Introspection

I had good intentions, at the beginning of this year, to focus more on this blog. To write more. To create pages for poetry, and for the Christmas posts. And here we are, well into August, and not a word have I put to this endeavour. Not a single alteration has occurred. Indeed, I see that I have again left the Christmas playlist up, far after I could reasonably argue for it being there.

What can I say? This year has been something unlike I have ever lived through before. Something my parents, and sundry aunts and uncles aver, is unlike anything they have ever seen, in spite of living through the upheaval of the 60s and 70s. I do not want to write about any of the extraordinary things that have come upon us in this most singular of years. I have nothing to say that has not been said before-- more eloquently by some, and done to death by others. I do not understand the fear that oppresses and drives so many into behaviours that I find unfathomable, nor why we are discounting so many societal red-flags in the interest of a safety, which, in this case, has nothing whatsoever to do with actually being safe, but has everything to do with not getting sick. Nor I do not understand how the reasonable anger at a cruel and needless death, translates into months of rioting, burning and looting, much less into a wholesale iconoclasm, without even a thread of connection to the original grievance. Nor how we-- an ostensibly civilised society-- can look upon this great upheaval and do nothing at all to stop it. I am a creature of habit, a lover of order and the natural rhythms of ordinary life, where one attends Mass on Sundays, visits with one's friends and family in the evenings, or the weekends. Where the holy days and the holidays are marked with the same, tradition-worn pleasure and comfort with which they are always marked. I cannot comprehend a willingness to allow such an upending of these cycles. It seems that we are in the midst of a great unravelling, and I do not know how to make sense of it. I know that it is not right, nor healthy, nor wholesome, and I have on me a great desire to fight for the return and preservation of these ordinary good and human things.

And yet, for all of the grievances this year has given me, and the anger, outrage, anxiety and panic that have accompanied it, I cannot honestly see it as a bad year. The big and incomprehensible things going on about me... I cannot do anything about them, but live as a good Catholic (or as good as I am able), to pray, to fast when I can, to offer up the daily sufferings (which are manifold and idiotic) for this poor, Godless world. And while the Wide World around me falls apart under the weight of its own hubris, my own, small world has enjoyed much blessing. A particularly troublesome quandary that was plaguing me last autumn, was largely assuaged by a Providential (and completely unexpected) educational opportunity, and even the burdensome lockdowns have given me a breathing space in which I do not have to make any great decisions for my future. A two week precautionary isolation period allowed me the luxury of participating, via livestreams, in all the Holy Week and Easter Week services-- a holy and wholesome experience indeed. The good priest was able to keep our local Catholic church open for visits to the Blessed Sacraments during all of this time (even when he could not celebrate the Mass), so I have gotten into the habit of making daily visits. There is much calm and courage to be gained from this, even if I am a dry and brittle creature, often insensible of its grace.

And the world is still a very beautiful place, full of hopeful new mornings, flaming sunsets, the balm of summer rains coming in unexpected and thunderous downpours in the midst of summer heat. A friend and I have made frequent pilgrimages to that little strip of meadowy land between the Marsh and the sandy edge of the Lake, where chickadees, juncos, wrens and sparrows make noisy communion from the willow breaks. We have walked in the twilight, beneath a sky alive with swallows, when the world is darkening, but the lake holds fast to the silver light. We have seen ravenous young coots, calling pitifully from the shelter of the reeds and cattails, while their harried parents hunt in pools for little silver fish. Have stood on the opposite bank of the river, where it widens into the Lake, and seen a mama black bear, swimming lugubriously in midstream, tossing her head and chuffing at her three timorous cubs, who sat on their furry haunches and refused to follow her into deep water. We have watched the terns and osprey, wheeling for fish, their hover-hunting, and subsequent straight-down plunge, a thing of heart-stopping joy and exhilaration. Have seen the great blue heron make its long, slow flight up from the half-hidden marsh water, its elegance marred by a most ridiculous calling-- as though God, in designing so lovely a creature, gave to it harsh and hilarious voice to keep it humble. We were privileged to see unusual things: the uncommon nighthawks, with their raptors' bodies, and sparrows’ flight, the windows on their wings making for easy identification. A river otter... a river otter, here! I never knew we had them in the mountains.... bounding along the far bank of the river, like a sleek, playful dog before slipping  back into the current with that liquid grace that all water creatures display when they are in their element, however clumsy they might be upon land. The arching leap of small fishes as they went after the mayflies, swarming just above the evening lake, the curve of their straining bodies describing some perfect joy. The pair of summer-bright tanagers-- normally a canopy bird, seen in quick, yellow glimpses as they streak from tree to tree-- feeding among the bitter brush and meadow grasses. Strangely unafraid they were, concerned only with the hunting of seeds, and patient with us for watching.

To me, these are the real things, the important things in life-- the glimpses of a greater beauty, those odd moments when the veil between heaven and earth wears thin, and those little creatures of God somehow manifest a faint, and almost incomprehensible aspect of His own great beauty and perfection. Please understand me here. I do not mean to suggest anything pagan in this, no environmental, New Agey nonsense of God being in and composed of the things of this material realm. I mean that God the Artist (as all great artists do) left behind something of Himself in His works. That His distinctive touch, His fingerprints, are pressed all over His creation, and that in studying it, as one studies a masterpiece in a museum, we are startled to see something of the Artist Himself looking back at us in a way we cannot wholly comprehend. And so we-- in these fleeting moments that somehow have the mark of eternity upon them-- are able to glimpse, ever so dimly, something of God's great glory in the indescribable fire of a cloud-streaked sunset. Something of His gentle care, in that single-minded attention the coots and the bear show to their poor, crying, silly offspring. Something of the sheer exhilarating fineness of Him, in that arrow straight stooping of the tern and osprey. Magnificent as these things are, they are poor images of God Himself, and yet, for that bare instant in which we are able to glimpse it, we have the immense privilege of looking through the veil, through the tangle of the temporal, and seeing (imperfectly) the Face of God. And we are better for that barest of glimpses.

And so,  I cannot see how any year that is blessed with the mysterious hand of Providence (however it chooses to bless, with comfort, or with a much needed wakeup call), with beautiful holy-tides, magnificently shot through with the most unlooked-for moments of grace and growth, and so filled with the immutable beauty with which God, for sheer joy and goodness, chose to shape His world, could ever be a bad year. Perhaps there is foolishness in this-- I have known years of great sorrow and they have seemed very bad indeed to me. But perhaps this year has taught me to see with a wisdom I was not able to bear during those other years. Perhaps God has used this mad and chaotic time to bring me another step further along that steep, and treacherous path to the Light. I cannot be the judge of it, for I have failed more often than not in holding on to those moments of grace. I have prayed by route, more often than from the heart. Have complained bitterly that I know we are to accept the crosses that He sends us, but crippling panic attacks at work are a stupid cross-- and strained mightily against all of the senseless and unreasonable dictates that have upended so much of my orderly little world... 

And yet, all of this madness will pass away, as all things must eventually. And I suspect that the things that will be remembered most, are not the troubles themselves, but the lives lived in spite of them. I suspect that I shall look back on this year, and shall remember Holy Week and Easter Week, and homemade pasta, and sourdough bread. Will remember the otter, and the heron, and hunting terns, and the way my days had shaped themselves around the Blessed Sacrament, even while I was unable to receive the same. Will remember that my sisters and I learned to sing Sicut Cervus in 4 part harmony, and sang it on the last day of Easter Week, at Communion time, during a tiny, private Mass, in an abandoned, decaying old church out in the Nevada desert (the only place that was available to us) when our family friend was received with great joy into the Church. (And remember too, that being us, and incapable of not making things nice, we were able to make that desolate spot a clean and blessed place for our dear Lord to come.) Will remember that there was joy and grace, blessing and courage, freely given, and with them, a great and deep down peace, that remained steady, however tempestuous the surface might be. 

And perhaps.... just perhaps... it will not be myself alone, but all of us, who look back in this time, and call it blessed. 

The In Between Time

It is still summer-- at least, by calendar reckoning. August has not quite yet run her course, and Autumn does not officially come until September has nearly gone as well. It is summer by the calendar for nearly another month.

It is still summer according to the thermometer. The mercury marks day time temperatures that still run a bit too warm for my blood. We look to be in for more of the same for some weeks yet.

But neither calendar nor thermometer account for the sweet, slight-edged winds that give lie to the still-lingering heat; nor to the bright, deep-night chill that sets the stars blazing, and makes sleep come easily; nor again, that the northern tracking of the sun has dulled the fierceness of its insistent light. They do not mark the silence of the Marsh, now that the Redwings are gone, and only the Brewer's blackbirds remain, starting up in sudden, dense clouds, to wheel the open places, and dodge like stunt pilots through the rocking pines. We are on the cusp of migration season. Harriers are in the fields now, flying low and bright over willows and meadow grass. Nighthawks have visited us, with their swallow-quick, silent flight-- incongruous in so raptor-like a form. The geese are suddenly active, their voices no longer merely honking complaints. There is an ineffably wistful wildness to their calls, as they muster and V-mark the sky with their wing-loud squadrons. There is a half-hidden yellow in the heart of the aspens, in the neighbourhood rowans, in the willows and alder trees. There is a smell like baking bread, coming up off the meadows, a smell like wine in the wild rose thickets. 

The days are still hot enough, no denying that. It is still beach weather, for those that like that sort of thing. Still the season of picnics and barbecues. It is advisable to keep the fan at the ready, and to leave windows opened wide to the welcome night air. The pines have not started dropping their needles, in that bright, copper rain of true Autumn. There are no whirligigging pine nuts, no sudden storm of aspen leaves in the vagrant wind. It is still summer.

But the gripping heat has gone. The sun no longer shines with near-blinding intensity. The sky has lost its fired-enamel brilliance, and taken to it an all together gentler luminosity. The air is stirring, and wild, sweet smells keep slipping out of hidden places. We are at the in-between time, and I stand on the edge of it, newly in love with the beauty of the world, with the first, mad stirrings of wanderlust, beating against my heart. 

Panic

That was the prompt. Panic. And I am not about to write about a panic attack, thank you very much. So I settled with a memory of watching my little sisters play in the water. 

Jacinta at the Beach

She went with cautious confidence,
Her little toes curled on the sand,
And little face amazed and grave
As water rushed around her feet
And broke upon the shore.

While I watched with heart in mouth,
Her joy between lake and land,
Afraid, because she was so brave,
The water would rush up to greet

Forget its strength, and teach her fear.

Yet Another Nature Poem

Today I was supposed to discover something. So I remembered discovering a little nest with baby Stellar's Jays in it. They were astonishing ugly and I was amazed that something as stunning as a Stellar's Jay should have an offspring that looked like that..... but for all that, they were sort of adorable too.... And then mom dive bombed me and I left her family in peace. 

Discovery

I climbed a tree and found a nest,

A little nest of twig and string

With unfledged jaybirds, loud within,

Noisy, new and ravenous.

They were ugly and undressed,

Feeble, blind, unfeathered things,

​Crying mouths, altricial skin,

Timid, weak and tremulous.

And yet I loved their ugliness,

Th​e new life​,​ bare and trembling

The ​plaintive calling​, hungry, thin​,

Fragile, fair and wondrous.

I looked at latent loveliness

The hidden flight in useless wings,

The faint first colour, coming in​:​

Blue and black and lustrous.

The End of the Drought

Today's prompt was "a sound". Being a piper, my mind naturally went to that deep, elemental drone of bagpipes. But I figure the pipes are a good back up subject, and besides, it is too easy to go over the top with rhapsodical praise of the Great Instrument. And then I remembered a morning not too long ago, when the snow started melting, and there were little shorebirds wandering in the meadow rather than by the lake, with the worried-sounding little Killdear, calling from out of the grass and dry wildflowers of last year. So I wrote about that instead.

The Marsh, March 2017

The Marsh is flooded

And the well-known ways

Are rivers now, impassible.

The sound of water is everywhere.

Drought has vanished

Like a dream.

Where once was meadow

The Wood Ducks play

In waves of water and of grass.

The sky reflects a thousand times.

Cloud are racing

In every stream.

The Killdeer from shoreline

Far have strayed

And keen amid the willow breaks.

The Marsh gives back the plaintive sound

Of their crying

Spring! Spring! Spring!

Winter's on the Wing...

When last I took the time to write something for this blog, I spoke of the resolution I had made to be hopeful and trust in God, even if things look hopeless and trust is hard. This is, in retrospect, the sort of difficult, foolish resolution that one should only make with the full realisation that God takes you at your word when you do so. I was aware of what I was doing when I made that resolution, but I did not really expect God to test it quite so thoroughly as He has these last couple months. I have no intention of complaining about the hand He is dealing out through His wisdom. Nor, for that matter, to imply that the difficult situations in which I have so unwantedly found myself do not have the faint, curling new-growth of Something Good Coming about them - they do. There is - improbably - Hope in the midst of a decided Vale of Tears; Hope that shines like a single, bright prick of starlight - a solitary guide in the unfriendly darkness. What I do mean to say, is that sometimes, one is so busy being hopeful and trusting (with the full awareness of how often one fails of that resolve) there is not much time for the careful, thoughtful Ideas one longs to write about. I would apologise for this, but instead I merely ask that you bear with me. I want to write about things that matter, nor content myself with babbling.

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I saw a young Hawk take a Meadowlark in midair. It was during the first week of Lent, a bright, cold morning, heavy with frost, gilded with the first golden sunlight that means that spring is coming, for all the chill. There was a brief struggle between the two beautiful, dappled creatures; cries of hunger and distress, the flare and beat of wings, and a plunge - Mors et Vita duello...

It has been a wet, long winter here in mountains of the Far west. Heavy storms, one after another, bringing at times, rain, at others, snow. Wild always, with an unmitigated sea-wind driving them; a hard winter for the foolish, hardy thing that make their homes in such high and inhospitable places. 

The Hawk was hungry. It tossed the lovely breast feathers - yellow and grey, soft and warm, so that the air was full of the ghost of the Meadowlark. It keened as it ate, like a small child, humming at its dinner. The other birds, well hidden in the surrounding pines, scolded it at first . Jays, and Junco, Chickadees and Kinglets, called out together - in warning, perhaps, or in fear. Then one by one they fell silent, until the Hawk and the Meadowlark were alone, in a circle of silence. There was a slight ring around them, of pale yellow down, already being blowing away in the cold morning wind, a drop or two of blood, glowing warmly against the snow. 

When the first edge of its hunger was dulled, the Hawk flew into the willows to finish his meal. The willows were ruddy with the first flush of wakening sap. The brilliantly, dappled breast of the Hawk turned him into a creature of snow and shadow, easily lost in the willow shade. He ate in a small storm of flying feathers, methodically now, no longer a hungry child, but as a man might, at the end of a day's hard labour. He would occasionally look out into the solitary silence around it - his fine head like the profile on a coin, his eyes glowing, beautiful both in design and skill.

I went to look at the spot, when he finally flew away with the last of the Meadowlark. Does that sound macabre to you - not only that I should have taken such joy in watching the terrible dance of life and death played out in the morning before me, but that, when it was done, I should go to study the place once it had been left abandoned? There is a solemn beauty about such places - and that little hollow amongst the willow shoots and pine boughs was no exception. There was a sunset of colour there - wing feathers, striped buff and rufus, the astonishing yellow feathers from the Meadowlark's breast, the small spots of bright orange blood, on fire amongst them. I have not seen a great many kills in my life time, but whenever I have come across them, I am always surprised by the littleness of blood, and the diversity of feathers. They were surprisingly alike in colour, the Hawk and the Meadowlark, all bars and dapples. There was a faint, foolish hope that one of those bright feathers had fallen from the hunter. 

Perhaps it was because Lent was newly upon me, or because of the Latin lines from the Easter antiphon that came into my mind at the sight of the birds, but there was a feeling of great content that came with seeing Hawk and the Meadowlark, the hunter and hunted, life and death, in glourious combat locked. There was sorrow for the Meadowlark - sorrow that such a brightly beautiful, singing creature - designed by God to be pleasing to eye and ear - should die in blood upon the snow. But there was joy - even exultation - in the glory and power of the Hawk, in it doing so perfectly, precisely what it was designed to do, and in the one great beauty giving life to the other. There was a sense of splendor, a right ordering of things, the peace of death at the end of life well spent. The Hand of God showed in all of it - the love with which He shaped and shaded His beautiful little creatures, the joy He gave and took in the making. He knows each one of them, more intimately than a mother knows her child, and suffers none of them fall without putting His hand out to catch or bless. And it seemed to me to be a parable - that sometimes, God takes away a good thing in us, that we treasure, not to cause us pain or sorrow, but so that an even better good thing might grow in its place and be nourished by the good that came before. 

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One of my soft resolutions this year - in addition to 'hardening my heart with Hope' was to take a more disciplined approach to my poetry. It has been a rather hit and miss endevour, with only one full poem coming to fruition since the New Year. However, in an effort to force myself into a more serious approach, I decided to go for the Poem A Day Challenge again this year. I intend to write every day, though I might not necessarily post them here as regularly. But in the spirit of getting the month off to a proper start, here is the little thing I did today, in response to the prompt "reminiscence":

I remember when I met you.
You were younger than I'd expected,
With red hair, I'd always fancied -
Though I'd  forgotten, til I met you.

You were easy for me to talk to
- Me, eccentric, shy and silent -
Found delight in conversation,
When I talked and sat beside you.

You were good, but wild also,
Fierce and knightly, faithful, errant,
Who wakened Joy and Hope within me:
My bravest self I was with you.

But we are old now, me and you:
Sorrow between us, our chances spent.
We've traded our Joy for hard-bought peace...
I miss who we were, when I met you.