the lost key

~ FOR MEGAN AND JAMES


in the clearing beside the hall called mercury
amidst the ancient industry of living things,
the buzz and song and whir of insects
and birds, stands a craggy crowd
live oaks and post oaks with sun scorched
wind hardened bodies marked

with many rings, lines in endless circles
rough brown arms and elbows and living hats
of vivid green tip toward earth and eavesdrop
glad, bright and shining in the celebration's glade
where the old fragments we are certain and you are lodged
now reach them and the company gathered below them

now find their way new again, the way of remembrance for,
remembrance of, remembrance toward, forward, beyond 
remembrance because this day when the key is lost is the day
we witness two beings offering words engraved
round and round eternity, the day come, the day gone again
the trees motionless in the blossoming hush of evening
the stars a rising flourish in the southern sky
unlock delight in the vow stay there forever.

curious objects and other animals

Uncommon Objects, Austin, Texas, June 2013.

a single downy feather rests on top of a pale blue dresser in a shop housing uncommon goods. a feather not meant as part of the display but a random one descended from who knows what, who knows where. who knows what, who knows where? everything in the shop is either weird or old or wonderful or all three: dolls and parts of dolls—heads, arms, eyes— bleached animal skeletons and skulls, china, silverware, furniture and antique jewelry. it smells in here, but it's not actually a bad smell. it's just that this stuff has been around long enough to have witnessed plenty of good times and plenty of bad times—and probably plenty more times it would rather not have witnessed at all—that it can't help letting off the whiff of time, of tomb, the aroma of accumulation, of year after year scratching each surface, the scent an extract of tired eyes and gnarled hands and limping breath.

next stop, downtown. we descend the streets—eighth to sixth to forth to cesar chavez and finally the lake and the bridge. we wait and wait for dusk and one of austin's famous performances. in the end, we are disappointed. the night we position ourselves on the bridge black clouds slide in and block the backdrop of the sky. lightning excites the southwestern horizon. tall, bright street lamps throw enough light so we manage to see them if we stare directly below us into the river. here they come: at last, on their own unfathomable schedule, they are starting to wake up. first a few, then, slowly, surely, many, many thousands of mexican free-tailed bats emerge into the night. they glide low over the water. they do not soar above our heads as i expected, as i was warned, but weave in and out in a smooth, silent follow-the-leader formation under the bridge. the looping stream of bats is tight and circles together in the same direction, their fast fluid motion like the opening of flood gates. with a gush, their little light brown and gray bodies become a waterfall that pours down the warm spring evening.

hundreds of thousands of bats. hundreds of thousands of small beating hearts and flapping wings turn east into the night (but we can't see them!) along the texas colorado river—one gigantic body with many moving parts—to zero in on the heat and shimmy of fresh batches of hatching insects. they will devour zillions of them until the dark diminishes down and a new light crawls over the bats' fur and some ancient instinct forces them to thrust themselves into reverse and back across the land and the ravaged rip of night toward caves or, in this case, the underside of the congress avenue bridge, to succumb yet again to the lure of another day's deep sleep.

insert poem here

it's that time of year again—the academy of american poets poem in your pocket day is TODAY.

discover a poem, fold it up, put the wonder of it in your pocket—or at least put it somewhere where it might be conveyed—and carry around a little inspiration, a little mystery, a little memory, a little experience. read and reread. feel the pull of an imaginative journey offering, perhaps, a secret, and always pleasure. whatever you do, don't forget to share it.

here's a poem by mary oliver that's in this, my virtual pocket....and in my real one, too.



~Mary Oliver~

ONE OR TWO THINGS 

Don't bother me.
I've just
been born.


The butterfly's loping flight
carries it through the country of leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes


for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.


The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening


to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever,


which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.


One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning—some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.


But to lift the hoof!
For that you need an idea.

the scent of the night stalks

 along the caloosahatchee river. florida. january, 2012.

windows, thrown wide open to receive the warm, breezy, new air of daytime, need to be closed before bed. it is turning chilly, a real maine evening, one of those evenings where sitting in an adirondack chair around the campfire in the backyard—zipped in a sweatshirt, feet stretched toward the flames—is a good thing, but once you're inside, the night needs to be shut out.

as i reach for the handle to crank the window i pause. a sweet smell lingers on the nightair, a scent heady as incense—though more subtle—not a scent that can be described or identified as one particular plant.

forget-me-not. fiddlehead fern. chive. columbine. lily. euonymus. dandelion. azalea. peony. vinca. lilac. phlox. meadowsweet. grass. oregano. iris. hosta. countless weeds.

i stand motionless. i inhale. it is none of these—and yet it is all of these.

the aroma originates below, in the darkness of the underground world—not only in my yard, but everywhere—each place with its own particular scent, sometimes pronounced, sometimes not. the scent comes from the night work of plants. a pervading smell—a heavenly smell—of what, i cannot be sure, of what, i cannot say, but it strikes me that it is like a clear, rippling liquid, so i will call it a night juice: the juice that rises up.

i breathe it in. night essence.

it begins its move beneath the surface as the rainwater that washes over everything is gratefully accepted by earth and roots. the roots drink and it slowly starts the ascent, the vertical suck, streaming into stems and stalks after the roots have done their work, the lifting of the juice as it continues to make its way into the tips of quivering leaves and blades—long and narrow, round and full, small and compact, shiny and pointed, slivers, a multitude—and then out onto the air.

in the silent evening the earth stirs with that restless climb of fluid and nutrients—with life itself—and brings its perfume to my nostrils. i remove the screen (damn the mosquitoes, but then without them the bats and wrens and phoebes would not be satisfied) and stick my head out, hovering by the window a moment longer to drink in the sweet flow, this mighty night therapy, and its ability to calm and soothe after a long day.

i savor it—the heaviness, the dark rush, the pulsing up. the evening, alive.

i pop the screen back in place, lock the window tight. i climb into bed.

cracked

last may i was in massachusetts at the house on the hill where my parents live. the house is situated above what i like to call our golden pond—that's beck pond on a map—the place where i grew up and still, to some extent, consider home.

the weather was pleasant and sunny but not yet warm enough for swimming. my dad, a fit and healthy eighty year-old, was busy preparing lunch while i visited with my mother. over the last few years my mother's health has been steadily deteriorating, slowly diminishing under the silently prowling brain thief that is alzheimer's disease. speech is cumbersome for her—her ability to express even the simplest of thoughts is disappearing, and the few words she does manage to say are arrived at only after a great struggle. but on that day we were, in our own figure-it-out-as-we-go-along fashion, "conversing", with me holding her hand and guessing—do you mean this, mom? or this? no? how about this?—and filling in her blanks, trying to get the answers right like i was taking a bizarre multiple choice exam.

after lunch, my father and i made my mother comfortable on a chaise lounge on the patio overlooking the pond—she walks with difficulty and staircases are treacherous for her—and went down the stairs to the water, with my mother in our sight the whole time. we came back up and walked by the vegetable garden, checked to see if my mother needed anything, and continued around the other side of the house past my parents' beautiful stonewalls and up a long stone staircase—all built by my father (my mother helped) using stones they found on their property. (when you need rocks for a landscaping project it helps to live in new england where backyards can be full of them.)

it was then that my father pointed out the nest.

a large robin's nest filled with four gorgeously blue eggs.

but it struck me that something was wrong, horribly wrong.

i couldn't believe what i saw.

why—oh tell me why?—would a bird build its nest on the ground? i've seen nests built quite low in trees and bushes, but never on the ground, and this one was next to the foundation with no bushes or plants or anything to camouflage it, no protection whatsoever from predators.

when i looked at that nest, so utterly, hopelessly, exposed in a corner by the chimney, i was overcome with sadness, a deeper sadness than the situation called for. after all, birds and animals die all the time—nature is cruel, nature is unsympathetic. that's life. those are the facts. i knew that, knew it well. i thought get a grip; get over it. but in that moment i couldn't. i was hit hard by what i believed was the nonexistent future of the tiny lives contained within those shells; i was overcome by inexplicable and somewhat irrational emotion. i just wanted to be able to do something to fix things, to make things right, and yet there was absolutely nothing i could do, no way to change the outcome fate had in store for the baby birds.

a few weeks passed. one day i was on the phone with my father and suddenly i thought of the robin's eggs. i asked him if, by some miracle, the babies had hatched without incident. of course, i already knew the answer, but i waited for him to tell me exactly what happened.

there was not much to tell—events unfolded quickly. turns out, it didn't take long for what some people might call a bad luck disaster, and others might call a good luck opportunity—depending on whose side you're on—to come skulking along. the possibility of life for those unhatched-lings, which had been in doubt from the start, was like a dream—like something longed for, hoped for—with the dream coming to an abrupt end about a week after i left massachusetts. when hungry bellies demand sustenance and the brain yells go find food, what choice does any creature have?

my father informed me that the interior of the nest was in shambles—of the four eggs only three were left, and those were cracked wide open, their warm, wet interiors sucked dry, signaling fullness and contentment for a crow or a bluejay, a raccoon or a skunk. (he never did find the remains of the fourth egg.) not such a tragic situation, really—lives given up so other lives could manage to make it through another day. that's the way it goes.

i felt nothing after he told me the news—my emotional overdrive had been spent when i saw the nest.

actually, that's inaccurate. i no longer felt emotion for the ransacked nest, but i did experience an emotional response after i hung up the phone. i thought about my mother. it occurred to me that she had no idea about what had happened, no idea how events played themselves out after the nest's discovery. the story of the nest and its contents remained with her for a short time and then was lost—it became part of the realm of mystery—unless she was reminded of its existence.

in her world, facts such as these don't matter—they are completely useless to her. the facts remain for me and my father to decipher—we alone can break into them and get at them, allowing them to signal the beginning of another chunk of time, another chunk of reality different than hers, one where life has a before and after. we've become sharply aware of our own lives: it's as if we're in a kind of passage and, in order for us to avoid losing our way in this brittle existence, we need to know where we've been to help us figure out where we're going.

~  i took the photo of the nest on the day i saw it last year. my father was kind enough to save it for me after it was raided so now it's one of the nests i put on the christmas tree every year. the nest reminds me of a year of changes, and it always leads me to bittersweet thoughts of my mother.

dripdrop

dripdrop the weekend: in a word, rain. and more rain. nonstop rain. cold rain. isn't the weather what boring people end up discussing when they have nothing else to say, nothing better to talk about?

dripdrop saturday morning until mid-afternoon: hannah and i took care of amelia for a few hours while her mom had a photo shoot. when christina finished she brought jilly back with her and we enjoyed a really nice visit—so good to see you, jilly. how's it going with o's briefcase collection?—while we waited for the baby to wake up from her nap.

dripdrop late saturday afternoon: a little drama descended upon us in the form of an ominous phone call. hannah's summer roommate was at their apartment in vermont supposedly getting ready to move in and she called, distressed and in tears, to tell hannah (who was subletting from another student) that there were broken windows and rodent droppings and disgusting smells—the apartment was, in a word, uninhabitable. the landlord was indifferent to her roommate's pleas to do something about it. for hannah it was simply too late to negotiate; she needed to find another apartment posthaste since she was due back in vermont in five days to take a summer course and begin her job at the university as a teaching assistant in photography. hannah calmly told her roommate she was going to look for another place to live until mid-august when she returns home for two weeks before she heads out again for a semester abroad (london for a few days, then florence for a two-week orientation, then rome).

dripdrop quote of the day: thinking beyond these college days, hannah sighed and said "i need to get a real job. i need to start my life." (i don't know what, if not life, she has been living up to now.)

dripdrop saturday night: out for dinner and hannah's working the phone—apartment hunting in cyberspace—combing through craigslist and uvm's bulletin board in search of a place to call home in burlytown for the summer.

dripdrop sunday morning: road block ahead. the road was flooded one mile from the house. turn around and go the other way. breakfast at the freeport cafe with hannah, hannah's friend, molly, and molly's mom, vicki. good eggs.

dripdrop the rest of logy sunday: rain hitting the skylights and the rooftop like fingers tapping on a table that turns to rain hitting the skylights and the rooftop like a fist drumming on a table.

monday morning. no drama, just hot, black tea with a splash of milk and—ho hum, my dears—more rain, rain, rain.

hidden in the lady's house

whoosh. here's june.

my woodsy maine garden really begins to heat up in late spring. unfortunately, after many thunderstorms and torrential rain and kisses from the sun, the weeds are quickly outpacing me. i try to keep up—things look okay—just too bad the weeds will always be several steps ahead. it's a jungle out there, but—if you'll permit me to say so—it's a nice jungle.

bees, bats, butterflies, dragonflies and hummingbirds make the rounds. there's a welcome crowd—a busy, boisterous, hard-at-work crowd—amongst the shoots and blooms, swooping in and out and about the plantings, the buds, the leaves.

crazy overabundance, spilling over. that's what it is; that's what's visible.

but then there's the invisible.

those secret places. the inner sanctums. the private abodes. when male and female are together inside the soft, delicate folds of the petals. look closely—it's a steamy, x-rated place. love, green-style. seeds, birth, new generations.

take the azalea. look at her. what you see is no blushing bride, no shy innocent stigma. she is fiery and brazen, that one, and throws herself wantonly toward the sky to receive his pollen. what a delight.

below her stigma—near her middle, around the style—a ring of courtiers surrounds her (many male and female parts all in close proximity to one another—i would guess it's a good life for everyone playing inside this flower) each one a dusty anther where pollen is produced—the man's house, androecium.

a hidden place, unseen, lies below that. the gynoecium—the lady's house—with the ovaries, the eggs.

i don't need to tell you the details of what happens next, once the pollen grains travel down the style. they'll do their thing and not a single person will take notice. not a single one. it will simply be done.

and that's just one flower. how are your math skills? count, then multiply.

what can i say? i'm a hopeless romantic—there's no stopping love.

speaking of no stopping love—but in this case a bluesy kind of love mixed with some real rockin' love, too—last night ed, hannah, christina and i saw marc cohn and bonnie raitt in portland. she, like the name of her song, is something to talk about. man, can that lady perform. at 63 she's lookin' good and she's still got it in her—such a talented guitarist and singer. she and her band put on a fantastic and long—hand over mouth covering yawns this morning—show.

oh canada

driving down the road recently i saw what i thought was a duck lurking behind some reeds about seventy-five feet away from me in a small marshy pond. the lily pad and tree reflections on almost still water under the light cloud cover of morning sky were stunning. i had the urge to record this beautiful moment so i pulled over and rummaged around for my camera and then realized i had left it at home.

i quickly turned the car around in the next driveway and backtracked to get it, keeping my fingers crossed that during the less-than-ten-minute round trip the wind wouldn't pick up and the muted light would remain and the duck would come out from behind the reeds.

i was in luck. the scene remained the same as when i left it with, however, one notable exception—the duck, which had swum out into the middle of the pond, was in reality a goose, a large male canada goose. how could i have possibly mistaken a goose for a duck? (is it time for new glasses?)

and how, when male and female canada geese are identical except for size, did i know it was a male?

because, upon closer inspection, i observed the unmoving head of another goose behind the tall grasses on the other side of the water, this one obviously sitting on a nest. while a female canada goose incubates the eggs, the male keeps watch—and this guy did a superb job.

he did not take his eyes off me as he swam closer and closer and started to come out of the water. i was afraid of getting hissed and honked at, or even lunged at by this possibly wings a-flapping goose dad, so i took a few more pictures and left him in peace to watch over his mate and the eggs. female geese always return to the area where they were born and unless something happens to one of them, those two will be hanging out together for what i hope is a good, long life.

good morning perkins cove

when too much time passes between visits with old friends it becomes a kind of dangerous time, time that's barely hanging on by its fingernails, dangling above the great abyss of no time left and scrabbling to hold on. time like that begins to feel perilously long, especially the older we get (as opposed to the way most things these days seem to fly by in a flash), and suddenly an email or a phone call every month or so isn't good enough and it's necessary to make adjustments, to tweak schedules, tinker with calendars—those nasty little calendar squares that snappishly admonish dearie,
you're not getting any younger, you know—so what are you waiting for?—and extend a hand, mark a time in a box and say we're gonna do it, we're just gonna make plans.

such was the case with annemarie and me a few weeks ago. she was going to be staying in the area—turns out longer than i knew or expected, all having to do with her job—and we arranged getting together. annemarie's been my bosom buddy (bosom meaning the stickiest, never-to-be unstuck kind of friend) since we were both eleven years old. (ah, those thrilling days of junior high school when it was not going to be too long before we begged our mothers to let us get pierced ears and wear mascara and slip on oh-so-grown-up nylons.)

what's fantastic about our relationship is that whenever we see each other it's as if there's no such thing as time and we have somehow miraculously managed to connect with each other almost every day since that first day of friendship in 6th grade—as if hardly a few weeks have elapsed between visits since our school days to these days of our middle age.

we've always been there for each other, through the fun times and through the tough times, no matter what.

i drove down to oqunquit where she had rented a cottage at perkins cove and we picked up where we left off, progressing through the things that have flown by us in the intervening year and a half since we last saw each other.

it was good; dinner out and then the next morning a walk down from the house to the path above the rocks and along the shore. this was still the off season—most of the shops and restaurants were locked up tight—and it was quiet, quiet just the way i like it. annemarie and i were disappointed that the little breakfast place with outdoor tables was not going to open for a few more days, so we enjoyed a simple repast—tea and toast and fruit—back at the house.

it was good, that time together to laugh and reminisce and tell stories. always the stories. it was good, that continuation of last week and the week before and all the weeks before that. good and sticky.

in springlight

the light of late spring is a fine light—it is a warm and playful light that casts itself about in the right way. of course, that's just my humble opinion. at another time someone—and that someone might even be me—could very well write the same thing about the light of summer or autumn or even winter. the light of those seasons is also fine—it, too, accomplishes the task of pushing away the darkness, of thawing our bones, heating things up, making us feel alive.

the black metal chairs and tables were positioned on a patio amidst tulips in the clear cool mountain light of the trapp family lodge's terraced garden in stowe where my daughter and i had stopped for a good but—as it turns out—over-priced lunch. (the off-season beauty of the place made it well worth the higher price out-of-state and foreign tourists are willing to pay on a regular basis.) there were crowds of tulips in full bloom but hardly any people, and the afternoon arrived as if part of a carefully scheduled program, like the choir of birds were providing musical selections specifically for our entertainment. so we enjoyed the music and being encircled by mountains and sky—for me, mother's day arrived a week early.

the day was a day of capturing the light. the day was a day of being captured by the light. the day was a day of being in love with the light. then the light changed; it was time to go. the afternoon became quieter, the shadows longer. as we walked over the lawn and got closer to the parked car we could see  montana's black, furry head, her chin resting motionless on the back of the seat. as always, she waited patiently, hopeful that we would soon return.

bouquets of dandelions

except for a few small, isolated patches in the deep shade of overhanging ledges, the snow has finally melted from the trails around mount mansfield, the highest mountain in vermont. the melodic songs of waterfalls plunging down from the dizzying height of rocky outcroppings were a serenade to springtime, but the trees looked wintry, gray and skeletal—the buds tiny, embryonic and tightly curled.

on saturday my daughter alex and i played tourist in her backyard and drove up to nearby smuggler's notch after we helped the baby of the family, hannah, start to move out of one apartment in preparation to move into another.

at the higher elevations there was minimal green, but in the rest of vermont there was plenty of it, including bright green plastic bags which were sprouting up like cabbages along the road from richmond to the notch. the first saturday in may is green up day in vermont and many people were out cleaning winter's debris from the landscape. the bags were left beside the road to be collected later. we didn't participate, though. our excuse? we didn't have one, but i could say one of us was too pooped from driving for four hours and helping with the apartment and the other one was too pregnant (but too pregnant doesn't work as an excuse because the girl hiked the pinnacle at 30 weeks of pregnancy). plus we had other plans.

in addition to green there was lots of yellow—enough dandelions in fields and lawns and grassy ditches for thousands of bouquets. i always feel a little sad for the despised dandelion. i think they are very pretty (and useful—how about a yummy salad of dandelion greens and a sip of dandelion wine? no? ok, so i'll admit that to me, anyway, those aren't the tastiest of treats) and i find myself getting upset about the containers of nasty "weed begone" killers people douse them with in search of perfection. i generally have a hard time with unnatural weed-free golf course types of grassiness which leach lakes of harmful chemicals into the environment.

but in vermont the dandelions seem to thrive; people either like dandelions better here or they have made peace with the idea of their existence due to the severe cost to nature of attempting to eradicate them—they are an accepted and natural part of the landscape. the dandelions' sunny yellow faces will continue to keep on smiling until the day comes when lawnmowers are hauled out of sheds and garages and barns and revved up for that first mow of the season.

crossing the road

i slow down and pull over when i see them. they are sauntering—an everything's cool, no worries, just grazin' and gobblin' and enjoying the day saunter—across the field toward me. i roll down my window, grab my camera, take a couple pictures. this time there are six hens, zero toms. but it's spring and love is in the air so you know the toms are somewhere nearby ready to pick a good fight.

i allow the group of ladies—sleek copper-bronze-black-with-dabs-of-bluish-reddish dames with alluringly wattled heads and necks held high—who, out of necessity, have picked up their pace, to cross the road in front of my car.

but i don't drive away after they have made it safely to the other side.

the hens hold my attention. i watch them and wonder about them. once they're across i wish i could follow them and see where they go and what they do when they enter the woods. what are their turkey lives like? they seem "happy." do they know it? what is happy to them? a full belly and a warm bed? (not too unlike us) they shine. they strut. they glow with confidence because they know they look good (ah, such magnificent wattling)—just like some women.

and the wild turkey toms are exactly like some men. they, too, strut their stuff and think the women will simply fall all over themselves trying to get noticed. and they're right. some will fall all over themselves, some won't. some women will get noticed, some won't. it's a macho attitude, and also a somewhat understandable survival attitude at work, one that says i've got to pass on my fab genes in a hurry. all hens—and women, too—have known those kinds of toms at some time or another.

i don't think it's too much of a stretch of the imagination to realize that a few similarities exist in a wild turkey's life and and our own lives. we both start out wild—we begin life as wild animals—all squishy bodily fluids and functions, noisy grunts and emissions. but we become tame and the turkeys don't, and then it mostly comes down to this matter of survival, this urge to reproduce, for some of us, and for all of them. the male thinks to himself i want her to notice me—he has his reasons—and she has her own reasons for wanting to be noticed by him.

aren't we all part of this grand game, this grand show, that's been performed, over and over again, for thousands of years? sometimes i wonder, is it partially the game that keeps us feeling alive?

for thousands of years males and females have danced around each other, surveyed each other, looked into each others' eyes. what do men see? what do women see? what do we think we see? do we only see what we want to see?

questions nag at us. is he thinking what i'm thinking? what will he do? what should i do? what do we really want? whose move is it anyway? all this in an effort to feel life deeply and get a lot out of it and in the end be able to say we lived it to its fullest. (sorry that last bit sounds sort of like a lame greeting card or a corny song but i hope you get what i'm trying to say.)

and so it goes.

i drive a half mile down the road and as the car reaches the top of a rise near an old farm—a small farm, but a real one, and even better than that, an organic one, one where they raise a few cows and chickens that actually roam the fields and see the light of day, breathe the fresh outdoor air, and where they grow a few local crops without throwing chemicals in the pastureland—i spot quite a gathering along a knoll. at least a dozen hens, and this time there's a tom, too, grazing. the hens seem rather relaxed but the tom is not taking any rests; he couldn't be less relaxed.

that's because he's hard at work, teasing and showing off, trying to get the hens to please come out and play and—here he has my sympathy—any second he knows he may have to deal with the blood-thirsty competition moving in. he moves back and forth. i hear grunts and gobbles as he repeatedly opens and closes and shakes his glorious tail feathers trying to get a response to his brilliant display.

but, you know, there isn't any. the females keep picking at the ground and ignore him. (in the end the tom will win, though. the hens will change their minds and become receptive to him very soon, as nesting time is almost here.)

the game they play amuses me. (i am easily amused—in fact, i love to be amused.)

as i continue to observe life i have come to the realization that the more i think i have things figured out in this here cosmos, the more i have to acknowledge that i don't. for human beings the reality remains that there isn't such a thing as stirring the pot and making a nice reduction out of traits or problems or whatever—peoples' traits and issues and experiences and motivations cannot simply be boiled down and made easily understandable.

our true identities will always present a somewhat complicated puzzle—like the puzzles with 1000 tiny, similarly cut pieces that all look like they might fit but have to be rearranged a lot, and then the dog comes along and eats a piece and messes up the nice arrangement—even to ourselves.

interrupted by green

on saturday alex, andrew, christina, amelia and i went on a short hike up and around freeport's hedgehog mountain—a mountain which is is hardly a mountain at all; in reality it is only a wee forested hill capped with a gigantic rock. from the rock's raised vantage point you can see the real mountains miles to the west, and also that other false mountain up the road named bradbury. the first half of hedgehog mountain's name makes a justifiable claim, however—a hedgehog population does, in fact, exist (although we didn't see any) in the freeport woods.

(it must be nice to be the person to name a place on a map. the people who originally came up with the names of hedgehog and bradbury mountains obviously had some fun with the naming process—a healthy sense of humor was at work here. otherwise why not simply call it the hedgehog woods? who can say.)

the day looked more like a sketch of fall than spring—the predominant color being a used, dried-out tea bag brown—and the bone dry conditions that have prevailed 'round these parts (the fire danger has been extremely high) turned the little streams and brooks in the hedgehog woods into mud holes which the three dogs immediately stumbled upon with the single-minded objective of testing the pure muddiness of them all—an exhaustive examination of the murky muck utilizing the dogs' highly specialized equipment of paws and tongues and noses. we humans stayed on the path and clomped over the little wooden trip-trap-billy-goats-gruff-style bridges.

tree buds were barely visible. as far as i could see in every direction along the trail there were no signs of color, no signs of a green spring anywhere in the wide open expanse below the mountain's summit (it feels silly typing mountain and summit), just a monochromatic dunnish brown crosshatched every so often by segments of broken stonewalls.

that is, until christina, the only seemingly aware-of-their-surroundings person in the group, made a discovery and said look, what's all that green over there?

green? really? here? where?

sure enough, there was a good sized splotch of green challenging the predominantly sepia canvas. we left the trail and walked over the drab, leaf-strewn landscape to discover a huge carpet of six-inch-ish daylily shoots. that was it—nothing but day lilies. hundreds and hundreds of day lilies.

in a couple months—if not sooner—when the day lilies in our zone start to bloom, i'll head back over to hedgehog and see what colors have been added to the artwork-in-progress along the forest floor.

~ the top photo is of two terra cotta pots filled with tall grass which were on my sunny, south-facing kitchen windowsill. i have an absolutely crazy craving for an indoor presence of bright green living shoots in winter.

totem

it's early, very early—too early for most people to get out of bed if they don't need to—but i like early. from where i stand in the yard, waiting for the dogs to do their business, the black silence of morning is like a satisfyingly protracted yawn, or a long pause between sentences.

but why the pause? is it because the writer can't think of what should come next? has no new ideas? can't find the right words? or is it because the writer is focused on something other than what's on the page, focused on listening, perhaps?

what's the writer listening to? what's out there?

in our little woods in maine wildness prevails—that is, as well as it can prevail with neighbors visible through the trees on both sides of us. we have done very little in terms of clearing trees (after the initial clearing of enough land for a modest house and yard), and we take care of only necessary clean ups after storms. over the (many) years we have trimmed out some undergrowth, cut up dead trees on the edge of the yard, and those which have fallen—or are about to fall—too close to the house. other than that, we have left the forest pretty much as it presents itself to us—after being thrashed by winter—each spring, with the exception of some as-needed foraging for, and tidying up of, fallen twigs and branches and small trees that are in a ready-to-use state for the fireplace, or the fire pit out back.

our neighbors to the west keep the forest adjacent to their yard in a state of fussy perfection—an immaculate, unnatural perfection—with no dead or fallen anything to provide food or shelter for animals or to aid in the germination of seeds. hardly a stick remains (an exaggeration, but you get the idea). every twig is raked away, every branch removed, no rotting stumps or logs or limbs or trees are allowed to stay on their forest floor—they are all chain-sawed into oblivion.

i, on the other hand, believe a good bit of well-placed rot should be left alone in the woods: stumps covered in a growth of verdant moss and rich with fungi which are even now providing a home for small animals and insects while simultaneously turning into nutrient-laced soil; a few tall trees still anchored to the ground but broken in half, their crowns—toppled by storms or lightning strikes or disease—resting peacefully on the forest floor beside them and quickly surrounded by new growth;  trees leaning drunkenly on other trees, dying from within.

it's a mess when mother nature's doing her thing, but i like a natural mess—a mess that fosters an undisturbed small-scale wildness that lives here in our suburban woods.

long, lean and branchless, the broken trees are beacons, symbols, totems of the living kinship group of the forest. these dying trees are vital, they are providers—they provide for the life of the forest. many of them exist—are encouraged to exist—on my patch of land; they are allowed to remain in their broken state, untouched by humans. this is what i see: the stark outline of forest poles. and from where the fractured trees stand to the north of me, i hear, as the sky gets lighter, a sound—a deep, hollow drumming—that fills the silence, fills the gap between sentences.

i can't see him—the light is too dim and he is too shy—but a pileated woodpecker is out there among the totems—a large black bird with a flash of white and red—hammering his meticulous rectangular designs in the dead and dying trees. for a while the trees will live on and provide for spring's flourish of new birth with their insect-filled cores and carved out nesting hollows.

hear it. susurrando. the emptiness is slowly being replaced by exhaled breath and joyous flight, the first notes of morning song and a wild, unhindered delight.

crocus

i observe she is always the first to arrive
in this season of awakenings, this season
of erupting life—edgy, eloquent, forthright—
surrounded by her siblings
she stretches upward aiming for the sun

and i am struck by her couture
by that tiny body flashy with outrageous color
showing off a slim white form from which spring
long green sleeves and a smallish purplish hat
festooned with lavish orange embellishments
that make the statement here i am.

i can tell you the reason for her prompt appearance—
well before the steadfast daffodil
and the exuberant forget-me-not, never mind
the prim lilac—is simply the advantage
of her location—as they say, it's all about
location, location

location on a rich hump of sunny dirt. but don't
get worked up—that's not the whole story.
that's not what's making the dirt even better.
can you imagine, better than compost?
rather, it is this: her nether regions are securely
lodged, along with fistfuls of worms,

in the hottest spot in the town—no, that's a lie—
take away town and add yard—
in the soil directly on top
of the simmering sludge
within the slow-cooking
septic tank in the garden.

and if she could express her feelings
i think she would pose a riddle
in such a way that neither dictionaries
nor encyclopedias nor all human knowledge
could help solve it—

leaving the answer in something immediate
in something, i imagine, she, at least,
has intimated all along.

cobwebs

i threw open the windows, slipped on a pair of flip-flops, made some iced tea, put my hair in a ponytail, and started to attack the cobwebs on the screened porch with a broom. ah, summer.

but wait. it's not summer at all. today we're back to chilly. quite nippy. snow in the forecast!

that was last week, last week was summer, and those wonderful "summer" days with temps in the 60's, 70's and 80's were so much more than just a taste of summer, they were so much more than just a tease—they had me downright confused. they tricked me into believing it really was summer. it was like a button or something had been turned or pressed in my mind and when it clicked it sent me reeling and lurching over into a false summer mode.

one or two unseasonably warm days won't do that, but six or seven of them will. the balmy weather that didn't belong in maine in march almost —but not quite—had me convinced that i could skip april and may and move right into june. those days really messed me up.

but today it's back to reality.

the spiders will be pleased to discover i've decided to stop my vigorous sweepings and leave their dusty, silken tangles alone.

for now.

until the real summer weather gets here.

in conjunction

a few scenes—ordinary scenes, some would even say boring scenes—performed over the last few days in maine were, to me anyway, worth noting.

the worlds of venus and jupiter were visible—bright, vivid, bold—high and mighty in the west on cloudless monday evening, so close together in the sky they were practically holding hands.

earlier in the day, a day that showed off a gentle warmth that was weeks ahead of schedule, it was the gray versus the red, each holding on to their positions in the backyard.

in a flurry of rapid-fire squeaks and squawks, a chattering war was going on out there. i watched from the window as the battle lines were drawn—the little red squirrel occupied the high ground on the bird feeder pole and the large gray squirrel, at a definite disadvantage, was below the feeder in the garden.

they put on an entertaining show. red rushed down the pole when gray dared to get too close, causing the big guy to run. satisfied, the little one climbed back up the feeder to guard "his" stash of sunflower seeds, but then gray would pivot, take a couple jumps and stop, walk, stop, walk, like he was sneaking up on red or something.

finally red could not take it anymore. he jumped off the pole and ran gray straight out of town. congratulations, red, for being monday's winner.

and the maine black bears up north? let's not forget the bears. (who could forget the bears?) the two adorable cubs, now almost two months old, are very active—they tumble and play-fight and ham-it-up in full view like they know they're on camera—and they're obviously getting sick of being cooped up in the den watching momma sleep.

the bears, right here, were fun to watch this winter, especially lately. but it's almost spring and i know one of these days when i click the link to the live camera the bears will be gone.

i will really miss them.

the sparrows

a flock of white-throated sparrows descended. (there's one hidden up there—like in the book where's waldo—in a messy, untended patch of garden. which has since been tended. i do a lot of tending. can you find the sparrow?) they were very preoccupied with eating up every bit of the bird seed which had fallen on the ground under the feeders. a dozen birds at a time arrived in the yard.

they did a funny back and forth hop dance and scratched in the dirt like chickens as they searched for a morsel to eat. the birds were in constant motion, busy balls of feathers pecking away in the flower beds looking for seeds and insects to gulp down in a hurry. so much movement. as soon as they took in life sustaining calories they burned them up again.

the sparrows treated me to some little songs.

they arrived in our yard in mid-may and hung around for a few days. then the flock flew away.

caution: intoxication and bee stings

dearest reader~

please meander on over here and take a walk with me in maine so i might offer you a glimpse of some of the pretties in the garden. in the (finally!) humid air the flower's perfume is strong, almost too strong—if that's possible—and even mildly intoxicating. i think i feel a little woozy. would you mind catching me if i fall over? that's awfully good of you. enjoy your day and don't forget to stick your nose in a blossom and smell the happiness......

oops, just don't stick your nose in one like that one up there.

hermit thrush music

a pool among rock
if there were the sound of water only
not the cicada
and dry grass singing
but sound of water over a rock
where the hermit thrush sings in the pine trees
drip drop drip drop drop drop drop.....
-t. s. eliot (from the wasteland) 


where the little stream flows behind our house in the maine woods, i hear a hermit thrush sing his end-of-day song in the tall pines.

may's evening shadows linger around the pines' silhouettes while the bird's ethereal and somewhat mournful notes hang flute-like in the air, the last lonesome sound in the otherwise quiet forest.

in the house i move from room to room and switch on lights, banning shadows as the gloom creeps in.

the thrush's descending musical phrases fade and disappear like an echo in the night.