The world transfixed

Yesterday at the far edge of the lakebed, in the afternoon, dust was rising, miles away, higher and higher. How was it possible that when it is so wet here, and that side had gotten just as much snow? But, then too, this morning I walked out nearly as far as the water, all the snow gone, (it had been too wet to walk on at all yesterday) but what wasn’t dry was also hard with cold. I kept going until it was goopy. I stood and turned, sinking into the mud. Winter Ridge still with snow, some trees full too; tall and white against the blue.

The moon was out before sundown last evening. Mocking the melted snow that had accumulated wherever the sun did not touch. Mocking too the sun, I think. Beautiful in the now clearing sky. And last night, this morning, one a.m., I stepped out again to see it shining brightly, the night sky pale, the pond glowing, stars hiding their faces. I stood and listened. Nothing was making a sound, everything in the world was transfixed by the moon’s face.

Here's an older poem about the moon in a way:

Russia won’t rule out nuclear weapons

This sad heart, the moon goes quickly

to wane as though she can’t turn

her full face quickly enough away

from the earth.


A few life cycles of orbit

& tides she must forget.

How often she had lingered

into the daylight, her presence

a walk of shame for all to see.

How she shudders now

for ever having loved this world.

Hieroglyphic messages

Yesterday, the lake was half-size. Dust and clouds and snow creating the optical illusion that only a thin line of water existed. This morning with the wind’s rest, the lake is full and wide and full of shimmer. In the sun, with more blue sky than not, I was pelted with snow as I walked the lakebed. Winter Ridge has fresh snow, but not much and less than yesterday.

One always wonders if a place that you love can ever get better. I mean sure the views, the quiet, the birds, the views, the stars, the focus, the ease, the views that’s why I come. But is that all, says one so fortunate. This year there are Turkey Vultures roosting in the trees outside the lodge. Hard not to say things just got a lot better. I wander over in the evening to look at them, they’re like, great, tourists. But they are wonderous. And more polite than the flicker that has been peeping in my window. I think he’s actually just admiring himself in the reflection and occasionally practicing dance moves. If I was that beautiful, I’d appreciate me too.

Here's a weak hand poem from the weekend:

At daybreak, literally as sun rises
over the spine of mountain
I’m on the Playa; on the cracked
surface run through with a thousand
small notes from rain, wind, coyote,
bird: whatever is blown or walks
or flies, writes something here.
Water rises and falls leaving hieroglyphic
messages as it seeps away, evaporates,
leaves the West.

Needing the West

While driving from Elko, full of gratefulness after spending the night with a friend at her lovely, lovely home but feeling a little tired, a little headache-y, (the fourth day of driving catching up with me) I thought (even as the sky expanded and exhaled light) am I done with the West? And then I was suddenly back into pines and wide meadows and extra sky, and I stepped on the Playa at sundown and the heat that it had absorbed all day pushed back at me, like a lover’s embrace. I shook off that feeling with a laugh. I am not done with the West (the same way I am not done with Rome or Paris) or those small towns that dot the way from there to here. The ones that sit like comfort on the tongue, Plush, Adel, Paisley even the wild buck of Winnemucca. Coming out of Humboldt County Nevada into Oregon on the Warner Highway I stop and took a picture of the Welcome to Oregon sign. Twenty years ago, when Jerry retired, we came this way as we headed to Klamath Falls. We stopped at this sign and took a picture. Issac was eleven, Justine would have been nine. The day must have been as warm yesterday because they were in short sleeves and shorts. Jerry is in the background, hamming it up.

When I realized the other morning as I was driving (that I would be going that route) I nearly had to pull the car over and cry. Twenty years. Twenty years. I may have just been full of history and longing as I had been listening to Warlight by Michael Ondaatje for the past few days as I drove. I kept playing the last chapters starting from The Street of the Small Daggers, I’ve read the book twice and I’ve read this section more than twice and now I’ve listened to it at least seven times. It feels like a writing class is happening as you read/listen: this is how it’s done. It’s the same way I feel whenever I reread the Molly Gloss story Lambing Season: this is how it is done. It’s how you get so caught in the story and scene and character that you forget you are not in it, of it. I’m sure there’s some scientific term that would explain why this happens, how; for me it is just magic.

So, I am here at Playa for a few days watching the lakebed and the light, the birds and the light, the sky and the dust and the shimmer of water in the light. I’m not looking for comfort or rest. I’m looking for good writing, I’m searching for magic.

Here’s a poem from yesterday morning before I got into my car for one more day’s drive:

Behind me is a dog not mine.
A fire in front – not mine a well –
a window filled with mountain views.
The sky becoming daylight.
After a day’s journey, I journey
once more, into a day
that will be filled with sun
and Spring heat. When I arrive
in late afternoon I will walk
once more upon the Playa
under the great open sky
and sort my thoughts
for the work I must do.

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.