Continue reading “hues .3”
Category: time
august
say something about August.
well,
it sweats and sticks
then is gone too quick
just when you begin to tolerate it;
if Sunday Scaries were 31 days in a row;
a sudden carpeting of yellow leaves on green grass — current fall rate: 1 leaf per minute —my instrumentation: a pair of 5+decades-old eyes;
there will be no prolific fruiting on the two black walnut trees this year — and i am guilty with a schaudenfreude regarding the red squirrels;
the starlings stack the power lines and camouflage themselves in the green tree tops
this, a rest stop in their annual migration
those synchronized swimmers of atmosphere,
a singular heartbeat, a murmuration, of hundreds of individuals, these beautiful communists.
i have become invested with the observation and documentation of phenology:
i expected them this week.
Continue reading “august”the obliquity of the ecliptic
Summer Solstice
One experience of living rurally — without any obstructions of buildings or infrastructure — and with a full southern exposure out my front door, generous windows and an unencumbered view of all four cardinal directions — it’s like i am in the center of a beautiful compass at all times — is, that i have been able to observe and better understand the obliquity of the ecliptic:
marking the farthest northeastern point of the Sun’s eager rise and the farthest northwestern point of the Sun’s leisurely set at the Summer solstice with my own eyes — the Sun making a deep, high horseshoe arc on those long Summer days,
and to watch the Sun’s progression/regression daily,
and, to witness how at the Winter solstice, the Sun just sleeps in, lazily rising in southeastern Sky, just barely making an appearance for us in the northern latitudes — offering us the shallowest, little arc of light before quickly bedding down again in the southwestern Sky;
Darkness is so precious in the Summer and the light is so precious in the Winter. The darkness is so gloriously abundant in the Winter and the light is so gloriously a abundant in Summer;
i am so grateful and privileged to have experienced this solar panorama and time lapse in real life for eight years now, after living many decades in a major North American city — Chicago, without it;
and,
below is my favorite ever foto to share on the Solstice: Attila Kálmán faithfully and wondrously captured the obliquity of the ecliptic — his camera tracking the Sun’s path from a point on the Northern Hemisphere of Earth from Summer to Winter Solstice in 2012.
Perfect for explaining our Sun, axial tilt and seasons to a child
(or to a white American adult).
and a few of my own favorite Summer Solstice experiences:
Schwabacher Landing,
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, U.S.
in absentia
i carry on in absentia
dialogues
monologues — rhetoric, socratic, analytic,
with — and for, people i once
knew,
had,
loved,
who i have lost or misplaced,
or
who have lost or misplaced me,
in some way,
waiting for the bough to break
i am waiting for the bough to break — or, to be severed by proxy at my behest.
earlier this week on my daily walk-about, i noticed that a primary limb, the major artery, on a nearly 80’ tall and likely nearing 100 years-old, elm tree on the land i occupy, had cleaved and that the fracture was migrating down into the trunk — and dangerously so.
i don’t know the cause: if it was the abrupt shift in temperature to freezing here in southwest Michigan — or, if the tree was stressed from a standing-water-wet spring followed by a very dry summer, or if “it” is simply at the end of their life — all the elms here had unusually held onto an abundance of their prolific leaves until the fourth week of November.
no matter.
the matters:
the massive limb of the elm stretches high and precariously over the old barn, and depending on the wind direction, there’s a chance if it falls, it could clip the back of my house or take the whole tree down with it.
i await the tree surgery & removal crew. i am at their and the northerly and westerly gusts’ mercy.
in the meantime, i have also been wrestling with the possible choice of whether to have the crew amputate just the cleaved limbs — if the tree is in fact salvageable — or, to remove the entire tree at once instead of forestalling the inevitable.
Continue reading “waiting for the bough to break”slouching toward bethlehem
i resist stirring, opening my eyes, or thinking
as the dog wakes, and waits
i am in the center of another dawn-dream,
on the precipice of
experiencing some thing, of understanding some thing
but it cannot hold,
evaporating
with every
slouch toward consciousness
i open my eyes to
the grey of the room, to the dark white gyre of the sky through these generous windows
i open my ears
to the beat
of crystals pummeling these generous windows,
once and again, realizing
i possess slow thighs,
heavy lungs, a heavier heart,
an entire weighted mass,
and a mind — less than half-known / half-known
i want to re-bury myself in the warm sands of sleep, the enveloping weightless numb
and drift back to
the liminal/
this must be the
feeling
of the fully-gestated
unborn fetus, warm,
quiet, still
waiting to be born
yet resisting being known, moving on
asters, monarchs & crone
i offer purple bouquets
rooted in the ground,
not dying, wasted, in vase or pot
this purple
reflected in your eyes, my eyes
monarchs married in our october gaze
we’re not long for this world, we, monarchs, asters, and crone
still, we feast, without any gluttony, waste or fear
one of us, prepares for honeymoon flight to Mexico
where marigolds and death await
later, birds with bellies filled by aster, will seed a known, unknown future
crone’s eyes full and clear, she sees it all, near and far, past, present, future, winter and spring
she is rooted too, laughing and grieving in the threshold
between death and the future, future and the death
between remnant wild and final ravagement
between time and anti-time
thousands of purple petals cascade from her crown chakra like asters //
Continue reading “asters, monarchs & crone”Becky
she insisted we roll the car windows down
while the a/c was cranking
and she just kept it cranking
in her mid 90s silvery Saturn sedan,
second-hand from her parents,
three little boys crammed in the back seat
a baby girl not yet in her belly,
as we drove down the Kennedy, then the Dan Ryan, heading to the Skyway
for our weekly day-trip
to the southwest Michigan coast
our cooler stuffed with tarragon chicken salad sandwiches for us, fried chicken drumsticks for them, at least two pounds of black cherries, pickles, diet cokes, limes, and capri-suns — the box of white cheddar cheez-its hardly ever made it all the way to the Warren Dunes on the ride from Chicago
for the Lake, the beach, the inlet hike to the clay pit,
the Dune climb, always hoping for some gentle, yellow-flag waves, and the long, eastern time-zone Sun’set over platinum blue water
perplexed, delighted by this novelness, by her unconvention:
a/c on our skin — and summer air blowing in our hair?
Continue reading “Becky”Sylvia Dickinson Edgar Anne Hughes
every poet should know the company of a wild bird, at least once
i recently binged the biography:
“The Occult Sylvia Plath: The Hidden Spiritual Life of the Visionary Poet” by life-long Plath scholar Julia Gordon-Bramer
i feel fortunate this book was my introduction to Plath and her poet husband, Ted Hughes— and other significant influences in her life and poetry /
hat tip to my long-time favorite podcast: Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio — created and hosted by Miguel Conner at The Virtual Alexandria for interviewing Gordon-Bramer, because, for the first time ever, i was actually interested in Plath — and furthermore, i unexpectedly experienced a psychic “something” with Plath while listening to the audiobook; this “something” — i want to digest, explore – and possibly explain, in detail, in a future essay //
Julia Gordon-Bramer
while i imbibed this book, i was simultaneously raising an injured and orphaned starling nestling — on an intensive feeding schedule — and during this time, i learned from the book, that Sylvia and Ted also attempted to rescue an injured and sick baby bird — but after a week, and upon determining rehabilitation was futile, they jointly and sadly euthanized the bird in their gas oven (i know. wow.) ///
Continue reading “Sylvia Dickinson Edgar Anne Hughes”sonlight [june 2014]
you drove away, West,
from Chicago, annoyed, yet exhilarated
while i was full of held tears,
a mother, trying to mother a boy,
on his bold edge of two decades of life
2014 was a rough
half year to June
we lost our first person to fetanyl
but he would not be [y]our last
i witnessed your grandmother’s January bitter coldness for the second time
and i still have a lasting bone chill from it
by the time you drive across the Mississippi River,
you have forgiven me
but i, you — even before you drove out of our alley,
we keep forgiving one another, me and you.
a couple of weeks later,
i am with our first, sweet dog in our Sun-filled back yard, as he is given a gentle, good death / we have shared so many firsts, but this,
i/we do without you; 17 years — ours, for sixteen — this loyal and strong dog that you chose on Mother’s Day weekend on LaSalle Street
how can it ever be a home again without you, without him
Continue reading “sonlight [june 2014]”sonlight [june 2004]
the Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone National Park,
Wyoming, June 2004
a lucky reservation for one night of lodging and a late dinner — made by telephone months earlier, but just barely early enough,
choosing sweaters to wear to dinner as the June Sun
finally sets / you and i match in black cotton ramie, always and still, my favorite
hungrily watching the clock, in the Great Room, nestled in the same chair by the colossal fireplace
we’d been camping the previous night, in a thunderstorm and downpour at Bridge Bay,
where we awoke to a bison’s grunting, and their immense shadow upon our tent;
we shared our griddled french toast breakfast and percolated coffee with a couple in a VW camper, who were no doubt younger than you are today in June, 2024
with our “Wildlife of Yellowstone” booklet, we identify an osprey perched above our heads in a pine tree as we pack up our camp — a first, for each of us
mudpots, fumaroles, bison herds, bison “jams”, pelicans, waterfalls, canyons, elk, towering basalt columns, sulfur, a wild river, geysers, marmots, hot springs — and Morning Glory Pool.
so many firsts, for me and you.
your shining, smiling face[s]
around that table
by candlelight
what a gift, what a day, what a dream
to share this exquisite meal with you, two,
in such a truly wild place
is this real life?
the clink of silverware
voices and laughter centered — and from every direction,
imply, “yes”.
Continue reading “sonlight [june 2004]”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 