And you can quote me!

 

Veteran's Day

 

Windnoon

 On the green hill with the river beyond it
long ago and my father there
and my grandmother standing in her faded clothes
wrinkled high-laced black shoes in the spring grass
among the few gravestones inside their low fence
by the small white wooden church
the clear panes of its windows
letting the scene through from the windows
on the other side of the empty room
and a view of the trees over there
my grandmother hardly turned her head
staring like a cloud at the empty air
not looking at the green glass gravestone
with the name on it of the man to whom
she had been married and who had been
my father’s father she went on saying nothing
her eyes wandering above the trees
that hid the river from where we were
a place where she had stood with him one time
when they were young and the bell kept ringing.

~ “Windnoon” from The Moon Before Morning by W. S. Merwin

 

 

 

 

Weather and Ignorance

This morning it was 17 degrees warmer than yesterday morning.  The night before last and yesterday morning we had a cold north wind blowing.  It was not surprising that it was cold, the kind of cold that goes right through your jacket and tells you winter is coming on hard.  The grass on the ground, frosted and white, crunched underfoot.  It even smelled cold -- a sharp, delicious tang with a hint of wood smoke.  There was a handful of low clouds scudding south, but high above were mare's tails marching northeast.  Otherwise the sky was crystal clear, blue to hurt your eyes.
This morning, it felt like I was in the tropics.  It wasn't actually that warm, but it felt like it in contrast to the day before.  In fact, it felt like spring.  There was a warm, south-southwesterly breeze and it was raining. Not hard with blustering winds, but a gentle, steady rain bending slightly before the wind. The air was thick, on the edge of a fog, and there was fog in the valleys and low clouds shrouding the hills.  The sky was a solid, gray overcast and the day was dark. It was delightful.
Later in the day, someone mentioned how remarkable it was that the weather had changed so much in only one day, and I mentioned the wind shifts, and was thinking about high pressure and low pressure wind patterns and might have pursued the conversation further, but this person responded, rather peevishly, what's the difference which way the wind blows?  Yeah.  Wind is just wind.  It blows this way and that without any reason and has no influence on anything.  Right.  So I just shrugged and ended my participation in the conversation.
It astonishes me how ignorant, and how aggressive people are in their ignorance.  This is most especially true when the subject is the natural world.
One evening when I was in college, I once wandered by an outdoor environmentalist rally, and as I paused to listen, the speaker gestured to the thin crescent moon descending into the sunset and said something blah blah just as the moon we see is rising blah blah and I shook my head and walked away.  People don't know the phases of moon or which way is east and which west, yet talk about saving the planet.
And I think I'm dumb!  I'm a genius compared to these morons.  But they are the ones with the public megaphone, and everyone listens to them, not to people like me.  Not that I have anything to say.  I don't.  

"Come said the wind to
the leaves one day,
Come o'er the meadows
and we will play.
Put on your dresses
scarlet and gold,
For summer is gone
and the days grow cold."
~ A Children's Song of the 1880s

Happy Halloween!

 A repost from Halloween of 2020.

It's an evening for dress-up play for kids of all ages, as they say. Fog blew in in the late afternoon, making everything clammy, close and cold. But just after sunset, while there was still an afterglow in the west, the fog retreated and the full moon rising in the east illuminated almost leafless maples and oaks with shriveling leaves that rattled in the night breeze that suddenly sprang up.

The party at a rented lodge we went to was held outside.  Flaming torches, propane heaters, fire pits and barbecue grills held the autumn chill at bay, except for swirling waves of icy air that suddenly skittered across the flagstones and strolling paths.

The first part of the evening was for the kids, with children's games and children's dinner and snacks.  Everyone was very active and laughter was everywhere.  After a couple of hours the little ones grew tired and we bundled them off to sleepy town with a bedtime story, a prayer and a good-night kiss.

The adult wind-up to the party involved sipping hot rum or hard cider punch, quiet conversations in front of crackling fires, snuggling while listening to owls hooting and one honking rush of a flock of late migrating geese dropping down to the marsh below the hill.

Walking alone down a path away from the light and loungers of the patio, the night and nature became more real than the man-made world. Susurrous stirrings made me suddenly turn and peer backward into the darkness, only to turn back at the sound of rustling ahead.  Dead leaves fled before the wind that cold-fingered up my dress.  Moon shadows were opaque dark and imagination suggested they could conceal lurking monsters.  The path ended at a pond dappled by moonlight and tree shadows.  Childhood memories of stories of Axxea, the so-called water panther, a cross between a mountain lion and a rattlesnake, who preyed on lone late-night travelers, suddenly seemed real as I looked from the brightness of the full moon to the blackness of the earth.  A coyote howled in the distance followed by another closer, then by one that seemed almost right next to me.  I suddenly thought of my cat and hoped she was safely home and curled in her little bed.  I wanted to see her.  I wanted to see if my little boys and little girl were sleeping safely in their strange beds.  I walked as fast as I could back up the path, wishing I had a sweater, once tripping over a tree root and almost falling.

I wanted Halloween to be over.  I wanted to be home.

__________________________________________________________

An addition this evening. I'll dance for my friend the Tin Man, to whom I gave a heart. Or opened his.