Soooooo – I was going to write about a book I thought I would have finished reading by now, but life and a knitting project intervened. Sneak preview for all you Richard Powers fans out there: he scored again. Get on the library wait list for “Playground.” Very much worth it. I will report more anon. What to do for a placeholder in the meantime?
As it turned out, Greg Olear published a W.B.Yeats poem yesterday in his newsletterPrevail. I could not think of a more prescient description of our very own situation here before November 5th. I had to look up Helicon – a mountain in Greece, praised for two springs that sustained the muses in Greek mythology – and calumny – malicious false accusation or slander. Yeats’ ire was likely directed at the religious factions in Ireland, our’s is most certainly applied to whom the descriptions below match best: those averse to learning, open to slander, masters of fantastic falsehoods and opposed to anything that diverges from white supremacist norms….
The Leaders Of The Crowd
THEY must to keep their certainty accuse All that are different of a base intent; Pull down established honour; hawk for news Whatever their loose fantasy invent And murmur it with bated breath, as though The abounding gutter had been Helicon Or calumny a song. How can they know Truth flourishes where the student’s lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no Solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.
But before we start this week with dismay, let’s look at those beautiful owls that simply sat next to my path in the woods, looking at me while I was looking at them. Bliss.
Now I must go back to the novel, dying to know how it ends…
Music is a reference to W.B.Yeats as well…a bit strange, and quite enticing.
I was walking on a dike towards the Columbia river, water levels so low that the geese rested on sand banks in the middle of the sidearm.
Drought had emptied the ponds of all water, colored the landscape with muted browns.
(The brown center is usually a lake)
Leaves of the cottonwoods all silvery in the bright light, mustard yellow on the ground once shed, echoing the lichen.
A few familiars, a harrier hawk, herons and deer, a fearless kestrel advertising the location, an egret flying in search of water. It was hot and it was still, only some isolated chants of geese formations carrying across the meadows, stark light, air shimmering.
If you can’t walk with me through a strangely out-of-season October landscape, find a comfortable spot to sit and read a very long poem. It contains worlds. Cyclic worlds of destruction, worlds of renewal, worlds of despair and ultimately resilience.
It also contains lines that describe perfectly what I experienced yesterday, “summer after summer has ended, … the low hills shine, ochre and fire, even the fields shine… a sun that could be the August sun … a day like a day in summer, exceptionally still.”
I have not been exactly a fan of poet Louise Glück who won the Nobel Prize in 2020, and died this week a year ago. For me, her biting wit too often veered into cruelty. Yet I do see why the Nobel committee awarded Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” She describes the core of coping with trauma regardless of what it was or whom it affected: a person, a people, a planet. There is indeed a universality to the processes she describes, understands and accepts, with a few recommendations toward action or acceptance thrown in.
Having written last week about Kintsugi as a ceramic art form addressing trauma, I thought we might be challenged by looking at poetry that shares some of that approach. Laying bare the scars, acknowledging the irreversibility to a prior state of being, but finding beauty in acknowledgment – there with gold dust as a means of emphasis, here with determined words that claim an untouchable core.
The poem I chose for that purpose is called October. It was written in 2002 as a response to the World Trade Center bombing, and published in Averno in 2006. Lago d’Averno is the name of a deep crater lake near Naples, Italy, thought to be the gateway to the underworld by the Romans. The volume contains several poems describing the myth of Persephone and her cyclical return to earth, with imagery alternating between the destructive world of Hades where she has to reside, and the fruitful world of earth where she is permitted to return to her mother, Demeter, and makes things grow, for periods of time.
22 years later, the poem fits with a world gone mad, whether with personal loss, or the ravages of war, the lure of fascism, or the fears brought on by nature shedding all reserve – through pandemics, or catastrophic changes in climate that lead to the disasters we are now experiencing. It alludes to fear, memory distortion, experienced harm and a refusal to give in to despair, even when we have to acknowledge that we cannot turn to the earth and the planets to rescue us.
Here is my spontaneous take (and you might want to read the poem below first, so I make at least a semblance of sense…):
The first section describes disorientation, a shifting and uncertainty of where the narrator is in time, a loss of a sense of hearing or the ability to decipher meaning. It alludes to pointlessness in trying to anchor herself, no more grasp on reality. It mentions a better, more fertile past where we believed in growing things, in good outcomes. It is a jumble of confusion. Wasn’t life supposed to have a happy ending?
The second section has the narrator reemerge with a strong mind, one that is tested and wary, observing, able to discern that the violence of trauma changed her, harmed a body in ways that cannot be reversed, but a mind now clearly assessing the world that is. Nature is still around, like a bit player, observed but not able to intervene.
Section 3 is given to memory. Remnants of beauty, succor in nature, a world beckoning you to be part of it. Reminiscence makes way to acknowledgment that life can bring pain worse than death. An inkling of defiance, not a submissive nod to saying good bye. So many amazing things to list.
Section 4 starts – for me – to deliver the goods. The poet acknowledges how horrid things have become, how fall (after trauma) contains so much more loss than spring, but she starts to add up what still exists: ideals still burn in us, like a fever or a second heart, music remains, though changed, perceptions are sharpened.
“How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. Maestoso, doloroso: This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.”
Majestic. Painful. A core of us remains intact, despite the horrors, indestructible.
The fifth section reminds us that there is still work to do, work that can be done, and that we are not alone in all of this, whether in collective grief or through collective action.
And lastly, section six seems to sink into the depth of defeat, acknowledging the destruction of a barren earth, no longer nurturing, no longer an option to act as a rescuer. But then the moon appears, with the last lines referring to beauty and friendship. There is no illusion that the moon will do what the earth can no longer, but the concepts of beauty and friendship counteract hopelessness, suggesting there are still forms of connection.
Like in real trauma work, the alternations of drowning and lift-up, of cycling between hope and despair, of past and future orientation, allow us to spiral upwards on our own path towards healing.
“How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love.”
Maybe it’s privilege. Maybe it’s grace. Maybe it’s simple grit, refusing to give up.
I’ll cling as long as I want to, trauma be damned. I’m not forfeiting hope either, let me tell you. There is still too much work to do. (And I hope I’m not eating my words after the election. Then again, remember what Persephone and Demeter, central figures in the Eleusinian Mysteries, promised true believers: a happy afterlife. Looks like we have one final shot…)
October
1. Is it winter again, is it cold again, didn’t Frank just slip on the ice, didn’t he heal, weren’t the spring seeds planted didn’t the night end, didn’t the melting ice flood the narrow gutters wasn’t my body rescued, wasn’t it safe didn’t the scar form, invisible above the injury terror and cold, didn’t they just end, wasn’t the back garden harrowed and planted— I remember how the earth felt, red and dense, in stiff rows, weren’t the seeds planted, didn’t vines climb the south wall I can’t hear your voice for the wind’s cries, whistling over the bare ground I no longer care what sound it makes when was I silenced, when did it first seem pointless to describe that sound what it sounds like can’t change what it is— didn’t the night end, wasn’t the earth safe when it was planted didn’t we plant the seeds, weren’t we necessary to the earth, the vines, were they harvested?
2. Summer after summer has ended, balm after violence: it does me no good to be good to me now; violence has changed me. Daybreak. The low hills shine ochre and fire, even the fields shine. I know what I see; sun that could be the August sun, returning everything that was taken away— You hear this voice? This is my mind’s voice; you can’t touch my body now. It has changed once, it has hardened, don’t ask it to respond again. A day like a day in summer. Exceptionally still. The long shadows of the maples nearly mauve on the gravel paths. And in the evening, warmth. Night like a night in summer. It does me no good; violence has changed me. My body has grown cold like the stripped fields; now there is only my mind, cautious and wary, with the sense it is being tested. Once more, the sun rises as it rose in summer; bounty, balm after violence. Balm after the leaves have changed, after the fields have been harvested and turned. Tell me this is the future, I won’t believe you. Tell me I’m living, I won’t believe you.
3. Snow had fallen. I remember music from an open window. Come to me, said the world. This is not to say it spoke in exact sentences but that I perceived beauty in this manner. Sunrise. A film of moisture on each living thing. Pools of cold light formed in the gutters. I stood at the doorway, ridiculous as it now seems. What others found in art, I found in nature. What others found in human love, I found in nature. Very simple. But there was no voice there. Winter was over. In the thawed dirt, bits of green were showing. Come to me, said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal— I can finally say long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty the healer, the teacher— death cannot harm me more than you have harmed me, my beloved life.
4. The light has changed; middle C is tuned darker now. And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed. This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. The light of autumn: you will not be spared. The songs have changed; the unspeakable has entered them. This is the light of autumn, not the light that says I am reborn. Not the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered, I was delivered. This is the present, an allegory of waste. So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate: the ideal burns in you like a fever. Or not like a fever, like a second heart. The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful. They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space of the mind. They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish. And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly in anticipation of silence. The ear gets used to them. The eye gets used to disappearances. You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared. A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind; it has left in its wake a strange lucidity. How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. Maestoso, doloroso: This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.
5. It is true there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use. I am at work, though I am silent. The bland misery of the world bounds us on either side, an alley lined with trees; we are companions here, not speaking, each with his own thoughts; behind the trees, iron gates of the private houses, the shuttered rooms somehow deserted, abandoned, as though it were the artist’s duty to create hope, but out of what? what? the word itself false, a device to refute perception— At the intersection, ornamental lights of the season. I was young here. Riding the subway with my small book as though to defend myself against the same world: you are not alone, the poem said, in the dark tunnel.
6. The brightness of the day becomes the brightness of the night; the fire becomes the mirror. My friend the earth is bitter; I think sunlight has failed her. Bitter or weary, it is hard to say. Between herself and the sun, something has ended. She wants, now, to be left alone; I think we must give up turning to her for affirmation. Above the fields, above the roofs of the village houses, the brilliance that made all life possible becomes the cold stars. Lie still and watch: they give nothing but ask nothing. From within the earth’s bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness my friend the moon rises: she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?
You’d think when you randomly google “chicken” you’d come up with good news, so direly needed at the end of this week. After all, a certain vice-presidential candidate claimed that his two kids eat 14 eggs every morning and then complained about the price of eggs being $4 a dozen, directly contradicted ($2.99) by the display he stood in front of while being filmed at a store in Pennsylvania. Hard to decide which of these two pieces of information is more out of touch with reality, but the latter was laid at the foot of the current administration, once again falsely blaming them.
So, chicken news. Here are literally the first 4 headlines that came up in a Google search:
Chickens are the most populous bird on Earth and are widely considered among the most abused animals on the planet. Despite their ability to think and feel, billions of chickens are raised and killed for food each year and subjected to some of the worst living and slaughter conditions imaginable to meet the increasing demand for meat worldwide.
I stopped reading after this. Remember, we want good news.
I give up. Enjoy your weekend, have brunch eating eggs Benedict, if you like them. I’ll go and see if I can find a red wheelbarrow to photograph. Maybe good thoughts will appear while staring at a “thing” rather than the news reports. After all, the poet linked below had a famous maxim, “No ideas but in things.”
The Red Wheelbarrow
So much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
“So much depends upon “? What is referred to? Maybe my sanity depends on it – here is a red bench. Red wheelbarrow next…
Music today is Jaco Pastorius and friends celebrating Chicken.
One of the most amazing pieces of music from the romantic period is a song written by Franz Schubert ((1797-1828), The Erl-King or Elf-King. It sets a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) to music, words that were based on a medieval Danish ballad, Elveskud. The narrative describes the night ride of a father carrying his feverish child on his galloping horse. The child fearfully tells his father that he sees the Erl-King, a metaphor for death, but is calmly and rationally told that it is just the wind, fog, trees and darkness that scare him. The Erl-King, after trying to lure the child with promises of toys and amusement, eventually threatens to take the boy by force, and the father gets increasingly anxious, realizing that the vision is not just a hallucination. When they arrive at home, the boy is dead in his arms.
Every school child of my generation had to learn the poem by heart, having no clue what it was all about other than a horror story. It contains many of the elements so important to the Romanticists: nature, death, the supernatural. Goethe certainly knew about fear of death as a youngster – he fought tuberculosis for two long years before he even turned twenty. Schubert’s composition manages to capture dread with changes in key and tempo, as well as introducing 4 distinct voices with different melodies, ranges and key changes alternating between major and minor keys. There is the narrator who frames the story at beginning and end, and then alternating vocalizations of the father, the kid and the Erlkönig. A fifth personality – the horse – is represented by the piano with a relentless, pounding rhythm throughout for the right hand (and the score specifies every single move the accompanist has to take, incredibly thought-out and rigid. The whole things comprises three or so minutes, a good thing too, otherwise your right hand would fall off.)
To this day I know very few pieces that embody dread, particularly the dread of an innocent child that senses death, as well as this song. It gave me goose-bumps as a child. Now the fear of being a helpless parent is more prominent – trying to distance yourself from the realization that horror lurks, and wanting to protect the child (as well as yourself) from that reality, to no avail.
The photomontage is an older one that I recently added to the series of images representing music that matters to me. It captures a torso of a young child surrounded by birches and alders (the “Erl” in Erlkönig is the German word for an alder tree: Erle. Unclear if Goethe ignored the Danish “Elven”, or it was a translation error. My speculation would be that he wanted to stage the eeriness of the moors where alders grow at the damp places. But what do I know.)
I photographed these very trees on the grounds of the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, a camp where so many Jewish children died of disease and starvation, as did their parents, eventually. (52.000 human beings, as a matter of fact, 13.000 of those after liberation of the camp, too starved to recover.)
How does a parent, themselves aware of the inescapability of potential death, protect the last weeks of their children? The history has renewed relevance for us, given the unrestrained rise in anti-semitism, both In Germany and here in the U.S. – an unrestrained rise fueled by unrestrained language encouraging violence against Jews, preemptively blaming them for election losses, and throwing out dogwhistles (serial numbers for to-be- deported immigrants was the latest in Floridian fantasizing, evoking tattoos of the Holocaust, and publicly welcoming fascist ideologues. Here is an overview article in The Atlantic about anti-semitism of the upper echelons of the American right wing. Read it and weep.
I weep also when I think of the mothers and fathers in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon desperately trying to find some fashion of normal life for their children among the bombs and the hunger and the disease. It is they to whom the children turn, like the boy in the poem besieges his father, expecting comforting and protection. And it is they who cannot explain that all the laws we thought would protect us, have been cast aside, are ignored, or scoffed at, on all sides.
U.N. experts, for example, consider exploding pager and radios a terrifying violation of international law.
“Simultaneous attacks by thousands of devices would inevitably violate humanitarian law, by failing to verify each target, and distinguish between protected civilians and those who could potentially be attacked for taking a direct part in hostilities….Such attacks could constitute war crimes of murder, attacking civilians, and launching indiscriminate attacks, in addition to violating the right to life,” the experts said. Humanitarian law additionally prohibits the use of booby-traps disguised as apparently harmless portable objects where specifically designed and constructed with explosives – and this could include a modified civilian pager, the experts said. A booby-trap is a device designed to kill or injure, that functions unexpectedly when a person performs an apparently safe act, such as answering a pager. It is also a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians, including to intimidate or deter them from supporting an adversary,” the experts warned. “A climate of fear now pervades everyday life in Lebanon,” they said.”
Legal experts in the US disagree with each other whether law violations occurred with these booby-traps (Ref.), but nobody disputes that Israel defies the orders from the U.N. top Court to halt its military offensive in Gaza, after South Africa accused it of genocide.
Many argue that targeted attacks against the militants of Hamas or Hezbollah are justified in a war. Civilian casualties are seen as an inevitable side effect and within the boundaries of international law, justified by the warring factions in pursuit of their strategic goals. That cannot, however, count for actions that affect civilian populations most grievously and indiscriminately.
The Gazan children are starving. Over 50.000 children ages 6 months to 4 years are in urgent need of treatment for malnutrition. Israel deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to our own government authorities, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
“USAID had sent Blinken a detailed 17-page memo on Israel’s conduct. The memo described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.”
“Separately, the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration had also determined that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid and that the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to freeze almost $830 million in taxpayer dollars earmarked for weapons and bombs to Israel, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.” (Ref.)
Secretary Blinken and President Biden disregarded the assessment, since it would have stopped us from sending bombs to Israel, per the law. Here are the details from an investigation by ProPublica published yesterday. Aid organizations across the world agree with the original plea by our agencies: CARE, Oxfam and multiple others warn about a humanitarian disaster because of Israel’s obstruction of aid: food, water, medicine. The U.N. General Assembly concurs. Here is the report of their special rapporteur.
What do you tell your child, all over the world, when the Erl-King calls and there’s not a morsel to eat?
Here is a different iteration of the song – above I had linked to Ian Bostridge, here is Fischer Dieskau.
Who rides at a gallop through night so wild? It is the father with his dear child. He grips the boy firmly in his arms, He holds him safe, he keeps him warm.
‘Son, why do you cower so fearfully?’ ‘Father, the Erl-king! Can you not see? The dreadful Erl-king with crown and tail?’ ‘My son, it is mist blown by the gale.’
‘You lovely child, come away with me, We’ll play together down by the sea; Such pretty flowers grow on the shore, My mother has golden robes in store.’
‘My father, my father, oh do you not hear What the Erl-king whispers into my ear?’ ‘Be calm, stay calm, it’s nothing my child But dry leaves blown by the wind so wild.’
‘My fine young lad, won’t you come away? My daughters are waiting for you to play; My daughters will lead the dance through the night, And sing and rock you until you sleep tight.’
‘My father, my father, can you still not see The Erl-king’s daughters waiting for me?’ ‘My son, my son, I can see quite clear The moon on the willows, there’s nothing else there.’
‘I love you my boy, you are such a delight; And I’ll take you by force if you put up a fight.’ ‘My father, my father, he’s gripping me fast! The Erl-king is hurting! Help me, I’m lost!’
The father shudders, and speeds through the night, In his arms he holds the moaning boy tight; At last he arrives, to home and bed: In the father’s arms the child was dead.
Since I photograph and write about what I see and what I think three times a week, year after year (eight years, can you believe it?), there is some inevitable repetition. That is simply because I have been living in the same place for decades, and across the seasons I observe the same things that make their annual appearance. Magnolias in the spring, sunflowers and meadows in the summer, pumpkins and mushrooms in the fall, and eventually the song birds in the snow of my garden. Let’s not forget the frequent repeat of racism, xenophobia and other political recurrences, but that is not today’s concern. We have reached the pumpkin stage, and another scratching of head as to how make it feel fresh, eight years on.
As luck would have it, I came across a video of someone reciting a pumpkin poem with skill and passion deserving a thespian award. The poem’s author turns out to be a fascinating character, a rags-to-riches success story built on fumes, certain talents and an intuitive understanding of the needs of the masses. I had never heard of him, stunned to learn that he was the nation’s most read poet at the beginning of the 20th century.
James Whitcomb Riley (1849—1916) was born in Indiana, and likely considered a black sheep by his lawyer father, a member of the Indiana House of Representatives, since he wiggled out of formal education at an early age, getting into nothing but trouble in school. Instead he started selling bibles, and got paid for painting advertisement signs onto barns and fences while traveling with a patent-medicine show, all the while trying to get his verses published and into greater circulation. He was a real huckster, telling lies to sell the tonics, and submitting his poems as long-lost ones of Edgar Allen Poe, soon debunked and causing a scandal that provided notoriety.
Riley became an alcoholic at an early age after falling out with his father once the latter had succumbed to financial ruin after returning wounded from the Civil War. Lying, cheating and alcohol-infuses anger resulted in break-ups of all of his love-relationships as well, across his life time. The writer started to tour with local theatre companies, still earning a living by painting advertisements, and eventually got hired by a newspaper to write society column, report on local events and submit poetry. Most serious publication refused to print his sentimental poems, but people started to flock to his performances of his work, almost always in dialect and covering romantic versions of longed-for times past. The readings were dramatic and comedic, the audiences loved it. His tours extended from the Mid-West to other parts of the country, and he started to achieve national fame. Fights and lawsuits with his partners and agents brought more notoriety, all strangely helping with sales of his books, making him eventually a wealthy man.
He met with President Grover Cleveland and supported Harrison in his election campaign. When the latter won the Presidency he suggested to make Riley Poet Laureate, but Congress did not comply. Alcohol-related health problems led to an end to Riley’s touring in the late 1800s. By then he had turned to writing poetry for children, with little quality left for his previous types of work, even though popular sentiment still gobbled up what he now published from his early years, dug up from the dust bin. His complete life-works was published in a series of multiple volumes, and honorary Ivy League (!) degrees started to roll in, including doctorates from Yale and Penn. John Singer Sargent painted his portrait. In 1908 he was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters with a special medal for poetry awarded in 1912.
He was known as the Hoosier Poet, whose reflections on small-town life and “Every Man”‘s problems clearly resonated with a large public. He was funny, bent, strangely lucky in his divers endeavors, and at the same time a tragic figure who succumbed to the consequences of alcoholism. Peter Revell once wrote Riley’s dialect was more like the poor speech of a child rather than the dialect of his region. Does it matter? I think what is relevant here is that Riley was a minstrel, a performer, an entertainer. He had a musical ear, clearly echoed in his craft. In that regard I am reminded of Amanda Gorman, the young woman whose poetry is offered at important events of the Democratic party. Her poems rise when hearing them performed (and not so much when read… )
Live entertainment is what people craved in an age before mass media, stunned by someone who memorized up to 40 poems per performance on the lecture circuit, flocking to his shows by the thousands and buying the books afterwards by the millions. It was egalitarian poetry, if bad one, brought to the masses. It is hard for me to understand how a public, just 15 years out of the Civil War, could so much long for “the good old times,” but apparently they did and he served their nostalgia well, a populist to the core. Sounds familiar?
So, I urge you to spend the three minutes it takes to listen to today’s choice of poetry. (No music today, alas, so your time can be spent on the recitation.) The text can be found below. As it happens, I agree with the sentiment, fall as a season of contentment, and a nice time to let go if so asked, spared yet another harsh winter. Riley was not granted that wish – he died on July 22, 1916.
When the Frost is on the Punkin
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock, And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock, And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens, And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence; O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best, With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest, As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here— Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees; But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock— When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn, And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn; The stubble in the furries—kindo’ lonesome-like, but still A-preachin’ sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill; The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed; The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover over-head!— O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!
Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps; And your cider-makin’ ’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too! … I don’t know how to tell it—but ef sich a thing could be As the Angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me— I’d want to ’commodate ’em—all the whole-indurin’ flock— When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!
Since pumpkins, fruit belonging to the family of Cucurbita like cucumbers and melons, are 92% water and the poem speaks of frost, today’s imagery is an icy white….
Yesterday I was surrounded by blue beauty – purplish and silvery hues as well, next to riotous oranges and yellows, an absolutely astounding summer garden. I was surprised by so much blue, associating it more with spring, but here it beckoned in all hues and shapes.
I think Frost was onto something here, even for the non-religious. The absence of constraint in that wide space, the promise of fair weather days, the warmth of sun associated with blue skies, the illusion of easy living – all contained in sky blue. Smoke haze, storm clouds, tornadoes, hurricanes, for now kept at bay.
Enjoy the flowers. I will be taking a bit of a break, working on an art project that fully demands my brain and looking forwards to family visiting. Will resume by mid-August.
Walk with me. Midmorning in the wetlands before the heat rises once again. Yellow meadows, blue skies, make me think suddenly of Ukraine and guilt-infused gratitude rises that here I have the luxury of peaceful meanderings, when others fight for their life. This week has been hard, with all the news in our own country as well, and the inability to decide on what might be the right path forward. When did we even last think about Ukraine, or Gaza for that matter, with our national horror show unfolding?
I chose this walk to leave politics behind me, just watch the birds, but can’t easily let go of so much I read across the last days. Here is a remarkable piece on J.D.Vance from a year ago, that might raise the stakes, if that is even possible. Ukraine will be left in the dust. Well, focus, Heuer. You came out here to recharge, not ruminate.
The bugs are out. So are the bees, legs thickly coated with pollen.
Finches waking up and breakfasting on early elderberries. Bushtits prefer mites on the oak leaves. A pair of kestrels hanging out. Bald eagle observing from on high.
Closer to the water, with slowly drying ponds, hungry nutria. Kingfisher high on his perch. Turtle taking a sun bath.
Some late ducklings, lots of shore birds, the killdeer looking like s/he has a glass eye.
Herons and egrets everywhere, eying each other, herding the geese until some fly off in annoyance.
And then, out of the blue sky, come the pelicans, diving down right in front of me, circling me, eventually coming to rest in the water and starting to preen. These infrequent sightings still make my heart race. In a good way, in this instance.
Gratitude descends. About nature. About the privilege to have access to it and the mobility to enjoy it. About a world in which so, so many people engage in trying to preserve it.
Here are words by William Stafford from over 60 years ago:
Let’s all try to meet the rage without with the wing within.
(PS: Mine is not the Selasphorous humming bird – those are red. It’s the plain Rufous.)
Since today was easy on the eyes and brain, music is going to be a bit more demanding. Truly interesting, though. A compilation of electronic music by Peruvian composers between the mid 60s and 80s.
One of those weeks. Between the heat and a body with its own intentions I had to cancel all planned outings, miffed and distraught. As luck would have it, a friend sent out a poem that shut me up and set me right. It converts disappointment into the insight that all moments matter. They all contain their very own history, asking us to value what is, not what has been or might come along. We are embedded in a timeline, each moment of its own importance.
“So it happens that I am and look.” Which is what I did. At a single plant on my balcony, a blue salvia visited by the occasional humming bird, the bees preferring its neighboring lavender and the yellow zinnias (this year’s color scheme in solidarity with Ukraine. Much good it will do, other than reminding me to be a witness. But I digress.)
No Title Required
It has come to this: I’m sitting under a tree beside a river on a sunny morning. It’s an insignificant event and won’t go down in history. It’s not battles and pacts, where motives are scrutinized, or noteworthy tyrannicides.
And yet I’m sitting by this river, that’s a fact. And since I’m here I must have come from somewhere, and before that I must have turned up in many other places, exactly like the conquerors of nations before setting sail.
Even a passing moment has its fertile past, its Friday before Saturday, its May before June. Its horizons are no less real than those that a marshal’s field glasses might scan.
This tree is a poplar that’s been rooted here for years. The river is the Raba; it didn’t spring up yesterday. The path leading through the bushes wasn’t beaten last week. The wind had to blow the clouds here before it could blow them away.
And though nothing much is going on nearby, the world is no poorer in details for that. It’s just as grounded, just as definite as when migrating races held it captive.
Conspiracies aren’t the only things shrouded in silence. Retinues of reasons don’t trail coronations alone. Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around, but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.
The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense. Ants stitching in the grass. The grass sewn into the ground. The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.
So it happens that I am and look. Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air on wings that are its alone, and a shadow skims through my hands that is none other than itself, no one else’s but its own.
When I see such things, I’m no longer sure that what’s important is more important than what’s not.
