2.28.17 The tiny possum

The tiny possum who made it through the winter, and wandered down the wet dirt road last night, leaving behind their blossom shaped tiny footprints

 

And then, the big big beautiful possum, several days later, wandered down the dirt road late at night

3.11.17 So far above and away you are

     The window sill is so close to you, you feel the breeze fluttering past you, past the tablecloth, where you stand by the fabric placed carefully beneath the effervescent vase of flower, and then stretched out beneath the small heavy fruit, that now lie heavily upon their sides.

     The dark umber bottle echoes its hue, shuttered across the patterned cloth.

 The pink of vase and buds call out to the muted colors of the print kept upon the wall.

     The frame of the window is both matching pink, and solicitous green. The sprigs of blossoms frame a bright swath of city, pulling your eye up the small, undefined street, bathed in light, and beyond. Darkness to light. Below to above. Green to pink.          

     You find yourself drawn to the sunbaked land beyond, the buildings piled up in a long line, extending out to some endless dusk-pink horizon.

     The view is so far from the serene immediacy of the windowed room, the scene below showing a soft green columned edifice, a creamy yellow building, and the triangular roof of yet another structure, with its smooth Adagio of windows, as small as a small faraway story from another land.

     The people are story-like also, minute and indistinguishable in their anonymity, as you stand in the dark room, by the beautiful window, as undetected as others may be at this moment, leaning by a darkened window in the buildings below.

          You stand here, feeling as in a dream, so far above and away you are. Here, within a secluded small windowed universe. As, somehow, the whole storied life goes on, without you, far below.

    

(apologies, artist unknown)

2.28.17 Down by the beauty filled

Oh my boyo, almost four years old, down by the beauty filled flooded farmers fields

 

2.28.17 Everyone falls in love differently.

     Everyone falls in love differently. Often, seldom; people, oak trees, dogs, places, paintings, the ocean, your rowboat, that song on the jukebox, your best friend when you were five, your new baby, your seventeenth journal, those wicked great boots.
     Myself, I fall in love a lot. With my beloved, at times with my kids, with friends, with strangers I glimpse, with crabby postmasters, with kind convenience store clerks, with every kid and animal and old person and struggling person.
     And most of all, with places.
     So even if I don't get to travel the world over or see lots of people or things, I seem undeterred, and fully capable of going out some days when the light is just right and the wind and clouds somehow are sublime, and falling in love all over the place.
     With the reflection in this puddle and those geese in their lives, flying by overhead.
     And the coyotes who are wandering round my house most nights, going about living their lives, too.
     And with that tree on the corner, and those goose tracks, like remarkable art, in the mud. And that one tiny possum who survived the whole winter, and last night wandered down this muddy road , in the pitch black night.
     I fall for seasons and trees struggling in the drought of summer and the field next door, with artifacts from the Native People, whom my own kind pushed away, from their own land, when we came here as welcomed immigrants.
     I fall for springtime Oak and Beech leaves still hanging on, to prevent microbial infections. And my five crow siblings, three years old now, off with the hundreds of other crow , but who still come to my compost, and call to urge me to bring leftovers out.
     Falling in love is risky and tough stuff, opening your heart and mind all the time to other lives and other ways. To care and have all those lives matter.
     And yet, sometimes we are just wired this way. So that life and breath and co-existence simply is love.

https://www.facebook.com/GwenMcClellanWordsandPictures/videos/1240271362676312/ 

2.28.17 Dressed in filagree

What a beautiful surprise the river was this morning, dressed with the lace filigree of the softly pattered overhead clouds.