September
I go get the mail – new issues of Poetry and American Poetry Review, & I feel blessed.
Last night, walking in the courtyard, I heard a neighbor laughing in her bedroom – and realized that my neighbors must hear me, mornings and nights, sweet-talking my dogs.
Labor Day – to all those hands that shaped and carried and built and laid stone and wire and pipes and did all that I could not, to make for me a home to live in and a garden to grow in – Thank You.
I woke at eight, in a room full of sun. Got up, & closed the shutters. All summer, behind everything, the constant murmur of sparrows.
I wonder – could I be grateful for this illness, that has taken me out of “the world” and brought me into this one – this garden – ?
Kathleen Norris: “The death of the body is something we live with all our lives.”
Thomas Moore: “Maybe we could all use an emptying out of identity now and then. Considering who we are not, we may find the surprising revelation of who we are.”
little fledgling
feathers all cock-eyed
how can you fly?
Thomas Moore: “Accepting that we are wounded, we enter life differently than if our only concern is to overcome the wound.”
an “empty” life:
– hollow, barren, sad – or
–
open, spacious, receptive
this life, an open hand . . .
stars, and mars, in a black sky
winter is waiting in this morning
this slackening, this waning
silver hairs on the black sweater
one grey lash on the eyeglass lens
Noisy garden – a crow calls, twice – suddenly, silence: all the birds take cover. What did the crow say?
A whole flock of sparrows, dozens, waiting their turn at the fountain. I twitch my arm and they all lift up, together – some days everything I look at is beautiful
October
This morning a kestral took a sparrow from my garden, right in front of me. It flew to the ash tree,little broken sparrow in its talons – then flew into the lilac tree and looked down at me, as if in challenge . . .
opening into that bareness that is winter
netting gold leaves from the pond
waxwings in the mountain ash
morning walk –
through the sleet
an eagle's cry
November
Jay Leno says new research shows that poets live short lives: we die at sixty, having learned we have no marketable skills.
December
Huge winds – they seem even louder now that I’ve fixed the bedroom windows so they don’t bang. Wind like a big, angry animal, throwing itself through the courtyard again & again. I get up & put on socks.
Woke this morning to a day that reminds me I do like this time of year, despite the cold, the ice, the aches. That diffuse winter light, reflecting off new snow – sometimes I feel companioned by the world.
so difficult, this life – & as I bend to put this book away – the call of a night bird
Solstice approaches. . .
TRANSLATE