5.21.16 She was more

Since I was 22, I've had a beautifully wrought and heavy cedar chest ,left behind by a roommate up in Brattleboro , a reticent person, a retiring quiet friend. 
She left behind also an enormous watercolor, that we've relished living with all these years since.
Back then, she was moving out, and shrugged as she left it , newly up on her wall , the watercolor from her too-important-to-come-visit-or-call esteemed father. 
He was a distant , prosperous artist, who chose a piece to gift her, as lovely as pie.
Of sheets on a line , off on the windy day, with a great gouged signature somewhat painted over in the left corner , it's proper replica repeated over in the right.
She'd had it leaning face to wall in her room all that time, and looked away when I saw it first , something not hard to understand.
But when leaving , she'd hung it up in the place from which she herself now would go.
And in that moment, as we both stood and briefly glanced at the thing, a dog she could manage if we stood together, I gave her with my eyes then and our goodbye embrace that she was more than he'd ever be.

5.21.16 This magic moment

 

5.21.16 Commencing

The sky and light and wind were dizzyingly beautiful ,

 a perfect counterpoint to any cares one might have. 

As the pup raced about, and the farmers commenced 

their spring farming .

 

5.21.16 An otherwise silent place

Down by the farmers fields, neighbors on tractors pass by, waving, the plowing now begun. The thick rich grasses begin to grow over the discarded sinks, tubs, garbage. 
The old families with private camps drive their old cars down the town road, and begin pulling down all the camp objects tied high for the spring floods. 

They now their small patches of grass outside their entries . Sometimes park their ATV's down there and get little toilet houses dropped off, in preparation for the great family times that will come. 

All this sudden and sweet activity come with the season to this otherwise silent place.

 

5.20.16 And in its own way

     Next to our home, on the foothill of The Mount Holyoke Range, is a conservation field, that was home years ago to a Native tribe. There were several small tribes here, that coexisted peacefully, canoeing the Connecticut River down that hill , for wild rice, for fish.
     Now a dairy farm down the road hays the field, to keep the forest from overcoming the sloping hills of silt rich land. To feed their cows the thick green grasses, dried carefully and saved for cold dark times.
     They spray this and all other valley fields, with manure , come spring . You go out, and there's this huge truck lumbering up and down the steep hills and small smooth low points, spraying poop all over.
     When the first grass comes up, it's rich with nutrients , and the cow's first milk of May, and it's first butter, will be unlike any other in nutrients. A broad conspiracy to support new life in spring .
     After the farmers seem to all agree on when to do the first haying, the wildlife know to follow, for there are wild mice nests all over the land, and exposed .
     Sometimes the coyote will return from their new summer dens farther off into the human-inaccessible forest , safer for birthing young , in times when the climate is mild and food plentiful. At times , despite the far off next door neighbor who hunts them with night vision on ATV's and semi-automatics, they will be across the field , their thick red or grey or brown fur glistening in the light.
     The wild turkeys will always come to feed, either the young single hens, so independent , or the partnered hens in groups, chowing down, to nourish the eggs they soon will lay, as their toms exhaust themselves , puffing up for anyone and their sister.
     The crow neighbors will go happily feed across the field in a delighted heyday, and at times in the dusk you will catch sight momentarily of the smaller mammals that otherwise frequent the compost pile in the night, like the silver backed possum , or the ring tailed raccoon .
     Once I think I caught sight of a weasel, who otherwise I only know from their wandering the land and seeing their tracks in deep winter, as they skim across the deep snow in search of chipmunk burrows , in hope of finding those torpid chipmunk who ignored the warnings of their parents, and took their winter's rest too close to the surface of the woods.
     All have learned, and taught their young to come and feed and feed well at this time of year, to create strong young ones.
     So that when we are out , and the skies are as thick with beauty as any Romantic painter's dream, with violet skies and dramatic crescendo-filled clouds racing by overhead , it seems almost dreamlike, and thrilling.
     And in its own way , it helps to offset inequity and injustice and other human endeavor.