the porch who will not
leave her post as long as these shadows
billow. They taste the lilac, the pansy,
the dainty faces of the primrose before
trimming all the willows to horse high lengths

and then they discover the apple tree
its small gems still ripening and then corn,
though fenced in it is still horse neck
accessible. And you have wandered
with them, but room to room until you stand
now at the kitchen window, laughing.
These night mares yours for the taking.

You slip out of the house,
talk softly to them and they turn, snort welcome
and warning but allow you close. Their scent
is sweeter than the first cut hay, their odor
honest and for a moment you are high
on sweat and dust. Like permission you offer
your outstretched palm, salty and damp.
With a bow you place you face near them
blow into their great nostrils and take their
breath into your own lungs. Now a part
of the creature, you pull up onto the shortest
animal, adjust and grab the mane.

As though this was part of a mission, they move
out of the yard, cross the road and enter
your neighbor’s wheat field. We all grab stalks
chewing the green heads as we walk toward
the river. The night sky is full of stars pushing
down, touching the backs of the horses, the top
of your head. At the river we meet deer, elk
and owls who sense you and hold their talk.
You are not horse, you are not wild, your bit
of moondust has forgotten this magic. When
your companions’ step into the water to drink
it is easy to slide off into the coolness, float
away to the far bank. When you turn all heads
are watching you; none cross to bring you back.

Then the moonrises higher, the water shimmers pewter
the horses and deer and elk all turn silver
and the owl with one long cry swoops past
and disappears into the stars. Shivering you
slide back into the water and all the animals
retreat leaving you alone to wander back toward
the outline of the barns, your house, the moon
now following along, but dragging its feet.