Thursday Poem - Assurance

You will never be alone, you hear so deep

a sound when autumn comes. Yellow

pulls across the hills and thrums,

or the silence after lightening before it

says its names—and then the clouds'

wide-mouthed apologies. You were aimed

from birth: you will never be alone.

Rain will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,

long aisles—you never heard so deep a sound,

moss on rock, and years. You turn your head—

that’s what the silence meant: you’re not

alone. The whole wide world pours down.

William Stafford, (from The Way It Is)

For my brother James Brendan Franklin
(March 10, 1960 - August 22, 2023

In Remembrance

For the brave men in my family who served their country and have gone on ahead: my grandfather, my father, my Uncle Bob, my soulmate, Irv.

They are remembered with so much love.

Two On Earth, Five Together

This morning marks the third anniversary of my husband's passing from pancreatic cancer. Irv took his last breath at 9:23 AM on November 30, 2019 as I held him, and it feels like only yesterday that he left us and went on ahead. To say that life without my soulmate is difficult is understating things and then some. I loved Irv more than life itself, and it is difficult to wrap my mind around the idea of years of life without him. Surviving without him is still hard work, and flourishing is probably not in the cards.

For many years, I was married to a guy with a razor-sharp mind, a dry wit, a fine sense of irony and a great laugh. The natural world was an endless source of delight to him, and he never wearied of its grandeur and its beauty. He was passionate about trees, rocks and rivers, fields and fens, birds, bugs and woodland critters, sunrises and sunsets, full moons and starry nights. He loved his tribe fiercely and unconditionally.

He loved rambling, and ramble we did by golly, hand in hand and all over the place, packs on our backs, notebooks in our pockets, a camera around my neck and our beloved doggy sidekicks trotting along with us. I could not have had a more wonderful companion if I had written him into being myself, and I simply could not believe my good fortune. I look back on our life together with amazement and gratitude.

Now it is Beau and I who wander through the great wide world together, in the flesh anyway. Cassie and Spencer, traveled beyond the fields we know long ago, but they are right here with Irv, and all three are walking along in the woods with us. There will be five of us on the snowbound trail this winter, but three of us will not need parkas and snowshoes or leave paw prints in the white stuff. There is a small measure of comfort in knowing that we will walk these hallowed hills together forever. A fine untrammeled wildness dwells in our blood and bones, all of us.

Friday Ramble - Memory

This week's word has been around since the thirteenth century, coming to us from the Middle English memorie, the Anglo-French memoire and the Latin memoria/memor meaning "mindful".  Further back are the Old English gemimor meaning "well-known", the Anglo-Saxon gemunan meaning "to bear in mind", the Greek mermēra meaning "care", and the Sanskrit smarati meaning "that which is remembered". In the Vedas, the word smarati is used to describe teachings handed down orally from the ancients and never written out. At the beginning of this week's wordy adventure is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root form (s)mer- meaning to keep something in mind.

One of the late autumn entities that always tugs at my heartstrings is the last heron of the season, he or she haunting leaf-strewn shallows in solitary splendor and hoping to find a few fish, frogs and water beetles to fuel the long trip south. It's an arduous journey from here to there -  all the way to the southern states, Cuba, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Venezuela, and the Galapagos Islands. Consuming a few omega-rich meals before starting out on such a long voyage is a sensible thing to do.

I have already written here more than once about a long ago autumn morning in northern Ontario when the heron migration was in full swing. The great birds had gathered in predawn darkness to feed before flying onward, and hundreds stood almost side by side in the foggy waters of the Mississagi river near the town of Iron Bridge. As we moved along the shoreline, their silhouettes appeared one by one out of the mist, and it was breathtaking. It was wild magic of the finest kind.

There is enough enchantment in such tatterdemalion snippets to last many lifetimes, and I would like to retain the memory of that morning for the rest of my earthly days and beyond, no matter how many other mind scraps embrace the void somewhere along the road. I've always loved the "great blues", and I revisit the scene often in my thoughts, always a place of tranquility and stillness. We need as many peaceful places as we can find in these troubling times.

For whatever reason, archaic English refers to a group of herons together, not as colony or a flock, but as "a sedge of herons".  Every summer I watch herons fishing in the shallows along Dalhousie Lake and think that if there were no other teachers about, I would be just fine with a sedge of herons to show me the way.  

I don't usually think of a group of Great Blues as a sedge though. For those of us who love Ardea herodias and stay home in winter rather than flying south, the right expression for a gathering of our favorite birds is surely "a memory of herons". In the depths of the long white season, we think of them and smile.

Thursday Poem - Remember

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Joy Harjo, from How We Became Human

Coming to Light

Weariness of the long white season and its gelid trappings notwithstanding, occasionally there are surprises. Now and then, something poignant and engaging appears in the midst of our endless shoveling, heaving and scraping. Whatever it is, it grabs our attention and stops us right in our tracks, a tiny discarded running shoe, a pine cone, a tattered swath of ribbon, frozen weeds.

Pleasing bits of gnarly plant magic poking their heads out of the snow are unexpected, and they are always delightful to see. Withered and desiccated remnants of last summer, they're powerful reminders of its warmth and light, its glorious coloration and fragrance, and they awaken something within.

The dried fronds, wands and seed heads coming back into the light of day have curving, sinuous shapes and just a hint of the vibrant hues they once wore, and they are signs that winter is "getting old". We perch in towering snowdrifts, think about springtime and nesting owls, of maple syrup gathering, snowdrops and songbirds. We (season and humans) rattle and creak and carry on.

Perceptions totter, wither, fade and take on strange shapes in late winter, and we need reminders of the earth's own magic and capacity for infinite change, in this case a strand of last summer's common tansy with flowing arty curves against a background of deep blue snow.