crescent moon

Reach a hand to the crescent moon

grab hold of the hollow.

If she sits in the palm of the left

that moon will be fuller tomorrow.

If she sits in the palm of the right

that moon is on the wane

and the love of the one who shares your bed

will be doing just the same...

Out among the fields gently hipped

beneath the corn,

Assiniboine bones beneath the highway

he stood there and he thought of home

A finger traces the path of a satellite

You're drawn to a distant copse of trees

A voice as sweet as Mare's Tail

clings to the prairie breeze...

 

Do I reach for you

when I know you're on the wane?

Do I sense you when I know you're not around?

Do I search for you

when I know you can't be found?

Do I dare to speak your name? 

Raise your eyes to a moonless sky

and try to wish upon a rising star.

Search all you want for her blessing

but you won't find her sparkling there.

Now cast your eyes to a part of the sky

where nothing but darkness unfolds

and watch as all around you

she reveals the brilliance of secrets untold...

--Michael Timmins

pale sun

Sick day -- first one in four years (throwing that out there because I don't like to admit to weakness).  Spent the day in bed reading Louise Erdrich and listening to Cowboy Junkies.  I emerge from my sick bed congested -- my head and chest full of the plains, passion and restless spirits...

Pale Sun
Michael Timmins

Fifty miles from Dakota territory
Cheyenne scalp hangs from his belt.
Found him alone washing in the Bighorn
a steady aim and he bagged his game.

Pale sun falls without contest.
Here is obedient darkness. He will not return.

White Cadillac, white man at the wheel,
white faces on the mountain,
wounds that will never heal.
Black clouds overhead, old man says
looks like rain.
Thieves' Road winds to the Black Hills sign
says South Dakota, U.S.A.

Grass plains stretch to the horizon,
not a soul can be found on them.
They will not return.

Old rusted pickup and a mad dog in the yard,
purple paint peels but fails to reveal
the bitterness that grows inside.
Cloud of dust in the distance,
strange knock beneath my hood.
Is it better to have words left unsaid than to
have words misunderstood?

Pale sun falls without contest.
Here is obedient darkness. It will return.
I know it will return. It will return.

under a heavy spell

It was very still this morning under this thick blanket of mystery.

So still that I could hear the drops of dew as they dripped from leaf to leaf ... or was it the sound of spirits, tiptoeing among the branches?

tact

Found this little book at my mom's tonight.  This is the sort of common treasure you might pick up as you are browsing her bookshelves. 

 Tact means touch.  When we are in touch with people we understand that we have a peculiar sympathy, that there is a thrill which goes from heart to heart and from hand to hand.

recover

yourself.  look for you in the places where you are sure to find you.

it's not complicated.  just go there -- where you are waiting -- for you.

definitely digging

all the golden vibes this afternoon.

I guess I might also have called this post "leaning trees."

If music has color ... this is in the yellow range of the spectrum -- brilliant coin (thinking pirates' treasure), mellow amber, thick honey, all rinsed in lemony sunlight:

sunset on the lake

Sunset on the weekend.  

I cannot see anything from our house but the change in light.  Tonight I looked across the bay and noticed the tips of all the trees as they were set ablaze.

I knew there was no time for the four minute walk over the crest of the hill so I yelled to Will as I grabbed the camera and we raced for the car.  I have so many pictures of this dock and this tree but I really like the way the water came up with all the colors of the sky.

the speed of blur

...hit "pause."

byron I

“I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of an excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake or an eternal fever.”   --Lord Byron, in a letter to Thomas Moore, 5 July 1821

If I had been sitting across from Byron I would probably have just nodded (in what I hope would have seemed a thoughtfully aloof manner) and swooned -- because Byron is the kind of guy for whom I would have fallen hard.  He was one of the original "boys in the band" and I would have tried to play it cool, hanging out, affecting disinterest -- but I would have only been able to keep that up for so long --  soon enough I would have ended up a little pathetic and a lot heartbroken.  

But I digress...  What I meant to say is that as much as my heart would try to argue, Byron is right, almost.  Passion, inflamed, has the power to move -- it is intoxicating -- and addicting -- and fleeting.  The ebb of such is a strong pull in the opposite direction that we can leave us wanting -- but a sustained inflammation would surely be the death of most of us.  So, the way I see it, there is passion and passion inflamed.  While we may live for the explosions, we might also find that it's the coals and embers that keep us alive.  

the clouds wrote a poem across the sky
each line a revelation into the swirling mystery
and though I thought I got it
when I tried to translate
I realized I can't speak cloud.

evening...

...to night.  The space between light and dark is shrinking.

from some other place

I want to say that Emmylou has the most incredible voice but as much as it is hers it is as if it comes through her from someplace well beyond this world.  She opens her mouth and here is this sweet strange almost harmony that is the rush of heaven and earth and deeper darknesses.

half crazy

You'd have to be to get up in the wee hours of the morning and wait in the predawn chill with a 17,000-strong sea of runners who have all come out to see how well their mettle and endurance stand up to a good distance run.  The air was brisk this morning and the wind, as is usually the case at Broad Street, tenacious, but stepping into this throng was like stepping into a bee hive -- warm -- buzzing at the same time with conviviality and purposeful intensity.

Not a common occasion for me and only the second time that I have run the half marathon event.  (Do two halves make a whole?)  Running for me has always been about just getting outside, but it is tremendous to be a part of something so much bigger than my own "trip" -- each person bringing their own energy.  Multiply that exponentially by the force of this enormous crowd.

That I made a nice new PR was less rewarding to me than the overall experience of running with such hearty participants and spectators.  If you want to feel like a champion, you need only lace up your sneaks, put on your game face and make your way the best way you know how.  So many show up just to share the journey and cheer you on your way.  It's impossible not to return the favor ... and for all you might leave out there on the road, you take away so much more.

shootin'

"Shootin tomorrow 430ish weather permittin," reads the text from my brother...

While at previous moments in my life this might have been an absurd invitation, all I can say is never say never...  

I have very little experience with guns, or shooting them, but I got it in my head that I wanted to go duck hunting this year (duck sausage is what I have in mind).  While I am an intrepid DIYer who relies heavily on Google to guide me through most endeavors, this seemed to require a little more personal supervision.  

So I found myself here on an appropriately autumn evening.  It was my good fortune that it was a slow night at the sportsman's club.  We had the (mostly) undivided attention of the RO (range officer, if you didn't know -- I mean, I didn't).  I say mostly because he had recently taken up golf and when he wasn't releasing clays and coaching us, he was firing golf balls -- not really into the range -- but more in what seemed to be our general direction.  Strange irony to fear, not a stray gun shot, but an errant golf ball.  I need not have worried though.  He was impressively accurate with both a Remington and a five iron.

So first we shot some trap and after the first couple of shots, I was shooting much better than I thought I would ... and then some skeet, at which I was, to borrow a favorite expression, puke.  Still, I surprised myself by having a good time at it.  My tutors were patient and I received a good deal more information than I could process, but to recap the highlights, I have a "pretty swing" and, given the right circumstances, I might actually be able to hit a duck.

Some other revelations:

1.  I shoot right-handed, but am left eye dominant.  The simplest, if not most attractive way to remedy this is to wear a pair of shooting glasses with the left lense covered with duct tape.  So in addition to being mostly deaf (ear protection), I was also faced with the additional sensory impairment of being half blind.  Small wonder I hit anything.

2.  You have to get very close to a shotgun. It is not something you can do from a distance.  It's a strangely intimate act to rest one's cheek on the stock of a gun.  After shooting a couple of different guns, I can say I prefer a wood stock.  (Who am I?!!)

3.  Swinging a gun is not unlike swinging a golf club -- maybe that explains the RO's accuracy with the 5 iron.  

4.  While I didn't think I was much troubled by the recoil, the giant bruise at my shoulder suggests otherwise.

5.  If I am hunting, it seems that I might be a predator.  I initially bristled at this label and was inclined to disagree.  It certainly interferes with my romantic notions of duck hunting...

But as I consider the definition, it is not entirely inappropriate, especially as far as the duck is concerned. 

6.  And finally, it seems that I will be purchasing -- and wearing -- camo.

that moon song

and ahh that full bellied moon she's a shinin on me

yeah she pulls on this heart like she pulls on the sea 

the moon, the moon

I asked Will what I should say about the moon.  He was back with this in about ten seconds...

III

'Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

   Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'

So they took it away, and were married next day

   By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

   They danced by the light of the moon,

              The moon,

              The moon,

   They danced by the light of the moon.

From "The Owl and The Pussy-Cat"  Edward Lear, 1871

asymmetry

Sunset this evening from the soccer fields.  I was the one wandering off -- struggling with division in attention -- and fascinated with the difference in the southern and the northern halves of the same western sky.

hunter's moon

...setting as I made my morning commute. 

Dow, August Moon, c. 1905

I wanted a picture, but could do this moon no justice.  Maybe because I was thinking of this -- and neverminding that it is October.

the sky was a soft blanket of clouds

that i might have liked to pull up to my chin as i sank back into sleep

given the chance

and on the opposite end of this october monday

we're just a sliver shy of the Hunter's Moon

some madeleine for a monday

notan II

in progress...

"kindred living things"

O'Keefe, Autumn Leaves -- Lake George, NY, 1924

Autumn Leaves -- Dawes Lake, OH, 2011

*Painting and detail from photograph taken 9/24/11 at The Columbus Museum of Art.

gilded

The afternoon sun today is crazy liquid gold cascading all over everything.  The trees are dripping with it.

A most peaceful Sunday.  Could we keep it -- frozen in this amber -- for all time?  These are the kinds of thoughts that autumn thinks.

within

One of my students made this for me today.   

We are carrying all of these gifts around within us.  Give ... and receive with grace. 

wonders

I really hadn't planned this post but I was looking through the pictures from my run this afternoon and I was struck.  It seems like a small miracle to me that I can share this image that I took with my phone.  I never would have thought ... and yet someone did.

heavenly day part III

Where were you at 4:33?  Saying goodbye to your office mates?  Sliding your bank card at the express lane in the grocery?  Flipping through the mail while you waited for the dog to come to the back door?  Wherever it was, this was here.  This corner where a cornfield and grasslands are divided by an over-grown fence row.  The crickets, they were here.  The trees were here, absorbing the heat from the sun even as they pondered the winter ahead, and a rest from all that photosynthesis.  The breeze?  Here, lifting leaves and limbs...

Right now, it's Legos and dinner and piano practice.  All the heaven of home -- but here the cool air rises from the shade as the shadows lengthen and the light fades.

heavenly day part II