1.18.15 I'm Kind Of Surprised Its Almost February

1.18.15 "It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end." Ursula LeGuin

1.18.15 The Colors of Deep Winter

1.18.15 I'm Not Missing Summer, Nor Fall. I'm Right Here, With The...

I'm not missing summer, nor fall. I'm right here, with the freezing rain, the impassable roads, the difficult coating of ice upon all that lives out there, and the blessing of being a human able to be warm and fed and surrounded by furred ones,

      (albeit one young itchy bored furred one minus a necessary walk),

      as we finish up a Sunday when our youngest was unable to come, after all, with his new beloved to meet us.

     While my dear friend here got some vital and new changes done on his class, in the coolest way.

     While I got to rest and stretch and just be in life, enabling my body to have all it needs  to heal itself up a bit.

     As the darkness falls, the skies once again overcast and raining, the new moon hidden.

     And I am thinking back to self-indulgent warm-weather hardly-any-clothes-necessary  flip flops and early autumn;

      to Kestrel Lane and the convenient confines of a land,  and a flat land  at that,    

     to give that dog a daily walk, til I discovered it was privately owned.

     To the daily changes of the lands and the fields and the brush and the small plants by the pathway;

     to the minute changes that moved us slowly from summer to autumn to where we are now,

     snow covered and cold and all things frozen.

     It's in this moment I gaze at the photograph and become transported back to that morning,

     when the sun reflected small bursts  of light from so far away it's inconceivable:   

     onto  the lane's puddle, filled with rains from the night before-

     and the leaves ,that morning before i even awakened,were brushed by some indeterminate wind that came from who knows where,

     pulling them from their trees, as they slowly drifted through space down to the ground, and landed gently in the puddle.

     Where I came by, hours later, but still early morning, with the marauding pup racing about, clenching in his teeth a  long thick stick, bursting with  his delight,

     while I in my flip flops still, and happy for it, wandered down the lane and soaked in the cathedral feeling

     of the tall trees swaying in the early autumn winds,

     of their overhanging branches covering everything from above;

     and then down I gazed at each puddle filled with new and wondrous colors and light, changing moment to moment with noone but myself to witness.

     As I thought about all that exists and happens and trees falling in forests and cells dividing and rocks that have been here since so long ago and those of us living come to be and then ending our time here; so many things much like the single leaf loosening from it’s branch,

     after being a bud in spring and a beautiful tender new unfurled leaf in early summer and a stalwart leaf adhering to its perch through rough thunderstorms

      and slowly its composition changing as the light changed and the temperatures shifted and the tree responded in kind, and the leaf changed colors and its hold became tenuous,

     and then in one small instant when possibly no one was watching, not even a chipmunk or a Kestrel or a few grains of stardust, it came loose and had its one flight of its life,

     sweeping down and down in small dancing arcs, until it landed, shining in the waters, and its decomposition and contribution to continuation, began. 

      as the season moved inexorably along.

1.18.15 "Living In Process.... Creativity.."

“Living in process is being open to insight and encounter. 

     Creativity is becoming intensely          absorbed in the process
     and giving it form.” 
                           Susan Smith

1.17.15 Silent and Pristine

The two Shepherds ran and leaped and bit and played

while we talked about writing and parenting and life, crunching our way through a 12• morning as the snow revealed the secret inhabitants of the deep Shutesbury woods, til one of the gallivanting youngsters, racing by at a million miles an hour for the billionth time, for the very first time took me out by the knees. Course, tomorrow morning will be when the results come in. Still, all bundled up and forest bound, it was nothing short of magnificent and silent and pristine.

1.17.15 Far above orbits silently a new moon hidden beneath a chilled night sky