Honey to the Ear

As recent posts may have indicated, I am in the mood for poetry. And today, having run across a most beautiful piece by one of my favorite poets, I felt obliged to share it here.

Vultures

Like large dark
lazy
butterflies they sweep over
the glades looking
for death,
to eat it,
to make it vanish,
to make of it the miracle:
resurrection. No one
knows how many
they are who daily
minister so to the grassy
miles, no one
counts how many bodies
they discover
and descend to, demonstrating
each time the earth’s
appetite, the unending
waterfalls of change.
No one,
moreover,
wants to ponder it,
how it will be
to feel the blood cool,
shapeliness dissolve.
Locked into
the blaze of our own bodies
we watch them
wheeling and drifting, we
honor them and we
loathe them,
however wise the doctrine,
however magnificent the cycles,
however ultimately sweet
the huddle of death to fuel
those powerful wings.

– Mary Oliver

An October Poem

October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost–
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

           –   Robert Frost

September Poems

Spring scarce had greener fields to show than these
Of mid September; through the still warm noon
The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune
Than ever in the summer; from the trees
Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,
No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon
In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon
Finds motionless white mists out on the leas.
          – Edward Dowden, “In September“

I can hear
September’s
leaf
following
me
down
the asphalt
surface
of Locust Street
cartwheeling
on pins
when suddenly,
it stops –
just
to see
if I’ll turn
to look.
          - [ unattributed ]

(I am trying to identify the author of the second poem but have not yet; please comment if you know the author and I will update the post accordingly.)

Rain, Rain

Early autumn is a wet time of year here. Rain-heavy clouds spin out of the North, West, South, and loosen their burdens before passing on. Sometimes the sky closes and the sun disappears for weeks on end. It can be a gloomy, grim time for those still hoping to cling to a bit more summer.

But I love it. Granted, the prolonged rain can be problematic and tiresome, and I do miss the sunshine, but it is so beautiful. Colors are deep and vibrant, washed clean by the rain and unbleached by the sun. It’s cool enough for a flannel shirt in the morning, a small fire in the evening, cups of hot tea and cocoa and steaming bowls at every meal. A light but incessant breeze soughs in the trees, and I am home. These sounds, smells, colors, conditions echo in my heart and settle with the well-worn comfort of old jeans. I am home.

Rain drips from the eaves, pecks on the roof like a flock of birds. Shallow puddles bleed out from the grass, fill the tracks of the driveway, huddle in small pockets on the sidewalks. Trees and bushes swing with the breeze, dance with a gray sky. It is both bleak and beautiful. And I love it.

Photo courtesy of Harshad Sharma.

Changing Seasons

With the traditional close of summer last weekend and the official close only a week and a half away, people are starting to gear up for fall. Autumnal colors have cropped up in displays and advertisements, and Halloween accoutrement are beginning to appear in stores everywhere. Seasons are changing.

I know a lot of people are somewhat saddened by the passing of summer, especially those who have to go back to school and those who see fall as little more than a harbinger of another winter. But fall is my favorite season. It has been for as long as I can remember. Summer was always great – full of days spent in the sun and water, watching clouds and rolling in the grass – but autumn brought the year’s best weather and brightest colors. It meant going back to school and re-joining friends I had not seen all summer (and, yes, I was one of the few children who didn’t mind school). Fall also meant the sweets and candies of Halloween, the fantastic dishes of Thanksgiving (as well as the leftovers for the days that followed), and, if we were lucky, the first snow.

Now my point of view is different, but my enjoyment and excitement have hardly changed. Autumn contains the last opportunities given by the living seasons – begun in the first green shoots of spring and finished in the last colored leaves of fall. It is the last chance to get out there and shake a leg before the frosts become icicles hanging from the eaves and a howling winter wind drives us – and most other animals – inside for shelter and warmth. It is a celebration of life, of having survived thus far.

It is also a reminder that winter is just around the corner. It is a last chance to settle warm-weather affairs and prepare for the cold-weather challenges to come. It is a reminder that to all things there is a season, and that someday Death will nip us as easily as frost does flowers. It heralds an end of things, but also the hope of new beginnings, however far off they may seem. And what a way to go: all beauty and color and light before that last long darkness.

I love fall. I hope you will enjoy it as well.

Shooting the Evening

As promised, if later than I had planned, due to technical problems, a whole new post.

I’ve always enjoyed spending quiet time just soaking in a good evening. Watching a brilliant sunset, picking out the first stars, listening to the sounds of frogs, crickets, cicadas calling. My perch usually takes the shape of porch swing but I once spent a fantastic evening at a picnic table in the Midwest that rivals the best of them.

We drove miles down a dirt road to a small patch of rolling farm country and pasture land in the middle of Kansas. It had been hot that day, over 100`F, and we had covered many, many miles on a trip headed West in a car with no air conditioning. We stopped not long before sunset, seeking refuge in the shade of a group of small trees near a picnic table. A light breeze drew across the hillside and shallow valley below and I thought perhaps we had stumbled on a small piece of Heaven.

We moved the picnic table into the shade and ate a bite while birds stalked tiny prey in the grass and flew in looping patterns over the grassy field a few hundred feet away. Backlit by the sinking sun, they snapped insects out of the air and sang their successes. The tall grass below them and the bugs they sought burned golden in the sunset light, gilded brightly against a dark line of trees bounding the far side of the field. The breeze was cool, the air dry, and we sat in perfect comfort watching the show.

Just up the road, an old windmill creaked and bumped through its slow and deliberate revolutions. Cattle grazed in the surrounding pasture. From time to time they bawled and lowed and wandered to the tank below the windmill for a drink of water, water delivered from somewhere underground to a quiet Kansas pasture by workings that had weathered there for more years than I and my traveling companion had been alive. Its steady sound was as natural as a creek gurgling over cobbles. I found it unspeakably comforting.

As evening drew the shades and the birds and bugs found their homes for the night, we sat reversed on the seats, our backs propped against the tabletop, and trained our eyes farther upward. Constellations materialized in the clear evening sky. Bugs called in a low chorus from the grass and trees. The windmill creaked reassuringly. And we stayed up until after midnight talking about the world, our lives, and counting shooting stars.

We left early the next morning, dawn still caught in the dewey grasses. We had miles to turn. But I left a piece of my heart on that hillside, and I took a piece of Kansas with me when we went.

It’s the reason I love to travel. It’s a cornerstone of the hope I hold for myself and this world. It’s something pure and simple and beautiful, and I saw it. I didn’t just look at it with open eyes, I saw it. And every time I see a place, a person, an object, I am forever changed … usually for the better.

In Return

I am back. Again. Hopefully for a while this time. I’m working on a nice little post about evening-time which should be up in a day or two. I hope you’ll come read it.

And I hope you had a wonderful August.

Disappearing Act

I’m going offline for a couple weeks, maybe a tad longer. Keep cool in the August heat, keep your eyes open for the surprisingly wonderful, and I’ll see you sometime before Labor Day.

Take care.

Surprise Lilies, cont’d

A small update…

Yesterday morning I went out to smell the lilies and noticed one stalk had been broken down in the night (lots of pets and roaming wildlife around; the list of possible culprits is endless). Three blooms were open and three buds remained at the head of the stalk so I picked the blooms, put them in a pressbook, and trimmed the stalk. I don’t have many vases, and none within easy reach that could handle a large, heavy flower like the lily, so I grabbed a tall beer mug instead (forgive me, oh Chloris). A couple inches of lukewarm water, a couple spoonfuls of sugar, and in went the stem.

This morning I awoke to two new blossoms dangling above the lip of the great stein. They are beautiful. Creamy pale where they dive toward the stamen base, the color bleeds to a rich pink as the petals flare outward and each is tipped with a daub of lavender. The last bud has yet to bloom but I am hopeful.

It’s a beautiful sunny day, blue skies dotted with small white clouds as picturesque and perfect as a Norman Rockwell painting, and my lilies are blooming. What an amazing way to end the month.

Surprise Lilies

As long as I have lived here, surprise lilies have bloomed every summer in two patches, presumably planted by some former owner (as I and my black thumb have planted nothing surviving more than a couple seasons). One patch out in front of the house ringed a small decorative tree which died long ago, leaving them isolated in the middle of an open, grassy yard; the other patch, out back, circled two still-lively oaks. But most years they hardly bloomed, and lately had managed only half a dozen blossoms altogether. I thought their soft pink faces were slowly dying out.

But this summer has been wetter and cooler than most, and when they began to bloom it was clear that this year the surprise lilies were going to live up to their name.

I’ve counted 66 buds and blossoms so far. Out front, the lilies have sprung up in their circle like an overgrown fairy ring. And the oaks out back are wearing a frilly pink skirt above their spreading roots. It’s beautiful, and totally unexpected.

What a lovely late-July surprise.