Summer Waters

The Blessing Moon of July

The eighth calendar moon of the year rises slowly into the night sky - she is as bright as a whole forest of lighted candles, and she is attended by oceans of stars and velvety darkness. I had a companion last evening as I stood in the garden with my tripod and camera, a young peregrine falcon who seemed to be as enchanted by the rising moon as I was.

The full moons of the waning year always seem a little brighter and more luminescent to me than their earlier counterparts, as if the Old Wild Mother is making up for the waning daylight hours by granting us a little more moonlight when late summer darkness comes tumbling down.

July's moon is ruled by Saturn, and so, this is an appropriate time to honor those who have been our teachers, tutors and mentors on this earthly journey, to give thanks for the lessons they have given us and the wisdom so freely shared. Let us also honor the poets, photographers (not this fumbling one however) and artists who also shared their vision and bequeathed us a rich inheritance of words and images when they passed beyond the fields we know. We also know the July moon as:

Blackberry Moon, Blueberry Moon, Buck Moon, Claim Song Moon, Corn Moon, Crane Moon, Daisy Moon, Fallow Moon, Feather Moulting Moon, Flying Moon, Grass Cutter Moon, Ground Burning Moon, Hay Moon,v Heat Moon, Horse Moon, Humpback Salmon Return to Earth Moon, Hungry Ghost Moon, Index-finger Moon, Larkspur Moon, Lightning Moon, Little Harvest Moon, Little Moon of Deer Horns Dropping off, Little Ripening Moon, Lotus Flower Moon, Meadow Moon, Manzanita Ripens Moon, Mead Moon, Midsummer Moon, Middle Moon, Middle of Summer Moon, Moon of Claiming, Moon of the Young Corn, Moon of Fledgling Hawk, Moon of Much Ripening, Moon of the Home Dance, Moon of the Middle Summer, Moon of Ripeness, Moon When Cherries Are Ripe, Moon When the Buffalo Bellow, Moon When People Move Camp Together, Moon When Limbs of Are Trees Broken by Fruit, Moon When Squash Are Ripe and Indian Beans Begin to Be Edible, Moon When Ducks Begin to Malt, Mountain Clover Moon, Peaches Moon, Raspberry Moon, Red Berries Moon, Red Blooming Lilies Moon, Return from Harvest Moon, Ripe Corn Moon, Ripening Moon, Rose Moon, Salmon Go up the Rivers in a Group Moon, Seventh Moon, Smokey Moon, Strong Sun Moon, Summer Moon, Sun House Moon, Thunder Moon, Warming Sun Moon, Water Lily Moon, Wattle Moon, Wort Moon

Emerald Rain

Late Summer Stillness at Sunrise

A quiet sunrise moment by the beaver pond...

In late July, the sun comes up like molten honey over the water. There is a gentle breeze in the surrounding trees and the ripples widen slowly in circles across the surface of the pond. I can hear the beaver tribe swimming languidly nearby. There is the contented "plop" of mud turtles jumping off their log into the water one after another, the quacking of wood ducks along the shoreline, the creaking voice of a heron as it moves majestically through the reeds.

It will be very hot later today, but nothing could be more perfect than this late summer stillness at sunrise. If this season was longer, would I love and appreciate such moments as much as I do, here in the north? A summer sunrise by the pond is wild and timeless, and it is priceless.

Mama Says Om - Magic

Magic is everywhere we look, if we have the eyes to see it, and the wits to comprehend it.

It is in the exuberant self-rooting residents of the hedgerow and the leaning ash trees above, the summer songs of the birds and the slow happy buzzing of crickets in my western field in late afternoon. It is in the perfect golden mandala spokes of the Brown Eyed Susan blooming by my old rail gate. Magic is also in that wonderful old gate and all along the country road it borders so patiently.

Magic walks among us too - we are all magical creatures spun out of stardust and sparkling like the early morning dew on a garden plum. Here's to magic and the turning year, here's to us as we walk together along this magical path called life. We shine, if only we could remember it.

Written for the blithe and shining souls at Mama Says Om.

Thursday Poem - Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry, from The Country of Marriage

There is an original haiku sequence here.

Wordless Wednesday

The Rose

It's the first bloom of the season on the rose in my northern garden (Abraham Darby) and a perfect specimen of David Austen's art, truly magnificent in size, shape, color and fragrance.

Alas, I am not the only wight here with a passion for David Austen roses. Of the seven buds on my rose, only this one has persevered to bloom - the squirrels are absolutely mad about English roses and have been consuming the buds as soon as they appear.

My apologies for this late posting - Blogger would not permit me to write or post anything at all today, and while I would like to write more now, doing so today does not seem wise.

New Life

Here is to radiant new life!!! The newest member of my extended family is three days old, and his name has not yet been revealed, but he is a handsome lad, and being of both thoroughbred and draught lineage, he is going to be truly statuesque when he grows up.

Like all newborn foals, my god(dess)son is trusting and sociable. He is identical in physical markings to his noble mother, Brandy, and his personality is as sweet as hers has always been.

Late Summer Woods

What shall we say about Saturday in the woods? The day was brilliantly sunny and the air was full of birdsong and hungry deer flies.

As Lanark moves languidly into late summer, the brilliant early emerald greens of the fields and woodlands are turning dry, going powdery gray and dusty brown around the edges. I took one bad tumble yesterday and righted myself quickly, but somewhere in the beaver pond is a derelict lens cap which went flying off in the process. My back is much the worse for wear this morning, but the camera is just fine. I shall hobble slowly about this morning and look for the lens cap.

It has not been hot enough here for the summer cicadas to climb up into the July sunlight, but we have been prowling the verges looking for them, and there were grasshoppers and crickets everywhere we went yesterday.

Mama Says Om - Responsibility

The word responsibility emerges from Old English lexicon, then from the Old French respondére (to answer or reply), and finally from the Latin word respondere: to answer, promise in return, or pledge something.

It's a word we all hear from the time we are capable of forming words and sentences of our own, and something we are admonished to assume, adopt or take up for ourselves. For some reason, "being responsible " is deemed the province of adults - to act responsibly implies maturity beyond one's years and steady progress (if progress it is) into adulthood. I love the idea of responsibility as response, promise or pledge.

On a day to day basis, being responsible means that we should embrace our failures as well as our successes, and that we should pick up after ourselves. It means that we should communicate with others in a genuine way, and that we should honor the bonds which tie us together as a community. That community certainly includes other human beings, but it also embraces every tree and butterfly and stone, the earth from which we came and on which we stand, the sun, the moon and the summer stars overhead.

Perhaps we can take responsibility for our ceaseless and thoughtless despoiling of the planet and start cleaning things up? That kind of responsibility is way overdue.

Written for the blithe mamas at Mama says Om.

Thursday Poem - Sojourns in a Parallel World

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension — though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal — then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
— but we have changed, a little.

Denise Levertov

Wordless Wednesday

Iridescent

There are spectacular dragonflies here in summer, and sometimes one can discern a wild truth in the iridescent shimmer of a Twelve Spotted Skimmer's wings too - even when the wind is dancing across the hill or through the hedgerow and setting everything there in motion.

The iridescence is something magical, a naturally occurring phenomenon in which the wings change color constantly because their many layered semi-transparent surfaces generate multiple reflections in the eyes of a patient observer - sometimes the camera lens, but usually just a faint shimmer.

The physics of the phenomenon are absolutely fascinating, but they are unnecessary here for the moment. The word iridescent comes from the Greek iris (or plural irides) meaning rainbow, and it all begins with the goddess Iris who personified the rainbow on Mount Olympus and acted as a messenger of the gods.

Butterflies and Truth

It is a state of mind which always seems to set in at this time in summer, a nebulous melancholy which defies adequate wordy description, perhaps arising from the fact that summer is fleeting and passes far too quickly in my beautiful north woods.

When the malaise sets in, one can nurture and cultivate it, or set off into the trees with camera and binoculars to listen to the grosbeaks in the overstory, take a closer look at the season and embrace what summer holds out to a patient potterer.

Yesterday, that is exactly what I did - I set off into the greenwood and climbed out of myself for an hour or two, finding a leafy peace and quiet wonder among the graceful wings and uplifted voices. Somewhere along the trail into the greenwood, I encountered wild truth, and I found myself too.

Fritillary

July Blooming

They are one of my markers of the season, the orange and magenta Asiatic lilies blooming now in the garden behind the little blue house in the village.

One can see the blooms against the garden walls and the greenery from quite a distance, even on dark and rainy days. My lilies toil not, and neither do they spin - they just stand there and bloom brilliantly, and they nod in the wind as though they are having conversations.

Other Signs: tomatoes and peppers appearing in the garden, rose mallow and elderberries blooming in the Lanark Highlands, first little green plums on the wild plum trees in the hedgerow

Mama Says Om - Honesty

It's looking at myself in the mirror in the morning and accepting this old hen in her silvery hair, sags, furrows and creases, her aging metabolism, her temper, her crustiness (oftentimes as prickly as a thistle) and her idiosyncrasies - accepting that she is no longer lithe and vibrant and bound for glory. There are only a few roses still to bloom on this antique shrub, and it has wicked thorns in abundance, but that is quite all right.

It's watching as benighted empires shudder and collide and fall into dust, leaving oceans of residual pain and vast heaps of reeking non-biodegradable detritus.

It's loving this beautiful world and embracing its suffering without reservation, trying to do something to halt the destruction of our earth, our abuses of each other and our slow march into oblivion.

It's realizing that we are one vast breathing organism and not just a collection of solitary entities bumbling along and mucking things up royally, that although my quotidian efforts are small (in the greater scheme of things), I am not alone in making them and together we are strong - we can change things.

It's embracing existence in all its shapes, colors and intensities, just as it is, finding a place to stand in truth and becoming truly fierce with reality.

Written for the honest mamas at Mama Says Om.

Thursday Poem - Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Mary Oliver
(Messenger from Thirst)

Wordless Wednesday

In the Great Round

One is very conscious of turnings, gatherings and transformation in July, the fat Monarch caterpillars munching milkweed leaves in the hedgerow and dreaming of flight, the hum of bees and wasps in the glossy buckthorn, the constant (and rather scattered) activities of squirrels and chipmunks chattering from their branches and filling their larders for the long nights time. It's as though the residents of garden, field and hedgerow have all glanced at their calendars and realized suddenly that these glorious summer days are the times of waning light, that they must begin to prepare for the lean times of late autumn and winter.

The same goes for the human species, for those who plough and sow and reap, who tend crops and fields and fill their local markets with colorful produce so bright and luscious that it is hard to know just what to bring home in one's basket in July.

There are stands of silky waving barley and high rustling green corn in Lanark, and it is marvellous to see. There is hay everywhere in these summer days - old fashioned heaps and stooks in the fields, small square horse bales and great round bales of fragrant timothy, alfalfa and clover as large as a pioneer's log cabin. The air is replete with harvest scents, and the bales and their newly shorn fields form fine patchwork patterns early in the morning. There are deep shadows along the old rail fences where deer and freckled fawns come out to feed at sunrise and dusk, and they share their space with flocks of wild turkeys.

I think of it as the "great round", and I wouldn't miss these perfect and astonishing summer rhythms for anything. It's all good and no two summers are the same.

Stormy Monday

Still raining here, and the night was chock full of thunder, lightening, ozone and precipitation. . .

Cassie and I spent most of the night in her closet sanctuary (or bolt hole), and I slept sitting up with Little Brown Girl in my arms. This morning, the sound of the gentle rain is soothing stuff, and my thoughts are of cups of tea and afternoon naps.

Green and Foggy Thoughts

It is raining steadily here this morning, and it has been raining all night, with fireworks and sound effects all the way through.

Alas the scribe is in a somewhat foggy and befuddled state this morning. My German Shorthair Pointer (and constant companion), Cassie, had an agitated night, and I was up for most of the dark hours with her, just holding her most of the time. My darling wee girl is somewhat elderly now, and a host of unhappy memories from her battered childhood have resurfaced. She is remembering being left outdoors as a puppy in her too-small crate during thunderstorms, and she remembers how terrified she was. As we age, such childhood memories (both happy and agonized) have a way of returning to us in all their intensities.

This mother has spent most of the night sitting in a nice secure windowless closet with her third daughter, and I really would not have it any other way, but this morning, I am not quite with it. Nevertheless, the day lilies in the garden are wonderful in the rain.

Heavy Cloud, Little Rain

We were gathering detritus along the road at the bottom of our property in Lanark yesterday when the storm wandered in.

It began with a light breeze and just a few wisps of cloud appearing in the distance, then the clouds rolled over in great waves and assembled themselves into towering drifts over the trees - they piled up against the big central blue in shadings from palest azure to a deep inky smoke with hints of indigo and chocolate here and there. The thunderheads were backlit by the sun, and there was light above, but all was twilight and darkness below.

For several magical minutes, a brisk wind scoured the hill, and everything seemed to be in motion, then it (the wind) became a whisper, and rolling thunder made its entrance, playing the sky and the landscape like a vast cosmic drum.

Magical stuff this. . . I love storms, and I stopped where I was working to watch the storm come in, marveling at the changing sky and the colors, the firepower and clout on display and the gusto with which the storm gods and goddesses cut loose whenever they have an opportunity to do so.

After all that, there was only a little rain, just a brief and energetic spattering of big drops which disappeared into the dry earth instantly. The air smelled wonderful though.

Sorry. . .

I apologize for multiple publishings here, but Blogger is back in puckish (and downright ornery) mode, and getting anything at all to flow up the cyber trail to it is a regular nightmare.

It takes several efforts to publish a post, and then, one notices that photos are skewed or missing, text is all over the place, the font is wrong and even the date. Apparently this is Thursday, July 5th.

Mama Says Om - Freedom

I think ruefully of all the vanished and benighted years when I was motoring downtown in early morning, dressed in a business suit and carrying an attache case, resolute of chin and grimly determined to "get through" myriad daily office panics and traumas as yet unknown. If anyone had suggested that I was not free then, I would have been indignant and rude too, perhaps given that person an evasive answer.

These days, I walk another road, one which is usually unpaved and (more or less) untravelled - it meanders along hedgerows, through old trees, down steep gorges into orchid bogs and up across stony hills. There is no business suit and no attache case, just my camera and a battered pack holding spare lenses, water bottles and Cassie's canine treats. There is usually a compass tucked in there somewhere too.

We have time to pause and peer into hedgerows and trees together and watch butterflies cavorting in the milkweed, to watch the light shift and flow across the hills and clouds pile up in the sky before a storm, to take pleasure in the waning moon dancing up there in the blue at sunrise and pouring her serenity over everything.

Now, we are free, like the butterflies we saw in the milkweed this morning and the cavorting cottontails on the village common, but there are times when I could weep when I think of the years wasted. What on earth was I thinking of then? I hope that I learned something, but I am not sure that I did.

Written for the inspiring mamas at Mama Says Om.

Thursday Poem - Allegiances

It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.

Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked–
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders:-
we encounter them in dread and wonder,

But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
found some limit beyond the waterfall,
a season changes, and we come back, changed
but safe, quiet, grateful.

Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
while strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.

William Stafford, Allegiances

Wordless Wednesday

High Vibes

My wild sister Taexalia, has pegged me for the High Vibes Game of Tag, so here we go, and the exercise has been interesting indeed. The things which make my spirit sing and set my senses thrumming like an old harp are (for the most part) simply wild.

(1) Wild Places
A walk in wild places takes me back to what is important. It reinforces a deep connection with this beautiful world of which I am such a small part. In the windy movement of the trees and grasses, the dance of birds in the overstory and the choir of wolves on my hill at sunset, there are songs and tales which are echoes of the great mystery. I long to understand the mysterious language of the earth and know what She is saying - there are times when that longing is almost enough to bring me to my knees. Sometimes I sing along with the wolves on my hill at sunset, and whenever I am "out there", I feel like dancing too.

(2) Earth, Water, Stone
I park myself on a stone by the river or stream and remain there for an hour or so, listening to what the earth and stones and river are saying. There's a fine wild music in play and I dissolve into that music as if I too am flowing merrily along like the water. In the quiet pools, small waterfalls and gentle ripples, the sunlight flickering through the leaves of old overhanging trees and the fragrance of riparian earth, there is an elemental peace which is profoundly comforting, soothing and energizing too.

(3) The Camera
As I grow older, the camera is becoming almost a part of me, and every time I pick up the Lumix, I feel myself relaxing and becoming more myself (whoever and whatever that person happens to be). The camera is my third eye, a revealing lens which allows me to see into the perfect architecture of leaves, wildflowers, and old wood, to see (and understand) in a very small way just how remarkable Gaia's earthly garden is. I come alive when I pick up my camera.

(4) Books
My father taught me to read when I was about four years old, and he had no choice. I was most insistent about learning to read then and there, intuiting somehow at that early age that there was magic in books, that there were great worlds to be explored and innumerable fine adventures waiting within their pages. When I am not out pottering around in woodlands and hedgerows, I usually have my withered (but very happy) nose planted in a book.

(5) Starry Skies and Moonlight
Can there be anything in this world more beautiful than a clear night, a sky full of stars and Lady Moon smiling down on us? I think not. When I stand outside on the hill or in the garden after dark and look up, there is a deeper knowing, one which says clearly that I am part of all this, that I am part of this joyous elemental communion, and I belong here.

All of this (of course) is creative in its way and very satisfying. In my own turn, I am tagging:

Maya's Granny

Potato Prints

Rapunzel's Castle

Wrennaissance Woman

Suzie's Sacred Space

On the Hill

The Rose Moon of June

June's full moon rising over the evergreens is as bright and as lustrous as an astronomer's pearl, the great round moon of midsummer, riotous blooming and growing things.

If one follows the modern calendar, the year is half spent, and days are growing shorter again - we are now on the downward slope of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere. If one follows the calendar of the ancients, we are already three quarters of the way along through the turning year, and we are looking toward endings and new beginnings at Samhain (or Halloween). By either calendar, northerners are busy in their gardens, and there is harvest, reaping and "putting things by" in their thoughts. South of the equator, winter is moving slowly toward springtime, and there are thoughts of planting.

We also know this perfect moon as the:

Bass Moon, Big Mouth Moon, Big Summer Moon, Blackberry Moon, Brachmon Moon, Bulbs Mature Moon, Centek Moon, Columbine Moon, Corn Tassels Appear Moon, Dancing Moon, Duckling Moon, Dyan Moon, Egg Hatching Moon, Egg Laying Moon, Eucalyptus Moon, Fatness Moon, Fish Spoils Easily Moon, Fishing Moon, Flowering Cherry Moon, Full Leaf Moon, Gardening Moon, Green Corn Moon, Hoeing Moon, Honey Moon, Hot Moon, Lady Slipper Moon, Leaf Dark Moon, Litha Moon, Lotus Moon, Lovers' Moon, Mead Moon, Middle of Summer Moon, Midsummer Brightness Moon, Midsummer Moon, Moon of Horses, Moon of Little Fawns, Moon of Making Fat, Moon of Planting, Moon of the Turtle, Moon When Green Grass Is Up, Moon When June Berries Are Ripe, Moon When the Buffalo Bulls Hunt the Cows, Moon When the Hot Weather Begins, Moon When the Leaves Are Dark Green, Moon When the Leaves Come out, Moon When They Hill Indian Corn, Oak Moon, Peony Moon, Planting Moon, Pomegranate Moon, Raspberry Moon, Ripening Moon, Ripening Time Moon, Semivisonna Moon, Sixth Moon, Sockeye Moon, Solstice Moon, Strawberry Moon, Strong Sun Moon, Summer Moon, Sun High Moon, Thumb Moon, Turning Moon, Watermelon Moon, Windy Moon