Tag Archives: birds

Time and the flying snow*

I just wanna be here with youThe time of snow has come.

This is now a waiting time.

All my effort every day is going into the waiting.

Or the holding still in the waiting. Or the being busy in the waiting. Or the restless flicking of fingers or searching the white white white for that one red-splash cardinal.

Or the remembering to breathe in the waiting. Or the looking over my shoulder in the waiting.

Or the flipping through magazine pages in the waiting. Or listening to the snow melt off the roof in a drip drip drip.

I took my watch off in hopes that it would make time foreign. But time is internal and part of my blood. My blood, which quite likely is rushing too quickly from heart to fingers and back again. Like thoughts. Like birds.

These little birds are staving off death every minute, flying back and forth between the feeder full of sunflower seeds and the cold, bare trees.

They’re not waiting. They just are. They’re living in spite of the dying. Getting on with living while the daylight is on their wings.

Take a lesson, right?

I just want
I wanna be here with you
Not bracing for what comes next
I’ve got some new words
I can see sideways
If there’s a limit
It hasn’t found me yet

My friend is an artist
Doesn’t fit in
Lost a front tooth
Can’t keep a job
But the things you make
Are so beautiful
They bring me joy
Don’t you ever stop

The hungry fools
Who rule the world can’t catch us
Surely they can’t ruin everything

I just want
I wanna be here with you…

*”Time and the Flying Snow” is a book of songs by Gordon Bok, which reminds me of another song I want to share with you.

Hidden spring

Hidden spring

The internet’s serving up photos of crocuses and daffodils. I hear tell of apple and pear blossoms, kids and lambs, and Easter egg hunts.

Around here, spring seems reluctant. There’s tell-tale mud, to be sure. But there’s still snow. And nothing is blooming.

When I look up into the trees, they look as quiet and empty as the winter that’s just passed.

But just because we can’t see something happening, doesn’t mean it isn’t.

Spring

There’s a thaw beneath the fallen snow
And the geese don’t know which way to go
There’s a warm wind blowin’ round the bend
And the days are growin’ long again

And I will go down by the river
And wash the cold away
And gaze across the water all day

There’s a bird rehearsing on a wire
And a soft green underneath the briar
There’s a hazy ring around the moon
And the rains of spring are comin’ soon

–Cheryl Wheeler, from “Spring“, 1997

A brightness

Is the coast clear?

Bird at the Window

Beyond is a brightness
I am not equal to

Yet what I see
Turns into what I want,

And to bring nothing but this body
To pass through

The one thing between
Myself and what I crave,

Almost done, the world a ruin
Of leaves, winter at the throat,

My song over and over until
So familiar I can do

What I am about to do
While you who rise from the table

And walk from room to room
Will remember only the sound

Of what cast herself through
All that glass, instead of the song

That was sung until finally
You would ask to know more.

–Sophie Cabot Black, Poetry (June 2008)

52 Photos ~ Crimson

Rose breast

Ruby throat

Red wing

So This Is Nebraska

The gravel road rides with a slow gallop
over the fields, the telephone lines
streaming behind, its billow of dust
full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds.

On either side, those dear old ladies,
the loosening barns, their little windows
dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs
hide broken tractors under their skirts.

So this is Nebraska. A Sunday
afternoon; July. Driving along
with your hand out squeezing the air,
a meadowlark waiting on every post.

Behind a shelterbelt of cedars,
top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,
a pickup kicks its fenders off
and settles back to read the clouds.

You feel like that; you feel like letting
your tires go flat, like letting the mice
build a nest in your muffler, like being
no more than a truck in the weeds,

clucking with chickens or sticky with honey
or holding a skinny old man in your lap
while he watches the road, waiting
for someone to wave to. You feel like

waving. You feel like stopping the car
and dancing around on the road. You wave
instead and leave your hand out gliding
larklike over the wheat, over the houses.

–Ted Kooser, from Sure Signs. Copyright © 1980 by Ted Kooser.

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These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.