Below are posts from the earlier version of this site when it was not a blog.
Surprising Deer:
When I first moved from Boston to the land where I have now been living for twenty-two years, I knew there were lots of deer, but only by the footprints that circled the house every winter night in the snow…
Finally, after about ten years, I saw three deer flying away, white tail flags up, into the setting sun… then one day I saw a lustful buck cavorting in the meadow... three years ago Sandy and I started seeing a mother and two exquisite fawns come out from the trees... the next year we would see three adult deer: Mama and grown-up girls, we think...
Last week, on a warmer day than we had been having in this long and relentless winter, I happened to look out the 2nd floor hall window at about 8:30 am down over my herb garden at the back of the yard... beyond this mowed area lies brush, then woods... I spied a couple of small deer (no antlers) moving in a line behind the white picket fence of the garden...
Enchanting! then I saw more movement... within a few seconds a whole line of deer, about 10 or 12, came moving silently along behind the garden, out across the orchard to the mulch panel into the trees beyond… I called Sandy, who grabbed her camera and took this photo…
a few moments of stillness and magic to begin a February day...
August 01, 2008
Loss:
In early June a close friend died, tragically, in a freak accident while hiking on a trail that had a steep drop-off into a gorge, leaving behind his wife, another close friend of mine, who had been with him on the hike... We learned the news right away through email from someone we knew who had seen the posting on the Finger Lakes Trail web site put up to warn others about the dangerous spot...
The memorial service was held a few days later... None of it seemed real, nor does it still... The next week, organizing photos for a collage frame, I found several of our two friends from outings we’d shared... His name is still on my email list, written in my address book... I had not seen him very often in recent years. The last time had been at another memorial service, for one of the co-ministers of the Unitarian-Universalist Church we had all attended (I had stopped going several years back, but my friends had continued as active members). He and I sat together at that service, holding onto each other, crying, having no idea of what was to come...
Last week I saw a wonderful independent film from the U.K., "When Was the Last Time You Saw Your Father?" featuring Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth, from a memoir of the same name by British writer, Blake Morrison, about his own father's death and their relationship over the years. The title comes from the author's attempt to answer a friend's question. When had he last seen his father—really seen him—not on his deathbed diminished by illness and medication, but fully alive, fully himself?
When did I last see Rodger? Laughing at Letchworth Gorge? Walking the labyrinth at Linwood Gardens where we used to go for the Peony Festival? Reciting his favorite poem, "The Cremation of Sam McGee ?" Wiping away tears at Carl's service?
A life is only a collection of moments... Right now in the rain as I sit on my back screened porch, a black walnut falls with a thud... This happen each year as autumn approaches, even while August is just beginning... Every moment is like that walnut. I want to catch each one somehow in mid-air.
In early June a close friend died, tragically, in a freak accident while hiking on a trail that had a steep drop-off into a gorge, leaving behind his wife, another close friend of mine, who had been with him on the hike... We learned the news right away through email from someone we knew who had seen the posting on the Finger Lakes Trail web site put up to warn others about the dangerous spot...
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| Labyrinth, Linwood Gardens |
Last week I saw a wonderful independent film from the U.K., "When Was the Last Time You Saw Your Father?" featuring Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth, from a memoir of the same name by British writer, Blake Morrison, about his own father's death and their relationship over the years. The title comes from the author's attempt to answer a friend's question. When had he last seen his father—really seen him—not on his deathbed diminished by illness and medication, but fully alive, fully himself?
When did I last see Rodger? Laughing at Letchworth Gorge? Walking the labyrinth at Linwood Gardens where we used to go for the Peony Festival? Reciting his favorite poem, "The Cremation of Sam McGee ?" Wiping away tears at Carl's service?
July 31, 2008
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| black-eyed Susans; echinachea |
a hummingbird dips into the lavender trumpets of the hostas under the black walnut... a tiny speckled fawn ventures out of the pines all the way to the edge of the herb garden… when we walk the dog in the evening on nearby roads, we often spot a deer or two feeding in the tall corn we pass… frequent cloudbursts with a heavy deluge of rain... wild thunderstorms, once even hail... so much rain alternating with sun creates a lush, fertile, burgeoning landscape... squash and tomatoes and beans coming on in the little vegetable patch; cabbage and dill and lemon cucumbers: round and yellow… abundant herbs: dill, fennel, apple mint, all flowering... perennials flourishing; stargazer lilies, black-eyed Susans, Russian sage, coneflower: purple and white... fascinating cloud formations; huge deep orange suns setting over the far trees...
a poem:
YEARS AND THEIR
SORROWS
out-distanced, hungers and
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| Archway, Linwood Gardens |
footfalls on a brick walk at twilight,
glow the way lamps do, blossoming
on as dusk falls down an unknown
street where we might walk
toward the deep well of night.
Yet all walks are the journey
to the field's edge surrounded
by the cicadas of late summer
reminding us that underneath
their hum lie mid-winter's
drifts, underneath that await the pale
shoots of almost-spring full
of a force that will pierce ice:
even if one of us spirals
off of the circle before it all
happens again, it all happens again.
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| Grecian windflowers, Sage-Thyme.Haven |
in memoriam, Patricia Janus
and Rodger Smith
(published in Le Mot Juste IV)
