Wordless Wednesday - Surfacing

Golden

By the Tay

 

 

Leaves and Berries

Friday Ramble - An Organic Silence

So watchful, serene and attentive in the peaceful waters on the edge of the pond that they seem to be meditating, and I love their expression.

On these days in August's closing pages, the mornings are lovely and cool.  Later, temperatures will be in the thirties and hovering near forty (Celsius) when humidity is factored into the equation.

Rural waters are receding as is usual at this time of year, and in many places one can traverse waterways without getting wet above the ankles.  Rivers and streams will be replenished by September rains, and we are all longing for the cooler days to come.

At our pond in the Lanark Highlands is a shallow waterfall surrounded by smooth old stones, and the sound of the incoming water makes a soothing song. I can sit there for hours and sometimes do just that in late August, often accompanied by scores of tiny jewel eyed frogs basking in the cool stone-scented wetness and the quiet. It's a peaceful place, and one of the scenes I remember in January when snow lies deep on the land and the waters have been silenced - the susurrus of the cascade like a mantra, late summer light and floating leaves dappling the surface, reeds swaying to and fro, the watchful repose and Zen posture of my little friends on their lovely wet rocks.

Summer time is kairos or nonlinear time anyway, but in late August, the hours seem to pass in another way altogether, this year perhaps more thoughtfully since I am indoors for the most past and beset by health issues, respiratory problems among other things.  My voice comes and goes (mostly goes), and being without a voice makes for some interesting moments. I make lunch plans with friends and sometimes just sit at their tables waving my hands in the air.  I run for the telephone and remember only as I am picking up the receiver that I have nothing to say, or rather that I can say nothing. I laugh when it happens, and my laughter is an odd sound, lacking the grace of flowing water or floating leaves but still organic - it falls somewhere between a rasp and a hollow creak like an old tree in the wind.

Poetry Thursday - Piute Creek

One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge
Gone in the dry air.
A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we are here.
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow:
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.

Gary Snyder

Wordless Wednesday - Rising

Here on Earth

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism 
is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. 
And we’ll change the world.

Jack Layton

Yesterday, I logged on here early and read that someone I admired very much and respected deeply had passed away.

Last month, Jack Layton had taken a leave of absence from his duties in parliament to battle cancer, having already weathered one bout of cancer and a broken hip. He had high hopes of coming back to the House of Commons next month, but treatment was not successful, and he passed beyond the fields we know early yesterday morning with his family at his side.

I am sorry for for the Layton/Chow family's loss, and my heart aches for them, but we are all poorer for the departure from life of this good man, gifted teacher and skilled politician. Jack was a soulful warrior, a passionate humanitarian and "the real thing" - someone with true grace within, a heart as wide as the world and a bone deep commitment to the common good. For those of you who did not know him (or of him), there is an excellent obituary here, The full text of his farewell letter to all of us is here.)

I couldn't settle after I read the news, just wandered around the house not sure of what to do with myself - stared out the window, kept losing my train of thought, read the same page in my current reading material over and over again, let cups of tea go cold, picked things up and put them down again. Grief is like that, and it is a wonder that anything got done at all yesterday.

Returning from an aimless walk late in the day, I looked up and saw a kite dancing in the breeze overhead. The scrap of rainbow colored silk was tethered to the planet by the lightest of cords and held in the chubby hands of a smiling toddler. I hadn't cried a single tear all through the day, but grief took over then.  I crumpled into the grass right there, and the tears came pouring out like a salty flood. Why they chose that moment to well up, I don't know - I only know that a good man has dissolved back into the great sea of being, and I am very very sad. Here on earth, it's up to us to carry Jack Layton's vision into the great wide world.

Our Daily Bread

Road at Sunrise

The serendipity union of road and field and tree at sunrise could be a metaphor for life itself and our meandering earthly journey through it - so too, the rosy horizon, pale violet skies and drifting wisps of cloud.  There's a refreshing coolness in the air at the very beginning of day, a whispering of surprises and unknown adventures waiting away out there, somewhere along the shining rim. 

When I awakened early this morning, the waning moon was almost overhead, and planet Jupiter was suspended below it like a solitary dancing pearl.  Sometimes one needs a morning like this to start things off in late summer, especially when the projected temperature for the day is in the forties (Celsius) with humidity factored into the equation.

Wordless Wednesday - Brushed

The Times, They Are A-Changin

Can it be?  You awaken one morning and realize that the world is changing, that days are much shorter than they were only a few weeks ago, and a brand new season is on its way.

Suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, the higher branches of elderly maples on the upper ridges of the Two Hundred Acre Wood are tipped here and there with scarlet.  Sumac leaves are acquiring a rosy cast, and as Spencer and I potter along the trail together in the morning, the first acorns and fallen leaves drift languidly into our path like little boats.  There is a whiff of spice in the air from wild woodland organics going to seed.

The last hay cutting of the season is in progress; artfully winnowed grain in pleasing golden curves and bales like rolls of quarters (or loonies) everywhere in the fields.  Local barley is still standing, but it will be probably be harvested in the next week or so.

There is an earthy abundance of color on which to feast one's eyes these days, stands of milkweed along our fences going mustard yellow, rust and burgundy, roadside foliage providing contrast in dusty grays and silvers.  Rural scenes are fringed with amber and saffron as far as the eye can see, and between the usual August thunder storms, the rolling vistas are set off gloriously by fluffy clouds and brilliant blue skies.

Morning and evening skies are full of proclaiming geese traveling between cornfields and the river, and there are wild turkey clans gabbling in nearby woodland clearings as they forage for acorns, fallen apples and hickory nuts on the forest floor.  Approach their banquet place, and the birds scatter in all directions, chattering like squirrels and protesting our thoughtless interruption.

This morning we noticed that starlings and swallows are congregating on telephone lines in long dancing skeins, and as we tried (and failed) to count them, a heron flew over our heads and landed silently in the pond.  In only a few weeks, they will all have departed for warmer climes and a more reliable food supply.  Summer is a fleeting thing this far north, and Bob Dylan had it right methinks - the times, they are indeed a-changing.

Dragon Skimmer

Widow Skimmer  (Libellula luctuosa) 

and Tufted Vetch (Vicia cracca)

Thursday Poem - One Song

After Rumi

A cardinal, the very essence of red, stabs

the hedgerow with his piercing notes;

a chickadee adds three short beats,

part of the percussion section, and a white-

throated sparrow moves the melody along.

Last night, at a concert, crashing waves

of Prokofiev; later, the soft rain falling

steadily and a train whistle off in the distance.

And today, the sun, waiting for its cue,

comes out from the clouds for a short sweet

solo, then sits back down, rests between turns.

On the other side of the world, night’s black

bass fiddle rosins its bow, draws it over

the strings, resonates with the breath

of sleepers, animal, vegetable, human. 

All the world breathes in, breathes out.

It hums, it throbs, it improvises.  So many voices.

Only one song.

Barbara Crooker

Wordless Wednesday - Watchful

Early Days....

Early days, the bittersweet stirrings of late summer and the harvest season...

Dawn skies in August are a fetching shade of violet, crinkled like crepe paper with rose and gold along their edges, high fluffy streaks of pink cloud from here to there and gossamer light touching everything with oro pallido, the pale lustrous gold that only visits the world at the beginning of day. One needs a very large brush to paint such sweeping confetti colored expanses, a wide angle lens that takes in all of the Old Wild Mother's creation.

How can one stay indoors on such a morning?   One cannot, and so Spencer and I went out to greet the new day together.  Barefoot, I sipped my tea thoughtfully, and my companion looked up at the sky and crooned softly, just as his big sister Cassie used to do on late summer mornings.   It is three years today since our darling girl passed beyond the fields we know and into the butterfly meadows beyond the bridge.

As we stood outside in sleepy wonder, thousands of geese were flying up from their night's rest on the river and out into the corn to feed - there were vast waves of joyous honking as they passed overhead and away to their breakfast in sun dappled fields. This is the music of August; this is "the music of what happens".

Lake and Early Sky

Turning With the Sun

An early morning rain dapples the sunflowers in the garden with beads of glossy wet. Then daylight arrives. They bow their shaggy yellow heads for a little longer, then lift their dark gypsy eyes to the rising sun and dance, long fuzzy stems and crepe paper skirts swaying as one to invisible instruments, cadence and tune.

Theirs is a journey round with the sun, turning to follow it across the sky all day long.

Thursday Poem - Morning Prayers

I have missed the guardian spirit

of the Sangre de Cristos
those mountains
against which I destroyed myself
every morning I was sick
with loving and fighting
in those small years.
In that season I looked up
to a blue conception of faith
a notion of the sacred in
the elegant border of cedar trees
becoming mountain and sky.

This is how we were born into the world:
Sky fell in love with earth, wore turquoise,
cantered in on a black horse.
Earth dressed herself fragrantly,
with regard for the aesthetics of holy romance.
Their love decorated the mountains with sunrise,
weaved valleys delicate with the edging of sunset.

This morning I look toward the east
and I am lonely for those mountains
though I've said good-bye to the girl
with her urgent prayers for redemption.
I used to believe in a vision
that would save the people
carry us all to the top of the mountain
during the flood
of human destruction.

I know nothing anymore
as I place my feet into the next world
except this:
the nothingness
is vast and stunning,
brims with details
of steaming, dark coffee
ashes of campfires
the bells on yaks or sheep
sirens careening through a deluge
of humans
or the dead carried through fire,
through the mist of baking sweet
bread and breathing.

This is how we will leave this world:
on horses of sunrise and sunset
from the shadow of the mountains
who witnessed every battle
every small struggle.

Joy Harjo,

from How We Become Human

Wordless Wednesday - Harvest Gold

For the Earth in All Her Contours

In some measure, the woman who is standing here with her DSLR, photographer's vest and bag of camera equipment is the same person who stood on the edge of the field with her prized Brownie Bullet many long years ago.

That wee girl was filled with wonder.  She marveled at the beauty of the rural morning around her, and she traced the contours of the field with her eyes, framing the image in her mind and wondering how best to capture it in the little box around her neck - she could have stood in perfect contentment by the rail fence forever.

There are the same feelings on this day of Lughnasadh or First Harvest, although the elder (me) creaks as she turns to frame a fey and ethereal shot out across the sleepy landscape. Some things never change, but should they change, and do they need to? Perhaps I never left this place - perhaps I have been here forever watching as the clouds and the light change and flow.