Category: mist

The Intricate Texture of Things

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Here is a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world…: the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling — not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.
~Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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The weather is getting brisker so the outdoor critters, some invited, some not,  are starting to move inside.  The cats scoot between our legs as we open the front door, heading straight for the fireplace to bask in the warmth rather than a cold wind. The pup comes in from the yard for a nightly snack and chew bone, and stretches out on the rug, acting every bit like a piece of furry furniture. And today there was another mouse in the trap under the sink. I almost thought we were mouse-free with three weeks of none sighted and none trapped, but there he was waiting for me in the morning, well fed and quite dead.  He became an opportune meal for a cat too lazy to go get himself a living breathing mouse.

From nibbling to nibbled.  It is a tough world, inside and out.

Our most numerous and ambitious visitors from outside are the spiders, appearing miraculously crawling futilely up the sides in the bathtub, or scurrying across the kitchen floor, or webbing themselves into a corner of the ceiling with little hope of catching anything but a stray house moth or two this time of year. Arachnids are certainly determined yet stationary predators, rebuilding their sticky traps as needed to ensure their victims won’t rip away, thereby destroying the web.

I don’t really mind sharing living quarters with another of God’s creatures, but I do prefer the ones that are officially invited into our space and not surprise guests. The rest are interlopers that I tolerate with grudging admiration for their instinctive ingenuity. I admit I’m much too large, inept, and bumbling to find my way into someone else’s abode through a barely perceptible crack, and I’m certainly incapable of weaving the intricate beauty of a symmetrical web placed just so in a high corner.

After all, I am just another creature in the same boat. There is something quite humbling about being actually invited into this frayed and beautiful, complex and broken world, “pitted and scarred” as I am. I’m grateful I’ve so far escaped capture in the various insidious traps of life,  not just the spring-loaded kind and the sticky filament kind.

So it is okay that I’m settled in, cozy in front of the fireplace, just a piece of the furniture. Just so long as I don’t startle anyone or nibble too much of what I shouldn’t, I just might be invited to stay awhile.

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Warned By Wild Things

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Frightening the foliage from its sleep, we travel along
the Quinault Lake Loop in our big red truck.

Roofed by dank rainforest, we know
we are not alone, though we see no bird, no beast.

You say, It’s beautiful, but do we really belong here
where creatures hide? Then an elk herd stomps across

the dirt road, and you brake, shocked. The fattest turns
to stare over his long beard. To know or warn us.

Yes, my love, we belong, but on soil-stained knees,
asking for each wild thing’s consent to stand.
~Lauren Davis, Home Beneath the Church 

I’ve been to the temperate rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula,
only a short ferry ride and two hour drive away,
where 300 year old trees tethered to one another
with connecting crepe of dangling moss,
hiding the creatures within,
taking all down with them
if they someday fall to the wind,
lying still, nursing the growth of the next generation’s seeds
from long rotting trunks.

We can only pass through this place,
having been banished from the Garden.

We are not to dwell or cut or shoot or burn or slash,
at risk of being ensnared by reaching fingers of moss
seeking yet another woody heart to soften

Whispering grassfeet
steal through us
fir-fingers touch one another
where the paths meet
thick dripping resin
glues us together
summer-greedy woodpeckers
hammer at hardy
seed-hiding hearts
~Inger Christensen  trans. Susanna Nied

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June Trembling Like a Butterfly

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Green was the silence, wet was the light
the month of June trembled like a butterfly
~Pablo Neruda from “Sonnet XL”

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—
maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins—

but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,
dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,
and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.
~Billy Collins “Morning”

We are now four days into summer but aside from the date on the calendar, it would be difficult to prove otherwise.  After a dry stretch of warm late spring weather, it is now unseasonably cool, the skies stony gray, the rivers running full and fast, the ground peppered with puddles. Rain has fallen at night, hiding behind the cover of darkness as if ashamed of itself.  

As it should be.

What all this moisture will yield is acres and acres of towering grass growth, more grass than imaginable, more grass than we can keep mowed,  burying the horses up to their backs as they dive head long into the pasture. The Haflingers don’t need to lower their necks to graze,  choosing instead to simply strip off the ripe tops of the grasses as they forge paths through five foot forage. It is like children at a birthday party swiping the frosting off cupcake after cupcake, licking their fingers as they go. Instead of icing, the horses’ muzzles are smeared with dandelion fluff,  grass seed and buttercup petals.

In the northwest, June can tend to shroud its promise of longer days under clouds. Outdoor weddings brace for rain and wind with a supply of umbrellas, graduation potlucks are served in the garage and Fourth of July picnics stay safely under cover. There is a wary anticipation of solstice as it signals the slow inexorable return of darkness from which we have barely recovered.

So I tremble as I too splash through the squishiness of late June,  quivering like a wet butterfly emerging from its cocoon ready to unfurl its wings to dry, but unsure how to fly and uncertain of the new world that awaits.  In fact the dark empty cocoon can look mighty inviting on a rainy June night. If I could manage to squeeze myself back in, it might be worth a try.

After all, there is no place like home.

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A Solemn Ache

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A day is nothing if not a disappearing act
held fast by ropes of sunlight and breeze until rain comes
or a tree coughs to shake night along;

then there are the shadows that feel like yesterday’s distance
but become only apparitions when we haul them into light
or move beyond their pull—

I wish for mornings, still, days full of violets—
and the beautiful clouds, where in their always-
disappearing, their solemn ache, I find poems.
~Sarah Etlinger “Evanescence (with Clouds)” from The Weather Gods

I look for poems everywhere,
even in colorless misty mornings,
chill and stormy winds,
humid breathless afternoons.

It is as if a Poet is saying to me:
I feel this ache today.
You too?

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A Fattening Rain

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Every valley drinks,
        Every dell and hollow:
    Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,
        Green of Spring will follow.
 
    Yet a lapse of weeks
        Buds will burst their edges,
    Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,
        In the woods and hedges;

    But for fattening rain
        We should have no flowers,
    Never a bud or leaf again
        But for soaking showers;

    We should find no moss
        In the shadiest places,
    Find no waving meadow grass
        Pied with broad-eyed daisies:
 
    But miles of barren sand,
        With never a son or daughter,
    Not a lily on the land,
        Or lily on the water.
~Christina Georgina Rossetti from “Winter Rain” from  Poems of Christina Rossetti (1904)

Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve.
Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and
fruit cannot grow without water.
But there must be sunlight also.
A wounded heart will heal in time,
and when it does, the memory and love
of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.
~ Brian Jacques from Taggerung

It has been too cold to rain for weeks,
a chilly dry spell with unmelted snow
still piled in drifts along the roads.

Today is warm enough
for bulbs to breathe more freely
as they break through the crust,
given permission to bloom and grow.

The world weeps when no longer
frozen in place.
A drizzle decorates with mist
to welcome forth the fattening rain.

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A Weary Hope

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Yesterday it was still January and I drove home
and the roads were wet and the fields were wet
and a palette knife

had spread a slab of dark blue forestry across the hill.
A splashed white van appeared from a side road
then turned off and I drove on into the drab morning

which was mudded and plain
and there was a kind of weary happiness
that nothing was trying to be anything much and nothing
was being suggested. I don’t know how else to explain

the calm of this grey wetness with hardly a glimmer of light or life,
only my car tyres swishing the lying water,
and the crows balanced and rocking on the windy lines.
~Kerry Hardie “Acceptance”

For some time I thought there was time
and that there would always be time
for what I had a mind to do
and what I could imagine
going back to and finding it
as I had found it the first time
but by this time I do not know
what I thought when I thought back then

there is no time yet it grows less
there is the sound of rain at night
arriving unknown in the leaves
once without before or after
then I hear the thrush waking
at daybreak singing the new song
~W.S.Merwin “The New Song” from The Moon Before Morning, 2014

I leant upon a coppice gate 
    When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
    The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
    Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
    Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
    The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
    The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
    Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
    Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
    The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
    Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
    In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
    Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
    Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
    Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
    His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
    And I was unaware.
~Thomas Hardy “The Darkling Thrush”

photo by Josh Scholten
artwork of The Darkling Thrush by Linda Richardson

I need reminding that what I offer up from my own heart predicts what I receive there.

If I’m grumbling and falling apart like a dying vine
instead of a vibrant green tree~~~
coming up empty and hollow with discouragement,
entangled in the soppy cobwebs and mildew of worry,
only grumbling and grousing~~~
then no singing bird will come.

It is so much better to nurture the singers of joy and gladness with a heart budding with grace and gratitude, anticipatory and expectant.

I’ve swept my welcome mat; it is out and waiting.
The symphony can begin any time now…

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How Small a Thing

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Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

                                       The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

                      What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.
~Wendell Berry “VII” from This Day

What more did I think I wanted?

What always has been and always will be:

Until I’m not able to hold on in the wind and rain,
may I be a slight spot of light
in this dark and bleak world.

As I let go, when the time to finish comes,
I know my Maker’s smile
means it was all worthwhile…

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A Delicious Drizzle

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I was enjoying everything: the rain, the path
wherever it was taking me, the earth roots
beginning to stir.
I didn’t intend to start thinking about God,
it just happened.
How God, or the gods, are invisible,
quite understandable
But holiness is visible, entirely.
It’s wonderful to walk along like that,
thought not the usual intention to reach an
answer
but merely drifting.
Like clouds that only seem weightless.
but of course are not.
Are really important.
I mean, terribly important.
Not decoration by any means.
By next week the violets will be blooming.

Anyway, this was my delicious walk in the rain.
What was it actually about?

Think about what it is that music is trying to say.
It was something like that.
~Mary Oliver “Drifting” from Blue Horses

Wet things smell stronger,
and I suppose his main regret is that
he can sniff just one at a time.
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

When I whistle he halts abruptly
and steps in a circle,
swings his extravagant tail.
Then he rolls and rubs his muzzle
in a particular place, while the drizzle
falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace
and Goldenrod bend low.

The top of the logging road stands open
and light. Another day, before
hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,
leaving word first at home.
The footing is ambiguous.

Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,
panting, and looks up with what amounts
to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,
nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

A sound commences in my left ear
like the sound of the sea in a shell;
a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—
imagines to the end that he is free.
~Jane Kenyon “After an Illness, Walking the Dog”

This morning’s drizzly walk
and every surface is baptized
with gentle, loving sprinkles from God.
It reminds us how visible is our holiness;
His covering grace makes us free.

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The Grey Crossing

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“Your attention, please,” the mate’s voice says,
“we are slowing a moment for a memorial,”
and sure enough we all do, all of us, even those
entangled in a bustle to get to the other side,
restless chunks of festering business waiting,
little urgencies pricking us into a stressed huff.
Below on the car deck a small group slowly forms,
and a mate lowers a rope, beckons them forward,
the ferry engines slowing whatever our hurry,
and we are all coasting together on a rainy sea.

A heavy-set woman unwraps a nondescript urn
from a carefully held towel, handing it in turn
to an ungainly boy, a shy girl, an older man,
and she watches as each tips the urn to scatter
dust into a windy vortex off the ferry’s stern,
a fine grey mist streaming over the roiled wake
in a high breeze before settling, disappearing
into grey oblivion of sea, sky, and late afternoon.

As the ferry’s horn sounds three long blasts,
the four bow heads. The woman hesitates,
hides her face a moment in the towel, kisses
each of her party, and shakes the mate’s hand.
He speaks, his words lost to us in sea sounds
and engines, then looks up to the bridge, waves,
and the small group, holding hands, rejoins
some two hundred of us who have in silence
watched this mini-delay in our grey crossing.
The ferry’s engines begin their normal thrum
to push us forward again against a grey sea
and under a low, grey sky, where a fine dust
disappeared, and white seagulls rise and cry.
~Rob Jacques, “Memorial, Washington State Ferry” from Adagio for Su Tung-p’o

There is a sense of timelessness while riding on the ferry runs between the islands and peninsulas in Washington state. While driving my car on the busy freeways in the region, I am at the mercy of the weather, other drivers and all manner of delays. When I’m on a ferry, I become mere witness, only a rider seeking peaceful passage. Someone else worries about safely getting from Point A to Point B.

I’m able to breathe: watching the waves and the wake, the antics of gulls and cormorants, and rarely, an orca pod.

Next week is a time of memorial and remembrance of those who have passed into eternity. The ashes of my parents rest in the ground under a plaque that I visit annually with my family. Dad would have preferred his ashes to be cast out upon on the open water that he loved, but Mom chose a cemetery plot for them both, a more familiar resting place for a girl who grew up in the Palouse farmlands, no where near large bodies of water.

Last year, a good friend chose to be composted; he rests now in his beloved orchard, feeding the trees that continue to bear fruit.

No matter where our mortal bodies eventually find our rest, we hope to be remembered.

Our souls have risen, free.

video taken on the Samish Sea (Puget Sound) from my friend Andrew
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Cloudy with Sun Breaks

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When it snows, he stands
at the back door or wanders
around the house to each
window in turn and
watches the weather
like a lover. O farm boy,
I waited years
for you to look at me
that way. Now we’re old
enough to stop waiting
for random looks or touches
or words, so I find myself
watching you watching
the weather, and we wait
together to discover
whatever the sky might bring.
~Patricia Traxler “Weather Man”

My farm boy does still look at me that way,
wondering if today will bring
frost,
a wind storm,
maybe fog or mist,
a scorcher,
or a deluge.

I reassure him as best I can,
because he knows me so well
in our many years together:

today, like most other days,
I predict I will be partly cloudy
with a chance of showers,
and as always, occasional sun breaks.

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