Sunday, September 30, 2012

follow


Aunt Leaf

Needing one, I invented her – - -
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I’d call into the leaves,
and she’d rise up, like an old log in a pool,
and whisper in a language only the two of us knew
the word that meant follow,

and we’d travel
cheerful as birds
out of the dusty town and into the trees
where she would change us both into something quicker – - -
two foxes with black feet,
two snakes green as ribbons,
two shimmering fish – - – and all day we’d travel.

At day’s end she’d leave me back at my own door
with the rest of my family,
who were kind, but solid as wood
and rarely wandered. While she,
old twist of feathers and birch bark,
would walk in circles wide as rain and then
float back

scattering the rags of twilight
on fluttering moth wings;

or she’d slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;

or she’d hang in the milky moonlight
burning like a medallion,

this bone dream, this friend I had to have,
this old woman made out of leaves.

 - Mary Oliver

sunday morning

how i know


Night brings the moon
waking me gently as it reaches
through the slats of the window blind
and presses carefully against my cheek
and at my eyelids
with all of the weight of a whisper.
I wake enough to know that we lie together
restless and still
tangled in breathless distance.
This is how I know what the moon dreams.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

field notes

... from a good long run.  some more of the same things of which i never seem to tire:








how high is the moon

full day.  full moon.  just tucked my not-so-little buddy in and the high moonlight streaming through his bedroom window falls just so -- perfectly over his sweet face. sleep well, tangled and tight in these moondreams.

collecting









Monday, September 24, 2012

how to describe a starry night

Cazin, Solitude, 1889

There's a famous paragraph in one of Chekov's letters to his brother Nikolai in which he talks about writing description. In it he says, 'When describing a starry night, don't just talk about the beauty of the heavens, and the beautiful pinpricks of stars all over the inky sky.' He says, 'describe a piece of broken glass and the moonlight shining in that, and all of a sudden a wolf runs past you like a black ball in the night.'

--from an interview with Tobias Wolff

Sunday, September 23, 2012

fascinated

I keep thinking I should have something more to say about these, but I really don't seem to... 







...nope, still don't so, you know, just some feathers.  Well, I could say that if the birds to which they once belonged came to any harm, it was prior to my finding them.  That is -- no birds were harmed in the actual production of these pictures.

sunday brunch

Take an old friend, or maybe a good book...
...that's the most difficult decision to make.  Really, no menu -- no decisions.  How great to just sit, chat, and wait for whatever it is that Vince is bringing to the table.  Today it was paw paw pancakes, frittata with fresh, local (as in growing overhead) vegetables and steaming hot french-press java. WOW, and what a day for the patio!

Thanks Jerah!

Saturday, September 22, 2012

R.I.P. "elephant beech"

Some of the trails I wander regularly have been inaccessible since the wind-storm so it wasn't until today that I was sorry to learn one of my favorite trees didn't make it through. Some portraits from the archive:


field notes











As I write this the wind is rushing in herds of turbulent clouds that can't quite commit to rain and I am glad (always) that I spent the afternoon between clouds -- walking through woods and lingering at the edges of fields -- resting for a moment on the crest of the sweet decline.  So much light.  Happy Fall! 

Friday, September 21, 2012

an ocean and a rock

collecting





Picked up on the way:  seed pods from our used to be flower beds now turned jungle, feathers from three good runs (a good handful more than pictured here -- maybe later in better light than my very sepia "dining-room-after-dark" lighting), and more spore prints from fungi grabbed out of the mulch on my way back from parking lot duty yesterday (so excited to look at them this morning).