Thursday Poem - Mind Wanting More

Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.

But the mind always
wants more than it has --
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.

Holly Hughes
from American Zen: A Gathering of Poets

Wordless Wednesday - Little Bard of the Woodland

Thoughts Evergreening

Here we are in the last week of February, and the Vernal Equinox is not far away - something we need to remind ourselves about, having been on the receiving end of some whopping great snowfalls in the last week or three.

Hedgerows and small trees disappeared entirely in some places, and in others, just the tips of branches were (and sometimes still are) poking out of drifts almost Himalayan in their bold stature.  While shoveling, we chanted the mantra to ourselves over and over again that days are growing longer, but it will be some time before we sense real change in the air around us and notice sweeping changes in our native landscape.  There are still a few snowfalls in our future - we are fairly certain of that.

Dear departing February is often the coldest month here in the north, a time of snow and penetrating cold. It's tempting to just remain indoors and curl up by the fire with tea and books, but we need our woodland rambles in Lanark.  Snowy potterings among the trees and old stones nourish and sustain us - they keep us peaceable, and so we take them, even on the coldest days in winter.

"Crunch, crunch, crunch" went the snowshoes this week as we made our way through the woods.  It may have been our imagination, but the snow seemed brighter and more brilliant than on forays just a few days ago.  When there was sunlight, the fields glittered from here to there, and we felt as rich as old Croesus - as though every jeweler's vault on the planet had been looted and spilled out on the snow at our feet.

There was subtle shifting in wooded hollows, and the flickering movements were welcome to winter weary wanderers like ourselves.  Here and there, sprigs of evergreen emerged from the azure snows, and the color was a hopeful thing, one that not even the biting north wind could carry away in its grasping gelid paws.

Rumors of Spring Enfolded

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

King of the Still Snowbound Hill

Rain, rain, rain....................

What is that sound on the other side of the kitchen window? Wonder of wonders, it's the first rain of the calendar year, and the tuneful sound of its descent is welcome beyond any words I can think up and type in here.  I could kiss each and every glossy drop alighting on the veranda and anointing the glass.

Raindrops spatter the panes like confetti, and they lightly touch the tarnished wind chimes suspended from the roof and silent for most of the winter.  They paint their own moist decoupage on the garden and the trees and the whole wide waking world.

Since the temperature is only a few degrees above freezing at present, I shall stand here in the kitchen with my camera and coffee and watch it all, rather than running out to lurch and sway and splosh about in the wet.

Thursday Poem - Become Becoming

Wait for evening.
Then you'll be alone.

Wait for the playground to empty.
Then call out those companions from childhood:

The one who closed his eyes
and pretended to be invisible.
The one to whom you told every secret.
The one who made a world of any hiding place.

And don't forget the one who listened in silence
while you wondered out loud:

Is the universe an empty mirror? A flowering tree?
Is the universe the sleep of a woman?

Wait for the sky's last blue
(the color of your homesickness).

Then you'll know the answer.

Wait for the air's first gold (that color of Amen).
Then you'll spy the wind's barefoot steps.

Then you'll recall that story beginning
with a child who strays in the woods.

The search for him goes on in the growing
shadow of the clock.

And the face behind the clock's face
is not his father's face.

And the hands behind the clock's hands
are not his mother's hands.

All of Time began when you first answered
to the names your mother and father gave you.

Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.
Then, you can trade places with the wind.

Then you'll remember your life
as a book of candles,
each page read by the light of its own burning.

Li-Young Lee
(from Behind My Eyes)

Wordless Wednesday - Here Is the Trail

Standing in the Light

Weary of ice and snow, she longs to have her morning tea on the veranda and knows that she will not be doing that for months.  A little bright color right about now would be grand, and it would vastly appreciated too.

On a trip to the local organic market, a tin bucket of bright tulips catches her eye, and she scoops up a large bunch, carrying them home in her arthritic paws as tenderly as if they were fledgling birds.  Arrayed in an old glass vase (a flea market find from last summer), the glossy lipstick red blooms and bright green leaves don't just light up the day - they light up just about everything else too.

She resolves to keep a pot, a tin, a bucket or a vase of something flowering near the southern window.  She thinks how beautiful a single rose will look there come summer, and it seems to her that this is not just about a vase of tulips or a single rose, but about all the boundless gardens of the earth coming into riotous intoxicating bloom.

Over the Snowy Hills and Through the Woods

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust. 

The stars form a circle, and in the center we dance.

Rumi

February's Hunger Moon

Usually the second moon of the year, February's orb is a cold one, fringed below by the vague shapes of evergreens and often attended by faint faraway stars, but mostly by feathery snow clouds. Capturing this moon on a memory card is an uncomfortable business, so why am I outside in the snow after dark?  Yesterday, it snowed here most of the day, and I thought no moon would be seen this time around, but outside I went as I've been doing for years. Doing it is a way of "saying yes to the world", of saying yes to the wildness of life in the Great Round of time and grandeur in the night.

For me, this moon is always about owls.  Around this time, the Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), having taken a mate a few weeks earlier, crafts a nest somewhere and settles down to the happy business of raising an unruly brood. The great "hornies" are among my favorite birds - it's enchanting to hear a couple calling companionably to each other across the snowy woods in winter's (hopefully) closing pages. Quintessential northern residents, the great owls thrive on the tough northern climate - the further north one travels, the bigger they grow. The Saw-whet Owl or sugar bird (Aegolius acadicus) is not far behind in its courtship rituals, and neither are the other owls of the Lanark highlands. As cold as it is here in February, there is love and fertility in the air, among the northern owls anyway.

Life is a little more stressful for those of us who lack feathers and fur and dine not on mice and voles. The Wolf Moon was last month, but wolves are howling (metaphorically) at village gates, and hunger is a beast well known in wild places.  So it is to humans too, and so it has been for most of history - we count sticks of firewood in our woodsheds, vegetables in our bins and freezers, quart sealers and jelly jars in our larders, hoping to hang on to autumn's gathering for a little while longer. If we can manage to do that, March promises relief and sweetness. The splendid sylvan alchemy of the maple syrup season will be in full swing when the next full moon makes its appearance.

For a fine trove of moon and food lore about the ways in which we have traditionally hunted, gathered, cooked and "put things by" for the long nights, dip into Jessica Prentice's Full Moon Feast.  Her book follows the thirteen moons of an agricultural year from this month's Hunger Moon to January's Wolf Moon, and each of the thirteen chapters has recipes in tune with nature's own rhythms.  I am rereading Jessica's creation at the moment and finding it as much a treat now as it was in my earlier readings. This is my second copy, and I so wish Chelsea Green had published the first edition in sturdier hardcover format. One approach to addressing issues of wear and tear associated with softcover cookbooks (around here anyway) is to purchase yet another copy and tuck it away - either that or take up the fine old craft of bookbinding.

We also know this moon as the: Ash Moon, Big Winter Moon, Bone Moon, Bony Moon, Budding Moon, Chestnuts Moon, Cold Winds Moon, Coyotes Frighten Moon, Crow Moon, Dark Red Calves Moon, Death Moon, Eagle Moon, Fish Running Moon, Frost Sparkling in the Sun Moon, Gray Moon, Horning Moon, HUnger Moon, Ice in River Is Gone Moon, Ice Moon, Index Finger Moon, Little Bud Moon, Long Dry Moon, Makes Branches Fall in Pieces Moon, Mimosa Moon, Moon of Ice, Moon of Purification and Renewal, Moon of Rabbit Conception, Moon of the Cedar Dust Wind, Moon of the Raccoon, Moon of the Frog, Moon When Geese Come Home, Moon When Bear Cubs are Born, Moon When Spruce Tips Fall, Moon When Trees Pop, Moon When Trees Are Bare and Vegetation Is Scarce, Narcissus Moon, No Snow in Trails Moon, Owl Moon, Peach Blossom Moon, Pink Moon, Plum Blossom Moon, Primrose Moon, Quickening Moon, Raccoon Moon, Rain and Dancing Moon , Red and Cleansing Moon, Second Moon, Snow Crust Moon, Snow Moon, Solmonath (Sun Moon), Squint Rock Moon, Staying Home Moon, Storing Moon, Storm Moon, Sucker Fish Moon, Sucker Moon, Trapper’s Moon, Treacherous Moon, Violet Moon, Wexes Moon, Wild Moon, Wind Moon, Wind Tossed Moon, Winter Moon

Among the many names for this month's moon, I am rather fond of Quickening Moon and Wild Moon, but first and foremost, Owl Moon.

For Valentine's Day

It should be every day, and not just one day in the calendar year. That goes for Newhaus Belgian chocolates too, especially the absolutely amazing dark ones.

Having just remembered how utterly sublime Newhaus creations are, I am going to pull out my battered copy of Chocolat by Joanne Harris - fine reading for Valentine's Day with its almost indecently sumptuous descriptions of handmade chocolates.

However you are celebrating this day (or perhaps not celebrating it at all), may there be love, love, love and plenty of dark chocolate too.

Thursday Poem - Litany

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

Billy Collins

Wordless Wednesday - Just a Little Snow

Watching the Light

A vaguely restless time, these middling weeks in February. At night, there are dreams of wild orchids, trout lilies and columbines, sunlight falling greenly through the trees and songbirds in the leafy canopy.  In the wee hours of the morning, I wander the fully leafed out understory, follow the movement of clouds across the western field, harken to bullfrogs in the beaver pond and bees in the wild apple trees by the fence.

By day, I measure icicles dangling from the roof, assess the strength of returning sunlight and the length of shadows in the landscape, watch as snowdrifts recede from favorite trails through the woods, leaving puffs of snow like cotton wool and a fine lacy fretwork behind as they go. Moving along, I find myself listening for the telltale sound of maple sap dripping sotto voce down tree trunks.

... and the birds. That gentle hoot is the unforgettable call of a Great Horned Owl (bubo virginianis) communicating with her mate - he is sitting on their nest in the old oak as she hunts nearby. Other monotonous (and repetitive) notes are the swooping courtship ballad of the Saw-Whet Owl (aegolius acadicus), that fierce little harbinger of the approaching maple sugaring season.

There are all these snowy trees, tiny red buds and artfully frosted grasses to ponder as I wander about with field notebook and camera, and my restlessness vanishes like smoke as I potter - I am contented just to be here and watching as the day unfolds, and the light ebbs and flows.  It's a late winter Zen thing, its appearance always an honored guest on the threshold.

Atomies of Wonder

How heartening it was to peer into the lacy fretwork of a grove of young maples in the Lanark woods this week and see buds, lavishly enfolded in ice, but waxing rosy and vibrant in the depths of deep gelid winter.

Bud and branch, tree and thicket, all were vibrant and living entities, and every single nubbin was an atomy - a perfect tiny world replete with infinite greening possibility.  There was more hope in that moment of unfettered astonishment and those minute swaying presences than I have encountered in some time.

A pair of great horned owls is constructing their nest in an old oak in the deep woods, and the Northern Saw-whet is practicing its courting songs.  Wonder of wonders, somewhere beyond these rocky snow clad hills, spring is already on its way. 

Saying Yes to the World

Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky.  When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world.
Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

Curious Friend on the Trail

North American Red Squirrel 

(Tamiasciurus hudsonicus)

Thursday Poem - Don't wait for something beautiful to find you

Go out into the weather-beaten world
where straw men lean on frozen fields
and find the cardinal's scarlet flash of wing,
a winter heart, a feathered hope.

Without a camera or a memory,
we travel these old country roads,
turn corners like the pages of a book,
enchanted by the ordinary life

of fields and rocks and woods,
of small wild creatures stirring in the brush.
We take home pockets full of myths
and wonders seldom seen.

We will not give up easily,
Across the breakfast table
in our precarious nest,
we make those promises keep on going

that no one ever keeps.  And yet...
there is the cardinal again,
a finial on our old gray fence.
Red is for Valentines.

This favorite poem is reprinted with permission from my friend Dolores Stewart's gorgeous volume of poetry, The Nature of Things

Wordless Wednesday - By Winter Crowned

Dreaming of Spring

It's a February thing methinks...... Standing out here this week, I noticed that day by day, the sky is becoming bluer, at least when it is not shrouded from here to there with stratonimbus snow clouds and fluffy curtains of nebulous winter precipitation.  There is such glorious light on clear days, and it dazzles these old eyes.  The trees sparkle, fences sparkle, snow sparkles - everything sparkles.

The deep drifts around the old barn and lying across the landscape are also blue, and the splendid shadows falling across fields and buildings are beginning to take on springtime sharpness and depth and length.  There are pools of indigo shadow so vivid and intense one could almost dive into them.

In the last week, the chickadee community has switched its winter repertoire to springtime (and courting) songs, and mirabile dictu, I discovered the first precious buds of the coming season on an old maple tree leaning across the trail. All the northern world, it seems, is entertaining thoughts of springtime and warmth at last.  Standing in a waist deep snowdrift, I could do little except lurch about and exclaim, but in my heart, I was dancing, and no mistake.

Another Snow Day

I am certain I posted these images yesterday, but they (and the post) seem to have disappeared into the void, so I am tucking them in again. 

Saying Yes to the World

Touching Sunrise

An early February morning, and it's cold, cold, cold...  Pale sunlight paints the sky and clouds with oro pallido light as old Helios climbs above the horizon.

She puts her coffee down on the kitchen counter and walks outside to the deck in her tattered tee shirt, yoga pants and fluffy slippers, wild of hair and brown eyes alight.

Something within her is insisting, and the fey spirit will not be dissuaded by the cold. A morning like this simply must be welcomed with open arms.