Fruit Filled

We are in the rocking horse days of summer, mid July, when growing things have taken the place of barren winter landscapes, when exuberance of shoot and stem pushes upwards.  So mow the lawn, pull weeds, trim hedges; grab a glass of cold tea, straighten the back and go at it again.  Work your bare hands into the soil, there are beneficent mycorrhizal bacterium that cause serotonin to be released in our brains,  which may be Mother Nature's manner of getting us to like gardening, because it makes us happy.  I do enjoy shoveling snow as well, but the satisfaction of a clean sidewalk doesn't compare to seeing new columns of buds atop snapdragon stems, or better, the shoulders of a growing carrot burgeoning up above the level of soil.

Rocking horse days because the day's work does end, clipping tools are wiped, maybe a light supper and then you get to sit, the kids play, and feet go up onto wicker ottomans.  Wicker, what a great summer sound.  This year has been full of rain, and besides a bounty of mosquitoes, the farmer's markets are heavy with new, tender chard; the first of the sour cherries came two weeks after the first dark sweet; lovely green beans came home with me, as well as two ears of early corn.  Brilliant yellow zucchini, green cukes; red raspberries shaped as fairy cups, each drupelet containing an antioxidant powerhouse, ten times that of a tomato; the stalls are manned by folks who were up by four to load trucks and vans with full wooden crates, stamped with family names.

The ears of corn have been shucked, releasing the banner of summer in the kitchen, the husks and silk examined by the cat.  Milky sweet rows of yellow fill these short cobs, to me a miracle of pollination.  Wind does the job for corn, not bees.  I pit two quarts of sour cherries with my ten-dollar cherry pitter for freezing, and shred a zucchini to toss in a pot with chicken backs, a tomato enters as an afterthought.  I add the packets of salt and pepper left from yesterday's take-out fish fry to the soup and let it go.

Tonight I wish to finish the dishcloth I began knitting while watching my friend, it has the pattern of a sand dollar apparent through knit and purl stitches.  Because at best, even though I wrote down which rows were finished, stitches were skipped, added, lost, returned, and fumbled, the sand dollar looks more like a Girl Scout cookie the dog stepped on, but I don't care.  It was begun with my friend, and it will remind me of sitting with her one last time.  The next pattern will look better, but not mean as much.

The day was hot, lucky duck us have the air conditioner running, and now the sun is past meridian and the edge of the earth lifts up, spins to meet the setting sun.  The new blood pressure medication is a pain in the neck, for it encourages listlessness and dumpy drawer lackadaisia.  Doctor says side effects will smooth out.  Meanwhile, I can manage to count stitches while the stars begin to be visible in the heavens, progressing through the spiral arms of our galaxy.  Find a cheek to kiss, one that was out in the sun, tousled hair that still smells of outdoors air, good for you if you can.  The rest of us have memory and dreams, wishes and plans, and it all works out in the end.  Let your self flop down, safe, loved, good job done, another day comes.  Sleep well; the clock will count the hours.

Dream of Then

When I dream of my mother, she is no longer infirm or ill and often younger than her full age of seventy-nine.  In these dreams, there are two paths of awareness: either I know that she has died, or that she has rebounded from a physically devastating time in her life without dying.  Inside the dream, I remember caring for her, carrying her, feeding her, seeing her pale, weak and mottled.  Yet, this is dream memory, for in real dreamtime she has reappeared, vital, aware, smart, and younger, from anywhere in her late twenties to her sixties.

It is always a surprise, and I sometimes ask her, "But...you died!  How can you be here?" She laughs and tells me that death is something one recovers from, that it is a passage from one part of your life to the next, and do I want that coffee table?  "Don't worry about your father," she often says, "he can't get you, I don't know where he is, but you should tell him to go to hell."  I don't dream of him except as an accessory to her, and he is still a sullen, drunk memory and I dream wish him to die and stay dead, permanently.  If I thought it would help, I would really stick a sock with button eyes full of pins to keep him catatonic, petrified, and bottled up.  Compassion, maybe later.  My brother cried, heartbroken, when my father died, possibly because he was loved.  Me?  The angels played banjo music and I hopped like a bunny.

Mom is busy, seemingly on her way somewhere to shop or visit; she hugs me, drives our old Ford Galaxy, and heads on out.  Always glad, always healthy.  So, what connection am I leading to?  While sitting on a desk, my down-to-earth neighbor teacher related a similar experience with a departed, beloved relative.  She said that in spite of the debilitating dying process, in dreams this person is now vibrant, healthy, and saying that death is just a change of address.  I have other friends who have visited with dead relatives in dreams, almost every single one with the same reassurance of death being a minor inconvenience.  What does this say about us?

Is it a wish for resolution with the deceased person, or are we humans processing the death of a loved one through the available tool of dreams?  Is it a way we use to explain death to ourselves?  I think there is more to it than that, too much else that happens during waking hours directs attention to paranormal bridges to other places, other times.   If it is a self-contrived comfort, I will take it and enjoy the solace it brings.  If, as I believe, it is a true connection with loved ones traveling time and space, the comfort is abetted by curiosity with a half-wish to know more, the other half a desire to be left alone so that the metaphysical tides don't get too deep.  You know what I mean.  Myself, I already have five cats, going to Purple Quartz Junction is just around the aromatherapy bend if I don't watch it.

Talk of death and dreams was opened by the last Sunday morning passing of my friend.  Many other friends have also died, and how do I put this, I get feelings about them.  My mother is busy, happy, and has more power in death than in life; when I ask her for help, I often get a "I'm busy, figure it out" sensation.  My late teacher friend is practical and supportive.  My closest friend passed away in 2009, and from her I get no sensation at all, the same for a beloved aunt.  Nothing.  Something is stopping them, holding them in stasis.  Maybe they asked for a break, a rest.  But this most recent sorrow has an unexpected impression: happy, she is happy.  Regretful to leave so soon, but wherever she is in whatever company, there has been provoked a sense of joy.  In pace.

I pay little other attention to my dreams, they are often quick in scene changes and garbled.  There is another whole world, a village where I buy Easter candy in the woods and swim the backstroke in pods of other people down the Niagara River.  There is a hotel that has an expensive Chinese restaurant that you want to visit before the tornado drops by and scares the old people living in the basement nursing home.  There I am naked in Tops dairy department, not understanding why everyone is making a fuss for I do this all the time, I've been going naked for years, maybe I should start wearing clothes.  I rebuild my house that I lived in while married, repairing floors, adding orchids to a now attached greenhouse.  It is haunted by 17th century royalty, and we have to move after fixing it; we leave, I sneak back to grab more stuff left behind, get lectured by the new owners that they will call the police if I show up again.  I am able to get through their silly locks.  I order the Sunday paper to be delivered again.  My house.

In reality, I have given in and brought out the air conditioner; the cats are now lolling blissfully in boneless repose on the floor and furniture.  Why do I think it necessary to tough it out when all utilities are included?  Possibly because this is powerful juju, this air conditioning business, a flabbergastment of chemistry and coils, and I was brought up not to complain and work with what I have.  Fans were permitted, automatic ice makers led to devilment and a life of immoral choices, like you would suddenly begin smoking unfiltered cigarettes while walking an ocelot on a leash if you had more ice.  Not understood was the idea that if things were cooler, more work was completed; you should quit complaining and start canning something, go throw a pot roast into the oven at 400 degrees in 90 degree heat.  

The sky is past sunset, the building are turning grey in dim light.  Check the cats, the latches, feed the fish, and put away the supper dishes.  Water laps at the shore, Mars and Venus descend at the western horizon.  It is a good thing to hope.  Good night, all.  

Hello Tomorrow

Catharsis turns the latch open, admitting whatever foibles represent our personal experience to the sun, sending them out like winged birds to scatter amid yellow fields.  High wheat, waiting to be cut and baled, bends to the wind from these thousand wings as they fly, oceans of waves roiling together with more in common than not, a host of obdurate pliancy that rebounds from feathered incantation.

Look up, human, it is your charm.  Count not the errors of your ways for really, they are few and lend small inconveniences to the being you truly are.  Shoulds should go to hell.  Connect by loving, expand through patience, determination, forgiveness.  Trust that the universe wants you to succeed.

Summer mourning cloaks flutter around flower heads of rose, hollyhock, and daisy, the goldfinches twiddle and sputter between declarative canticles. Sing, things of the day, till cool night slides over the east horizon following the passing sun.  Close doors, settle the cupboard, whist candles dark, let evening come.  Peaceful night.

Undoing

Tied up in knots of schedules, medicines, cold wash cloths for fever, rubber gloves, and tubes.  Undone.
Sleep, sleep well.  See you soon. Love you so.

Rara Avis in Terris

Spanning a shallow crick, the bridge that took the traffic over a rough pavement was set in contrast to the green leaves of embankment growth.  Wild plants burst upwards on either side of the supporting transom in the lighter greens of early summer, the wider leaves of stalky astilbe bobbing yes.  Then, a bird.  An unusually large, dense wingspan was silhouetted against the late afternoon sky in slow, flapping aviation, revealing the incredible long body and legs of a sky dragon, a grey heron.  The sequence of flight simulated the movement of a flip book, each frame a suspension of image as if Eadweard Muybridge had  positioned his camera upwards.

How can anything that large and architecturally disparate sail in eloquence?  What marvel of hollow bone and balance allows lift and sustained movement forward?  Mechanisms of engine and lane fell to nothing, as this feathered demigod processed the air, the water, the leaves, and the flow of humanity into a world that shrieked for him to fly.  Please fly.  Please be with us.

The cars traveled on a road of box stores, electronic depots, and fast food shops whose very demeanor yelled:  Always this.  Always that.  Always more.  The heron flew forward; nothing of orange advertisement or cloying persuasion deterred his straight path to below road level, down to minnow and crayfish, beetle and frog, hidden by the lush tenacity of the wild.  Oh, miracle.

A heron in the suburbs is as rare as one in the city, yet both have occurred mostly because we live near the water.  You will see them occasionally standing one-legged on the rocks of the berm, a refreshing sight from the commonplace geese.  Yet when living in Florida, the larger waterbirds were abundant, frivolous as a looking-glass carnival: gaudy, prehistoric, pinioned foofaraw.  There were both smaller white and scarlet ibses, with curved beaks for digging through slurries of sand.  The larger white cranes and egrets competed with ubiquitous flamingoes; pterodactylish brown pelicans flew single file and begged for fish from the docks.  On Sanibel Island, the sanctuary was roost for roseate spoonbills, a beautiful pink beast with a green paddle-shaped bill and reptilian eyes.  I have been enchanted with birds ever since finding striped tail feathers of the ring-necked pheasants, who lived in the tall grass fields beyond another crick long ago.

A feather tells a story of time and evolution from single strand to vaned plumage, and each was a note from a particular species kept in a tiny wooden chest.  Brilliant yellow came from goldfinches, bright blue was a jay.  Because we lived in the woods, most feathers were some form of dappled brown from hawk, owl, or wild turkey.  I sharpened a goose quill begged from a neighbor farmer, and played Bob Cratchitt keeping books with the ink made from smelly Coprinus mushrooms, the inky caps.  Eggshells from the robins were a sign of spring, and were placed on a shelf in my science collection of shells and rocks.  Mom would warn me when the red winged blackbirds were nesting, for they were notorious in temper and held back nothing in language or dive-bombing murder, yet their tweedle-deee made my skin prickle with excitement in knowing spring was really here.

Birds don't follow the temperature or availability of food when migrating back north, they are led by the amount of light in the day which explains how early visitors can be caught by bad weather.  You look at them and hope, thinking what on earth were you doing, why not hang about in Kentucky a bit longer before freezing in New York? I really don't understand how the world works at all these days, and so often find myself in one of those box stores, searching for some thing that doesn't exist at all.  Then, appeared this heron, who brought me back to where I belong.

After a very hot day of stops and starts the air is cooling, much to everyone's desire.  Everyone over at this address means me, the five cats, one large and four small fish.  Five really isn't that many, unless you are a canary in a cage; then, you have ten slitted eyes measuring to see if you fit in the casserole dish, and are there any breadcrumbs in the house?  The image of the heron still plays in front of my eyes, the neck folded back as he/she swam through the air in grace.  A respite.

Sleep well in dreams, fling open a window if you can, let your box of a house or apartment or room breathe the night air that spills over the sill.  Tuck under a wing, trust in safety for just this night, you will be fine, I am watching over you till you come to new shores.  I will see you again, tomorrow and in images and in the cycle of time.  Good night, good, dear night.