Summer teases us with her dramatic, exaggerated changes of mood and meaning, but if we know our own history well enough to remember it, we can be sure that her graces will always return when the time is right.
Mocking, Ever So Gently
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Tag Archives: nature
Sources of Brilliance, Such as We Are
Tropical Splash
A-chatter in the curling fronds, the wet-leafed canopy, the ponds,
Among the tangled twining root of every vine-choked tree’s broad foot,
Wild birds spread out their neon wings in this green palace of such kings,
Shout to a sun that’s seldom seen, deep in this hot palace of green,
But bring a blaze that’s all their own, as bright as such a place has known.
Take flight! Take wing! Aim for the sun–race with them upward, every one,
Above the canopy, to see whether a sun can really be;
And if it’s not, let no bleak night deter a second from our flight:
Upward and forward, light or none, we always ought to seek the sun–
And if not found, our calling is that we must light these palaces.
All the Colors
When we speak of something having ‘all the colors of the rainbow’ I am certain we don’t quite understand the enormity of such a thing. My sisters and I used to criticize badly designed or tasteless clothing, interiors and the like as being so artificial and clumsy because they were of a ‘color not found in nature’–but then, too, our thinking was far too constrained. For nature, that queen of design, has more colors than can be perceived, let alone understood, by mere human eyes and minds.
She’s a trickster and a lavishly opulent over-doer, is Nature. We are much too small to comprehend the fulness of her range and beauty. What seems like one rather simple thing at first often morphs, as we look and imagine further, into something far different and most likely far more subtle and complex.
I was reminded of this last night when I sat down with a new set of children’s marking pens–the cheap permeable-tip markers that last for about five drawings but cost a tenth of what the ‘professional’ pens do–and began to sketch something leafy. As soon as I began I knew that one kind of green would not make a leaf; no, I knew that all four kinds of green supplied by the manufacturer of this little bag-of-pens couldn’t begin to be sufficient to convey the character of the simplest, plainest sort of leaf-like thing, let alone give a hint of the way light might play across it in different climes, at different times of day. Or how much its appearance must be affected by my own vision, my mood, my expectations.
Our abilities to envision, physical and metaphorical both, are fluid but can never quite keep up with the mysteries around us. And that, my friends, is a fine excuse for forging ahead into the puzzling and problematic and pearlescent thing that is the future . . . .
How It Works
In Haiku,
Reality takes
Sudden swerves
The Song Rises above All Else
When the night is long and the day after it dawns dark and grim, sing.
When winter is colder than the inmost heart of death and is finally supplanted by the least promising spring, empty of graces and starved for new, green life, sing again and sing out loudly as you can.
When age and infirmity and dangers of every kind are buffeting all the lovely youth and strength they can find in this sad world into terrible dust-devils of desiccated sorrow, sing with all your heart and soul and make the most tuneful, joyful, glorious prettiness that you can float into the air, and know that your song, no matter how wholly alone it may float up, is powerful enough to rise above it all. This is the only way that any of us will rise above it all. And that we will, so long as we sing.
Malignant or Maligned?
Are pigeons the oppressors or the oppressed? Having been a-traveling a bit recently, I was reminded of the omnipresence of pigeons, those birds noted as the comforting signatories of nature’s profound adaptability and variability, and less kindly but perhaps a bit more succinctly, as flying rats. Yes, I have seen a pigeon perch with apparent deliberation on the roof edge over a family’s picnic table, point its posterior in their general direction, and release a firehose-worthy arc of nastiness that sent the poor humans scattering for shelter. While I’ll readily agree that pigeons are known disease-carriers, that they tend to crowd out less aggressive and smaller birds from their habitats, and that they are notorious painters of streaky badness upon all and sundry within their aim, I still harbor a fondness for them in small doses–and preferably from a safely higher position.
Part of the sympathy stems from knowing that their widespread propagation was partly human-driven, as growing and/or roaming anthropoid populations gradually displaced native ones over time (also human, among many other creatures), and as people also on occasion deliberately imported various kinds of pigeons to new locales for other reasons. Certainly part of the feeling stems, as well, from knowing that we people-types are largely responsible for the decline and sometimes extinction of whole species–the rule rather than the exception, when it comes to pigeon families. The Passenger Pigeon is only the most obvious example of what has happened and is happening still among pigeon-kind, and no coy and cuddly images of how we embrace the Dove of Peace can counter that fact.
But let’s face it, this is neither a scientific treatise nor a polemic indicting all mortals for such depredations. We are a merciless lot, generally, and I am not in the least exempt from all ignorance or guilt. No, honestly, what struck me as I was pigeon-watching along my way on this latest outing was a much shallower, yet still pleasing and even, intermittently, refined aesthetic appreciation of the breed. I simply like watching their fluttery interplay. Their tumbling and stumbling acrobatics in a pool of water. I like watching how they quickly establish a pecking order whenever a group assembles, how they strut around preening and showing off for each other with a certain amount of pomposity and frivolousness, and turn instantly to blurry streaks catapulted into the air if they sense any danger, which includes the slightest movement of air around them or a change in the light. In short, I like anthropomorphizing them and being amused at how like them we are, squabbling and flirting and showing off and taking wicked potshots at each other and everything around us. I like watching them fly in such smooth synchrony when they circle their way through an updraft, and burst into chaotic motion when anything disrupts the flow. And of course, magpie that I am, I like looking at the myriad colors and patterns and iridescent gleaming streaks that paint the birds into something less commonplace than such a common creature ought to be.
Ten Thousand Kinds of Green
It takes very little time upon returning to the Pacific Northwest for me to be reminded of one of its central characteristics that became so imprinted on my heart and mindset through my many years of dwelling there as to be interchangeable with my entire concept of wholeness and well-being: the color green. The millions of colors that can be called Green, to be more precise. Having been born in the Emerald City of the Evergreen State, I can confirm that they have earned their titles both the hard way (rain–sometimes seemingly endless–rain–oh, and snowpack and glacier runoff in the spring) and entirely honestly. The city and the state are genuinely, deeply, exquisitely green.
Other places may be green with envy. Yes, there are certainly other spectacularly green places on earth, some of which I have visited, among them to wit: Ireland, Allgäu, and the jungle that straddles the Panamanian border with Costa Rica (a tropical cloud forest) all rife with verdure and also with all of those forms of watery nourishment that bring about such burgeoning beauties in their respectively green-glorious regions. Each green place is unique in the character and flavor of its glowing, growing vegetation, and each gains its place in my heart as much through its variations of verdancy as by any other means.
What it all comes down to is that these things grow on me as much as on the face of the earth, filling my senses and my emotional center in ways that few other things can. This recent return to my mossy, leafy, grassy, graceful green roots merely reminds me of what lies deep within me all of the time. The west coast is so rich in tints and hues and tones and shades and variations of green that I cannot imagine an existence without them and know that green will always be the color against which completeness and contentment and ecstasy are best measured.
Mourn the tiresome persistence of the rain at times, if you must, but once you have been drawn into the corridors of the green world you will likely find it irresistible, too. It bursts with the presence of renewal and strength, lures you with the dappled dream-world light that only a leafy and towering tunnel of trees can create, and makes the heart ache with that yearning form of delight best found in things that sing of secrets, promises and hope.
A Mockingbird Appears
When ideas and inspiration have ceased, at least for the time being, to well up from the inside, it’s a mercy that the wide world contains so many and will hand them to me if I keep my senses ready enough. I often find myself too distracted by the busyness and pedestrian chores of the workaday world to see the magical other dimensions right within my reach, and need some helpful pricking from a sight or sound or scent as I pass through to remind me to open up the eye and ear and heart and take advantage of the universe’s generosity when it’s poured out so liberally right within my grasp.
I walk in a haze of dully daily thought, lost to the world of rich and rare delights I’m walking in, when suddenly a mockingbird appears and turns its bright eye on me and seems to contemplate how absent I must be to almost pass it by when it’s quite nearly underfoot. In that shining eye a world reflects in which the other me is wrapped around with blooms, with drifting clouds sailing across a broad blue sky; with jasmine-scented breeze, with mist as the sprinklers spring to life, with happy shouts from a handful of little playing school kids passing me, looking for miracles of their own everywhere because they are yet too young to have forgotten them so foolishly as I have done. When the bird takes to its stripe-blazed wings and dives back into the air, my thoughts begin to follow and fly with it again: I am awake once more to flight and tune in to the rippling, rolling variations of its song as it rises to the trees, and soars above, and makes me remember that I am in a world full of wonder, if I will only let it fill me again.
Gleaming Afternoon
While I would soar, would gladly fly
Wide, in an arc across the sky
Whose dome of hotly burnished brass
Encompasses at every pass
The great wild height of atmosphere
That would engage to hold me here,
I can, eyes shut and spirit wide,
Pierce heaven to the great Outside.
Rodents on the Run
How does My Garden Grow!
Mornings are glorious, oh yes: last year’s blue morning glories in their full blazing beauty (center, with the infamous garden chandelier needing better candle power to compete with the blue brightness) inspired the planting of not only the blue variety again this year but also these hot beauties flanking it . . .
My friends, Texas gardening is a ceaseless adventure. I sense that Round One of the growth season has already closed and Round Two is beginning. The first batches of blooming goodies have quickly baked to dainty crisps and their leafy greenness gotten rather scrawny and lean looking. Yes, my darlings, it’s gettin’ hot around here.
The pavement and patio concrete have a certain handily dense solar mass that lends itself to emitting mirage-like rays of shimmering hottitude that fry up whatever seems to have escaped the downward dash of the sunlight as it fell burning from the sky in the first place. Hand watering with a hose, even in the cooler parts of the day, is an exercise in futility to a certain extent–you can practically see the spray evaporating as it comes out of the nozzle, and anything with full sun exposure makes me wonder if the roots of the plant in question will in fact be boiled in the water I’m trying to give it. Gives me a different perspective on the old saying about ‘killing with kindness’, to be sure.
While the planters are already past their first peak (in the left-hand shot taken during the roses’ first heyday), more blossoms are coming in readily; the blue-black ornamental sage next to the bell in the center photo are already a big favorite with hummingbirds–you can just see the white blurred silhouette of one in the lower right quadrant of the picture–and the brilliant blue of borage is in full swing . . .
The first burst of the rose blooms has passed and the buds are in place for their second coming after a couple of weeks of being pruned back and nurtured through their little rest period. The boxed herbs and vegetables are very thirsty and rather root-bound, so I shall have to ease their pain by some gentle dividing and see if they can continue to show their heroism in beating the heat. Even in their potted distress, the borage plants are putting out large trusses of those glorious blue, refreshing-flavored starry flowers, so I will hope all the more that a little judicious division or removal to allow them a little loosening of their too-tight pants will make them happy rather than prove an additional challenge.
Zinnias make fun little hideaway homes for local bug-dom, but katydids seem to prefer something with more windows, and the dragonfly always goes straight for the penthouse so he can survey all of the lesser insects down below . . .
I know that the garden creatures are happy. Besides having me to chew on, the insects have all sorts of plants, not least of all those greens that are heat-stressed and have their defenses down. Some of the little bugs are still shy, like the one just barely peering out of the peachy zinnia above. Most of them are quite happy to be a bit more brazen, though. My little green friend came to the window and hung out with me the other night quite willingly–or was it just staring and spying on me? The prize for showiness this week goes, though, to the handsome Carmine Darter (correct me if I mis-identify) dragonfly that calmly came and posed on my little homemade tomato cage so long that I could come out of the house and get up close and macro-personal with him.
Whatever else happens in my little playground here, the main development will likely be somewhat delayed by the depredations of my intended full-yard rehab and my entirely predictably inevitable mistakes and faux pas. And, of course, getting overheated. For the time being, I am enjoying the begonias, the silverbeet, the sweet potato vine, and the cyclamen; the marigolds, the basil, and the blue sage.
For now, all is color and joy . . . and there is undoubtedly much more to come . . .
Blueprints for the Romance of Place
Building Strong Bones
In the lovely resonant
shadowed hollow of
an architectural ruin,
the beauties of
its skeleton become
more than engineering,
more than a means
of shelter or a clever
way to shut people
in or out–
What happens is
life becomes caught
in the interstices of
a building’s bones–
vitality drawn off
from all the smaller lives
that have come through;
in the humming open space
of a lovely
building in ruin,
mortality is kept
as though in a jewel-case
or a body quite perfectly made
for being loved
North
The depth of the lake cannot be guessed
Its shimmering silicate glacial glow
With turquoise mask screens what’s below
In filtered glimmer, thought at best
To be just deep enough to hold
Beneath the frigid upper glass
Down in its centermost crevasse
Something mysterious, so old
It’s passed from memory and ken
And only surfaces when stars
Come showering down as red as Mars
To call it upward once again
Communing with its antique kin
For roaring moments in the night
Before the day dawns turquoise bright
And glassy water closes in
Once more its inexpressive glow
A wall of silence ageless, stern
And secretive, where none can learn
What lives those fathoms down below
Art-Colored Glasses 