What the birds and Ned Stark know . . .

October by Emily Dickinson
These are the days when Birds come back—
A very few—a Bird or two—
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume
The old—old sophistries of June—
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee—
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear—
And softly thro' the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.

Oh sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze—
Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to partake—
Thy consecrated bread to take
And thine immortal wine!


I came across this piece yesterday while searching for a poem about bird migration.  I decided to wait and post it this morning, not realizing then that the forecast for the rest of this week would be more June than October-like and thus making it all the more perfect poem for this first day of October.  (And October was its original title although now it's more commonly titled according to its first line as so many of Emily's poems are.)

So why was I looking for a poem about bird migration you may be asking?  Well I'll tell you.  I spent the better part of Sunday morning spying on the various species of birds who were stopping by the dogwood tree in our front yard.  Evidently our neighborhood is an avian rest stop on the migration interstate and Sunday morning that tree must have looked like the equivalent of a Starbucks to our fine feathered friends.  

At first it was the robins who came through.  They caught my attention when one plump bird swooped in to land on the edge of a branch loaded with red berries, only to discover as he put his feet down that it wasn't strong enough to hold him so he toppled to the grass. (If you've never seen a grown bird fall out of a tree in which he's trying to land, it's a pretty amusing sight and makes you reassess the notion that they're graceful creatures.)  He then proceeded to do a repeated hop, bounce and flutter up from the grass to try to get to the branch before giving up and finding a sturdier limb to stand on.  Other robins soon descended, some lighter than the first chubby visitor and thus able to balance on the slender branches.  

After a few minutes, the robins took flight as a cloud of European starlings descended on the neighborhood, noisily making their way from yard to yard and tree to tree. (It's amazing to think that this now highly invasive species of bird started from fewer than 60 released in Central Park in the late 1800's and now number about 150 million.  It seems like at least a million of them  were in Wheaton/Silver Spring/North Kensington on Sunday.) They left and a few stragglers came . . . a yellow bellied sap sucker, a cardinal couple, a smattering of wrens, and one lone brilliant but skittish blue jay.  

Then the process started all over again, minus the robin falling out of the tree.  I guess he learned his lesson. By noon the cranberry leaved dogwood that had been loaded with fire engine red berries when I woke up was stripped clean.

I'm sure there's a lesson about preparation and faith in here somewhere.  Because despite it being a balmy 80 plus degrees this first week in October, as the birds know . . .

(With thanks to George R. R. Martin and the current Game of Thrones mania for
providing a large selection of "Winter is coming" graphics from which to choose.)

A Poem for Earth Day

'Nature' Is What We See by Emily Dickinson
'Nature' is what we see--
The Hill-- the Afternoon--
Squirrel--Eclipse--the Bumble bee--
Nay--Nature is Heaven--
Nature is what we hear--
The Boblink--the Sea--
Thunder--the Cricket--
Nay--Nature is Harmony--
Natures is what we know--
Yet have no art to say--
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.

This weekend I spent part of each day playing in the dirt-- planting poppies, herbs and a rose bush, sowing seeds in the wildflower and butterfly garden, digging up and moving rogue lilies to place where they can actually get some sun and blossom.  While my hands were busy digging, my eyes and ears were open. 

If nature is what I saw while I was engaged in this work of co-creating, it's the broken robin's egg under the flowering pink dogwood, sprouts of lily of the valley poking up through the mud, a rabbit pulling up dried grass to make a nest by the front porch, the blue and yellow blossoms of forget-me-nots.

If nature is what I heard, it was the chatter and creaks of a pair of rusty blackbirds warning me away from their nest in my neighbor's yard, the rustle of wind blowing through the new leaves on the maple trees, the buzz of a bumble bee hovering over fragrant white alyssum.

I read Emily Dickinson's poem as an invitation to attentiveness, an encouragement to be in the present moment, an act which, for me, often leads to gratitude.  When I go out for a walk later this afternoon I'll again have my eyes and ears open and come back with a different litany of what nature is. 

So on this Earth Day, I invite you to join Emily and I looking and listening, in considering what nature is for you . . .

A Trio of Storm Poems by Emily Dickinson in honor of El Derecho

The Wind Begun to Rock the Grass

The wind begun to rock the grass

With threatening tunes and low, -

He flung a menace at the earth,

A menace at the sky.

The leaves unhooked themselves from trees

And started all abroad;

The dust did scoop itself like hands

And throw away the road.

The wagons quickened on the streets,

The thunder hurried slow;

The lightning showed a yellow beak,

And then a livid claw.

The birds put up the bars to nests,

The cattle fled to barns;

There came one drop of giant rain,

And then, as if the hands

That held the dams had parted hold,

The waters wrecked the sky,

But overlooked my father's house,

Just quartering a tree.

  

The Lightning is a Yellow Fork

The Lightning is a yellow Fork

From Tables in the sky

By inadvertent fingers dropt

The awful Cutlery

Of mansions never quite disclosed

And never quite concealed

The Apparatus of the Dark

To ignorance revealed.

There Came a Wind Like a Bugle

There came a wind like a bugle;

It quivered through the grass,

And a green chill upon the heat

So ominous did pass

We barred the windows and the doors

As from an emerald ghost;

The doom's electric moccasin

That very instant passed.

On a strange mob of panting trees,

And fences fled away,

And rivers where the houses ran

The living looked that day.

The bell within the steeple wild

The flying tidings whirled.

How much can come

And much can go,

And yet abide the world!

Friday night the DC area was hit by a Derecho, a fierce, fast, straight storm that brought hurricane force winds and mass destruction to the area.  At the time, it didn't seem that bad to me.  I opened the curtain to watch the light show illuminate the trees swaying to the raucous tune of the wind.

I heard the staccato of the power going off and on but didn't think too much of it.  Brown outs and blown transformers during thunder storms are as much a part of summer in DC as concerts on the mall and the August mass migration of politicos.  

But then Saturday rolled around and no power . . . and Sunday . . . and Monday . . . and Tuesday . . . and now it's Wednesday morning and the last I checked, still no power in our neighborhood. 

This picture illustrates one of the reasons why.  Granted, it's not a very good picture but hey, I was snapping it as I was driving south in a north bound lane on Connecticut Avenue through Kensington as we were fleeing the apocalyptic chaos of Montgomery County for the promise land of a northern Virginia hotel.  (You know things are bad when those north of the Potomac willingly cross the river in search of comfort.)  But at least this gives you some sense of the chaos in that mile long stretch of a major thoroughfare in my neighborhood.  Although in this photo the trees have been somewhat cut up, they were still strewn across one whole side of the road and there were many more trees that hadn't been touched.  Nor did I get a picture of the downed utility poles, some broken in two, and wires that also littered the road.

So now my electronics are fully charged, I've slept through the night (and actually been a bit chilly while doing so) and am debating about whether or not to spend the holiday catching up on work or reading.  Although seriously, we all know reading is going to win out but I am thinking about work which should count for something. 

Good old Emily Dickinson.  When summer storms hit Amherst she didn't just think about work, she did it, retiring to her room to write more poetry.  No wondering what to do without Internet access or fretting about how much charge was left on her mobile and whether she should use it to update her Facebook status. 

I always tell myself that if I didn't have easy access to the distractions of modern life, I could write about lightning falling like dropped silverware from the heavens. But I didn't even manage to write my morning pages in the first few days, post-storm.  Technology, or lack thereof, isn't my problem, focus and self-discipline is.