1.31.13     Trees Thrash Low

I do most of my writing by paraphrase

a slip and a daze

a long phantom raze

Most of my nights are spent somnolent

sequating rents;

heedless intent

In wild raining mornings the trees thrash low;

 your heart like a spear

digs deep; strikes slow

2.6.13 Thank you, Octavio Paz

Water night

If you open your eyes,

night opens, doors of musk,

the secret kingdom of the water opens

following from the center of the night.

Si abres los ojos

se abre la noche de puertas de musgo,

se abre el reino secreto del agua

que mana del centro de la noche

and if you close your eyes,
a river fills you from within,
flows forward, darkens you;
night brings its wetness to the beaches of your soul.

Y si los cierras,
un riote inuda por dentro,
avanza, te hare oscura;
la noche moja riberas en tu alma

2.5.13      Thank you, J.D. Salinger

"I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, 

and all, Teddy said. It was on a Sunday, I remember. 

My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, 

and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. 

I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, 

if you know what I mean."

-J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

2.4.13          Cows Afield in One More Sunrise and One More Sunset

One mile down the road is a local dairy farm. They can't afford to have fields that the cows can be in all the time, like the other two neighborhood farms, so they let the cows out as much as they can, groups taking turns to romp and run and stretch their legs. 

This farm created a brilliant restaurant a few years ago, with all recyclable dishwear and delicious food they make all themselves, freestanding shelves holding the works of  local artisans and producers, local historical books, and farmers selling their wares. 

It's hard to see the cows getting to run around in the upper left corner of this photo, but because the ground is firm and there is no snow at the moment, someone decided to let them have some relief and fun getting out of their boxes. If you were standing there as I was, in the bright freezing cold February afternoon, you would see them rambling and running and tossing their heads in all out cow fun,  nuzzling each other and bumping into each other as if to say "Wow, is this great or what???"

 In the meantime, the day is sliding to a quiet close, the earth in its limitless cycle of turning on its axis, the sun shining through the atmosphere and over and over and over all on earth presented with the gift of one more sunrise and one more sunset, here on the fields leading to the Bald Eagle Nesting Area, on the banks of the Connecticut River.

2.15.13          One Small Moment

Fall Over Friday. Resplendent early winter morning, a rush of great variety and numbers at the bird eating station in front of our broad living room window, with only momentary hungry Red Tail Hawks of various sizes looking on, at times to have the coup of a delicious well fed morning dove... 

Old dog Shiva Louisa blindly wanders  along her snowblower paths, relishing all the smells I can only dream of detecting, happily bumping into the powdered snow walls of her passageways, mosses softly living underfoot, one young Crow perched on the top of a nearby Aspen as scout, catching sight of the blue plastic bowl that does daily bring compost...I mean crow and coyote and possum food...to the compost, and startles suddenly in their grasp of branch- when I walk out the front door, identifying the blue bowl, the inhabitant of the home, the impending food source, and quickly sets off the call, enhancing it by soon taking flight, calling calling, as, if one is a crow, one does not ever ever dine alone, so off they go and soon will follow their adolescent cohorts to arrive overhead, to soon perch upon oak and maple, scanning down, waiting for human and dog to pass by, so the breakfast may begin. 

Gazing at Shiva wandering slowly by, enticed by the early morning mist and the softness under her old pads, her belly full of both dry food and freshly cooked meats, to finally turn at the end, unable to ford the distance this year between path and mounded up snow, to turn herself and enjoy every 15 year old moment as she makes her way back and finds one more path to choose and wander along, as I follow, inhaling the clean small mountain range air. 

As I imagine the individual who became Pope and had the responsibility to not question but to provide protection and succor and accessibility for injured harmed Priests continuing an age old tradition, perpetuated far and wide, in the past and present, of sexually harming small young people, the Pope following rules and orders and providing leadership for years and years, with this knowledge somehow uneasily eroding his very heart, beneath all that he willed himself to assert, with his faith and belief, all of this sidling up to each other, the rotting of deep lasting wrong, the hand in enabling more deep lasting wrong and destruction of lives, together with anything good and true and full of God's love he worked to support. 

I am walking and imagining the meteors and otherworldliness of life far and away from we small individuals in our clans and villages and gatherings, known or unknown, alike or not alike, the image of in billions of years the sun overtaking the earth, ultimately dust unto dust,  as I stroll, on Fall Over Friday, along a mossy land that lies, ever, beneath any drought or pile of snow, that has lain here for as long as this earth has spun in its inimitable orbit, my self a small moment, the moment mine.

 Before

2.14.13  For C.M.   1969

Complex, it is, love; who it visits, where it remains and why, for how long.

Not something to take credit for, certainly, as we are wont to do, with parenthood, certain it is we who have created such remarkably compliant, successful offspring; then our complete disavowal when things do not go 'well' in a way that ensnares our own sense of comfort and self. And when love finds us at other times, sometimes in youth, its stay can be both a moment, and momentous, nothing more.

So love at times comes for a few hours, with some incessantly turbulent individual who carries you ten blocks, on their back, the others flanking you both front and behind, a darkened unfamiliar city street, cold, rain flecked, this group ultimately reaching a tall aged structure, soot-ed, shadow-bound, til up the ten stories this person is grasping your legs still, pulling you up upon their slim young hips as they reach with youthful sinews to strain and carry you up the floors and floors of dank worn staircases, up to the very very top of the grey ratty building, the others tumbling along also, silent, no idea the origin of this odyssey, lemmings all, following the sense of an unspoken irrevocable pull.

Wordlessly up up to the absolute roof, still on their back you are, their powerful arms, poet hands, wrapped with single-minded possession about your young woman thighs, pulling you quietly, innocently, truly to them, as they stalk over to the side of the tar thickened roof, and lean carefully over a bit, gifting you with the journey and the view, the antithetical embrace, the gift  presented to you in silence, no kiss, no embrace other than your close-knit legs strapped about their back, warm and quiet in the late late night.

You renew your arms' hold with sweet single-minded care about their slim muscular shoulders, their long russet hair tangled in your own curls that stream down your back, the scent of their breath, their pant, their breathlessness now as you both gaze down upon the city in the midst of its frequent restless somnolence.

Yet still you are held, as they are also; immobile, fixed, intransient, as if for all eternity. For when they exhaust, when they finally give way, when they release you, all will be lost, and all will return to that which was before.

Before the potent smiles before shared look before the leap up upon their back before being caught by their quick grasping arms before the interminable walk through city streets before the holding before the enclosure of your tender arms about that fragrant thoughtful neck; all that was engendered and held in the passage soon to be gone, a small boat of twigs and bark, haphazardly tumbling down a billowed stream, soon sodden, the moment of ignition between two selves still within what remains.

2.13.13    Winter Snow: It's All About The Water Table, for Wildlife, Trees, and Ourselves

Early this morning hardly qualified as winter, by standards here and elsewhere, the air mild, the wildlife well fed and warm, the snow damp and shrinking as beech and willow buds showed themselves shyly, inherently buffered against further winter showiness....and yes there will probably be more storm, more snow, more sleet and freezing cold.

The waitpeople at the small diner, opened in the 40's and continuing today on a side street in Northampton, MA, leaned on the counters, in a line the three of them, complaining about the accumulation of snow that precluded cars able to park, and people able to come in and eat and tip them.

Finally I turned to them, and said "It's all about the water table."

"WHAT?" They replied in unison.

I patiently repeated that it was all about the water table.

That down the street were all the trucks and front end loaders trying to slowly scoop up and carry away the huge accumulation of snow that created a 10 foot divide along the main street, that yes there were no places to park along their main side road, but this was how the trees and plants and farm crops and wildlife and insects and microcosms that create and support our health and life here...this is where they get their lives...from the water table.

 And the water table is created by and large during the winter, when it snows and the snow accumulates in the hills and mountains, and then during spring and summer it flows...downward, fills rivers, fills the water table deep beneath the earth, and then despite momentary droughts, the trees and plants and animals and wildlife and crops and insects and...us....all can survive.

They paused for a moment, watching this 60 year old crone eat her gluten free cheese and avocado sandwich with chips and water.... checking the photos on her iPhone, taking a few panoramic shots of the outside and inside of the old restaurant, and then one spoke to me - "Oh, Okay. I never thought of it that way. I guess it's ok, then, the snow, the no parking ,the less tips. It makes a lot of sense." The others nodded their heads, looking out onto the snow covered sides of the small street, and I nodded, and said, "Yeah. ".