As well, you saw this morning on the hill
Her horse is in the stable now, the men are at the mill
She thanks you for the apples by her gate
And hopes that when the moon is full you’ll join her once again to celebrate
For she knows that the harvest has begun
The autumn feast rewards our time when
All is well and done
With the blessing of the sun
~ Dar Williams
♫ (All is Come Undone) ♫
Some things take a lifetime
Some things can’t wait
But I’ve got just one more change to make
~ Ben Harper
♫ (One More Change) ♫
Ah, Henry, I’ll wager that you, scribbling notes in your cabin by the pond, never worried about the difficulty scientists might have reading your atrocious handwriting some 150 years later. How could you have known they’d unearth those notebooks, use your records of 1850’s bloom time to compare with ours today? To sound the alarm about Walden warming? But were you alive today and ambling about your pond, I’d wager you’d notice what’s already a little off: blueberries and trillium in flower and maples aleaf more than two weeks early. You’d know that means earlier caterpillars, which means decreased food for the birds who can’t resynch their calendars and migrate north while food is still being served, which means, among other things, that veery’s song you loved to listen to (vee-ur, veer) might grow increasingly rare.
~ Barbara Hurd
(Listening to the Savage: River Notes & Half-Heard Melodies)
Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hillsides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Walden)
My dear sister-in-law, Fran, and I attended a Dar Williams concert on Tuesday, February 10, at the A. J. Fletcher Opera Theater, in Raleigh, with Seth Glier opening. We had such a great time listening to her wonderful story-telling melodies. The little anecdotes she shared between songs were very amusing and heartwarming.
The words to one tune in particular, from her new Hummingbird Highway album, resonated with me deeply, especially at this time in my life:
In the parking lot the dark becomes two panes of light
There’s a charcoal slash of ocean and a smoky plank of sky
Now they’re changing colors
Laurel green with alabaster,
Agate blue with snowy aster.
And as the blues are brightening and the cars are coming in,
You see a seagull weave a path upon the wind,
Like a thread that can begin and then begin
While the world just goes about its day
As the ground beneath you falls away
In this time when there’s no time, there is no place to be,
What bird did you see?
You think a goldfinch is enchanting and you know you told her,
Now a goldfinch lands above you like it’s on your shoulder,
Yesterday you saw a red-tailed hawk
Around a corner proud and still
Out of place, a sentinel.
And at the window when sparrows flew away,
A single cardinal seemed to know he had to stay,
He had to be the bright vermillion in the gray,
While the world just goes about its day
As the ground beneath you falls away
In the presence of this absence, was there one bright flash, a simple song, a revery
What bird did you see?
And You will feel the summer sun and autumn rays,
You will return to busy friends and busy days but now,
In this time between the here and the hereafter there’s a feather at your door,
Love will find its way,
In the very life you have today,
You’ll go back to what you understand,
Maybe unbelieve
But tell me now, what bird did you see?
It’s okay to know it’s me.
~ Dar Williams
♫ (What Bird Did You See) ♫
Now is the solstice of the year
Winter is the glad song that you hear
Seven maids move in seven time
Have the lads up ready in a line
Join together ‘neath the mistletoe,
By the holy oak whereon it grows
Seven druids dance in seven time
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming
Praise be to the distant sister sun,
Joyful as the silver planets run
Seven maids move in seven time
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming
Ring out these bells
Ring out, ring solstice bells
Ring solstice bells
~ Ian Anderson
♫ (Ring Out, Solstice Bells) ♫
Sometimes when one is feeling cooped up with summer cabin fever, the universe will send a little gift from the great outdoors right to one’s window. This little molting Carolina wren was sitting on a dead rhododendron branch, singing very loudly and with marked enthusiasm. A bright streak of sunshine bathed him in a magical aura. After I got my camera he started to preen, and preen, and preen.
Just now the wren from Carolina buzzed
through the neighbor’s hedge
a line of grace notes I couldn’t even write down
much less sing.
Now he lifts his chestnut colored throat
and delivers such a cantering praise —
for what?
For the early morning, the taste of the spider,
for his small cup of life
that he drinks from every day, knowing it will refill.
All things are inventions of holiness.
Some more rascally than others.
I’m on that list too,
though I don’t know exactly where.
But, every morning, there is my own cup of gladness,
and there’s that wren in the hedge, above me, with his
blazing song.
~ Mary Oliver
(The Wren from Carolina)
‘Twas my lucky morning! You never know who might stop by. These pictures were taken through a dirty window with my neighbor’s wall and window in the background. I’m glad her shades were closed — there were already enough reflections cluttering up the shots. I’m surprised the photos came out as well as they did.
Everywhere, from sunup to sunup, the world is full of song. The days are hot, hot, and all the day long I listen to the bees lifting from flower to flower, to the watchful chipmunk sounding its chock chock chock alarm while the red-tailed hawk wheels, crying, high in the sky. I can’t see the songbirds in the dappled light of a thousand leafy branches, but I can hear them calling from the trees.
~ Margaret Renkl
(The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)
The clearing rests in song and shade.
It is a creature made
By old light held in soil and leaf,
By human joy and grief,
By human work,
Fidelity of sight and stroke,
By rain, by water on
The parent stone.
~ Wendell Berry
(This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems)
It seems like it’s been raining and dreary for the past couple of weeks — we even turned the heat on a couple of times. But we’ve been seeing a lot of interesting creatures outside our windows, like this baby bunny I caught with my camera. One morning I saw two opossums scrounging around in the leaf litter for food, and another time I saw a coyote trotting across the back yard.
One day when returning from grocery shopping we were very excited to find four fledgling Carolina wrens trying out their wings on the wax myrtle branches in our front yard. And those darling Carolina chickadees who nested in our birdhouse had some little ones, too. They flit about so quickly I can’t count them but there are at least three and I got to see a parent feeding one of them.
And one delightful afternoon Kat and I designed a dragon garden to fill in the unused birdbath in the front yard. 💜
Soon shall the winter’s foil be here;
Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt — A little while,
And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and growth — a thousand forms shall rise
From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.
Thine eyes, ears — all thy best attributes — all that takes cognizance of natural beauty,
Shall wake and fill.
Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the delicate miracles of earth,
Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flowers,
The arbutus under foot, the willow’s yellow-green, the blossoming plum and cherry;
With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs — the flitting bluebird;
For such the scenes the annual play brings on.
~ Walt Whitman
(Sands at Seventy)