Church

Quiet and quiet still

Under the pine I build the altar
leave a prayer for something wild,
leave an offering, listen for the first
star, say goodnight to the birds
set the camera on the soft needles
of the pine hoping to catch a god,
a night dwelling sprite or just a hungry,
being wandering through the yard.

Then six pictures (and in five shots) close and closer
and then just to the edge clearly: the fox.
Accepting the offering, sharing the darkness
with the ghost house and the streetlight.
The quiet night quiet still. Offering accepted.
Prayer answered. And then, the sixth picture
the last, the night dwelling sprite, her mask and
ringtail prominent, too late for the snack
desecrating the altar, knocking the camera
down, no worship here.

Something shifted

Between 0730 and 1030 on Tuesday the 22nd, one of the old lilac bushes collapsed. This was the cardinal seat. Though I do note the cardinals are still out there sitting in it. I was able to pin down the time by careful scrutiny of my yard cam photos. At 0730 five cardinals were on the deck and in the background two lilacs; two pictures later,1030-ish, the bush is down. We had a lot of rain this past week and some gusting winds. The loss of anything green is sad; I guess that emotion is enough for losing a bird throne. Whenever I look out the window a bright red king is still there: observing the world from a different height, admiring the view and it still keeps them safe from hawks.

Last night when I was closing curtains a hawk glided from a tree and swept along about a foot off the ground over the lawn and slowly around the neighbor’s house. It felt like it too had heard the news from Ukraine, that maybe peace will return, that right now I can quit this yard and go tend my own problems. Not that a hawk could have a heart as dark and hard as Putin’s, but still, something (felt) shifted, however briefly, in the world.

The forsythia out my office window is blooming, rioting in yellow. I love when the cardinals come to add a little zest of color, a pop as the home shows like to say. I was coveting the colors in the yard behind mine, the forsythia there has been bright yellow all week but now this one is catching up. Today we are to have more rain and heavy winds, possible thunderstorms, typical end of March stuff. (Side note, goldfinches have been visiting this week.)

Speaking of March stuff, I have been watching women’s college basketball like a fiend. I do not think I’d seen a whole game in over two years until the tournament got underway and since I have spent hours (hours!) watching and learning the players and remaining [almost] neutral in my cheers. I have been a UCONN fan, since the days we lived in Connecticut. I love that Coach Auriemma was so happy for his team after the last win (2 overtimes!), but also how he became so emotional with the responsibility of coaching and getting these players to his program on a promise he has made. But then, any of the teams still left are interesting and so, so talented. The game on Friday night between UCONN and Stanford is going to be fantastic. I do like both teams and both coaches. And I agree with the ESPN commentator yesterday that women’s college basketball is 1000 percent better than the men’s: nuanced, faster, tougher; the majority of the women are not going on to play after college so, for many, this is it.

BRAD CLIFT / THE HARTFORD COURANT 1995

A mocking sort of rusty call

From the window grackle chat, sparrow gossip, cardinal chide, a blackbird sings, so close I should see her. Before sunrise this morning a wren was close and loud. A few days ago I wrote:

The smallest bird
destroys morning
with her great song.

The trees here are quickly putting out lots of new growth, the maple and the ornamental pear are showing their colors. A few of the trees in the neighborhood have creamy white and pink blossoms already. When I look back at my Instagram from a year ago (2021), we’re at the same place. Going back another year (2020) the same; 2019 the same flowers are blooming. We moved here October of 2018. Going back through time like that makes everything look normal.

Today, on NPR, a story about a death in Ukraine of a 96-year-old man who survived four (four!) concentration camps during WWII and has been killed in Putin’s “denazification”. I always pause when I hear some circumstance of death that seems (that makes me imagine) every breath was parceled out at birth. I do the same when I hear a story that makes it seem every moment in a life had  been choregraphed to get a person to the exact second a plane hits a tower, a crane falls, a river floods. But there isn’t anything mystical or fateful about it, death is sped along so often by man’s ponderous horror. In Boris Romantschenko’s case, manufactured lies of full of horrors. 

Grackle’s have a distinctive cackle, a mocking sort of rusty call. They’re big and shiny birds, with yellow eyes, their feathers are iridescent colors of purple and dark teals on black. The talk a lot, when together they are loud. Often one or two will have their beaks toward the sky while they shout out the day’s news. Today they seemed especially animated, especially loud in their telling. Today they seemed to have heard all the other hard news of the world, the shame and sorrow that is just reaching us.

Something peaceful, neutral

The flowers outside are the only thing that has a little tameness about them. I didn't rake leaves last fall, letting whatever creatures need to sleep (and eat) amongst them have peace. I think my neighbor behind us may have been a little cerebral about it all. He and his wife were out picking up branches and pinecones during a heavy wind last week; they’ve mown their lawn once already. I'll start cleaning tomorrow. I saw Olive the ground hog today, that's my spring. She was paused on the lawn, slim from her sleep. She headed toward the woods near the little ravine. If she needs water that’s where she’ll head, I imagine. Down there it’s always damp. As you walk through the neighborhood there are places you hear water running. A groundhog has to drink. She has shown up just as one of the pears went bad, think of the odds of that? I cut the pear up and left it for her. She will be my friend, little brown flat cat.

Speaking of little brown cats, here’s my neighbor’s cat from the other day, she was out not being very hidden while watching birds and when I knocked on the window she came over to the door until I stepped out to say hello. She makes the rounds (we are on a cul-de-sac, lol) daily. I did see her go under the deck the other day and it made me wonder if Olive was around and they seem to have some sort of interspecies friendship/enmity going on. Now that Olive is back it will be interesting to see what happens this year. Something peaceful, neutral.

A little knowing*

Today is sunny, warm, But there is pondering on many things. Here are the daffies welcoming the sun back and a poem from early in the month. It came from page 29 of Segues A Correspondence in Poetry between William Stafford and Marvin Bell. "The world's wheel, alrighty, *a little knowing and presence and a long build-up that sends up our long ideas of what is natural, while we turn through "excess" that is only being, trees that are only treeful awaiting our seeing,..." (Marvin Bell)

                                        If a tree stands in the forest
                                        and no one hears it sing in the wind,
                                        is it a tree? If the shadow falls
                                        upon no one who can tell us
                                        is it shade, is the tree
                                        alone? If a tree stands in the forest
                                        and no hand, no human hand
                                        ever touches or draws
                                        close a leaf or needle to smell
                                        or taste or take an afternoon
                                        resting beneath as sun and cloud
                                        pass over, mottling through
                                        those leaves or needles
                                        or branches, if no one stays
                                        on the ground at the tree’s base
                                        listening to what is above
                                        what sings or crawls or looks back
                                        is that person ever alive?

Miscellaneous weak hand poems and miscellaneous birds

Here in the quiet of snow
day pauses, it too loves the hush,
the quilted whisper of flake
against flake, ice nestling ice.
Light swallowing the night.

The quiet and chill seems
all I own somedays,
all I should want to own.
I gather them both like marbles
and covet their perfect clear
and singular beauty.

The night and its comforts
are often visited by the twin
demons of regret and sorrow
those two argumentative sisters
who rule only their world
but meddle in mine. They’re
like those two orange tabby cats
gorgeous and poised
in the afternoon
sun who then run through the 3AM
darkness and bite your toes.

The moon shifts its place in the sky.
Of course, I know it isn’t the moon’s
shifting but mine. My world tilting
back into other alignments
but even with the lengthening days
(the shortening nights) something
feels off. The moon’s brilliance
is charming but needs so much
darkness to shine.

Open it to other things

This is a picture taken in Brugge, Belgium when my sisters were visiting (2017, Jerry and I were still living in Mons at the time), we'd driven up for the day, it was cool when we got there but by lunch, we were able to sit outside and enjoy a meal. It was between tourist seasons, mid-Fall.

It's such a calm picture. October hadn’t been very cold, the leaves were still turning, the canals were quiet. These houses that line the canal interest me. In Amiens, France the houses are on a canal fed by the River Somme. Of course, Amsterdam; of course, Venice; then, Ghent and a host of smaller towns and villages. These all are attractive to me. Not as much as houses hidden behind foliage, or passageways that dodge between buildings and streets or secret gardens. Perhaps I can blame Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Today my yard and feeders have been overrun with cowbirds and grackles. They came enmasse, planning ahead for tomorrow’s snow. Bullying the cardinals and intimidating the sparrows, pushing the doves around; real hoodlum behavior. I wonder about the birds in Ukraine. The animals that are watching the fighting. Listening. Trying to get away. Much like all the millions of people.

A friend of mine in Europe says that her family is trying to get a co-worker’s wife and child out of Ukraine. In a day or two I’ll ask again how that is going, let her take a breath. Her family is Romanian, she grew up under communism. Her opinion of Putin is unprintable. I wish I could give her a hug, I wish I could get a hug from her, she’s a great hugger.

Well, this is a meandering meander, here’s a poem I found today from a prompt that I did while at the library on SHAPE. I feel I want to pick pieces of it out, open it to other things:

Like the first time you connect not only the dots
but understand what the dots represent:
the star becomes more than star
the dog becomes wolf, the horse that long day
with your father, before he shut the door
and awareness of that door, perhaps
the grain of that door, the weight as it slammed
like a summer storm relentless and horrible.
The horse that survived the wasps, and the wire
and still loved you.