Sequestered (XXIV)

Thursday Poem - Bio

I am a leaf-dance in the woods.
I am the green gaze of the ocean.
I am a cloud-splitter in the sky.
I arrived robed in red
out of nowhere and nothing.
I whisper between pages.
I disappear in the painting.
I rest between musical notes.
I awake among strangers
in a country I never imagined.
I am timbales and bells,
a parade under your window.
I am the riddle I cannot solve,
hands on the clock's face,
seven crows on a branch.
I am the one whose footfall
changes the pattern of stars.

Dolores Stewart
from The Nature of Things
(reprinted here with the late poet's kind permission)

Friday Rambles - Winter Returns

A brilliant cold moon rose around midnight last night and was midheaven around five this morning.  Luna was a radiant, fey and insistent presence through the bedroom draperies, and sleeping was well nigh impossible. Temperatures were several degrees below zero overnight, and as I watched the moon from my pillow, I could hear the north wind dancing along the roof shingles and cantering briskly through the eaves of the little blue house in the village.

There was fresh snow in the garden at sunrise this morning, and there was ice in the heart of the birdbath, the sound of snapping and crackling as winter birds danced from twig to brittle twig among the bare shrubberies and did a little chilled singing to greet the day.

Now and then, there are brilliant blue days in late March and early April, but we are back to winter for the next several days, leaden skies from here to there, bitter winds out of the north, snow and ice pellets, sometimes freezing rain. We wandered in the woods for a few hours this week, but after only a few clicks, my fingers were blue, and back into heavy gloves they went.

Wonder of wonders, the gnarly old willows down by the creek were putting up lovely furry catkins anyway, and the icicles below cradled tiny branches and fragile scraps of green. Snow blanketed everything in my favorite woodland clearing, but water in the little stream at my feet was running free and singing. Song and flow are still percolating in my thoughts this morning, a few days later.  A strange blending of seasonal images and motifs perhaps, but this is what my native place looks like this year, and I am contented with it.

There is rising everywhere as Gaia Sophia awakens and opens her arms.  There is light in the icicles, in thawing streams and fuzzy little willow buds. I cling to the thought and turn my collar up against the gelid wind.

Pictures in River Ice

Seeing Through and Loving It

Is this place an ocean or a desert in winter? I am never sure which, but either way, there is always something to feast one's eyes on and capture with the lens. Old window panes, heaps of books, bowls of fruit and cups of tea, it's all good. Isn't a little uncertainty a good thing, every now and then?

Before the first snow of the season falls, I l wonder how I will survive without autumn's shapes and fiery colors, and I feel a vague anxiety contemplating the monochromatic weeks and months to come. Shame on me for harboring such morose and mutinous thoughts.  I should know better.

There are patterns here everywhere one looks, and they all have to do with liquid turnings and sparkling transformation: feathery patterns in river ice as it forms, glossy icicles suspended from trees along the shore, field grasses poking their silvery heads out of drifts, beads of water falling in the garden and freezing in midair, fallen leaves with snow crystals shining through. Everything my cronish eye alights on is food for eyes and lens and thought, a good thing since I am still not able to wander as far as I would like to.

Absent the vibrant and earthy colors dancing on my palette at other times of the year, winter's offerings are a commonwealth of swirling shapes and patterns, each and every one exquisite.  Even an egg yolk sun shining through a friend's kitchen window beguiles and enchants.

Taking wing

It's the first Tuesday in September, and village children are off to their first day at school, walked all the way there (or just to the bus stop) by proud parents, big sisters and brothers and family pets. I have known many of the kids since they traveled about in prams, and here they are going off to school.  Dear me...

The youngsters wear jackets in confetti colors, carry backpacks and lunch boxes in pink, turquoise and lime green, tote pint-sized umbrellas patterned in flowers or bunnies or polka dots. They bloom like peonies in the street, and watching from the windows, I feel like doing a little blooming too.

Only a short distance away, other brightly arrayed offspring have hatched out in village hedgerows, and they are strengthening their wings for the long journey south to begin in a week or so—every single Monarch butterfly is a stained glass jewel, a wild, vivid and breathtaking wonder.

There are vibrant hues everywhere I look in early September, and they are a treat for these old eyes. It doesn't matter whether the colors are on Virginia creepers, coneflowers or tiny raincoats - they invite me to kick up my heels and dance.

The Sisterhood of Wandering Eye and Dancing Leaf

Little things leave you feeling restless in February. You ramble through stacks of gardening catalogues, plotting another heritage rose or three, new plots of herbs and heirloom veggies. You spend hours in the kitchen summoning old Helios with cilantro, fragrant olive oils and recipes straight from Tuscany. You brew endless pots of herbal tea, sunlight dancing in every china mug.

You play with filters, apertures and shutter speeds, entranced (and occasionally very irritated) with the surprising transformations wrought by your madcap gypsy tinkerings. Camera in hand or around your neck, you haunt the woods, peering into trees and searching for a leaf somewhere, even a single bare leaf. You scan the cloudy evening skies, desperately hoping to see the moon, and you calculate the weeks remaining until the geese, the herons and the loons come home again.

It may not seem like it, but change is already on its way.  The great horned owls who live on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are now building their nest in an old oak tree about a mile back in the forest and getting ready to raise another comely brood.  It makes me happy to think it is happening again.

This morning, a single delicately frosted leaf was teased into brief flight by the north wind, and it came to rest in the birdbath in the garden, bearing in its poignant wabi sabi simplicity an often and much needed reminder. This is the sisterhood of fur and feather, snowy earth and clouded sky, wandering eye and dancing leaf.  Out of small and frost-rimed doings, a mindful life is made.

My friend Penny had an infectious grin and a dry sense of humor, a passion for crows and ravens, for organic food and fair trade coffee. She adored her cat, McBain, and she loved indie book shops.  She gave wonderful hugs, and she enjoyed getting them. She was a livelong member of the Sisterhood of Wandering Eye and Dancing Leaf, and when spring arrives, I will plant a tree for her, not far from where the owls are nesting now.  Wild soul that she was (and still is), she will love it.