Pastorale

The pasture is messy. Clods of overturned earth flounder in afternoon heat. Intransigent field weeds fountain between the plots and rows. Mud puddles in the tractor path wallow in their own mire. In the field's anteroom, two giant damp barns shelter rusty machines, every curve of pitted metal, every peeling board weighty with time's passing. So much work to do, my back crumples in the face of it—and it isn't even my work. I walk way out in the fields and face the mountains that do no work. A breeze comes up. I can see it in the distant trees and feel it on my shoulders.

May in the Mountains

Cold rain continues. Adamant windows let the wet air penetrate the house and bones. Why doesn't the person close them? The windows insist on remaining open to the possibility of Spring.

Week of Rains

The Norway maple rains spring-green flowers all over the yard. The rosemary bush takes them on like its own blue flowers, which have just started to open. The beech tree showers brownish cat-claw husks, bracts I guess. They are harder than the maple pods and make a tiny sound when they hit ground. The apple pours off its shocking petals and makes a bridal path of the sidewalk. The poplars start their cotton storm. Pollens trickle down incessantly, becoming visible on the surfaces of cars and lakes. And the sky, taken over by clouds, rains and rains rain.

Too Fast

The infant leaves of the red beech—

one evening in the gold light—

I was on my way—

I would have come back—

Foolish woman—

made of birdsong—

Charms

The copper beech in leaf and flower.

High Spring

Green smoke rises up the mountainsides.

Without Pause

The maples opened on April 26. They still carry pale spring-greenness, but are already dropping their tiny flowers as batwing leaves droop forth.

A gray sky

What if, instead of trying to understand our dreams, we saw that we were understood by them? That's a paraphrase of something Thomas Moore said in "Original Self." I'm taking it further: what, then, if we saw we were understood by the art that comes out of us? I like these ideas very much, but don't know yet how to use them.

Spring still holds back. It will be warm today. Thunderstorms. Weightiness. Trees inching towards bloom. Spring is understood by the small flowers it makes.

On the way to New York I saw large patches of bloodroot in bloom in the woods along the roadsides. Yesterday I looked: my own single flower was gone, a little yellow nub on top of the stem was all that was left. I did not even see fallen petals. Now the leaf is starting to unfurl its strange flat palm.

Spring Green

"...the violet was flawed on the lawn." That's Elizabeth Bishop in a poem entitled, A Cold Spring. We are nowhere near the violet stage. It snowed last night and the daffodils are diminished. The trees are late; the maples usually blossom out by April 23. The buds are showing but hold back their color. Maple blossom time is the definitive turning point, for me, into High Spring. One of the great discoveries of my life was to notice as a child that the color "spring green" in the 64 Crayola box is the exact color of the maples when they first open.

Startled

The wind chimes swing lazily after two days of incessant wind. I spied some forsythia in bloom down by the river, but ours are not out yet. Today is the kind of grey day against which their yellow would be so vivid and cheering.

Starlings have been nesting for the past several years in a hole in the corner of my neighbor's eaves. It appears that several adult birds take care of it, more than a pair. I have not confirmed this. There's intense activity in the nest right now—chatter, comings and goings, bird droppings piling up on the ledge beneath.

The other day I was standing in the doorway to the back porch and three of the cats came rushing past me; one had a big speckled starling in his mouth. The bird looked stiff and dead. The cat pushed on the inside door, wanting to bring the bird into the house. I said, "No!" He dropped the bird and it burst into life, flying out the porch door and up into the maple before any of us could blink. It seemed unharmed, but if a bird's skin is punctured by cat teeth, it will die of infection. Days after the porch incident, all seems well with the nest. Don't know about the bird.

A few years back I got into trying to rescue birds and bring them to a bird rehabilitator who lived a ways away. Each time I brought her a bird she would excoriate me for letting the cats be outside cats. Once I brought her a large fledgling I hadn't been able to identify. She looked at it and said, "Oh, it's just a starling."

A little more

The bloodroot yesterday afternoon.

Down at the Lake

Big wind pushing the water to shore, strange diamonds and sheen strewn over and under grayness. Mallards flying. Cloud shadows speckling the purple mountains. Every tree and bush reddening into bud. Quiet enough to hear the lap of waves coming in. Joy and nostalgia for old paths and pine needles.

Frequent Visits to Lakes

A beaver's sleek pointy face tilts upward as it swims. It's following the shore, going somewhere, going on, as are the paired mallards drifting in the swampy end, and the peepers chorusing amongst the phragmites. A tiny pussy willow in partial bloom bends over the shore edge. The wind creates changing patterns of ripples that sunlight repeats on the sandy bottom. All over the lake diamonds are bouncing and we all feel rich. In a little cove on the far side they appear to hover over the surface, a phenomenon I have never seen in all my years of studying the water jewels.

Bloodroot

A bloodroot showed up in our backyard.

Parted

The river is but yards away from my house, as the crow flies, but layers of kid shouts and traffic usually overwhelm the chorus of peepers. Sometimes the cloud of noises parts, and for a moment you can hear them singing.

Opened

Today the wind blows the daffodils backwards as I try to photograph their yellowness. Open-throated canaries, they proclaim themselves full throttle until they wrinkle away.