thoughts

Here is a somewhat somber poem for a beautiful spring day:

O let me not die in the cold gray of winter
And let me not die in the merciless heat of summer
And let me not die in the giddy, heedless spring
But let me die in fall with an honor guard of color

Farm Evening 12x12

 

these days

We have had some really beautiful days here in Fredericksburg.  For about a week at the end of October there were these trees that were like candles ablaze with light that fell all over the sidewalk and lawns.  Here is a little poem for you:

Remember finding four leaf clover

along the driveway?

Bent down, fingering through the green

round leaves.

Those were days of sitting while

you played in the sandbox

and chased fireflies in the semi-dark. 

I want to sift through and lift them out

to comb the half forgotten,

flattened out picture show

tangled maze of memory.

Pull them out and dust them off

the miracles.

fragments

Painting

Sometimes I feel like each canvas

is a piece of the puzzle.

And if I could paint enough

it would all make sense.

Where the Artist paints in the perfect medium

completeness in motion,

I paint in finite, stop and go

with brief brushes of transcendence

as momentary as a leaf fall in November.  

Fredericksburg, Virginia

 Living Here

The Muleshoe Salient is still imprinted on the land in the fields and woods

of Spotslyvania Courthouse.  The mounds of dirt they dug

in haste for cover

are low now and covered with moss, twigs,

grasses nibbled on by the deer and rabbits.

Longstreet Drive, Jackson Street, Ewell Lane,

new roads with token names, a nod to what?  Restless dreams

and flags. 

Layer after layer of fall leaves laid in now cover the dead.

Curried golf courses and battlefields mowed every fall. 

Chancellorsville, First Day, preserved.

The scrub woods that was the horror

of Wilderness has grown up.

It veils new subdivisions hidden back in the woods. 

Stories float among us of misty dawn ghost soldiers in the road

I half believe them.

In the fall the shadows get longer,

the sky bluer.   Visitors come here to remember a few days in May.

Like the deer and moss and new trees,

living on mostly we forget. 

photo by Susan Krieg

its July now...

Summer for me is marked by the wheel of perennial flowers in my garden.  We are precisely at the point where there are only three days of day lily blooms left and the black eyed susans are just  beginning to uncurl their first gold petals.  I noticed this year that it's not until the end of June when the locusts  really tune up that monotonous drone that I always associate with lying outside trying to get a tan as a teenage.  It's a really hot and boring thing to do anywhere but the beach.  And not very smart!  In the backyard the tomatoes are still green and the sunflowers are blooming.  Some time ago I wrote a poem for the passage of summer that comes just before this.  

Ode to June, the most beautiful month,

full of roses, beginnings, soft breezes, swinging in hammocks.

Those cottony, white clouds shot through with blue heaven are June,

singing soundlessly above us, June, June, June,

crickets, screen doors, porch lights, lilacs, moonlight, blue sky,

cows moving slowly through waist high grass.

We’re on the upswing now in balmy, breezy, blowy June,

June bug June, lilac June, rose petals and showers June.

My garden- this is actually late May

the beach

Here in Virginia the daily ninety plus temperatures have me longing for the beach or at the very least a pool.  Since neither are accessible just yet I decided to reminisce and write a poem.  

 

Jersey Beach

A hot day at the beach

scours the brain clean 

of everything 

but the anticipation

of the icy, cold ocean.

Entering the water

is like a game of double dutch,

catching a break between the waves

to rush in.

Back on the beach I lie

one ear to the ground and listen.

The depths of sand, grain on dark grain,

is a sound chamber vibrating

with every footstep above.

A seagull arcs overhead

a brief shadow across my eye.

a poem

The Peony

bush rises from the bare ground with its shiny green leaves

and sends up long slender stems with small fists.

Too frail for their growing burden, they arch over,

bending and bending until they touch the ground.

I rescue a few to bring inside, caress the pale pink,

silky, soft petals, blow off the ants,

their dark attendants working tirelessly,

and put them in water.

In the garden the rain beats them down- a tragedy,

white swan feathers lie about muddied on the ground,

not like the sturdy daisies, not at all.  

Every spring, they arrive with no thorns, no defenses.

I hold one tenderly to my cheek.

Peonies don’t count their petals,

they are lavish and pure like love.

They are rich without regard to money.

They just need someone to hold their necks.

a poem

I have a pulled muscle in my leg.

It’s a gentle sort of word,

pulled, like taffy, almost French.

It’s not like a kidney stone or a cataract,

or tennis elbow.

Rest is best

and ice.

No need to call the doctor

for a pulled muscle.  

Yorkshire, England

time

Domestic and Wild Metronomes                                        

                                                                            

 After years of digital

I have a moonbeam clock

in the bedroom now

the sound touch 

is kitten soft.  I only hear it

when it's quiet

and I'm awake.

A metronome, external heartbeat,

time is divided into seconds

with chef's knife precision.

This morning outside my window

a cardinal spoke with insistent language

a repetitive message

similar in frequency and volume

to my quietly ticking clock.                                               

As I woke I heard

first one and then the other

their voices overlaid each other

then alternated.

I, dipping in and out of sleep

surfaced finally to look out

at the blue light

of early morning.

It's snowing today, tiny sleet and narrow slivers for snowflakes. 

watches

I used to wear Timex

watches for their simple open faces.

In odd moments

I would cup the watch to my ear

to listen for the ticking

as real and imaginary as the sea in a shell.

     After a few years of wearing a Timex I decided I wanted a watch with a little style and I found a gray and silver swatch watch.  It is the opposite of a Timex.  As it has no numbers of any sort telling time by it is a little chancy.  Every once in a while I miss by an hour.  Unlike a Timex it has no night light, no friendly green glow, so it is useless in the dark.  And in bright sun it is important to be careful looking at it.  The metallic face is a powerful reflector and I have blinded myself more than once.  But it looks good.  

     I dusted off my little travel watercolor set to practice some sketching.  My first subject: watches!
    

My husband's grandfather's brass watch

 

I only have a dim memory of my grandfather checking his pocket watch for the time.  He would pull it out of his pocket and hold it at waist level- I realize now that is the preferred distance when you need reading glasses.  My father wore a Timex wrist watch.

This was my husband's grandmother's grandfather's gold watch given to him by his wife on their fifth wedding anniversary. 

drawing in the meadow

A sea of grass

the sounds,  a mix

of raspy and smooth

long and short, Morse code

without interpreter.

Crickets, locust, bird song.

The meadow has a weave.

A breeze moves through

touching each grass.

They wave like a symphony 

each with its own movement:

bowing, swinging in gentle circles,

shivering and swaying. 

The complexity is so dense and artful

I could spend a lifetime

and never untease it all onto my paper.

days in the meadow

In the Field

I can hear a gentle bee nearby
buzzing and stopping from flower to flower,
and a woodpecker drumming.
Dragonflies patrol just above the meadow's surface.
Some of the grass is releasing tender,
creamy down to float on the breeze.
Everything is here.

today's poem

Wavelength

God speaks to me in dreams.

 Mostly my nights are the wanderings

of a resting brain as it ruminates

over life's salad of conversation and thoughts.

 Now and then the channel is changed.

I hear His voice

and He takes me flying,

the recurring dream that weaves

a bright thread through my life,

among the kaleidoscope of day dreams. 

overlook in Shenandoah National Park

Below us the rolling hills and patchwork farms
lay under a sea 
of blue green atmosphere,
with here and there a hill rising up through it
like an island.  Faraway in a smudged place land 
meets cream milk white sky
and clouds are calved.
They scatter quickly and grow toward us.

The rocks are warm with three or four hours of sunlight.
Grasses beyond the low wall rustle with ripening clouds of seed heads.
Locusts buzz.  Pine trees rise distinct and solitary
before so much space
fluting outward.

All we can do is stand and look
for we lack the wings needed to fall on the wind. 

time travel

 Mount Princeton, Colorado (above)

Leadville, Colorado (left and below)

We just got back from a trip to Colorado where we experienced four snow storms in two weeks!  We drove to the airport Wed in our coats and gloves.  Here in Virginia spring has fully sprung with lovely 70- 80 degree temperatures.  It is a bit disorienting but perfect for getting out in the garden! 





Time Piece 

Day has extended her hours 
instead of closing up shop at dinner time.

I want to throw out my clocks
and stay here in the garden with the light.

Thousands of days in my life are as forgotten 
and anonymous as a stranger.

flower fields

Color Play, 30 x 40", oil

  
I finished this painting a couple months ago.  The sky has a subtle shift from pink on the left to blue on the right.  A couple other paintings have had a similar sky and I've been pondering how red, blue and purple interact and what kind of associations these colors have for me.  The result is this poem.

Incarnation

A clumsy knife

cut in the kitchen,

just a pause to consider

the intense red

perhaps the most beautiful color

tightly tethered to love and anger

earth color

before wrapping it up

and returning to chop the carrots

Blue, insubstantial as air
invisible as breath, cool
as a scientist in a lab coat.

Between the two
purple echoes both
red and blue, it hums
along the spectrum
like a child running back and forth
between mother and father

It is the familiar land/sky,
earth/heaven,
red/blue story.
expansion and habitation

Beyond our place of living, You O Lord stretch out the heavens. 

brussel sprouts

Poem:
 
I am cooking brussel sprouts once
a week to get to know them
I slice them in half
the miniature cabbage opens up
delicate leek green inside

It is Persian tapestry 


Recipe: 
      Tonight I sliced them in half, sauteed them in olive oil to brown them a little, then added about 1/2 c. white wine and simmered them covered for about 15 minutes.  Until they are tender but not mushy.  Then I uncovered them, and turned up the heat to evaporate any liquid.   I toasted some pine nuts, tossed them and some goat cheese with the brussel sprouts. 

starlings

this photo was taken by my good friend, Susan Krieg

A Murmuration of Starlings

Mozart's pet starling whistled
the third movement of his piano
concerto number 17.
Master mimics

their conversations, Morse code.

They fly in plague proportions
settling in trees until every 
twig is darkly notched.
Speckled and iridescent
green like an oil slick,
awkward, strong beaked,
and splay footed, they thrive.

In the early dark of fall
their passage overhead
a vast school of minnows
and we are underwater
walled in by trees
swam over by birds 
catching the last light

in this aquarium under the stars.



     As a child I thought that starlings were about the ugliest bird ever. I learned that they had been brought from England along with every other bird named by Shakespeare and introduced to Central Park, NYC.  I looked at them a little different then- they had a romantic past anyway.   Recently I've been studying them while stopped at intersections as they walk and hop along the poles over head as if walking from their living room to their bedroom.  They are so very social.  There has been intriguing new research done to try to understand their mysterious flocking patterns.  Check out this amazing video:  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/starling-flock/
     That a humble bird could stir such awe seems to me a very profound thing! 

art for a snowy day

     These are tennis courts near our house.   Here is a poem and a painting:  


Glimpses

As fleeting as the after burn on the back of my eyelids
just before sleep,

I see a gray mouse sweep across the rainy street
like a windblown leaf to hide
under a car stopped at a light.

Something so tender, so unseen.

Where is that acorn?

swans

Here is a poem from several days spent with a friend in her house on the Chesapeake Bay last fall:

On the Dock

Five swans visit me each morning
with soft arrowhead wakes.
They move in and out of blue shadows,
white feathers, and shining white necks dipping and arching,
twisting over their backs.
The swans make throaty sounds,
water dripping from their beaks.  One looks at me,
with an eye tilted, as if to say, will you do as you say?
These swans do not brook excuses
or bad posture.  All are trained in ballet from a young age.

They are an occasion in themselves,
black tie every day.