Haiku 365

See the numbered weeks and colored box for Haiku 365

Advent Haiku (2020)

Day 1

Open the window,

Your first as Advent begins.

Sun shines, cold sets in.

~

Lemon tree in frost

Will it survive and bloom still?

Waiting, time will tell.

Day 2

Tiny pine siskins

Alight on goldenrod stalks,

Peck and wobble, sway.

Day 3

Dried oak leaves rattle

While meditation chimes ring

In my walking ears.

Day 4

Not much wind today.

Slenderest stalks of tuft grass

Wait to dance again.

~

I only watch.

The meadow, a company -

Tall grass by thousands.

Day 5

Fall strawberry plants

From the local nursery

Long to wait for fruit!

Day 6

Papier mache

They say it's child's work, this craft.

I am learning still.

Day 7

Fire catches quickly

Lapping at logs I have laid.

Give me heat! Thank you.

Day 8

Moon across the snow,

Breath - my own cloud - floats away.

Inhale cold. I'm here!

Day 9

New song this morning!

My guitar in hand, five strings

Make what's never been.

Day 10

I walk the near woods.

So much company around!

Trees all shapes, sizes.

Day 11

If I were to send

Christmas gift to ev'ryone,

What would be enough?

Day 12

Big storm on the creek

Wash'd away banks and dead limbs

Leaving new ways through.

Day 13

A cup of green tea

Steaming wisps like fog lifting

Off morning rivers.

~

Be water, my friend,

Once said the master now gone.

Still the words they stay.

Day 14

Dreaming a tree house

Hidden, high above it all.

Guest I'd be of birds.

Day 15

Rain drumming the roof,

My neighbor's cats are inside –

Yay! Frogs, you're safe today.

Day 16

The red-shouldered hawk

Soars. But who is this? Raven

Rises, meets, mid-flight.

Day 17

Japanese maple

Like lace, in icy detail,

There in winter air.

Day 18

The dog leaves no prints.

It's ice that covers the deck,

Ice on every leaf.

Day 19

What a crash that pine,

Once so tall, now on the ground,

Must have made. Who knows?

Day 20

Old cedar lying –

Your bark gone, moss now covers,

Soft as newborn down.

Day 21

Slow, the morning sun

And already night is here.

Solstice darkness shines.

Day 22

It's during winter

That the day light grows. How's that

For another Wow?

Day 23

Blue heron, so still,

Where did you spend the long night

To be here again?

Day 24

Outside, it's raining.

Inside, I see snow, smell pine.

Music blurs the lines.

1: January 1

Earth, water, fire, air:

make of my attention prayer.

Now little mouse, go!

It's winter and cold now where I live. Critters such as mice are more likely to work their way inside. Outside, I see foxes trot out from brush and across the grassy dam. There's a red-shouldered hawk who perches in a tall black locust and scours the pond and hillside for food, I presume. Owls roost across the creek. Rodent poisons also poison the wild critters who catch those tiny things escaping before they die, and sticky traps are a horribly cruel way to die. So I've been catching what mice prowl our basement with good, old-fashioned Havahart traps and releasing them near the dam. I check the trap at least once every day, hoping to minimize the trauma a captured mouse might feel. Then, I release it near the dam, hoping its tenure in our house has been merely a tiny arc in the healthy circle of life. This morning, I let a little mouse go and watched it scamper bright-eyed into the tall grass. 

~

2: January 2

Carolina wren,

in soft staccato speaking.

You've so much to say!

Today is balmy - 60s - and sunny for early January in central Virginia. I've got laundry on the line. As I checked the towels, the pillowcases, and napkins for what's dry and what needs more time, the tiny round body of a Carolina wren flitted into my field of vision and perched on a low cedar branch just a few yards away. I've still not mastered bird-song identification. So I never would have guessed that that staccato - not alarm, not a song - would be coming from the wren if I didn't watch her speak. At one point, she launched into a different, lovely short chirp, then went back to the thrumming beat. It's nice to have company at the line.

~

3: January 3

Where the path is slick

up hill and down, roots hold on,

tell my feet, "Here, here."

Trees give us so much - air to breathe, shade from a hot summer sun, fruit and nuts of course, wood to burn when it comes to that, lumber for building, host to myriad creatures who lend their own particular qualities to the web of life we share, and that's before we talk about their beauty beauty beauty. Another, rather crude and earthy, practical gift they offer quietly, freely, is the work of their roots - under ground and above. These days, as I hike wooded trails near my house, I am grateful for the lines of roots that give my boots purchase on trails muddied by the many human feet seeking the place these woods offer in uncertain, pandemic times. I accept their offer of a firm place to catch my step, like a strong arm offered on an icy walk, with some reluctance. I give nothing back, only wearing further the exposed bark. I try to step lightly.

~

4: January 4

The jackpine grows bent,

angling, twisting this way, that,

finding the sun. Yes!

I'd just been appreciating a stand of trees - so straight!, so tall! - on a neighboring hillside when a short distance farther, I encountered a different micro-ecosystem. In that tangle, this small gnarled pine had worked its way the only ways it could to secure just what it needed to survive. Judging from its masses of needles, deep green color, and whorled cones, it was thriving. We're so quick to appreciate the lovely in a thing that's matured with little struggle, someone who's become what we're trained to applaud, in an environment hospitable and supportive of it. But ah, what it is to see something (someone) find a way to flourish despite challenging contexts and in flagrant disregard for popular ideals  to realize its own remarkably unique self! 

 ~

5: January 5

Water finds a way,

over and around the stones.

No need to move them.

It strikes me, as I hike this section of path that follows a spring-fed stream, that the water I hear - a constant, pleasant burbling - will make its way to the wider creek downriver not by removing every obstacle in its path but by moving beyond them via whatever route is easiest. There's a lesson in that for me, I think, though I can't quite land the full weight of it. It hints of a kind of acceptance that's deeply comforting. For all my striving, for all my angst at the things of the world in desperate need of fixing (myself not least among them), "Meanwhile...," I hear the water say. To see space and grace even where there's trouble. And simply to go on.

~ 

6: January 6

"Twenty-four, twenty-

five." The boy notes a tree's years

five times his own age.

I'd been concentrating on the trail at my feet when I rounded a bend and stopped up short. A little boy, no more than five years old, stood in baggy pants and poofy jacket facing me. Except I couldn't see his face. It was completely covered by the cut end of a pine tree felled by a storm some weeks ago. Concerned I'd scare him, a strange adult coming up like that, I said, "Hello!" No answer. That's when I heard his high voice. He counted aloud, as a person does, who doesn't want to lose his place in a careful tally when faced with distraction or interruption. He stopped after twenty-five but still stood there, his face hidden. And still no other adults appeared. "Were you counting the tree's rings?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "Twenty-five." Then, one hand on the tree, he stepped out. He looked at me from a face as round as the trunk's circumference. He was not afraid. Satisfied that his parents were coming along, I wished him a happy walk, turned, and went back the way I'd come.

~

7: January 7

Under the muscle,

flesh so strong and fast, always

have been these here bones.

Our dog is dying. Maybe. We all are, of course, from the moment when we're born. But Charlie's death seems imminent. He rarely eats now and though young and recently so vigorous, his bones - hips, back, ribs, and head -  now lie hear the skin. Not long ago, a bundle of muscle and shining fur, a dog who'd run wide circles as astonishing speed, just for the hell of it, he now lies on the grass, the rug, his bed. Only his eyes follow me as I go about around him. We attend constantly to him, wanting only to keep him comfortable, free of pain and fear for as long as possible. If possible, to the end. 

~

8: January 8

The last leaves rustle,

still hang from winter branches.

Spring will move them on.

Some leaves don't drop like the rest, come fall. I don't know why. On the sycamore along our drive, on young elms and old oaks, a few leaves hang like husks, catching wind. Only every so often, one or another finally lets go. For these, the ones that hang on despite the truths of natural law, despite the greater organism's natural evolution in good health, the force of life ultimately pushes them out. Spring comes and new buds cannot be resisted. The green will, by force of vitality, for the good of the tree, insist these old husks move on. Inevitably the dead leaves must fall where, if left to natural processes, they join the mass that fertilizes and enables the tree to grow in strength and wellness. Winter may be long. But change is inevitable. It can be hard and is often scary, not least because by definition it ushers in something new – unfamiliar. Yet change is always happening. For human beings with agency, how we comport ourselves, how we live and speak and interact in the midst of change defines us. It seems good to remember this.

~

9: January 9

Four scars in the bark,

and five, my fingertips trace

a bear's from years past.

At the top of a hill on the wooded trail near my house, I once saw a bear. It wasn't very big - maybe a cub - black, and high in an old oak. Some time later, I noticed nearby those four parallel lines, scars on the bark of a young sycamore, about eye level. On the tree's other side, there were five - the odd one just a little shorter. My hand, with its four long fingers and stub of thumb fit the pattern just right. I didn't see a bear make those marks, but I imagine that's where they'd come from. The tree is no worse for the wear, but will wear the encounter for the rest of its life. And look, I too, am changed.

~

10: January 10

Red plume bobs to eat

red berries off the holly

while Mockingbird laughs.

Sunny today and oh, so warm on the patio protected from the wind. I've put a sheepskin over the Adirondack chair. In a black sweater soaking up sun, I'm as warm as need be despite the thermometer reading something in the 40's. An American holly, taller than the two-story house is bedecked with thousands of tiny berries. A ruckus high in the branches gets my attention. A pileated woodpecker snatches berries with its signature hammer motion. Behind it, a mockingbird, fluttering this way and that, goes through a whole repertoire of sounds. It is clearly animated by the woodpecker, though I don't know why. And when the woodpecker leaves (within moments), so does the mockingbird only to land a few yards from me, where it shrugs its wings and tilts its head this way and that. I wonder if it appreciated my audience.

~

11: January 11

Pink, the color streaks

between sheets of clouds I see,

since I could not sleep.

Awake at four fifteen this morning. Sleep eluding, I finally got up. While the coffee steeped in its press pot, I raised the insulating window shades. Had I slept as long as I might have wanted, I would have missed this - a sunrise as beautiful, and fleeting, as the music of a string quartet playing live. The clouds that had hung in sheets across the horizon filled in to a flat, solid gray even before I'd finished the pot. 

~

12: January 12

Look! Suddenly birds

lift from wingstem, goldenrod,

disappear again.

As I approach a stand of wildflower stalks and the brown tips of tall grass, seemingly quiet, even empty of life in this midwinter, a number of small birds - pine siskins and cardinals - take flight. They are a flurried congregation, chirping and flitting. They don't go far. Just as quickly as they appeared, they settle again, invisible to me. I have a new book coming out in a couple of weeks. With its release, I find myself engaged in the kind of public activities that might alert interested people to its availability. Speaking, writing short pieces for immediate-ish publication, doing interviews. I like it all just fine. But most of the time, indeed most of the work I do (and if I'm honest, the time I spend happiest of all), is invisible to others.  Maybe it's the same for you, whether it's the intentional set-aside time of meditation or prayer; time spent in devotion to a being who depends on you such as an elder, pet, or child; time on any of the mundane, seldom lauded, yet necessary details of life; maybe time raising plants for beauty and food,... Whatever it is, I hope there's satisfaction for you in that earthy stuff as well as in the flight. 

~

13: January 13

Shagbark, we call it,

this tree looming over me.

But what is its name?

Preoccupied with national affairs, I barely registered the striking pattern of bark on the trunk of a tree as I passed. But it was arresting. So I stopped. And looked up, and up, and up. Some trees' bark peels away in raggedy strips as they decay. But this one was healthy, and I was reminded of why its common name, around here anyway, is "shagbark." We name things based on our particular points of view, of course. And it got me thinking: what if trees could name themselves? I mean not to anthropomorphize but simply to recognize that another being's own experience and sense of self might be quite different than how I, in my particular human context and experience, identify it.  Something to ponder.

~

14: January 14

Ornaments to eyes

like mine, to others' food, these

pine cones - a tree's hope.

In the biblical garden-of-Eden creation story, the narrator says that God put the brand-new human being (in the "original" Hebrew, simply adam, which need not necessarily be rendered by the proper noun, much less gender, Adam) into the garden God that had populated with trees beautiful and delicious. This has long struck me as worth a bit more attention than it normally gets. "Pleasing to the sight and good for food" my NRSV translation reads. The Hebrew behind that is clear - the trees are beautiful and delicious. Both of those qualities (and only those qualities) define the product of God's green thumb. Sure, it mentions (immediately after) also the specific trees of life and moral discernment. But those two are not distinct from but rather part of the larger orchard of beauty and deliciousness. Beauty, at least as crucial as food. I can get on board with that.

~

15: January 15

Red-shouldered hawk waits.

Mouse from the basement, bright-eyed,

jumps in the grass. There.

This morning, while my coffee steeped, I watched a red-shouldered hawk soar, then alight on a power line over the pond. I'm not discerning enough to identify individuals, but I assume it' s the same or a mate of the one we've seen regularly here. As soon as I raised the binoculars to my eyes, I had to fight a quick, reflexive impulse to put them down again. The hawk's eyes seemed fixed directly on mine. It's startling to feel so seen by so unapologetic a predator. If you read the Day 1 post (archived now in the "Week One" link), you know that I've elected to use a live trap to catch the field mice that work their way into our basement. The trap works well. I check it several times a day. This morning, it had sprung. I spoke to the furry little creature as I walked it out to the pond's dam and lifted the trap's latch. It was quick to leave, jumping once in the frosty grass. Back inside, I watched the hawk. Its eyes fixed on the dam, it didn't take long to swoop.

~

16: January 16

These hills I walk now

once were mountains, so I'm told.

Still, the water runs.

I live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Some time ago, while my nephews Leland and Lowell were visiting, we hiked a popular peak together. Well, they ran it while my sister and I hiked huffing. In the car afterward, the subject of comparing America's mountain ranges came up. Now, I may not have this exactly correct, but the way I remember: those impressive mountains of the West are a good deal younger than the rounded, wooded ranges in this mid-Atlantic East. Someone out there should set me straight, but is it even so that the western ranges owe something to their eastern siblings? Whatever the case, this much we do know: despite their endurance, their seeming stasis – forever here and forever to remain – they were not always so. And I suppose won't always be so, even apart from our human assaults upon them. As I walk these gentle hills, I cross streams and the narrow rivulets of springs. And I am struck by their ever-changing, ever-ever-changing-ness. I'm particularly fond of the word "still," naming as it does both a quality of fixed ease and the "nevertheless"-ness of it. In this case, the word holds, simultaneously, competing opposites and in an atmosphere not of combat but of peace.

~

17: January 17

Mushrooms march in lines

along the fallen log, hark

to laws their own.

Shelf mushrooms, my brother-in-law tells me they're called. He's become quite the citizen scientist of the fungal world, so I take him at this word. This particular variety grows white, with pretty grey rings inside the scalloped edges. The order of them is striking. Its cause, not immediately obvious. But after writing this haiku, it occurs to me that it's wrong. That line – "to laws their own" is wrong. Even though I don't hear the orders these mushrooms follow – is it the way the bark had grown and now decays?, the spray of spores from some moment I didn't witness, the angle of the sun (or shade), maybe an opportune breeze, or biochemical conditions too tiny for my big ol' eye to observe – ultimately they're the same laws we all share. Every creature, every phenomenon on and of this marvelously dizzyingly wonderful planet is subject to the same laws. We twist them, break them at our peril.

 ~

18: January 18

Rose gold on the bay

in rolling folds of water,

gone as quick as this.

Dawn through a gray sky of clouds casts a slim band of light onto the lip of reservoir outside our kitchen window. Something I cannot see must be at the shore to cause the ripples on an otherwise still surface. That rippling surface looks to me, familiar with clothing - even the rich fabrics of silk and taffeta - like the long skirt of an evening gown, shaken out and laid across a bed to don for some big occasion. It's the color of an antique wedding band. And within seconds, it's gone, yielding to the gray-green patina of the larger body of water as the sun rises now behind a bank of clouds.

 ~

19: January 19

Hair, white as milk teeth,

lies on brown leaves. Who can tell

just what happened here?

The hair is coarse and straight, each strand a few inches long – in a hunk just off the hiking trail. You can't miss it, if your eyes are anywhere near the ground, so stark is the white against the bare, midwinter forest floor. Bare of snow, that is. It's covered in the dead leaves of last year's photosynthesizing, and they make a marked backdrop to the patch. It seems more hair than fur, though I suppose that's subjective. If I had to guess, I'd bet they're off the tail of a white-tailed deer, common enough around here. But how? How did they come unattached with no sign (to my admittedly crude eye) of struggle, no blood, no other features of the animal to whom the hair belonged. The trails I hike wind through a former farm. You can see evidence of that, here and there. Not far from this stretch runs a rusted line of old barbed wire. It troubles me to see, worried as I am about some wild thing entangling itself in the cruel stuff. So I can't help but wonder if that's how this hair was torn free. But I don't know, and my husband gets exasperated with such imaginings of mine. I exasperate myself sometimes. And who knows? Maybe it was something very different, maybe a swift kill within the natural cycle of things. Or maybe something even more benign. There are dramas throughout this world of ours that play regardless the audience. Someone, though, could tell.

~ 

20: January 20

Our dog is dying.

So, mere yards from the house, deer - 

heads down, ears back, graze.

(for Charlie, 2017-2021)

I composed this haiku at dusk the day before last. I didn't know on that gloaming eve how long Charlie would - could - go on. (See #7.) He had become too weak to move with the quick ferocity that had made creatures like these deer keep a wide distance. He had become too weak to move much at all. Charlie died today, minutes after our dazzling youth poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, delivered her deeply moving inaugural poem.

"When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light," she read with inimitable grace.

We adopted Charlie as a four-month-old youngster only a few years ago. He was strong, fast, and beautiful - dark, and as feline a canine as I've ever met. It seems he had a swiftly progressing lymphoma with a grim prognosis. We elected to let him set the terms for his decline and death, choosing simply to provide the most comfort, dignity, and a context free (as much as possible) of pain and fear. By this morning, he could no longer walk on his own, could not stand without assistance. A bath towel, Craig and I each holding an end, slung under his belly made an effective support to keep him from falling and to ease his lying into as comfortable a position as possible. He died quietly in a patch of sun, lying on a dog bed in full view of the yard he loved so much. Both my husband and I were there. So there is much to be grateful for, in this small intimate moment, even while great hope plays across our national stage. We miss Charlie already but are grateful for the good times we shared. The deer move quietly, gentle in their steps, across the land, taking only what they need and passing on.

~

21: January 21

Hawk, what did you catch

there, on the edge of the pond,

and what did you leave?

We've been seeing a red-shouldered hawk around here, on and off, for months. I've wondered if it’s one of a pair nesting somewhere nearby. Maybe. This morning, two swung into view and perched on the line above the pond and dam. Then, one of them, in a clean swoop, flew straight for the edge of the pond. It landed, busied itself on the ground for thirty seconds or so, then flew into the bare branches of a maple. Through binoculars, I could see it – feathers ruffled, feet busy – working at its catch. Then, a small object fell into the pond. I couldn't tell if the hawk had lost its kill or was already busy separating what it would eat from what it would leave behind. I learned recently that the forests of the American northeast are partly the product of salmon predators' leavings. That is, the bear and hawks and whatever else hunts salmon, catch the fish for food. Like us, they don't eat every last bit. What's left behind has served as crucial fertilizer (and more) to the complex ecosystem of that particular place. The hawks didn't stick around long this morning. I hope they'll be back again soon.

~

22: January 22

Low to the ground ferns

Bow it's how they grow oh way

Oh way oh way hey.

All through these winter woods, patches of green mound here and there. Some are ferns, those ancient plants -  prehistoric I think. They must be strong to persist for so many millennia, but like forest penitents, they remain low, humble even. And quiet of course. In the grief following our dog's death (Day 20), I am tired. And words seem overrated. But the play of sounds, the a and the o, they soothe, the ow feels right. And repetition underrated. On we go.

~

23: January 23

Morning stars hang bright.

Though they're always there, only

At night can we see.

Restless, I get up long before dawn, dress in the dark, and make my way by memory - the bed's corner there, the open door, short hallway, hard right into the dining room, avoid the table, another turn. The kitchen tile is cool under my feet. Up ahead, through a high window, I see stars. 

~

24: January 24

From my mittens, gold

Splinters of the old silver 

Maple turn to fire.

The forecast calls for snow, sleet, and freezing rain starting in a day or so. In fuzzy mittens, I collect kindling while it's still dry in order to ready the wood stove in my office. Some years ago, we took down a grand old silver maple that had been hollowing out at the base and shedding huge limbs for some time. It was close to the house, too close - we risked its taking out a chunk of the roof and kitchen, should it come down in a storm. So, we hired professionals to control its descent. I miss the tall, arcing limbs and am sorry we couldn't let it continue to house squirrels, snakes, and birds, feeding woodpeckers in its decay and the myriad other creatures for whom a tree like that provides. This morning, I gathered some of the stump's broken pieces for kindling and chunks to burn, brushing shards of wood - yellow gold - from my knit mittens. When the weather turns again, I'll burn the wood, grateful for this final gift of cheering warmth.

~

25: January 25

Quick, quick, little bird,

Storm's a-coming, you must hide.

Eat up while you can.

The morning sky is gray, heavy with the stuff of a mid-Atlantic "wintry mix." I woods-walk early, while it's still cold but dry. It's mostly quiet among the trees. But when I stop and look around, I see the tiny body of a shy bird flit out of sight, to the far side of the trunk of a tall black walnut - or pin oak? It hops back into sight. I don't recognize this little guy - round and small as a chickadee but different in coloring. It's not a junko, not a pine siskin, not a nuthatch eating upside down so nonchalant. Binoculars would help, but I don't have them on me. The bird is almost quicker than my eye can follow, pecking its way up and down the ridged bark, clearly eating with great determination some tiny thing invisible to me. I'm reminded how trees and shrubs such as this provide more than the obvious fruits and nuts but are also host to the kinds of insects and microorganisms that feed critters like this little bird, gone again from my eye as soon as I walk on. I hope to get home and my wood stove warmed before the storm sets in. 

~

26: January 26

So green the ivy,

Dry flower stalks rusty red.

Wet, light limbs grow dark.

That forecasted wintry mix arrived yesterday, right on time. On the ground this morning, remnants of an effort to snow. Little patches of crunchy white lie here and there, shards of ice in the coolest spots. Mostly it's just wet. The sky's still gray, and the air heavy. Nothing's drying much yet. So, the colors are vivid, and the trunks and limbs of trees and shrubs, even the ones that are normally pale, are dark, strong. What is the color of a thing, anyway?

~ 

27: January 27

Thick and soft this skirt

That graces the flaring trunk

In emerald green.

Morning fog is lifting, and my senses are alert. I've come to walk the wooded trails, assuming there would be few if any other hikers here on such a cold, damp morning. I'm right. There was one other vehicle in the lot – an old, light blue van, the kind a person who's fallen on hard times or chosen simple nomadism might live in. About half a mile in, I catch a glimpse of a man – slight, white, clean-shaven – hiking fast behind me. He's really hustling. At intersections, I choose the least popular trails. He does, too. I'm not afraid, but I don't like it, either. So at the next, I call back to ask which way he's planning to go. He indicates - it's the one I'm on. I cut across to take the other. And I phone a friend, just to let her know. Just in case this turns out to be bad. She's more worried than me, I think. But I'm grateful for the company she insists we maintain. We have a nice visit. All the while, I'm taking extra care to notice what's around. I see the man one more time, and easily avoid him. I'm almost back to the car when I notice this moss-bedecked tree trunk. I've never really seen it before. I don't know enough about moss to say whether this is one particular kind or a community of diverse mosses. But the effect is singular and striking. Looking closely, I see beads, tiny orbs, knitted tight among short strands each in a brilliant green. I run my finger over it – soft but tough. It yields, but only just enough.

~

28: January 28

Raccoon, fox, rabbit,

and deer passed this way last night.

Snow tells the story.

It's quiet in the woods this morning. A dusting of snow brightens dead leaves, limbs, and stones. The paths I follow criss-cross streams and a narrow creek. On each snow-speckled bridge, tracks report the night's activity. Pretty soon, the sun will melt this journal of nocturnal business. But the wild things, invisible to me now, remain, reminding me that despite the quiet, I am not alone.

~

29: January 29

Who's asleep and who

Awake on this cold winter

Day? Hawk turns her head.

~

It's in the twenties here, sunny. A few patches of snow from the night before last remain here and there. A nice winter day. This morning, my husband said, "Hey is that the groundhog up in the tree?" I stepped beside him to look. For the decade that I've lived here we've had a groundhog (maybe more) living at the base of a bank in the yard. It was here long before me. Some seven or eight years ago, I planted a mulberry near the groundhog's door. The tree grew well and is now quite large. A few years ago, I was surprised and amused to see the groundhog up in its branches. I didn't think they did that, but sure enough, it lay its portly flesh across limbs, plucked and munched the leaves and fruit within its reach. So this morning, when Craig asked, I had to see for myself. "No wait, it's the hawk," he said, binoculars to his eyes. I've wondered, here in a warming mid-Atlantic, about the hibernating animals. We had a small black bear come through last fall. It did a job on the Asian pear tree, cleaning it of almost all the fruit (there was a lot), tearing the fence, and breaking branches in the process. We saw it a day or two later ambling past the bird feeder (it had been cleaning that out, too, most nights). I assume it's hibernating somewhere now, but I can't imagine where. And I hope the groundhog is tucked in tight til spring. Meanwhile, the hawk fluffs her feathers against the cold wind. I've no basement mice for her today.

~*~

30: January 30

Like sunshine, of course,

This egg yolk pillowed in white.

Tomorrow may snow.

~

This morning's temps are in the teens. The sun seems ever so slow to rise. I wonder how it is for the wild things. Do they, like me, feel themselves willing that great yellow orb up over the horizon, eager for what heat it might bring after such a cold winter night? I boil an egg. A few years ago, I finally learned a reliable technique for getting an egg exactly as I like: the white cooked through, the yolk still mostly runny. A kitchen timer is essential. Unlike almost any other cooking I do, I can't see the transformation on a boiling egg that heat is effecting until it's too late. Start with boiling water - an inch deep. Only then should you take the egg from the fridge. I read somewhere that the shock of cold egg in hot water pulls the membrane away from the shell, making the egg easy to peel without taking half the white with it. It works. Lower the egg carefully, so it doesn't crack before you've even started. I use a spaghetti strainer - that utensil that looks like a cupped hand. Seven minutes, that's my magic number. Then, run it under cold water for a few seconds. Voila, bon appetit. By the time I've lopped off the egg's top, the sun has crested the horizon. The sky is clear.  Soon - it's a delicious anticipation - the sun's rays will hit the kitchen windows' glass, and my body will soften in the passive solar heat. Mornings like these, I feel every bit the animal I am.

~*~

31: January 31

Light as air, bright so

bright and soft, snow smoothes the rough 

places like grace. Grace.

~

Five inches and counting, the snow keeps falling. Sometimes small, sometimes big, the flakes float through the windless air straight down. I know that the jagged places, the dirt, and stones remain. But for now, they're invisible - each as good as gone beneath this clean, white blanket of snow. What I recall as sharp, sticking-up-edges are mere mounds now, rounded smooth, and even under a gray sky, bright.  There's respite here - from ordinary errands and tasks, of course. But also to the eye, and if I can accept it, to the soul as well.

~*~

32: February 1

Sound of crow, sky sweep

of hawk's wings, knitted tree limbs,

Water - these are here.

~

Noting things to be grateful for is a proven balm. This morning, looking out on a snowy landscape - down the wooded bank, tree limbs clearly demarcated, each dark limb hosting its heap of snow, I hear a crow. The red-shouldered hawk startles me, flying in and out of the window frame so quickly I don't realize that I've seen it til it's gone. The reservoir is a steel grey plane. Quiet. I'm grateful for these things. I've been restless lately, anxious and troubled, without discernible cause. Well, without a simple, straight-forward cause. And it's gotten me thinking about peoples for whom colossal injustice and helplessness in the face of a collective destruction (and not only their own, personal experience of such) has been the norm. How do they do it? How have they done it? This morning, I look out on the world and note with intention what it is there that is good,... And gratitude rushes in.

~*~ 

Day 33: February 2

Shhhhlushhhh, the snow slides

off branches, from the roof, up

lifts the goldenrod.

~

As I walked to the mailbox, the sound of snow, melting now from the places where it had landed - the high beech and cedar boughs and off the eaves of the roof - comes in a rush like the warning of an invisible sprite. Step quick there lady, else you'll be drenched. Cold drips down the part in my hair, warms. Free of their burden the branches bounce back up again. Outside my office window, I see again the stalks of dead goldenrod long and slender. Even the tiny clustered remembrance of their flowers on the far end, remain. What a wonder. 

 ~*~

34: February 3

How tall I am here - 

across the snow my shadow

floats a spirit twin.

~

I am not tall. But with the sun low in the sky - it won't rise much further today - my shadow, especially dropping away down the hill, is long and long. I step carefully on the uneven path. The snow has been melting in the days since it came, but slowly. And the nights are cold enough to freeze it all again. So, there are icy places, and the snow itself is crunchy. I like the sound, reminder as it is that I of flesh and blood, a weight on earth, am here. I step carefully, but there beside me my shadow floats with ease, riding over the bumps and breaks without so much as a pause, without complaint. She's got a hat like mine. Her mittened hands swing back and forth. Quiet, she's still pretty good company. 

~*~

35: February 4

Singing night-club jazz

in sequins and blue velvet,

this water in sun.

~

The sky is clear, a wide blue field for the sun to cross. There's a light wind that lifts the flag out front and ripples the surface of the reservoir, down the hill from the kitchen table where I sit, eating lunchtime soup. Without a cloud to filter it and across the stippled, wind-rippled water, sunshine sparkles. "Like diamonds," people say. And it's true. Like this, too, can't you see it? - the fabric of that dress on that wide-hip-swaying, full-bosomed woman who has seen the years (I tell you), and still can sing. Oh, can she sing!

~*~

WEEK 6

36: February 5

Broken, Cedar's trunk

fell but never hit the ground.

Years now, Oak's held it.

~

The path passes close to an old cedar, under a low limb, thick with age. I stopped there to catch my breath and noticed that that limb was one of five that had sprouted and grown from the tree's main trunk.  A heavy scar shows where long ago, that trunk had broken almost clean away. A broad-limbed oak on the other side of the path caught its fall in the crook of its branches and held it fast. For years. In the time since, the cedar sprouted and grew what are now four tall limbs that rise nearly straight up, like the fingers of a loose-cupped palm. (The limb you walk beneath is bent thick and low, strikingly like a thumb.) I'm reminded how some care-taking is thrust upon us, some we choose. The oak is elegant, healthy, and strong. With its help, the cedar has found its own way to thrive.

~*~

37: February 6

Why now, this chatter?

It's dusk, yet suddenly birds

busy the boxwoods.

~

It was quiet, mid-morning when I hung the laundry out here on the line - the last of the rag towels that needed washing since Charlie died. He didn't make much mess, even in those final days. Small streaks of pink and yellow - the stuff of a body's insides - and half a muddied pawprint. It was mostly general dirt and his hair, of course, washed away clean. Now, when I retrieve the towels, they're crisp with dry and fold  up stiff. Suddenly invisible birds begin chattering and keep it up,  not quite a sound, more like the nattering busi-ness of folks taking care of last minute things before it all changes. I think of mornings as busy bird time. But this activity at least matches that, and it's different somehow. I finish the towels as the light shifts toward dark and bring them, a tidy stack, to the basement where they'll wait for the next dear dirty paws.

~*~

38: February 7

Branchioles outlined

in white, thousands of slender

branches breathing ahhh.

~

Heavy snow fell last night and into the morning, too. Outside the kitchen window, the broad old Japanese maple is frosted, every branch, twig, and tip in white. The way this pandemic's virus affects the body has made images of our lungs and the mere wonder of breath at all freshly relevant. Maybe that's why that's what I see when I look out is a great big lobe of lung. And indeed it is, quietly and steadily, like all trees in leaf: our exhale its inhale, our inhale the blood food oxygen it exhales. We're all in this together, they say.

~*~

39: February 8

Here are ice crystals,

there, it's muddy soft; here, dry.

Every-changing, this.

~

As I hiked the familiar woods this morning, I was struck by the sameness of it - almost bored. So my mind flung me into moments past, usually the worst of them - when that last morning of his life, Charlie collapsed in front of me helpless to catch his fall which reminded me of how another dear departed dog, William, tolerated my pushing syringes of medicine into his mouth in the last days of his life - these are painful moments of deep regret that my mind can make me relive over and over again. It hurts. And it's not even happening! So I asked myself, what do you see here, feel, notice - what's the very most immediate thing of focus – here in the only moment that really is? The options were endless, of course, from the tiniest nubbin of moss to the lone bird calling over and over somewhere high to the north of me. But the very most concrete, immediate thing to me in that moment was the ground beneath my step - this step, then that step - each one the only one of that moment. And that's when I noticed: the path sparkled with the last bits of what had frozen over the cold, cold night. It crunched lightly beneath my feet. But no sooner had I noticed that than the path, exposed here to the sun was muddy and slick. A little farther, up a rise, dry leaves covered the path. And of course, with or without me, each stretch of path will change again. Heraclitus, that old Greek, observed how one never steps in the same river twice. It's something of that, I guess. Maybe the trick is recognizing which one you're really in.

~*~

40: February 9

In this rock, a crack

somehow hosts a robust pine

despite it all, home.

~

You've seen it: some green thing breaking apart the concrete or asphalt – a tree's knobby root or even just a bit of grass seemingly so fragile pushing up from underneath, making the pavement part. (And we thought Moses had it going on.) Then there's this: in the fissure of a broad rock, even one severely angled in a steep grade, a bit of soil by some extraordinary coincidence of circumstance exists. Just enough soil to host the seed of a tree. Tiny, the seed may simply have fallen there, blown a bit until it lodged, or dropped by a wild thing, a seed that contains the blueprint, the energy, the life to become a tree. Somehow, by a compounding now of yet more extraordinary coincidences of circumstance it takes root and grows. And grows, strong and fixed firm, like this jack pine jutting from a swath of boulder that rises out of the reservoir into the steep hill behind. I guide the canoe, on this unseasonably warm winter afternoon, under and past it. Reaching this way and that, hung with cones and green needles, it seems perfectly fine.

~*~

41: February 10

It is a round sound.    

A dove I do not see calls

out in its own voice.

~

We call them mourning doves, I guess because they sound sad to us. But that's unfair. Of course I don't know what this particular bird happens to be feeling when I hear it. I can't even see it. But I do know that that's simply the sound of its voice. And I'd like to give another being enough respect to be itself on its own terms. I'd like to start there.

~*~

42: February 11

~

A shimmering veil,

light rain falls through the air, so

light it's almost not.

~

They predicted winter weather - snow and ice and all that. But it's warm, too warm for such... for now. Still, I can see that the ground is wet. And the beech tree's thick trunk is pinto-ed by water running down. So it's precipitating out there. Yet the rain, which is still rain, is almost invisible. Staying my eyes in one spot, on the distant cedars, for example, I can see its movement through the air almost like those beaded curtains that were so popular strung from doorways when I was a kid. Illusions of reality, reality playing at illusion. The wetness witnesses - this is true. 

~*~

43: February 12, 2021

 Adage on ballet

feet Red Fox moves through the snow

every movement yes.

The snow came overnight, a good five inches or so. I raise the insulating blinds over the kitchen windows, never fast enough. I wish I could will them all immediately up, up before I even turn the corner into the room. I love the brightness snow lends the air, bright despite the low, white sky, love the picture through kitchen windows of white on white criss-crossed by the dark branches of black locust, dogwood, beech, oak, redbud, and horse chestnut. The last shade raised reveals the most perfect red fox – black feet, white tips, and a coat of elegant auburn red ochre. He steps sure but light, not quick but smooth across the dam until the hill's rise blocks my view. I drag a stool to stand higher, to peer farther, but I can only imagine. Later, when I step outside and make the short commute across the lot to my office, I see his tracks – right here, he passed! No motion wasted, no haste, no regret.

44: February 13, 2021

Snow tells the morning

news: here a hawk pounced, here

something warm still lives.

Craig brought out the skis. I threw on an extra sweater and "hoofed it" in my old, faux fur Sorels. We meandered the acres, scouring prints to reconstruct the drama of the night. Rabbit's tracks are easy to make out – a set of two dashes, two dots. Double-prints deep in the snow are harder to read, but the pattern, the slide and sudden gaps suggest what Craig suspected - deer. In the hillside near the fig, you can see the tiny tunnel of a creature's entryway, its burrow dark below. Most striking of all, in an otherwise untouched swath of snow, chaotic disturbance reports a bird – big - descended here and lifted off again. I wonder if it got what it came for.

45: February 14, 2021

Stink bug, to my eye

you are an ugly thing but

to someone, lovely. 

It's Valentine's Day, and I am struck by the mysteries of matings - among our own species (what does she see in him?!), but also and maybe even more baffling among others. I'm completely mystified by how the many species who mate for life can even identify the individual who is their spouse. I mean, gray wolves and pigeons – I get that, you and I can see differences between individuals. But bald eagles and seahorses? Sandhill cranes?! How do they tell each other apart? As for stinkbugs, the sheer (sometimes horrifying) numbers attest to their mutual attraction. Not all Valentines, not all objects of abiding love and companionship are sexual, of course. I just read about aging lemurs and the commitment Duke researchers have made to ensure that none lives alone. It's a touching story, poignant on many levels. And the images of care and affection these animals give to one another! I challenge you to see and not say, "Awwwww!" Go ahead, have a look. Then snuggle with your sweetie, if you can. And if you can't - know you're not alone in this world, if even might seem that way sometimes.

 46: February 15, 2021

Papery bouquet,

The hydrangea is all

one color - winter.

Outside the far window of my office is a hydrangea I planted some ten years ago. It has flourished into a sizable shrub, a good five feet across and as tall. In the summer time it puts out broad green leaves and blooms a riot of aqua blue heads, as big as Texas grapefruits, maybe bigger. But now it's leafless and beige - the stalks and the dried flower heads, mostly broken and barely hanging on. There's a beauty in it - the flower petals dried to delicate sheets still clustered in rounds. The shrub is a favorite of small birds, who peck around the branches and flit among the dense stand. From my desk I see the tops of the tallest branches, seemingly so lifeless, dip and sway with the avian activity.

47: February 16, 2021

Talk amongst yourselves,

grasses of winter. Pay me,

eavesdropping, no mind.

I went out into the town. It had been a while – a week, ten days? – since leaving the ol' homestead, and I had diverse things to do: drop a book by a friend's; leave boxes with various packing materials for re-use at the send-it-out store; fetch groceries,… oh, the groceries! (We were down to half a dozen wrinkled turnips and scraps of frost-burned kale for fresh veg.) I'm also out of wine. Now, I've considered myself to be a moderately social person, some have said "very." I like meeting people, chatting, sharing a walk or food or drink. I also don't mind being alone. This has been a good thing, pandemic-times and all. I had planned that when I was done with my in-town tasks, I would park the car and take my daily walk along some city sidewalk. I had not accounted for what I've heard is becoming more widespread – a certain, low-grade agoraphobia. I miss my friends. I haven't seen family in person, except for my husband and our (now-deceased) dog, for a few weeks shy of a year. But yowza, the degree of interaction I'd experienced by late afternoon had maxed me out. I drove straight home. Well, almost. I pulled off at the natural area across a creek from our house to stretch my legs on its familiar trails. Nary a soul in sight. No sooner had I turned the bend to cross a field of tall, dry stalks than a light breeze came up and set them all to chatting. I could have wept at the relief of it – the shush, shush of old grasses and wildflower heads careless of my presence, asking nothing.

48: February 17, 2021

These are the colors:

blue unto black powder gray

eggshell washed in red.

Up early. 5:24. I make my coffee in the near-dark of the stove light and read awhile there. Hints of light creeping under and around the insulating shades have me up and raising them quick as I can. Dawn. Where the night hangs on, the sky is still that fathomless blue that's nearly black. Or maybe it's black, and I merely remember blue from the day before like the way when you close your eyes, you see a bright speck where the sun had hit them just before you blinked. Before I've fully thought that through, the sky has changed again. I put down my book and watch. It happens slowly and also all at once, changing and changing again, until the strip of sky between the horizon and a bank of clouds looks exactly like the effect on a laundry load of whites by a red sock stowaway. It's happened.

49: February 18, 2021

Flush against the bark,…

Now I see,… on the lee side - 

there, where there's shelter.

I'm not keen on judging weather "good" or "bad," but boy oh boy oh boy, if I were, this would be "bad." With constant precipitation at temperatures hovering in the high twenties overnight and now in daytime thirty-two up and down by one or two degrees, we've got sacks of sleet layered between sheets of freezing rain and no end in sight. But the roof is strong, and we've got power (so far), which means running water and heat. And that's a whole lot more than a whole lot of other people have right now. I'm not complaining. Anyway, through all this, a pileated woodpecker came winging its signature swooping gait across my field of vision, and landed on a broad limb of the old weeping cherry. The limb's been dead for years and shows the pitted evidence of woodpeckers long before. Happy to think that this bird might find some good food to fuel the energy such a day requires, I watched it through the binoculars – him, since I learned that the red "mustache" he sports distinguishes male from female (and that they're notoriously shy). He didn't eat, though, but simply clung to the side of the limb, pressed against the bark and fluffed out his feathers. I've long wondered where wild things go – birds especially – to endure weather as inclement as this. And it occurred to me – it became clear – that it was shelter he'd found. That limb, thick as a fridge, angles ever so slightly. Where he clung it was dry. He stayed there for well over an hour, maybe two. And I noticed others – two woodpeckers and a flicker – do the same thing just a little lower down. It had been a rough night, last, for reasons having nothing to do with weather – and it took a while, but finally, curled up tight on the sofa I'd brought from my old house and under a wool throw decades old, I saw the storm for what it was and my being in it – and found the lee side. That's good.

50: February 19, 2021

Two sets of tracks meet

in fur and blood and entrails.

Winged vultures rise.

It's rare for me to see the death of a wild thing that humans didn't directly cause. But here it is. I'd gone to the woods to walk the still sleet-covered paths, figuring that under the circumstances, I might be the only one. I shoveled the drive and set out, making a quick pit-stop at the airy outhouse. Tracks meandered around the building – big tracks, a few inches wide, a few inches long – tracks like a dog's. But there were no human prints in sight. A stray? Miserable weather these past few days for a pup to be out wandering. Deer tracks and these others criss-crossed the path I chose. In some places it was easy to make out the timing – who had passed earlier, who had come late in the storm, who so early as to be barely notable on the ground. The sleet was like tiny pearls, white in total. But thirsty, I scooped some to eat and noticed that they're really mostly clear, tiny balls of ice. Refreshing. I chose a path close, a mere quarter mile, from the general parking area, thinking the wild things might like some more time undisturbed, since we humans had been there so much over these pandemic months. Indeed, there had been a lot of wild activity in the days of our winter storm. Not far from the trail's end, a group of vultures startled me with their grand lift-off. I love vultures – grateful for all that they do, unpaid, to keep the carrion carriers of disease from us – and sorry they get so maligned. A few more yards, following that single direct path of canine prints, the drama became clear. Bits of fur lay scattered over the sleet, canine tracks troubled the area. From the other direction, the prints of deer, direct and clean as far as I could see. But just a few feet ahead, splotches of half-digested greenery, a stomach split and entrails; more blood, and a few feet farther the carcass of a fawn, splayed open and empty but for its red and ragged ribcage. Perfect little black hooves and tawny twig-thin legs reached in four directions. As seldom as I see such things, I had to remind myself: this is not a horror, but the way of things – a way good in its way – so different from the crude suffering we humans so casually inflict on others. I left the vultures to their work, work that by its nature is for them pleasure.

51: February 20, 2021

In papery sheets

the sycamore sloughs and sheds,

editing its work.

Saturday and sun, we drove to walk on a paved path that winds toward downtown. The woods-walk would be muddy and busy. And truth be told, I wasn't quite ready to see the fawn again much less witness the mass human response to it. It seems somehow a private, sacred thing, and I wanted to keep it apart (i.e., holy) in my experience a while longer. Plus, Craig walking with me, was up for something different. The paved path was busy too, but easy for walking and clean. It roughly follows a new road – the city's effort to facilitate biking and walking. It's pretty – crossing streams, winding through stands of trees and skirting some wetlands, too. We saw a lot of young trees, trees just finding their groove. As trees grow, their bark must give – split or otherwise shift to allow a broadening trunk. Craig, checking i.d.s, read that of the trees in our area, sycamores reveal this process most dramatically. They slough off outgrown bark in thin sheets, revealing patches of light green, gray and near-white new bark beneath. Can't you just see it?: that image of an author, tearing page after page from the typewriter, dramatically tossing them aside, passionate to compose afresh. And isn't this the work of our lives - letting go what no longer fits or suits to make space for how we are to grow?

52: February 21, 2021

It's gone, the body –

from here, anyway. To where,

heaven only knows.

The fawn's carcass is nowhere to be seen. The only sign of its death as far as I can see is a few tufts of fur here and what I know to be its intestines there - a small brown mound that looks like nothing more than old weathered leaves and such. Which it is, I guess, finally. Crosshatch prints from the soles countless pairs of boots muddy the places where I'd seen blood and cover the area of canine prints where the coywolf or whatever it was took the little thing down. I see no bones, not even the scuff across snow where it might have been dragged. But the snow here is icy and wouldn't tell much of something now so light in weight moving over its surface. (I hope to God that a bunch of people didn't bundle it up in plastic and throw it in a bin.) I use "heaven" in this haiku carefully. If you're familiar with my God of Earth book, then you'll understand – I believe heaven to be every bit as much of earth as of anything. In this case, I think of the living, breathing, flying, prowling beings animated in part by the body of the fawn, creatures now going about whatever it is that they do. The fawn's body is with them and of them and with and of every living being touched by those. I think of the mysterious knowing of whole ecosystems, the grace of its vitality. Now, not fifty yards from this spot, deer graze. I count them – seven – old and young, milling slowly, focused on the shoots of grass and other plants tender from the melting snow and mid-winter sun.

53: February 22, 2021

Drip, drip, drip. Freezing

rain melts and falls in silver

beads off the awning.

Is it rain, or is it ice? With temperatures edging up, precipitation from a low gray sky comes down as rain. But since the patio, the steps and porch furniture are still cold from the night, it freezes on impact. I extend the awning to keep clear an avenue from the door to the railing. Soon, off the fabric's edges, the water begins to drip. But looking closely, I can see that the drips are slowly themselves turning to ice. So it's off of infant icicles that the rain drips down. It'll change again soon, of course, melting even those little bits away. Facing east, the ice-water-ice catches what light this gray morning brings and with the gray turns the drops to silver.

54: February 23, 2021

The valley stretches

flat, like a long easy breath

between mountain climbs.

The saplings are ready for pick-up. Back in October, I placed my order to the Virginia Department of Forestry – shrubs and trees to plant around the property. Mid-winter seems an odd time to plant, but for things like this in a place such as ours, it's best. That's what the know-how folks say. So I make space in the back of the vehicle – seventy saplings! the woman I call says my modest vehicle will carry them, no problem – and drive across the mountains to fetch my new neighbors. It's a pretty route, passing over the Blue Ridge Mountains. The highway climbs steeply, Some of the heavier vehicles, campers and trucks, can't make speed. So there's often a bit of jockeying along the lanes. Still, I have a chance to glance left at the top – stunning the peaks lined up across the sky, farms and fields below; and then to the right – wooded slopes stacked one beyond another to the north. The highway bends and winds again on the way down. Semi-trucks pick up speed, so I force my eyes onto the road. The highway straightens as it levels, and then I'm in the Shenandoah Valley. Traffic thins to almost nothing just as soon as I make the turn. Crimora, that's the name of the town. I've never been. Not much to it, I think, when I arrive. But who am I to say? For those who make it home, perhaps it's the center of the world. From a low-slung building in the middle of a field, a khaki-clad lad loads a box, no bigger than a toddler, into my trunk. I head home again.

55: February 24, 2021

Whack here, hammer there,

one stump dead but full of life,

the woodpecker knows.

As I eat my breakfast of cinnamon-and-sugar sprinkled sourdough cast-off (with a pinch of baking soda, salt, and an egg, it makes a lovely pancake), I watch the pileated woodpecker alight on the remains of a cut stump. It's a thick piece I rolled a couple years back, between the driveway and our septic tank, when we had big trucks parking every which way. Angling his red plume-topped head like a logger's axe, the bird sends the bark and pith flying. My husband, who's gradually been clearing those hunks of the old silver maple, said they're full of bugs. A good thing, that. The woodpecker seems well rewarded for his efforts. We finish our breakfasts and head into the day.

56: February 25, 2021

Inky red and smooth,

it's an old wine I'm drinking

in an old, old place.

For the past several years, I've worked occasionally in the tasting room of a local winery, Chisholm Vineyards. It's great fun chatting with whoever comes in and introducing them to wine produced entirely of grapes grown on site. Upon the release of my new book of nonfiction, the owner invited me to a book talk/reading there. I thought, why not pair it with wines – do a wine tasting at the same time, taking participants through samples of the winery's offerings while weaving in bits of info or samples from the book? We did. It was a hoot. We also talked a little about this Haiku 365 project and decided at the end for each of us to compose a haiku inspired by the wine. This is mine. Among the samples was a petit verdot from 2014. It's a gorgeous wine, whose years have softened the tannins and deepened its complex flavor profile. The land from which this wine comes is Monocan land – an old, old place indeed.

*See archived weeks for earlier haiku*

57: February 26, 2021

Can you make this home,

slender whip of river birch -

here, where I live, too?

I'm working to transition areas of invasive shrubs and vines back to native. It's a many-decades, ceaseless-task kind of project the way I'm going about it. But I understand that (and am trying to accept it). Growing up in northern Minnesota before climate change began to show its ways, I lived in the company of paper birch. Their soft white bark and slender trunks made a lovely contrast in piney woods and lent light to dark places and times. Here in central Virginia, Monacan land, a different kind of birch has flourished. I fetched a bunch of the most impossibly tiny seedlings to plant here. I tell them, so completely vulnerable at planting, that it's going to get better from now on. I hope I speak true.

58: February 27, 2021

Yes, eagle fly past

this star-spangled flag as if

it's nothing to you.

Standing in the living room, facing the window that looks out on the front yard, I've abandoned the yoga – downward facing dog – that's streaming from my computer. Arthritis has settled into my wrists and hands, so I find tree pose instead. Plus, it lets me look outside, even if I can't be there. And in that moment, a mature bald eagle wings across the yard. It doesn't give our flag even a passing glance. I don't know what will happen to the country that I love. I'm hopeful, but these have been tumultuous years, and we're not through it all yet. I love even more the nonhuman natural world that predates national boundaries and transcends them, too; and I'm even more concerned about that future. So I welcome the image of defiance I find in this eagle's flight and with my heart, I will it on and on and on.

59: February 28, 2021

To give me hope - one

seed, one bird never, never,

never, never fails.

I've been thinking a lot about hope lately - hope as different from optimism in hope's despite-ness. Hope recognizes the real circumstances, things as they are, and yes looks to the future as capable of bright goodness, but not as a matter of chance. Rather, hope is saturated with intention, with action (which doesn't necessarily have to be physical do-good-ing) aimed at making for that future what good is possible. I find it hard to maintain these days. YET, for as frequently as I lament our seemingly inexorable march into environmental free-fall, as near as I come to throwing up my hands in surrender to our willful destruction of what we mistakenly call nature-as-other, there's this. The mere suggestion of a plant's taking hold or a wriggling tadpole, a bird's flitting presence pulls me back from the edge. And I am determined again. I cannot help but be, praise Jesus (see my God of Earth theological experiment). That's what I took from Margaret Renkl's recent essay, "I Will Not Rest,..." What balm it is, too, to know I'm not alone; if you care, you're not either. Take hope.

60: March 1, 2021

The weeping cherry

reaches as far as it can,

then – by nature – drops.

There's a big old weeping cherry tree just outside my office window. It's bare of leaves for now. From where I sit, I can't see the trunk or main branches – only the low distal spurs off a secondary branch. They start out like other trees', lengthening away from the center, reaching for the light. But then, of course, because it's built into their very DNA, the branches bend and droop toward the ground. For every effort, surrender; for every gain a loss. None of it necessarily bad. Or good. I had the wonderful opportunity for these past few days to participate in a writing workshop – songwriting – that was as much a joy as it was intense. Really great. For a final exercise, we wrote haiku (!), three of them, prompted by "windows" – a window near, the window of an open refrigerator, and the window of a mirror. In the spirit of my personal "rules" for Haiku 365 is the first, of course. For fun, here are the others:

Eggs are always left.

Sour dough starter belongs

downstairs; it's ugly.

~~~~~~~

Hello, you again –

always the same face. But no –

ever different.

61: March 2, 2021

It's clay here, sand there,

Oh, but in the woods, not far -

Black and soft as home.

It's astonishing how many different types of soil exist within these few acres. There's heavy clay – a Virginia staple, but that's not all I find when I sink the spade. There's nice brown dirt next to the outbuilding that I use as an office. Originally the kitchen (1800's), I wonder if there had been a kitchen garden or at least compost here. It's much better soil for growing than the area we've demarcated for vegetables and such. On the slope where I put a few apple trees, I kept hitting what seem like chunks of coal. A few yards south, and I uncover old bottles and broken dishes. This must be the old dump. I'm dividing and transplanting a native called mountain mint. (I'll see if I can track down its scientific name soon.) It's a small plant that spreads by shoots – good for the dam, I think. And I've seen how much pollinators love it, so that'll be fun. My hand trowel turns a different kind of dirt there – grayish and sandy. Most surprising: down in a wooded area that I've only begun to reclaim from the oriental bittersweet, wisteria, and privet, I find the dark, dark soil, rich and loose that I remember from early years in Minnesota. The mulberry and chinkapin stand a good chance of making it here.

62: March 3, 2021

Prickly ball turning

shades of pink, greenly shoots reach

in all directions.

Several years ago now, my brother-in-law sent me home with odd-blob head of a "walking onion." I let it languish for months, neglected, until I just had to get rid of it. Only then did I stick it in the ground. And it grew! They're the wackiest darn things and delicious, too. That first root ball thing has yielded many more. Last year, I tried to be more thoughtful about harvesting and replanting. But again, one of those bulb-balls got by me. Again, it sat on my desk for months and months. Again, I finally got around to removing it. But amazingly – just sitting on my desk, sometimes sunny mostly not, sometimes hot sometimes cold, humid but never wet – it sprouted! So again, I took it outside and after breaking it apart into individual bulbs, I stuck them in the ground. We'll see what happens! By the way, "greenly" is a word e. e. cummings uses in one of my favorite of his poems, "i thank you God for most this amazing day."

63: March 4, 2021

This chameleon,

full-grown at sunflower-seed-size

knows how to live large.

The world's smallest reptile (as far as we know so far) is a perfectly tiny chameleon. I just read about this morning. You can read more here. They call it Brookesia nana . It's soooo cute!!! comes to mind. But I doubt it would like to be so identified. They say that the male (smaller than the female) has genitalia that make up twenty percent of its body weight. Them's big balls.

64: March 5, 2021

There's no denying

spring. It starts with so little

fanfare. Then, it's here!

I could swear that yesterday, like all the yesterdays before it reaching back as far as my animal self recalls, all the tree limbs were sticks of brown. The deciduous ones, anyway. But now, like the blur that is my sight without eyeglasses, myriad buds trouble the line. Along the faint edge of each thread of a twig is the knob of the beginning of a leaf. Here, they're reddish, there the suggestion of what might be green. Others are no different a color (yet) than the twig itself, but they're there, a blur of the turn to our most riotous season. I, for one, can't wait. And at this pace, won't need to for long.

~

65: March 6, 2021

So heavy these limbs

milled from magnolia trees

that lifted the house.

Some years ago, a contractor-man showed how the two stately magnolia trees flanking our front door were breaking the house. That explained all sorts of cracks and fissures and irregularities in walls, floors, and ceilings. Sadly, the trees had to go, and we undertook a big excavating, foundation repair project. Rather than chipping them, we elected to have the trees milled and have since then been building this and that from the beautiful wood. It's a nice way to remember the trees, to keep them in the family, so to speak. Yesterday, I wanted to take stock of what remained. But oh, the pieces are so heavy! Over two inches thick, "live edge" along one side, and some fifteen feet long, they are impossible to lift. Finally, I simply rolled the planks along logs in order to see them and take stock. I'd never before marveled at the extraordinary weight of any tree, standing in place, unfathomable. And at the same time with strength enough to carry our house away.

~

66: March 7, 2021

How does a bear eat

acorns, get fat on chestnuts?

I hope I can see.

Among the wee seedlings I've planted is a species of chestnut our VA Department of Forestry has made available. Castanea mollisima, they call them "Chinese chestnuts." I hope they survive (it's anyone's guess) to grow and produce that fruit. Hope is at the heart of these guys, possibly resistant to the fungal blight that wiped out our native American chestnuts some hundred years ago. I read that among the many critters who eat the tree's acorns (humans are one) are bears. and it got me wondering exactly how they do it. Do they eat them whole or somehow hull them? And how do they even know the hard, encased things are good for food? We have bears come through the property, in the fall at least, and I wonder if one day I might see it eat from the chestnuts I've planted. Or maybe the next generation who live here will? One can hope.

~

67: March 8, 2021

Spring sunshine beckons

bulbs and buds and birds galore,

shaking off the chill.

No time today for more. That sunshine's been beckoning me, too.

~

68: March 9, 2021

Invasive species,

multiflora rose, you're not

welcome here. Sorry.

Don't you love a good line break? Tricky here – multiflora rose is, I suppose, not invasive somewhere. But it's bad here in central Virginia. I'm not sure if what I'm removing was intentionally planted. I found it pretty enough before I knew much about it. And the thorns make a formidable "live fence," if you're in need of such. But wow, it's wicked. Anyway, I've been cutting and pulling, ever so carefully, trying to spare my own tender self from those brutal thorns and removing so's to help the wild things, too. I can't imagine how it must be for fox kits, rabbits, or the resident groundhog. Whatever the case, I'm eager to replace with some more native shrubs and trees and such. It's never-ending, such work. (They're invasives, after all.) But satisfying in its way. The yard guys came and toted away two dump trucks full today.

~

69: March 10, 2021

Gray and pitted dry,

the bark pulls away leaving

wood of solid years.

The magnolia planks milled years ago from trees that flanked the front door reveal a stark difference between bark and wood. What we call bark is, of course, a few layers – outermost, like our epidermis is dead tissue that serves to protect what's inside. By contrast, the inner layer of bark is vibrantly alive and crucial to the tree's survival and growth. That's where the tree transports its energy. (Disturb that transportation system by cutting a ring through that inner bark all the way around, and you'll "girdle" a tree – sure death.) Then there's the cambium layer, also part of what we might call bark, which becomes next year's ring. Some of these planks still have the bark along one edge – "live edge." I'm using them to build a shelf-hanger thing and a coffee table, too. That bark, the only thing I saw when the tree was standing, looks "old." And now it peels away in satisfying strips that I'll use for kindling. What's left behind, the wood, is hard and strong, pale gold in color with impressive heft. I think about how a tree such as this makes literal what we hope might be true figuratively for a human being: that while aging makes us lined and dry and fragile in body ("on the outside"), the inside can have a density and strength hidden from the eyes but there just the same. Happy birthday, Mom! and to Roo, too!

70: March 11, 2021

This native alder,

chinkapin, buttonbush,…

are they not sacred?

I keep going back and forth: should that last word be "sacred," or should it be "holy"? If holiness marks something as "set aside," dedicated to God, it works here. But as distinct from what is profane – ordinary, for common use,…? I'm not so sure. I want to have it both ways: the ordinary and commonplace as equally qualified for holiness (especially in the case of species native to a particular eco-place). "Sacred" connotes religious qualities, too – I think, in terms of enabling access to or encounter with the divine. Whether or not such relationship is realized is up to us, it's up to me. Anyway, what I do know (as well as anyone can know such a thing), is that in my doings and being with these nonhuman beings (of such intrinsic worth as to be themselves and the soil and the microbes and the… sacred and holy within their profane-ness) exists the possibility to do and be with – and here, language stumbles again – I'll just say God. Whoo-eee, bless your heart as we say around here, if you actually read this thick entry! For an antidote, tomorrow's entry might work.

71: March 12, 2021

Good morning, eagle

diving there, red-shouldered hawk.

You simplify things.

~

72: March 13, 2021

Oh, cat. Yes, you're cute,

and I wish you well. But please,

stay inside! Live there.

It's taken me decades finally to accept: cats are devastating to wild spaces. I had a cat – two, if you count the feral fellow I fed – when I lived in Richmond, VA. And I took pride on having no need for a litter box. They were "outdoor" cats. They could come and go at will! What a great life! I'd had them "fixed," these kittens that showed up in my backyard one spring. I wasn't irresponsible, after all. Or was I? I've since then come to understand this difficult truth: cats belong inside. On the upside: they can be perfectly happy (even happier) inside all the time! That we need to keep them there is becoming ever more urgent as we humans strip ever more habitat from the wild things. (Pandemics are one effect of that as is the whittling away of crucial services these critters provide "for free" – pollinating our crops, for example; cleaning up carcasses that would spread disease,… never mind the unestimable value of beauty.) And the wild things have little or no voice for "rights" or in simple defense. A few months ago, our wonderful tenant, who had kindly adopted two kittens finally made arrangements that would keep erstwhile free-ranging hunters safe inside. But there this morning: a beautiful tabby, plump as you please, sat back by the pumphouse, on the fringes of the acres I've been planting in natives. It stared straight at me, pretty as you please. I love cats, I do. Just as I love the other critters. Yes, as I love the other critters. It's up to us humans to adjust our perspectives to accept that we're only one animal among billions of others on a finite earth of incredible wonder both resilient and fragile. And we are the animal most capable of affecting all us. In these circumstances, our pets (including feral-ized domestics) are extensions of ourselves.

~

73: March 14, 2021

Belly like a nut

with a zippy little tail

tadpole swims away.

I love seeing these critters in the pond. And it seems we have lots of them these days. What looks like a pudgy round belly is, I think, the beginnings of legs. You can see the hint of angles on the biggest ones. How amazing is that? To so transform as to be for a time fish-ish before hopping up the bank.

~

74: March 15, 2021

For riotous ease

Rudbeckia fulgida

is a sure winner.

I don’t know from where the first of these sunny exuberant floral arrangements first came to our property, but boy do I love them. Volunteers in a casual garden, they're far more resilient than their spindly branches and small delicate starburst flowers look. Last spring, I transplanted a few to the front of our house as a kind of pretty place-holder for possibly more solidly landscape-ish shrubs. But the variety of pollinators they attracted (and charming goldfinches too) once they began setting tiny seeds makes me want to keep a few there and continue to divide and transplant widely. It took me a long time finally to identify them. I think this is it, by its Latin name, anyhow.

~

75: March 16, 2021

Gray dogwood gray roots,

Indigo bush are yellow,

all below ground now.

As I try to turn the balance from invasives to natives across our acres, I've sought the help of our Virginia Department of Forestry, namely their "buy VA trees" opportunity. Tiny seedlings, yearlings I think they are, are available by order. I picked them up from a place just over the mountains from us – outside of a town called Crimora. This is my second batch. And despite feeling a bit weary before I'd even fetched them, I got them into the ground – all-sixty five! – before the sun went down. Whoohoo! It's striking how, on first glance the bundles look nearly indistinguishable from each other – the dogwoods, both silky and gray, have reddish stems; but so do the bald cypress and arguably the – wait, the silky have some yellow at the base just like,… Anyway, as I was saying, on first glance, it's tough to tell the species apart. But as I untangled, gently as possible, individuals from among the bundles, their subtle differences became clearer to me. The gray dogwood have strikingly bushy roots with myriad thread-like tendrils and are dark gray – the soil clinging to them, anyway. The Indigobush (Amorpha fruticosa, I think it's called – a problem in some areas of the U.S. but beneficial here) has a much more discrete central taproot, maybe twins and is distinctly yellow in color. Now, we'll see what comes of them, if they can make it at all. (I hardly planted according to best practices.) But the weather is good for such – cool, cloudy, with a good chance of rain today and tomorrow, so fingers crossed.

~

76: March 17, 2021

Geese in pairs stroll

about the yard indignant

that I live here, too.

I'm not sure about this, of course, the attitude of the Canadian geese – two pairs – that seem to be scouting nesting sites. But they crack me up. They walk away from me in that heavy, only as fast as necessary gait that suggests I've interrupted, and rudely at that, their personal business. I suppose I have. But I suspect a nest mere feet from where cars come and go is not optimal. As for options, there seem to be many. But that's my human-ness talking. They may beg to differ.

~

77: March 18

Drizzle on the pond,

the reservoir lost in gray

spring rain changes things.

It's a good day for writing work – cool and wet outside. And a good day for the seedling transplants. I didn't water them when I planted on that marathon day two ago. I know, I know – that would have been best. I rarely do the best. But I'm hopeful it's enough, hopeful that timing it so we'd have rain following (prediction for yesterday never materialized) would set their roots and get them heading toward a new life here. Meanwhile, of course, millions of living beings who dwell on our acres do so with little or no help from me. And for that, I'm grateful. L'chaim! spring.

78: March 19

A pair of mallards

paddling at the pond's edge dip

for food and that's all.

It's all for them – the pond, the sky, whatever they find and eat beneath the water's surface. That's all. Meanwhile, I'm scrambling to gather necessary documents for our taxes – proof of payment for things owned, taxes on things owned paid, income from this and that, expenses offsetting such,… I catch myself holding my breath, shoulders hunched around my ears, anxious about demands unseen, responsibilities with consequential ties to huge agencies and also to my family. Meanwhile, the ducks paddle soft and slow. I'm not saying their lives are easy. Far from it, I suppose. But the immediacy of their needs, needs concrete and clear; the focus with which they set about the things that matter – and only those,… there's something deeply wise about it for us, for me anyway. Exhale.

~

79: March 20

Magnolia wood

chips scatter and fly like snow -

bright, light on the ground.

The trees we milled some years ago lent rough-cut boards we're finally putting to use (more use – they've already built kitchen shelves, an island, and many cutting boards). The process is slow. The milling left deep grooves and other irregularities that require honing away before building. A hand planer spared many hours of sanding, though many hours of sanding lie ahead. Still, the planer is remarkably satisfying – watching the wood shear to smooth. We're learning: fleece is not the fabric for such a task, especially on such a windy day (and goggles a must). Reviewing the scene from windows inside, a person could be excused for imagining a blizzard's just been through.

~

80: March 21

Half light, half dark – spring

begins, same and different,

turning around again.

Our planet home turns on in its axis and around the sun, each year almost exactly the same as every year before. Yet I'm older – my joints stiffen and ache, my skin's wrinkles deepen and gray streaks my hair. And that's just the outside, the physical stuff. Our planet's changing, too, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me sad – climate change and the proliferation of plastics. Half light, half dark today reminds me to seek that balance between for the better working in awareness of what's wrong, and relaxing in joy and wonder at this spectacular piece of earth.

~

81: March 22

Frost is a surprise

this morning – the days so warm

I forget winter.

~

83: March 23

What is it about

outside - that it goes on and

on – that feels so good?

Seems to me that this pandemic has brought home lessons we've had to relearn, lessons our ancestors would have laughed "to learn" at all – the special blessings of a deep breath, the taste of things, long life,... Not to be taken for granted. Or that being outside is what be-ing simply is, how much our animal selves need it. Call it "fresh air" or a "nature bath" or just the reminder that we humans are continuous with not separate from the stuff of earth. It's gray and cool today, and I've been swamped with the this-n-that of office work. I'm not complaining. It's been attending to broad interest recent publications, so that's nice. But it all takes time and in an office that leans dark. Finally, I stepped out, just for the walk-about our driveway provides. Voila, instant relief. A step over the sill, door shut behind me, and ahhhhh, the big world of tree and sky and crow and ant. A world so very much bigger than me, a world that I have the wildly remarkable privilege of in-habit-ing. You, too.

~

84: March 24

Red like the clay soil,

budding trees cast their flowers

upon the water.

At first glance, I feared the red rimming a corner of the pond was runoff from where a neighbor's son had driven the car round and round in (then) snow-covered grass. It tore up the turf, all right, but the red I see is merely cast-offs from a tall deciduous tree in bud. I'm not sure yet the kind that leaves behind this vivid flora. Funny how a little knowledge turns an ugly thing to beauty. Clotheslines are like that, too – beautiful when you know.

~

85: March 25

We're inside a cloud

this morning – fog all around –

heaven's come to earth.

When they're in the sky, clouds, especially the poofy ones discrete against a backdrop of cerulean blue, seem far more tangibly-contained, even portable, than they are up close. "Out there" they seem different. Traditional Christian iconography even imagines clouds robust enough to walk around on. Angels (winged humanoids, usually young, anglo, and musically-inclined) while away the time atop the clouds. It's an image with slim biblical support; rather, I find heaven's relationship to earth is far more provocative and nuanced in the Bible than that. (For more see God of Earth: Discovering a Radically Ecological Christianity). Sometimes I find that if I can let go my assumptions, there's far more to see and be – there's magic in the real.

86: March 26

First, a wasp flew by.

Three spiders, a dragonfly

appear just like that.

Suddenly, company has arrived. They show up as though there's nothing to it – no wonder to their existence, fragile beings of extraordinary grace. But how did they make it through the winter to appear here now? A buzz over the patio, spiders peering in the window panes, this dragonfly hitching a ride on the wheelbarrow I tote – and so blasé about it all. I am astonished.

~

87: March 27

Downy bits float by

my boat, each knit by a knob.

Mere speck, but all tree.

I took a kayak out this morning to watch the regatta – an "invitational," which has such a nice hospitable ring. Anyway, while I bobbed in a bay, waiting for the eight-person sculls to appear around the bend, I looked around, of course. There's so much to see! And right there, in the water next to me floated what I think are the seeds of some kind of tree. Fuzzy bits, sodden and pale fanned out from the dark bit of a seed. They'll float along of course, maybe sink or wash up on inhospitable land. Most will probably decay. But some lucky one or two may end its ride on fertile ground with just the right sunshine, perhaps planted by the foot of a fox. From there, that tiny speck could be a tree. Amazing.

~

88: March 28

You can almost watch

it grow – Japanese knotweed –

bully of a plant.

This morning, a leggy dogwood down the wooded hill burst into bloom. It's the first in a presently twiggy forest of pawpaw, sassafrass, sycamore, and other deciduous trees and shrubs. Sweet and slow, native to our place, it does well in such locales. Unless, of course, it has to compete with a species that has no sense of restriction, no innate knowledge of how to blend and be a benefit within this particular ecosystem. Japanese knotweed is one such invasive. Last spring, I found a swath of it down by the reservoir and hired pros to cut and dispose. It can't be composted for risk of inoculating soil and taking root elsewhere, too. Somehow, some escaped that spot and has shown up – a single branching shoot here and there. Now that I know what to look out for, I cut immediately. As for disposal, those shoots burn in the wood stove behind me as I write. It sizzles, green but layered in old pine lattice, it's soon rendered to ash. I have no illusions of being done. But I guess that's life.

~

89: March 29

Behind bending trees,

the moon in a cloudless sky

hangs perfectly still.

We had rain yesterday, off and on, sometimes hard, sometimes a mere drizzle. Then, well after dark, the wind picked up in great gusts that shook that windowpanes and roared through the woods around. The sky was clear by then, and the moon had climbed to the near tops of the mammoth beech trees that border the drive and wooded bank behind. A striking contrast – the branches bending this way, then that, and the moon bright and full fixed in place beyond. I sometimes listen to the Headspace meditation app. Its founder and narrator Andy Puddicombe talks about the mind in similar metaphors – thoughts troubling and sometimes occluding the fact of a permanent calm – like blue sky – always there, if not always "seen." Last night's picture remains in my mind most of all for the singular beauty of it, but also for that contrast of perspectives - dynamism in the immediate and near; stillness in the far-off, the wide lens of distance. I woke well before dawn. I could see the moon – now to the west – through pine branches as still as that.

~

90: March 30

Broken at the tips

seedlings find another way.

On trunk and twigs, buds!

I've been planting tiny seedlings, mere yearlings of shrubs and trees native to our area. They're so small – most aren't even half the diameter of one my fingers and have at best a few branching twigs. I'm rough with them, and they've already been through a lot (bare root from some other nursery site). I hurry to get them in the ground, and in my haste often damage them further. I break tops, already brittle and dead from the stress and strains of transport or simply too fragile for my clumsy hands. A couple weeks later, I make the rounds. I check on the gray dogwood, the red mulberry, the red ozier dogwood, chestnut, chinkapin, and more. Wonder of wonder, down from the dead brown ends, thickening buds – unmistakable – push out from the sticks. Darn if there isn't new growth. Life's found a way, again.

~

91: March 31

Rain starts slow like mist

then builds to a crescendo

that soaks. Then, there's sun.

A good day for planting – overcast with rain on the way. But the work was long (75 trees and shrubs) and the circumstances hard (vines and rocks and places best accessed by beings much smaller than me). So I was still at it, when the rain began. And finished only when soaked through and through. But like I said, a good day for planting. And at the end of the day, you could watch the sun set.

~

92: April 1

Wren, so diligent

builds a nest of moss and leaves

oh no, in the grill!

~*~

~

93: April 2

Solitary wasps

prefer white yarrow's nectar,

not red, not yellow.

~

I discovered a wonderful resource for native plants to suit our area. I don't know why it's taken me so long to find them. I've been searching for just such a resource for years. And they're right down the road! Anyway, Hummingbird Hill's website of available plants is a study in biodiversity and ecological potential. Among the many things I've learned is this - how cultivars of yarrow (the ones in a rainbow of colors) are less good for wild things than the simple white native. They cite studies of their own and a University of VT observation charting 1,414 pollinator visits at the native white yarrow achillea millefolium compared to only 119 visits to the cultivar Strawberry Seductions.

~*~

94: April 3

The bank faces south,

casually catches sun

that could save us all.

~

Seems a funny thing, isn't it – here we are circling a great big star churning with energy but we persist in looking down, burning what we can dredge up from the ground, to hell with the world. So it's a good thing we're finally starting to own the problem and act a bit more for a sustainable future. At our house, we're thinking solar panels might work on ground mounts below the yard, flush with a bank near the drive. Great if it works.

~*~

95: April 4

The wasp comes looking,

stops, cleans its antennae, walks

on in quick steps, sure.

~

It's a beautiful spring day here – Easter and sunny, mid-seventies. I eat a salad alone on the patio, until a wasp wings in. Careless of my presence, it's scintillating company, so diligent in its assessment of the cooling rack, then along the table. It moves with a certainty of purpose I admire and takes a moment for self-care, apparently knowing how important it can be to "secure your own mask before helping others."

~*~

96: April 5

Tiny bird passes

between hard lines of fencing

like they're mere rest-stops.

~

What serves to contain the dogs (when the weather's good and we humans won't be gone for long), is nothing to the little bird that chirps its way in and out, in and out, nothing to it. As I stand inside the kennel, contemplating new plantings (deer-proof!) and how to replace rotting floor-boards, I watch a chirping wren come and go, sometimes settling for a second or two on a line of the heavy wire that composes a lattice of fencing. And I wonder: how often do I see a thing as obstacle that might, with a different perspective, become aid? I want to think about that.

~*~

97: April 6

Yellow swallowtail,

drunk on new wings and spring, flies

a weaving line past.

~

Morning coffee in the sun. From the corner of my eye, comes the first yellow swallowtail butterfly I've seen this year: and it's perfect – its wings without notch or crease, its body full of heavy butterfly-ness. It bobs and sways, dips and floats, finally making for the pond and woods. I worry about everyone, of course, all the wild things here – worry that there aren't enough of the blooming things such butterflies need right now, wish I'd gotten more native plants in last year, and so on. But for one moment, for an instant, I see this creature doing exactly its creature-li-ness thing right now. And that's nice.

~*~

98: April 7

When it's still too dark

to see, birds fill the air with

song upon bright song.

~

Up before dawn, but not by long, I walked outside to fetch something from the outbuilding that serves as office for me. It felt like stepping into an aviary. And I guess it was, of a sort. Countless birds, invisible to my eyes, made a choral throng. I'm glad to have had to go out at such a time. Otherwise, I would have missed it.

~*~

99: April 8

The brown-eyed Susan,

grows without fanfare, any-

where there's sun it seems.

~

Rudbeckia triloba I've learned it's also called. And other names, too. For such a vigorous volunteer, beautiful and generous to pollinators and goldfinches and more, it should have hundreds of monikers. But like so many of the native plants around here, they quietly but diligently go about their work, asking almost nothing of me except perhaps a bit of sun.

100: April 9

We call them all "grass,"

but oh, there are so many!

The prairies know this.

~*~

101: April 10

Again and again

the honeybee flies into

glass, but here's the door!

~

I keep rescuing these sweet bees who find their way into my outbuilding office but cannot get out again. I can't blame them – the screen doors don't shut as tightly as the solid ones. So they wriggle through the crack and then fly to where they can see sunshine and flowers and beat against the window. They can't seem to find their way back. So, unless I catch and release them or herd them to an open door, they exhaust themselves to death. Sometimes the opportunity we seek is behind us, welcome and opening, if only we'd look. Sometimes it's a way we haven't taken but trods familiar ground, if we could simply see differently.

~*~

102: April 11

Ripples at the bank,..

who is it, squeaks then jumps in,

hidden by water?

~

I've been doing some work – clearing and planting down at the pond. And I'm so curious! Several times now, I can see activity stirring the water's surface – someone busy at the pond's edge. Then, as I step forward, craning to glimpse among the rushes and grasses and more some small thing gives a squeak of alarm, plops into the water, and disappears. I didn't think that turtles or frogs made such a sound. But maybe? I hope one day I'll see. But for now, It's enough to know they live there otherwise without direct human trouble.

~*~

103: April 12

Antennaria

nod beneath the beech, insist

on persevering.

~

"Pussytoes" we call them. I don't know the cultivar growing here – negectla, alpina, plantaginafolia. They don't mind what we say, only that we give them half a chance. Thankfully, they don't mind us much at all. A resilient patch grows beneath the beech trees beneath which we walk and where cars and trucks sometimes turn around. Thank goodness for their insistence on life. American Painted Lady butterflies use the plant as kitchen and nursery. Their flowering heads are indeed as darling as they sound, cute, and tender, but tough tough tough.

~*~

104: April 13

Will you, whose home this

once was make it so again?

We need your kind here.

~

Natives know. But wow, we've made it hard for them. On our few acres, I'm trying to be hospitable again, trying to peel back the bullying invasives and make space for the species that play well with others – feeding, housing, and holding (soil) – in that wonder-ful interplay of a healthy ecosystem. Today, I planted American plum and American hazelnut where privet, bittersweet, and honeysuckle and multiflora rose had grown without restraint. Time will tell. And we'll keep trying.

~*~

105: April 14

What is this strange bug?

No wait, it's two. But spider

eats beetle makes one.

~

I took my book and coffee out on the patio. As I read the page on my lap, a motion caught the corner of my eye. Under the chair's arm something creepy, half of it black with black legs out the side, the other half slender, lighter in color with two antennae jigging about. I'd never seen such a bug and was a little freaked out. But another moment's watching revealed that it was a small black spider – the ones that kind of jump and dart, shy hunters I think they are, not web-spinners as far as I know; and a long-ish beetle. The spider had a hold of the tail end of the bug, which tugged and wrestled to free itself. The drama played out for several minutes, maybe fifteen until the spider had worked their death dance into a corner and could gradually get up to the bug's neck and head. Still the struggle went on until finally the spider won out. And so the circle goes.

~*~

106: April 15

~

The brown-eyed susan,

so merrily growing here

will thrive there, I hope.

~

This bright little flower in branching sprays of exuberant growth has reseeded and spread throughout the asparagus and more. I suppose it's thanks to the thousands of pollinators who visited last summer and the birds (hello, goldfinches!) who ate from the dried flower heads come fall. At any rate, I'm happy to find these volunteers because even though they've come up in places that just won't work – where we mow, where I'm growing other foodstuffs,… - they transplant without much complaint. And after clearing more multiflora rose and privet from an area behind the house, I planted oodles of these gals, volunteer goldenrod and ironweed, too.  If anyone were to witness my planting, they'd likely wonder at my sanity. I talk almost constantly - to the plants of apology and encouragement. And I swear quite a bit, too. I can see part of the area from the countertop in the kitchen. I'm excited for the time my eyes fall on these flowers and the many critters who visit them and grateful for the force of life that leads me to bet on their flourishing despite it all.

~*~

WEEK 16

107: April 16

~

In the thorn tangle,

where I cannot easily go,

a bird builds her nest.

~

And can you blame her? It's hard being a bird. I'm learning that from the bits of news and information I come across. And here, though there's a bit of land by human standards, it's still pretty darn human-ized with houses and such all around. Not only that, but there's a regular flurry of dogs, regularly released to "run free" through these woods for a few hours. They relish the opportunity to chase down what moves. I love dogs, and I love giving them opportunities for leash-less exercise and happy play. But it does pain me to think about the wild things subjected to their terror in a place otherwise home. Happily, I spied this nest before clearing the grouping of this particular invasive, so thorny as to rebuff even the most enthusiastic canine, and others too. It can certainly wait another year or more. Peace to you, little bird. I hope.

108: April 17

~

What saved the spicebush

is the bend in trunk and limb,

bowing down to earth.

~

There's a dam on this property demarcating the pond of the old farm from a lip of the reservoir, a product of damming a river fork. Our little dam is earthen, so it doesn't do well with trees, particularly their roots. So we took down a paper mulberry of the sort that pops up by the hundreds around here (off of existing roots, the more when the tree's been injured) and escaped our culling. Also on the bank are several of the delicate spicebush native to these parts. Understory beings, they're naturally humble though they've got the earliest riotous flowers (sprays of bright yellow) of any woodland tree or shrub. True to its form, the spicebush growing at the base of the offending mulberry grew lissome and lithe, and bent nearly double. Thanks to that, it escaped the crash of trunk and branch. With an eye to the earth, it'll live.

~*~

109: April 18

~

Dragonfly struggles

against the web. Spider

hurries forth.

~

Kitchen windows over the sink afford a front-row seat to all sorts of drama. I'd gone inside to make a Thermos of tea and as I filled the pot, I saw a dragonfly of the kind that have been zipping around lately – dark, slim as a needle – catch in the nearly invisible web a spider had woven against the glass. Mere seconds later, the spider hurried from her hidden corner and within only a few more seconds, had immobilized the dragonfly with a bite, maybe, and a secondary web spun round the dragonfly's head and torso. Then the spider dashed back to her corner to finish with earlier prey. Amazing. I looked down. The pot had barely filled. I returned to my task, so minor and mundane, and I so big and bumbling slow.

~*~

110: April 19

~

Meanwhile, over here

a tree we neither planted

nor tended bears fruit.

~

It's humbling, working with the non-human natural world. And I mean "with." (Food for arrogance and self-aggrandizement is working over and against the greater living world – witness clear-cutting rainforests, mining in wilderness, putting huge swaths of prairie into monoculture ag,... all it takes is "power tools" and a bozo to run them.) My experience is that the more you learn the more you need to know. Scratch the surface, so to speak, and the sophisticated complexity that happens in an ecosystem becomes apparent. And humbling. When I first moved to these acres, I planted (human-) food-bearing things, among them peach trees. We're in the south, after all. Little did I appreciate how very many problems such a tree faces and in my ignorance beyond management by the chem-free ("organic") techniques to which I'm committed. The peaches survived, barely; but the fruit they produce, if any, is small and riddled with a fungus common around here. Meanwhile, I've watched and learned (begun to, anyway) from what's around. I can recognize the most prevalent invasives and know how, without chemicals or power tools, efficiently to manage them (though it's still a nearly insurmountable task). And I can recognize a lot of natives or at least recognize enough to know I don't know and wait to learn. That was the case last year, when I cleared invasive vines from an area behind the formal back yard – an area out of which enormous and aged pines, cedars, and a silver maple grow. Come fall, to our great surprise and delight, a small tree was hung with beautiful blushing peaches, the sweetest I've ever tasted. And all I did was give it a chance.

~*~

111: April 20

~

I approach and they

go – plop! into the water.

Come, and gone again.

~

I wrote earlier about the mysterious squeak-ploppers, beings I couldn't see who'd jump into the water and disappear as soon as I approached. Yesterday, same. I'd brought some perennials to plant at the pond's edge. It took a while, a good bit of which I spent simply looking, looking for the best place to get the newbies established with the least disturbance to the area. In that time, it must have seemed that I'd left because suddenly, my eye caught the hop of a thing leaping from the water back onto the shore. We looked at each other, at least equally astonished, for the split second before the critter was gone again. A frog "the size of a puppy," I reported to my husband later. I've never seen a frog that big. It all happened too quickly for me to give more details. Frog was gone again so soon. But the eyes – big and bright – I remember. I hope we get to see each other again. I doubt the feeling's mutual.

112: April 21

~

The persimmon waits

for a sign I cannot see

saying, Now it's time.

~

The beeches are green with new leaves, the Japanese maple, horse chestnut, tulip poplar, black cherry, and more. So, I've been concerned about a very tall, leafless and scraggly dark-trunk tree across the pond, that it's dead or dying and will fall across a power line there or otherwise give Dominion (our power company) the excuse to come roaring into that fragile riparian ecosystem with heavy trucks and saws and such. So I asked a tree company if maybe we should take it back. I'm glad I asked someone who knows. This I learned: our native persimmon trees are among the last to bud out and they can grow very tall despite a relatively trunk diameter. These things I did not know. We'll still have to wait to know for sure, but that's the arborist's guess as to what lies across the way. How do they know, these diverse trees, when exactly is right for each; and why so different, anyway? There are all sorts of knowings in the world besides our human ways, and a good thing, too. It's good to know this.

~*~

113: April 22

~

Step lightly through woods.

There's always something under-

foot, alive and good.

~

Spring is full-on green around here. I continue to tuck in the last of the perennials I've earmarked for the woods and riparian areas. But there are more and more plants coming up and taking off – plants I've begun to recognize and value for their good-citizenship. Wingstem is one – tall and yellow-flowering as well as Ironweed, Goldenrod, and Brown-eyed Susans. Money plant (lunaria annua) is another, blooming already in sprays of white. And so many others I still don't know how to identify and wish to leave until I can. And that's not counting the mammals and insects, snakes, too that populate these woods and ways. So as I pick my way into the wild border areas of our property to reintroduce natives I've had the opportunity to find or buy, I take care where I step. Yes, I mercilessly cut the oriental bittersweet, invasive honeysuckle and wisteria. But I've also inadvertently cut at least one of the shrubs and trees I planted in March. And my heart still hurts over the day I accidentally dug a hibernating turtle from its bed, thinking to plant a bald cypress in that mud. Oy. Step lightly indeed.

~*~

114: April 23

~

White Buffalo's eye

in her great hoary head looks

in the camera.

~

A caveat: this observation is from a photograph. This morning, as I perused the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly, I encountered this photograph of a buffalo encountering a photographer's tri-pod-ed camera while she looked on. The animal is so huge and so dear, so full of intelligence and restrained strength, and the subject of that shot and the greater article so poignant that I couldn't resist making it today's haiku. I like the way "looks" sits on the end of the line. I like that a reader might assume without thinking that what follows will describe how that looks to me but the subsequent and final line turns that upside down, boomerangs it back. It is the buffalo who is doing the looking. Self-centered as we are, it's usually all about what we see, what I see of the world, especially the nonhuman world. It's good, isn't it, to be reminded that we, too, are the objects of observation and judgment, too. Others watch and see and assess us and our stuff all the time. I want to unseat myself from the center of things, be a co-inhabitant, a curiosity at best to others who are busy being here.

~*~

115: April 24

~

Baby rabbit, gold

finches, wood ducks, and groundhog –

thanks for being here.

~*~

116: April 25

~

Break the mesh of roots

at peril, for it holds back

earth, keeps it in place.

~

In. Place. I like that. Planting on the dam itself, granted near the water, is a fraught affair. Existing roots, even those of the invasives are better than nothing at keeping things in place. But I fear I've also cut through that effective organic mesh of sedge roots and such merely to plant more erosion control. It's a gamble. And I'm betting on the natives establishing themselves before more damage is done. Still, unnerving.

~*~

117: April 26

~

Even a tree starts

small – see the rose heart-shaped leaf:

redbud, on the ground.

~

It's always a thrill discovering "volunteers" just where you might wish to plant them. This morning's discovery: several tiny redbud shoots mere inches tall, just in from the road prevailing over the periwinkle, English ivy, honeysuckle, and bittersweet. I did what I could to clear the worst offenders. Don't we each just need a chance?

~*~

118: April 27

~

These mountains, rolling

away into the distance

do not move but change.

~

As I drive across the Blue Ridge into The Valley (Shenandoah), I'm captivated like always by the view. I have to work hard to keep my eyes enough on the road not to crash. It goes by too quickly, this sight – first, off a bank to the left, green fields and forests far below and ahead the blue-grey graduating tiers of the Blue Ridge Mountains; a little later, from high along the ridge top, to the right the dips and peaks of the range lay blanketed in trees deciduous and pine. They're all green now. That's different from the last time I passed this way, four weeks ago. I'm heading into the valley town of Stuart's Draft for my second Covid vaccine shot. Nothing stays the same. Not me, not these mountains, though I'm grateful that the parks' protections enable change closer to nonhuman nature's pace than to ours. This pandemic is a product of too much human encroachment on the wild. We strive for health, and I'm learning that the more wild the better.

~*~

119: April 28

~

So much energy

these cardinals spend fighting!

Is that just the way?

~

Humans aren't the only creatures that battle with each other. Every spring I'm entertained by the fierce charge of the great big carpenter bees that drill holes in my garden posts. In practice, with me, anyway, they're sweet as can be. I've never been stung. But they approach with great speed and determination, then hover at my face as if in challenge before darting away again. With each other, they buzz smack in the air, tumble and go at it again. So, too, the male cardinals. I see two, in a kind of détente on the top of the fence, panting between bouts. And in the grass, flashes of crimson rise and fall again until the two reveal themselves in flight, then take each other down again. I cringe, thinking how much more energy they'd have for the other things of a bird's life if they'd just let each other alone. But it's not for me to say. But there it is: the priorities of a male cardinal are necessarily its own.

~*~

120: April 29

~

Green heron catches

my eye, splashing down for frogs

with an awkward grace.

~

We see a lot of great blue herons here – elegant in their long, blue-gray feathers, tall and smooth, still as a slender twig, or soaring with broad slow wing-beats. Green herons, on the other hand, are a rarer sight. Modest in size and shape, their feathers have an iridescence, but it takes a certain slant of light to see. I read they're more shy, reclusive, too. But our pond is full of tadpoles and frogs, a favorite food, and with help and advocacy the edge is slowly reclaiming biodiversity with just the kind of shrubbiness here and there that such birds like for food, nesting, and rearing young. Still, I was surprised when a bird seemed almost to fall out of an overhanging branch, thrash about a second or two, and then waddle, inelegantly to be sure, up a water-soaked fallen limb back to the pond's edge. It flew – a short energy-intensive burst to a higher perch and rested there. I'm thinking perhaps I'll wait awhile before returning to the area. Just in case it's settling in.

~*~

121: April 30

~

I run errands for

the apple trees – fetch water,

pull weeds,… and why not?

~*~

122: May 1

~

Inside a ravaged

web, Spider weaves ordered strands.

She's renovating.

~*~

123: May 2

~

Crows have repurposed

the old okra stalk, peeling

fibers for a nest.

~*~

124: May 3

~

In an old tree hole,

owls set up house, peer outside -

eyes, big as the moon.

~

My sister Linnea just introduced me to photographer Jim Brandenburg's Nature 365 - wonder-filled, daily 60-second videos. His latest installment features arboreal owls in Switzerland. Watch if you can. I dare you not to hoot aloud with captivated delight.

~*~

125: May 4

~

Half moon, fixed up there,

while down here, right in this place

a whole world is born.

~

I appreciate the quest to explore space. But it seems the more we learn of what's "out there," the more spectacularly mysterious and wonder-filled our own planet home becomes. It's irreproachably spring here now. And like it or not, the billions of living things within our few acres explode with life. I'm thrilled to see leaves and new shoots on many of the trees and shrubs I planted weeks ago – the Allegheny chinkapins, even in shade, have glossy green leaves, so too the Chinese chestnuts that grow noticeably by the day, the bald cypress in neon green, and river birch on delicate twigs. Plus volunteers of redbud and dogwood, maple, and oak that I welcome but had no part in planting. Some I despair: the multiflora roses wage a comeback and the other invasive ivies – oriental bittersweet, honeysuckle, and wisteria grow faster and more broadly than I can fully manage. There's a small rabbit living under the boxwoods outside the building where I write, and squirrels conduct feats of gymnastic genius high in the silver maple. It's a wonder it is, this Earth world of ours, and about which we still know precious little.

~*~

126: May 5

~

Surrounded by green,

Rabbit picks and chooses, care-

fully here and there.

~

A bigger rabbit, one ear torn at the top, appeared outside the kitchen window, near the boxwoods where I've seen that youngster come and go. I'm glad for this, thinking that the little one was on its own and too little for that. Then again, what do I know? There's so much more to learn. Such as this: what exactly is the rabbit eating? The area where it sits has at least three kinds of grasses plus white clover and creeping Charlie (everywhere) and brown-eyed Susan and broadleaf plantain and more. It discriminates, selects without hurry. The things I'd think a rabbit would gobble – clover, for example, or the tall grass with tender seeds on top – it doesn't. Or maybe it eats only new leaves near the ground,…? Our assumptions and perspective as humans about individual creatures or ecosystems are frequently proven by further investigation to be skewed or downright wrong. I think of how easily we've maligned beaver, wolves, sharks,… and come only late (sometimes too late) to learn that who they are and what they do - cutting, culling, preying,… - are of great benefit to exactly the places we'd though they compromised. Here are a couple of things I've read recently – "The Howling Wilderness" and The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild showing how much more amazing and complex the nonhuman natural world is than what I had assumed. And how much more in need of care, restraint - careful, humble, and kind.

~*~

127: May 6

~

Groundhog disappears,

fox and rabbit, too,

to gather itself.

~

The world is full of wonder, demands and terrors, too. For all of us. Demands from lots of sides, judgment and neediness, misunderstandings, burdensome responsibilities and the like take a toll. For my part, I find myself pulling inward, withdrawing to spaces quieter and apart within and without. There and then I gather myself together again. Around here, there's pretty constant human generated noise – traffic, mowers, (de)construction, the whine of power tools,… And come night, it's never full dark but rather a constant electrical twilight. I wonder what it's like to have big, sensitive ears, eyes with lids like ours – mere sheets of skin, but no "blackout" curtains. I hope that when these creatures dart underground, they find there some relief and food and water enough out to make it a real repose. As for those who don't burrow,…

~*~

*See archived weeks for earlier haiku.

WEEK 19

128: May 7

~

Green heron up high

walks the wire between water

and sky, then flaps down.

~

I'm pretty sure we've got a pair of these water birds nesting across the pond among the low branches of shrubs and trees, thick in the narrow strip of wild between the water and a rowing club road. They're comical to me – to my eye a bit awkward on foot and in the air, and not much in the way of swimmers, either. Yet, like all of us, they take themselves seriously. Before I knew what I was hearing, their call – sometimes loud and brassy – brought me from the bed, out to see what terrible fate had befallen a wild creature crying out in desperation. But I think it's merely the way they talk. Anyway, something about them – their flying bird-ness absent the glorious, soaring, so-high-it's-a-mere-speck quality of other birds,… their water-bird-ness absent the serene paddling or elegant diving qualities of other birds,… their singing bird-ness absent the bright and tuneful melodies of other birds,… endears them to imperfect, chronically out-of-place me.

~*~

129: May 8

~

After the storm, look -

A butterfly! catches wind,

alights, then floats on.

~

My cousin Paul gave the closing remarks at his mother's memorial service. We'd spent two hours together – some in person in a Salt Lake City church; some like me virtual, watching live online. Aunt Sonja lived a long life, which began as a Jewish girl born on the border of Switzerland and Nazi Germany. The music, stories, and reflections that her children, brother, grandchildren, and friends shared reminded us over and over again of her cheer, her generosity and care, her boundless energy and excitement, and more. Every person who spoke testified in that celebration of Sonja's life to a woman who celebrated her life, living it with laughter and passion and joy and wonder. After all that, Paul told a story that began with a butterfly and a storm that came without warning, a harrowing and terrifying storm that leveled the cottonwood forest where he and his wife had been camping. It totaled vehicles and transformed the landscape with debris. The lines Paul drew between Sonja's story, how she chose to live her life, and the wonder of that fragile butterfly, appearing in its inimitably butterfly style, somehow unscathed after such a storm, will stay with me for a long time.

~*~

130: May 9

~

We quarrel over

resurrection after death - 

or not - while Bird sings.

~

It sometimes happens that well-meaning Christians, eager to share a belief that gives them comfort and even joy in the depths of grief, fail to appreciate sensibilities at odds with those. Bodily resurrection after death, the re-assembling of individuals after they've died to "live again with Jesus" is one such belief. It can't be proven one way or the other, of course. So arguments for or against whether or not it happens or what it "means" in the first place tend to go round and around. One of the many things I appreciate about the Hebrew Bible (the Jewish Bible and generally the Christian Old Testament), is its relative disinterest in after-death/after-life matters. Rather, the focus over and over again is on the stuff of earth, of life now as it is for people in relation to each other, to the world, to God,… Years ago, a shepherd woman here in rural Virginia shared with me the struggles she faced tending her flock, keeping the sheep safe and well. She worked with a dog, semi-feral in its protective work, and she appreciated the benefits – and natural dangers – of other creatures for whom the region was home. It was hard, and she grieved the wounding and deaths of the animals in her care. But, she told me, a great comfort and inspiration too, was her observation that the animals didn't ruminate on future injury or death, didn't worry over it. As for whether or not they'd "be born again,"… Instead, they concentrate completely on living the lives they have in this morning, this noon, this night, living fully as themselves in the lives they happen in this moment to have.

~*~

131: May 10

~

Redbud lays it heart

on the line, wears its hearts

on limbs dancing with Wind.

~

Cercis Canadensis, the eastern redbud tree is native to our area. Maybe to yours, too – it's widespread. I remember the first time I saw one. It was in a suburb of Boston, in the strip between sidewalk and road. Springtime. I couldn't believe my eyes – tiny purple flowers blanketed each branch. They're a wonder, indeed, how the flowers cluster riotous before any leaves emerge. Recently, I've noticed tiny volunteer redbuds here and there, planted by some wild creature, or maybe the wind. Once you know what to look for, even without blooms, they're striking: the leaves emerge with a reddish tinge in a wide heart shape that only gets more pronounced as it matures. Attached to branches by a slender petiole, the broad leaves catch even the whiff of a breeze and bounce and twist and bob. It's still now. From over the wall, they wave demure.

~*~

132: May 11

~

It took months to sprout -

the indigobush I set

there – one second to cut.

~

I meant well. Among the first batch of natives I'd fetched from our Department of Forestry all those weeks ago were whips of indigobush. It's a plant that suckers and fixes nitrogen, too. So I planted one just outside the garden fence. I figured it would contribute to a nice hedge-ish, pollinator-friendly arrangement, and add crucial nutrients to the area where I try to grow food for us. Grasses were high there, and I was looking for a stone I knew I'd laid in that spot years ago. Wisteria vines wriggle through the soil to emerge regularly along the fence line. I'd cut a couple earlier. I remembered planting something, but couldn't remember what. Before I had another thought, I lopped the shoot just leafing out – pinnately compound leaves like wisteria has. Immediately I knew: I'd cut the indigobush, and down to the ground, no less. I wish I could say it's the first time I did that – cut precisely the thing I'd wished to promote. It isn't. It's okay, of course, though it hurts a little. And I'm reminded of the outsized power we humans have within the nonhuman natural world. Specifically, power to wreck, not power to make. We cannot, simply cannot with no amount of "resources" put it back as it was. Of such as the Pacific redwoods, the tropical rainforest, Appalachian mountaintops, or the Scandinavian old growth boreal forest, we cannot, simply cannot, with no amount of "resources" put it back as it was. How easily we undo, in a fraction the time it took a thing to become what it is!,… what it was. How many times do we need to relearn this?

~*~

133: May 12

~

Little bug, you look

nothing like what you will be-

come – a lady bug!

~

Something's crinkling the leaves on a small stand of brown-eyed Susans – desiccating the tips and scarring spots. I looked for sucking beetles, for fungus,… Here and there, small insects sit – mostly gray-black with orange spots in thin panels of armor. Frankly, creeping me out. But if I'm learning anything as time passes, it's that I need to learn more. Thank you, world wide web of information. Turns out, I'm pretty sure those little beasties are early-stage lady bugs! Fingers crossed they're tackling whatever's eating the Rudbeckia. Or maybe it's them, taking from the plant's life just what they need to get their own started. It'll be interesting to see.

~*~

134: May 13

~

The first strawberry

tastes best shared with a someone

who knows what it is.

~

It lay perfect and red atop the thin sheet of straw I'd put down last fall. Bulky gloves and urushiol prevented me from picking and straightaway eating it, standing there in the sunshine in the garden. I didn't get to it until my husband came to fetch me for our first dinner out in a very long time. Before we left, we walked to the garden. Dusk, and the strawberry had already been visited by something, pecked and poked. But only in a couple small spots. So we picked it. Craig cut away those spots and sliced it lengthwise in two. We both agreed: best strawberry ever.

~*~

WEEK 20

135: May 14

~

Without effort, moon

light changes everything, makes

silver out of steel.

~

What is it about the moon that so affects us? I remember learning that people, especially the closer we get to the equator, go a little crazy, "loony" under a full moon. And have you noticed the hush? It seems we quiet ourselves, even in speech, when looking up at that satellite of ours, really looking at it. As for the light it casts, it's special. It changes with the stages, of courses – full to sliver – silver where in its particularity it falls.

~*~

136: May 15

~

It's been weeks without

rain. Underfoot leaves crunch while

we talk about death.

~

It's the kind of conversation I prefer having outside, walking. So I'm grateful for that. As it turns out, I'm grateful for more things than I can list here in the time I have. So even as we talked about death – not in the abstract, but personal and concrete – gratitude kept company, too. Sunny and warm, just right in temperature, with happy people all around, I held the phone to my ear and walked hidden paths between flowering sage, butterfly bushes, dogwoods, and wild flowers not yet in bloom. It's been weeks of such dry, sunny days, and the path's foliage was tan and dry. But I know that all it takes it a bit of rain. And there's still a lot of life where I cannot see.

~*~

137: May 16

~

Waiting for the clouds

for blueberries to ripen,

for what is good news.

~

The sky is overcast but still bright as I wheel my garden tools out back. I understand now how it is that throughout time, humans have bent our wills – singing, dancing, crying, praying – for rain during such dry spells. I spread some mulch. I excavate around volunteer potatoes in the compost to get the rich, loose soil that came to replace the egg shells and tea bags and paper towels and beech leaves, apple peels, and pepper tops. I keep a section of compost for acid-loving plants. It's mostly pine needles raked in the fall from beneath a magnificent tree in the back yard. That goes under and around the blueberries. My husband loves those blueberries, checking on their progress, measuring the days until they're ripe. And we wait for news of what's already happening. Or not. Looks like a bumper crop so far.

~*~

138: May 17

~

Mountain laurel does

not care what we think of it,

flowering or not.

~

It's blooming now along the woodlands banks of the nearby natural area and down rocky slopes along the reservoir here. Clusters of tiny white cups streaked with pink and red spot the dark green shrubs. Like the lacy ferns, scruffy thimbleweed, and lanky oak seedlings, the mountain laurel is simply doing its thing, simply living into its authentic self. The flowers are strikingly beautiful. When it's not blooming, I rarely notice it. One of the advantages of getting older is how much less I care what people think about how I look, much less how my house or garden or yard looks. For myself, out of my own sense of who I am and how I wish to be, I care of course. For the sake of someone else's ideals, not so much. I'm lucky that with rare exception I don't have to face such pressure. And I'm lucky to keep adding the years to my life that afford time to learn better and better how the I that is me might grow and be.

~*~

139: May 18

~

Wind shakes the branches,

sends confetti blossoms loose

around our shoulders.

~

The horse chestnut's big clusters of cream and rose-streaked flowers are starting to give way to the conkers that are its fruit. It's a huge tree – high and broad – with pride of place in the back yard. My husband and I walk slowly after a hard morning, taking in the this-n-that of familiar and ordinary things. The dogwood barely cresting boxwoods so old they tower over us; the pine with climbing bittersweet and wild grape we determine to cut when we can find their roots; the rhododendron blooming great pink bunches better than any other year; how strange and wonderful the immature fruit on the Osage orange, bright green balls sprouting soft tendril hairs all around that neither of us had ever noticed before. I bring the sturdy oak Adirondack chair out from the garage to set in the horse chestnut's shade, and the footstool, too. We stand a moment, looking past the branches and the yard and the gate and the drive to a boat idling on the reservoir beyond. When a breeze kicks up, the air fills with blossoms, like New Year's confetti or the snow when we met.

~*~

140: May 19

~

Eyes down we walk,

talking about this and that.

Up high, Owl watches.

~

It was the odd scratchy screechy sound that got my attention. My husband and I were out for an uncharacteristically week-day walk together on paths at the nearby "natural area." We have a lot to talk about these days, much of which we'd rather not have to talk about, so it was nice in this moment to chit-chat about benign things – weather, the shade of a deciduous forest, the bridge a boy scout built to earn some badge or other. From the wooded bank on our right, a wild thing called out in what sounded neither alarmed nor hurt, but not practiced, either. A youngster, I figured, a big bird learning its ways. Of course I could be wrong about all that. But when we spied an adult owl several yards north of the scratchy-screech, an owl looking straight down at us and that surprised me with a deep whoo-whoo, I felt more sure. We never saw the source of the call – young owl or not – but resumed our walk and our particular preoccupations and left the wild things to their day.

~*~

141: May 20

~

No one told the pine

it could not grow in a brick

wall, so here it is!

~

On a brick wall rising from the sidewalk we walk between the children's hospital and the cancer center, is the tiny start of a loblolly pine. It's got a trunk mere inches high and already one branch. Each are bare of needles except at their tips where a tousled green extends this way and that. "A survivor," my husband remarks when I point it out. Yes, and inspiration, too. It's there – just the same – when we, carrying our heavy news, pass by again.

~*~ 

WEEK 21

142: May 21

~

Outside the children's

hospital, a bird carries

flowers for its nest.

~

While we waited at the intersection to walk across, a bird troubled the hanging basket overhead. I watched it emerge, moments later, with the most perfect pink flower in its beak. And I watched as it flew over the street to the children's hospital facing us. High up it went to an eave just outside a window. Despite our errand, I couldn't help but smile and dearly hope the people inside – patients, families, friends, and care-givers – can watch this bird at its domestic task, building for its own children. And with flowers!

~*~

143: May 22

~

The new transplants need

water. So I deliver

it and am relieved.

~

Sometimes attending to the simple needs of another is just what I need. This past week has been a roller coaster of emotion – uncertainty, sadness, anxiety, and hope. It's been hard to find my way back into cognitive work (though that can be its own relief, too). So, watering the plants that don't yet have root systems capable of weathering this long spell of hot and rainless days feels about right. I can do that. And afterward, I'm tired in good ways.

~*~

144: May 23

~

Water on whetstone -

a wonder, absorbs! ready

to sharpen the blade.

~

My husband has learned the art of sharpening knives using the ancient and still excellent technique of grinding on whetstones. He researched and bought a good set of tools and set about learning, in the modern YouTube way, how to wield them. We watched, astonished, as water that had pooled on the surface, shrank and disappeared into the stone like time-lapse evaporation except as we witnessed – by nothing less than absorption. To my delight, those knives are now as sharp as when I first purchased them.

~*~

145: May 24

~

Black snake lies across

my path, tastes the air for scent.

We watch each other.

~

The smell in the woods this morning reminds me of days in a clean barn. Sometimes out walking I don't smell much of anything, sometimes pines, sometimes whatever's flowering. Today, the woods smell of dry plants and the animals who happen through. I walk swiftly, grateful to stretch my legs and push my body a bit after days of anxious waiting and sitting and sitting some more. Down a long hill, and I come up abruptly. Black as ebony, the snake lies fully perpendicular to and fully across the path. It, too, has stopped abruptly its progress through the woods. I don't know how many feet long it is. Several, and all along its length bumps and bulges that I assume are recent meals. I'd have to step over it to continue. It swings its heads head toward me and flicks its tongue – in and out. I know enough now not to be alarmed. This kind of snake is common, shy, and harmless to me; and that tongue is how it picks up information about me, a sensitive sniffer. Still, we look at each other – two animals encountering one another on common ground, each wary, neither hostile. I know I have the upper hand. So I turn and walk back the way I came.

~*~

146: May 25

~

I'm in my head while

over and over, the birds

say, "This place here! Now!"

~

The ground is dry, cracked where it's bare. My feet know where to go. These paths are so familiar that I don't need to think about the route, where to turn, or how far it is. Only when I'm mere yards from finishing the walk, do I realize how loud the birds are. How many there are! High and hidden in leafy branches and clutches of shrub. Their voices, different calls and all around me bring me back from the living rooms and offices and kitchen and cars where I've been in my mind. Their insistent calls bring me back to this hazy afternoon, this bend from woods to field, this rutted slope past blackberries and sumac, this one and only moment there is.

~*~

147: May 26

~

Goumi berries hang

bright red now. My mouth puckers,

anticipating.

~

Unfamiliar with this plant, I was sold as soon as I tasted one of its sweet-tart-tangy fruits, years ago now. I brought one home and planted it near the blueberries. It's flourished. And this year, despite the heat and drought, I picked hundreds, maybe thousands of succulent berries off the leather-leaved branches. If you've tried it, you know what I mean. The mere thought makes my mouth water and tingle remembering, anticipating the pop of inimitable flavor, the chew of the thin skin, the tiny soft seed inside. They're a special spring treat, with asparagus and strawberries and the serviceberries just beginning to ripen.

~*~

148: May 27

~

Toad's belly is soft,

his feet slow and tiny push

my hand toward water.

~

Walking the natural area trails this morning, I startled to see, where I was about to set my hand on the two by four wooden rail of a footbridge, a toad. Its coloring of palest green with faint spots was as close to the bleached wood as a creature such as that can get. Only the bump of him stopped me from crushing or sweeping him into the air. Its legs, tucked in close under its body, made it look like nothing more than an inanimate blog, except when I stopped and looked more closely, except for the eyes, dark and half-lidded. I looked around to see how or why it might have landed there, why it might want to be there. There's a lot I don't know about the individual kinds of creatures with whom we share our world. But this I do know: many people have been walking these trails, many – young and old – enjoying the spring-fed streams that wind through these acres. And a toad is a particularly intriguing creature, and to its detriment vis-à-vis people, especially children, is gentle, small, and slow. Also, I know that frogs and toads "drink" water only through their skin. From what I could figure, this little guy, some four feet off of hard ground was stuck on a fatally dry stretch of lumber. It hurts my heart to imagine that some human handled this creature and left it there, probably appreciating how cute it looked perched on the rail. So, I hope I didn't mess with its intention to sit there, but finally – gently as I could – I lifted it from there, lowered it to the stream bank, and let it walk across my palm in tiny, slow hops, onto the wet ground. Another mile or so, along another stretch of stream, an owl sat staring down from an overhanging branch. Like the water trickling along, so the drama of the days, on.

~*~

WEEK 22

149: May 28

~

Dangling ruby fruits,

tiny and tart-sweet I eat

goumis from the bush.

~

On the advice of a regional nursery, specializing in edible perennials, I planted a goumi shrub. Related to the autumn olive prevalent around here, the goumi is not invasive. Tough and vigorous, it also fixes nitrogen in the soil, benefitting most all the plants around. My goumi stands next to the blueberries, all of them inside a netted space, since it took only a couple of years for me to realize that all those promising berries were eaten by birds before they'd even come ripe. Anyway, the goumi s most unusual – tiny (half the size of a fingernail) and red, they've got a thin skin and soft (when ripe) flesh around a semi-soft pit. I eat the whole thing, and it puckers most delightfully. They're fun to share.

~*~

150: May 29

~

Willi the wabbit

wanders not widely, not yet;

but I wonder, when?

~

A rabbit, quite small, showed up outside my outbuilding office some weeks ago. I fear that he or she was displaced by brush clean-up from behind the empty kennel. Darling in that baby-rabbit way, it tweaks the heart to see the little guy out nibbling from the diverse green of grass, clovers, and who-knows-what that borders the dense old boxwoods that it seemed to adopt as home. Finally, at risk of heartbreak, I named it – Willi, since Willi is a woman's name as well. In the weeks since, the rabbit, bright eyed with a tiny white blaze on its forehead, has grown. Yes, I lay out a bit of carrot under the shrubs every now and then under the boxwoods, and see that there's fresh water not far. But I trust that it's gaining its wild skills and happy that every now and then I see a bigger rabbit around. One day, I suppose Willi be gone. But for now, we are in each other's company. And that's nice.

~*~

151: May 30

~

Horses head to tail

in the spring field swatting flies

draw us to admire.

~

Fully vaccinated, and with the pandemic under control in our area, my husband attended what had been an annual event – live music by invitation at a "conservation farm" winery – in a crush of happy, dancing, (maskless!) people. Despite the pull of the music, the drink, and pop-up picnics dotting the field, the biggest draw for me were the horses in an adjacent field. They trotted tails high across the expanse, every bit as beautiful as horses can be. We wandered off to watch them up close. As the day's clouds rolled away and the sun shone brighter and hotter, flies gathered as they do around the horses' faces. And as horses do, they stood close in this manner, caring for each other without making any big deal of it.

~*~

152: May 31

~

Ocean waves neither

hurry nor wait, but steady

up and back, tireless.

~

It's a windy day. At the sandy beach shore, I watch the Atlantic Ocean move. The waves rolling one over another up onto the shore and receding back again. Despite knowing the harm we humans are in this moment wrecking (and for so many years of moment before have wrecked) within its depths, despite the seeming impossibility of shifting the figurative tides of human ignorance and enterprise that have gotten us to this point and may take us past the brink, I am calmed. I don't know how little ol' me can make much of any difference, but I know that I cannot cease to try. Up and back. On.

~*~

153: June 1

~

In light and shadow,

different things grow – ferns here,

Solomon's seal there.

~

My sister-in-law loves growing things as much as I do. Our properties are wildly different, but the passion is the same – to get out among the living things, all shades of green and white and yellow and pink and blue, the names of colors insufficient to the hues. To tend. So it's fun to walk with her, talking and thinking about how to encourage this and discourage that in the ever-changing space of a living place.

~*~

154: June 2

~

Home again. Rabbit

runs past me into the woods.

The flowers have bloomed.

~

I like to be home. If I had my way, I suppose I might never leave. But I do leave, and with the pandemic for all purposes over, there is even more going out, even more traveling to do. Only a few days gone, and I am astonished at the changes. The brown-eyed Susans have opened bright yellow and cheerful, the yarrow waves its thick white clusters high, and some of the elderberry blow has turned to berries - tiny and green, but berries nonetheless. I'd like to think it was Willi who dashed past when I got out of the car, but I'm not sure. The rabbit looks bigger than when I left.

155: June 3

~

The path winds through light,

through dappled shade, and even

in the darkest night.

~*~

WEEK 23

156: June 4

~

Spider web catches

silver in the sunshine – one

strand, and I walk on.

~

This stretch of path is mostly shaded now – the trees around tall and in full leaf. But a spot of sunshine makes its way through here and there. In the beams of light, all sorts of things become visible – but only for fractions of seconds. Something tiny flits through, and then here – a filament of spider web shimmers and is lost again to shade.

~*~

157: June 5

~

Hawk flies low

over rows and rows of one thing, not

stopping seeking yet.

~

I woke on the train somewhere in Indiana. Dawn over broad stretches of flat field tilled and planted in straight rows, just coming up in green, as far as I can see. We roll past a nondescript building announcing, some brand of fertilizer across beige aluminum or plastic siding. As we go, I'm struck by the absence of wildlife. I haven't seen any. So the sudden appearance on a knoll in front of some business complex of huge silver deer – buck, doe, and fawn – glinting in the morning sun seem nostalgic, ironic, an odd amnesiac yearning. Then a hawk appears soaring over the field not far from where the train runs. It rides low, a mere foot or so above the rows of green and brown. It's clearly looking for food. I watch it as long as I can, waiting, hoping to see it stop, sudden, talons-first on the ground. It's still looking by the time it's lost to my view. Hours later, in fields bordered by dense shrubs and trees, wetlands, and streams, I'll see a flock of wild turkeys scuttle across the rows of some crop or other.

~*~

158: June 6

~

Gulls lean wingtips mere

breath over Gitchee Gumee,

bank, and lift again.

~

There's a broad, flat rock – dark gray and smooth but for the scars and cracks of long ago (glacial?) – on the shore below my parents' house. It extends out into Lake Superior, a short drop from the path above. Years ago, my dad finagled a few boulders just so to make steps down. I take them, step over a couple driftwood logs, one pierced by a thick iron stake, now rusted a little and bent (an old beam, maybe?), and sit on the sun-warmed stone, my back against the remnants of any old stone wall, that rises some four feet or so, a retaining wall maybe. The path and low-slung houses lie behind, but I'm out of sight. Ahead, the lake sparkles in the last light of this late spring day. The port is still some distance west, and quiet. It's cooling after an unseasonably (climate change) hot day. I settle and feel time drop away. Gulls appear just over the lake in front and around me. Their white and soft-gray colors are exquisite within the gently shifting pastels of sky. I've grown up seeing seagulls all my life. But I realize I've never watched them like this, an I'm curious. They soar up and down, turn, rise, and drop again. Their wingtips seem impossibly close to the tips of small waves – never touching. But most surprising to me is how they occasionally they stop mid-flight and seem to stand an instant before flying again. I watch and watch. They're catching bugs from out of the air and eating them in flight. How could I never have known this before?

~*~

159: June 7

~

Wildflowers grow up

along the ski trail where birch

are now all in leaf.

~

My dad, some months shy of ninety years old, walks two miles a day, often along stretches of the hundreds of miles of trails in and around Duluth, Minnesota – there at the western-most tip of Lake Superior. It's fun to walk with him. Even growing up here, growing up outside, many of these trails are new to me. Today, though, we walk near and on trails I know by heart in winter, trails I've skied countless times. Summer transforms them again. We walk on the east side of Amity Creek. It's hot and we're on a narrow walk and bike path that's exposed. So where opportunity allows, we duck into the woods and amble a wide stretch of trail that's tracked and lighted for skiing in winter. Another half mile or so, we pick up another narrow path and scramble some rocks to follow the edge of the bright, tumbling stream. A grove of tall pines makes open shade. Two young bucks, the knobs of their antlers still covered in velvet watch us shyly from behind the trees, then tail high bound away.

~*~

160: June 8

~

Cool breeze off the lake,

red dogwood in bloom, yarrow.

My mom walks slowly.

~

My mother is thin, and shorter than before, but vibrates with energy as ever. For decades, she has had to deal with the compound effects of surgery for a pre-cancerous colon and over-zealous radiation oncologist who damaged what little bit of intestine remains. Add genetic heart disease, it's a wonder she's as strong and vigorous as now. Occasionally she laments the extraordinary athleticism of her youth and younger adulthood. She rarely complains. What's the use? We enjoy this walk. The path that skirts the north shore of Lake Superior behind their house is covered with spring and summer growth. I recognize some – these red dogwood bushes with their spring tufts of white and the yarrow, still reaching green, will itself bloom soon. We talk of this and that. There are bright yellow (hen and chicks?) low-growing flowers, clover or course, and a purple-pink-blue bell that bees wriggle inside and out again. Aspen saplings and wild roses. I wonder if another is a kind of alder. It was hot today, so the breeze off Lake Superior is pleasantly refreshing. At the end of the path, where markers warn it's been washed away ahead, we stop and sit on the flat of boulders to catch our breath and visit a little. Then we walk back.

~*~

161: June 9

~

The quick creek cascades

down rock, pools, and falls again.

My dad keeps his feet.

~

We begin our walk across from the grade school I attended. The trail drops immediately to the edge of Congdon Creek. We step steeply down, and then up again stone stairs crafted and laid back in the 1930's my dad surmises, as part of the make-work projects that pulled our country from its Great Depression. We are so grateful for these beautiful steps, but not only for that. We'll walk trails the equivalent of eight blocks all uphill before coming back down. Partway, we stop to take another breath of exquisite beauty. I take a picture of my dad, his button-down shirt hiding a customary cotton v-neck tee, tucked into trousers neatly secured with a leather belt, leaning lightly on the walking stick we found. Hat, of course. He smiles across the rushing, tumbling creek at the red-rock cliffs on the other side, all flanked by old pines, wild roses, thimbleberry, aspen, and birch. He recalls the "CCC camps," the WPA, and all they made that we enjoy still. I take another picture. He lifts the stick, and calls, "Send it to Mr. Biden! Say, 'Dear Mister President, Do it again!'" It's a great idea. "Promise me you'll do it," he says. I promise.

~*~

162: June 10

~

Two calves, long legged

run from the train, while their mom

behind them ambles.

~

On the Amtrak eastbound from Chicago, we pass through rural Indiana. Cows graze in a field near the tracks. Most of the herd is some ways away. But as we come rumbling and whistling along this stretch of track, we flush a trio – two black calves canter toward the herd; the one adult walks. It would seem she's already seen plenty of trains.

~*~

WEEK 24

163: June 11

~

On one side, a rock

wall; on the other, a river

winds through the valley.

~

It's almost claustrophobic, this stretch of track. From the train traveling through West Virginia, my sleeping compartment faces, mere inches away, the steep rise of rock that composes the old mountains all around. But when I step out and can see from the other side of the car, I look out and down onto the winding, sometimes wide and sometimes rushing New River. From this side, ahead and behind, I see late morning fog lying soft in the valleys between ranges. I think about perspective, how narrow it can be, yet if you're not careful, how completely it can define your impression and experience.

~*~

164: June 12

~

It even smells wet,

back in these woods that had been

just last week so dry.

~

The first thing I do after getting home from my long train trip is take a walk in the natural area across the street. Long-time friends from far away happen to be in town. We all walk together, which is nice. Before I left, a week ago, we had been without rain for too long – a lot of things died in that drought. But in the days since, it has been raining. The paths themselves are damp, the wooden bridges a little slick, and the woods emerald green again.

~*~

165: June 13

~

Among the old trees,

grass and graves, a spotted fawn

steps ever so light.

~

After grand-nephew Lee's christening, my husband and I walked streets and paths familiar from years ago, when I still lived sometimes in Richmond. We'd take the dogs to the historic Hollywood Cemetery and walk in the grand shade of old oaks and sweeping magnolias. The dogs are gone now, but we walk on. It's a big place and borders the James River just across broad rapids from Belle Isle, once a Civil War prison of sorts, and now popular park to sit on broad river rocks, hike, or bike winding trails. Wild animals of the sorts that have an uneasy peace with humans wander in and out of the cemetery. On this day, a tiny fawn perhaps even newborn, stood among the old gravestones, trees, and shrubs, and looked with wide eyes over its shoulder at us as we passed. I trust (hope!) its mother was nearby.

~*~

166: June 14

~

The air in the South

Field is sweet with wild milkweed

blanketed in bees.

~

There are several varieties of milkweed, I'm learning. A couple are just beginning to bloom on either side of a stretch of path mown through an open field in the natural area where I walk. The smell is heady with sweet perfume. I don't see any butterflies as I pass. Maybe monarchs, who depend on milkweed for part of their lifecycle will find this bit in time to reproduce. Meanwhile, the flower heads just opening are a-swarm with those big, buzzy, busy bees I so often see drilling holes in the wood of my garden fence. I haven't seen them much lately. I can't help conclude: so this is where they are!

~*~

167: June 15

~

This kale, those flowers,…

just because I planted them

doesn't make them mine.

~

I'd thought that these were truly resistant to the critters that wander through our property – the Rudbeckia triloba, the red Russian kale that had overwintered (twice!). But when I returned from a week away, each was stripped to the stalk. Even the goldenrod that has gone through years is reduced – the lower leaves gone and some from the tops, too. I don't see prints. But my guess is it's been a three-part affair. There are the rabbits, Willi and Notches; the groundhogs (Portly Ravager and two new youngsters); and the deer who wander with greater confidence, now that we have no dogs. Who's to say they can't take what they can find and reach? For my part, all that's left is to say, You're welcome. And plant some more within the fence out back.

~*~

168: June 16

~

She steps so lightly,

the doe, bends her neck and eats

almost everything.

~

It's been an education, all right. Of the natives I planted – wildflowers, shrubs, and seedling trees – only an indeterminate kind of grass and one odd variety of aster have evaded the gentle herbivores that live on or traffic through our property. Last night, I watched a doe polish off the leaves of a native hydrangea I'd situated out front. And this morning, she made her delicate way through the area of brown-eyed Susans, other asters, goldenrods, and shrubby dogwood, nibbling this and that and something else, too. What fencing I put up has helped. But it looks like I'll need to reassess the open areas, perhaps lean on the few natives that volunteer and somehow prove unpalatable enough to survive. I'm learning.

~*~

169: June 17

~

"L'il leap day," the one

bird calls among so many –

simply its own song.

~

After hot days, the nights have nevertheless been cool. I love to leave the windows open, relish the air that moves through the bedroom and freshens the house. Mornings come early without shades to block the light. But mostly it's the birds that rouse me. There are so many! This morning I lay listening, drifting in and out of sleep as the planet rolled into sun. It strikes me how individual bird-calls can be. This morning, one in particular stood out to me, one that chimed over and over its individual tune – a short note followed by two longer, stronger; a break, and then the same three tones again. I struggle sometimes to identify the one thing I might focus on, the one project or aim to define my work and my days. But I'm easily swayed by competing interests and demands and sometimes so scattered that it seems nothing stands true. That little bird, simply being itself is both lesson and inspiration.

~*~

WEEK 25

170: June 18

~

This potato plant

and that squash, with its great green

leaves, I did not plant.

~

The most healthy and productive vegetable plants we've got so far are volunteers, growing from the compost pile that I neglect ever to "turn." Some time last winter, I got a pint of small heirloom potatoes from the farmers market, operating during the height of the pandemic out of an abandoned parking lot. You placed your order online and then drove with the trunk open from vendor to vendor. At each, someone would put your order into the car, always from that distance and never touching. That we did not have the opportunity to see, smell, touch, or otherwise select the particular produce we ordered was a small downside to an otherwise excellent system. But of course it happened occasionally that what landed in the trunk wasn't of a quality I'd have bought. True with these potatoes – they were wrinkled and green (a color I associate with hard-on-the-belly effects). So I pitched them onto the compost pile. At some point in early spring, amidst the tree-and-shrub, whack-back invasives work I was doing on the greater property, I rifled through the compost pile for material to spread over the vegetable beds. Perhaps somehow that activity plus the digging and mucking about that wild animals do, those potatoes – and the seeds of some yet-to-be-determined squash took root. Despite drought and heavy rains, complete and utter neglect by me, those plants are the best looking and most promising I've got going so far. Yes, gardening is a lot of work. Then again, not.

~*~

171: June 19

~

On the highest branch,

a green heron looks around.

Kingfisher flits close.

~

I was captivated this morning by the sight of these two birds, in the highest limbs of the old weeping cherry behind my outbuilding office. I watched from the breakfast table, from a chair I rarely use, that gave me a direct line of sight. The heron assumed its wide-legged stance on an arching twig at the tippy top. A few bare limbs cap out around it at the same height. It was on these that the crested kingfisher hopped. I wonder if they know each other, these water birds that frequent the pond below. It seemed an intimacy, the heron barely moving up there, the kingfisher going from spot to spot all around it, each spot close. I wish I knew what it was they were "saying" to each other. It was surely something. I looked away for a mere moment. And they were gone.

~*~

172: June 20

~

A speck on the bed –

tiny spider tries to be

invisible. But,…

~

Staying the night in an old inn in downtown Richmond, I notice a small brown dot on the otherwise perfectly white, pressed sheets of my bed. I move to brush it off, and it breaks into motion. It stops barely under the cover and hunkers again so quickly, that I can't tell what exactly it is. A few more efforts, and I glimpse as it runs the impossibly tiny and fragile legs of a spider. It's clearly scared, and like a turtle, withdraws its legs tight up and under a body no bigger than the tip of my pen. The room is so clean. I think there's nothing here for such a creature. So I try to coax it onto a paper card thinking to take it outside. It's smart and evasive but finally dashes aboard. I lift and try every so carefully to open the door. It drops on a swiftly spun line that I cannot see and hangs there a speck suspended in space. My eyes on the spider, I slowly open the door. A breeze immediately sends it swinging. I cannot go out and back without the room key, so I hold it dangling, trying to reach. I fail. The spider makes contact with the edge of bed, drops, and disappears into the expanse of patterned carpet. I cannot imagine it's possible for that wee living thing to survive here. But maybe.

~*~

173: June 21

~

The city skyline

of rooftops fixed, is broken

by leaves swaying green.

~

From my window on the third floor of the Linden Row Inn, I can see the tops of old brick buildings and newer construction, too. How amazing the trees that grow in our urban midst, and some so tall! Too often, I take them for granted.

~*~

174: June 22

~

These rabbits care not

about our God, some old man

in the sky, judging.

~

I've been working on the proposal for a new book of nonfiction, another "Bible book," despite my thinking I wouldn't write another. Turns out there's more to say. Or more accurately: I'm still not satisfied I've articulated what preoccupies me about that book and its effects. This is one: that pervasive image of God as a man – white, with white hair,… You know. And of said God as sitting around in the sky wagging His (always "His") finger in correcting disapproval. It's refreshing to watch the rabbits hopping out in the late day light for another bite of this or that. I got back home a couple hours ago, time enough to unpack, get into the garden, showered, and onto the patio with a glass of wine and these four-legged neighbors to keep me company while the beans cook. That's enough.

~*~

175: June 23

~

Iridescent green,

this dragonfly seems unreal

unless you are prey.

~

I am captivated by dragonflies, even wrote a novel – a fantasy – about a girl and one. This dragonfly is green (probably a female "eastern pondhawk") and clings confidently to the slim stalk of a flowering fleabane. With those huge eyes, I assume she watches me but I doubt I'm her sole focus. Dragonflies are amazing hunters, catching their prey in mid-air where they're capable of stopping, turning and even reversing, I think. I read somewhere that they've got the highest "kill rate" of any insect (though you should double-check me on that). If a dragonfly determines you're worth catching, it's pretty much lights-out for you. At least they're fast.

~*~

176: June 24

~

In bands of morning

light, mist rises – a moving

thing, then lost in shade.

~

It's been cool at night – in the fifties, after hot days. The air moves around, following currents unseen to me. But in the early morning light, you can watch the moisture it carries from the surface of the water, watch it lift and turn and swirl in its rising almost like a living thing. You can see it in the strips of light that passed over the dam and between the branches of shrubs and trees. Back in the shade, it's invisible again. And a little later, altogether gone.

~*~

Presently underway. See the main Haiku 365 page.

WEEK 27

184: July 2

~

Goldfinches alight,

bright yellow on the flower

heads, and pick breakfast.

~

While I drink my coffee and savor the grits I cooked on this cool-ish morning, finches – a pair of goldfinches and a purple finch, too – eat from the fleabane and brown-eyed Susans blooming just outside the sliding glass door. Much to my husband's dismay but at the plea of a regional wildlife office, we've taken down the birdfeeder he'd been so diligently stocking for the past year or so. Because so many people during the pandemic enjoyed watching birds at household feeders, avian diseases have been spreading at an alarming rate. I'm glad that we can support the birds in these other ways – with native plants that enable "social distancing," too. To watch them in the wild, bob and sway – their tiny bodies bending the stalks this way and that – pluck, and dart away again is all the entertainment I need. And a satisfaction, too.

~*~

185: July 3

~

Spotted fawns gambol

up and down this hill and that.

To them, it's all new.

~

They're twins, born to the same gentle doe who steps daintily across the lawn, into the woods, over the dam, and behind the dogs' old kennel, where I'd planted so many wildflowers in hopes of a meadow. I've never seen fawns play, but there it is. Unmistakable. My husband fetches the binoculars. We cannot tear our eyes away. They bound up the hill toward the kitchen, stop behind an Adirondack chair, and then bolt across, past apple trees, and down again. At first, I feared they were fleeing the dogs loosed at the rowing club across the way. But there are no dogs. Only these creatures, having fun in a world that still fills them with delight. I cannot help but smile.

~*~

186: July 4

~

The vulture lifts off

from its work clearing the dead,

watches while we pass.

~

Our first visit to cousins in the house they began renting before the pandemic. It's not far but feels a wonderful world away – these rural roads and rolling hills. We take our bikes for a ride they do often. It's hot but big old trees cast welcome shade. The uphill hauls feel less arduous for them. The downhill rest and breeze rejuvenate. It's on one of those that we come upon this lone vulture. It was an opossum, not yet full grown, that lies in the road, flat and bloodied. We trouble the bird at its work, flush it into the sky. It doesn't go far, but perches on a limb just overhead. As I pass, I call out my gratitude, "Thank you for your service." After all, the diseases we do not get are due in part to these quiet, dark avian neighbors. I can feel its eyes following us on our descent and am glad today to be alive.

~*~

187: July 5

~

Along this valley

next to the creek, trees in leaf

demand I pay heed.

~

"Demand" may be too strong a word. And yet. I walk today in the woods near our house. The trees are nearly all deciduous, and many are very tall. I call my sister on my cell phone, but she can't hear me. I say, "hello hello hello," all the things we say, the questions we ask in such circumstances, until the phone goes dead. Summertime, and there is too much foliage, I think, to get a solid signal. Silly me. It's just as well. I grin up at the soft canopy, rest my palm on the rough bark of an old oak. More than "well." It's good to be brought back here and now in company with these gentle beings. Just us.

~*~

188: July 6

~

Out of dappled shade,

the dark shape of a humming-

bird in color shines.

~

Some ten days or so ago, I watched the tiny shape of a hummingbird hover under the Japanese maple where I've hung a feeder in years past. I hurried to set things up again. I've dutifully cleaned the feeder and refreshed the syrup every three days, but until today, I hadn't seen a visitor. While I sat on the patio, sipping iced green-and-mint tea and reveling in the stack of new library books I'd just fetched, I tried to make out the dark spot on the edge of the feeder. Then it lifted off, a sparkling jewel on the wing. Sibley's illustrated How to Be a Bird book taught me that what we see as a hummingbird's marvelously iridescent colors, are the products not of pigment but of texture. Its feathers catch and throw light in highly specific ways (and wavelengths), which affect how we see them, of course. And when there's no light – in the maple's shade, for example – they appear simply dark. What wonder, a bird!

~*~

189: July 7

~

In these woods, the doe

steps quietly, sees I mean

no one any harm.

~

It's about ninety degrees and hazy with humidity. Still, it feels good to step into the woods. Alone. We humans can be hard on each other, even on the ones we love. Maybe especially, sometimes without knowing or intent. Sometimes we're cruel. I go to the woods. There were a few cars in the lot, but I see no one here. No humans. I walk past bees busy in the bee balm and onto a path under the trees. It's shady, cooler here. I walk slowly and breathe. A doe stops in the dry creek bed ahead, raises her head, flicks her tail. I tell her how beautiful she is and walk on up the rise. She drops her head again and continues her slow browsing. I'll probably go back tomorrow.

~*~

190: July 8

~

Still, water runs

around rocks, over pebbles,

still carrying on.

~*~

WEEK 28

191: July 9

~

Tickling my ankle,

Spider returns. I have to

ask, Do you live here?

~

Sitting in the grass of a state park, listening to the "roots" music a small band plays with all their hearts, I feel a tiny spider crawling over my foot. It's strikingly pale – a little bit green, maybe, and perfect with its legs exactly symmetrical. It moves quickly to a place on my ankle where it stops, completely still. A grass blade serves as transport. I set it back to the ground. A few minutes later, tickling across my skin draws my eyes. The spider's back again, pretty determined. And I wonder: have I occupied the very particular home of this very particular creature? I with my mammoth body, oblivious to the myriad dramas playing out underfoot.

~*~

192: July 10

~

When the summer sun

is high, a brief breeze is all

I need of heaven.

~

The music festival's line-up is too good to miss. The afternoon's artists amazing. So we stand in the sun of Virginia in July and sway. When a breeze stirs across the meadow, each person sighs with pure animal pleasure.

~*~

193: July 11

~

Here at the wood's edge

thimbleberry grows en masse,

offers up sweetness.

~

We walk up and around the limestone "chimneys" that gave this park its name. Along the top, with occasional views of the Shenandoah Valley below, we remark on trees growing close. And what gift is this? At the edge of the mown path, forest on either side, clusters of thimbleberry bushes dangle fruit sparkly red. They're oh so sweet and warm. We take only a few, hoping the bears will find them, too, when we're gone again.

~*~

194: July 12

~

In the front garden

there's a hole that someone dug

while we were away.

~*~

195: July 13

~

Yarrow turns gray

not all at once but slowly,

and slowly it falls.

~

It's a process. In spring, the bright green frilly foliage emerges, unfurls. And the flower stalk rises, some as tall as and even taller than me. I didn't plant this yarrow. I guess it's wild, its flowers white – tiny individuals in great flat clusters across the top. I use some in bouquets, and it branches out from where I've cut. Myriad tiny flying things alight on the flowers, but I don't see many bigger butterflies or bees. Each to his own. At some point, when summertime sets in in earnest, the flower clusters change. It's subtle, a slight darkening, then more. And now, in a high heat drought, the tall stalks tip. It doesn't bend so much as tilt, each day at an ever greater angle until finally it lies across the ground.

~*~

196: July 14

~

Who says the snail has

not written a masterpiece

in slime - pure Scripture?

~

I'm contemplating a new Bible book, another, when I thought I was done. I'd thought to put that subject behind me. But. It's just that there's more. More to say, things I feel I haven't gotten quite right, fully clarified, or otherwise developed in earlier books to quite the degree I'd like. There are things that matter deeply to me, that feel urgent and demanding of address. One is the anthropocentrism we humans take so much for granted, an entitled way of being in the world that is not, in a word, sustainable. At times it's downright cruel, never mind that it's ultimately self-defeating. "But," some Bible-believing nay-sayers protest, "the Bible calls human beings image-of-God material, granted dominion over everything else,…" and all that. To which: this haiku. And more. In a future book, perhaps.

~*~

197: July 15

~

The cat's been out, and

the hummingbirds are nowhere,

meanwhile, to be seen.

~

I'm worried. There had been so much activity at the hummingbird feeder in the last week or so - near constant visiting, and the predictable skirmishes of territorial males. Tiny bodies flitted in and out of the Japanese maple that hosts the feeder, and through binoculars I could almost make out the tiny bird's extraordinary tongue lapping at the fresh sugar-water. Then, in the midst of plumbing troubles down at the rental, a converted barn, the tenant's cat got out. Maybe it's coincidence. I sure hope so. But I haven't seen any hummingbirds since.

~*~

WEEK 29

198: July 16

~

The bee knows just what

it is and why, and to whom

it belongs, I see.

~*~

199: July 17

~

Despite its seeming

fragility, this mint grows all

along the mown edge.

~

I made bouquets at the winery where I work occasionally, groupings of flowers from whatever's growing around there. Usually, it's easy. The owner used to run a plant nursery out of the property; so the landscaping is conducive to fashioning fetching bouquets. But it's been so very dry lately, and someone came to work the beds. Now they're cut far back, in some cases the plants that had been there are gone altogether. I'm reluctant to cut where there isn't abundance, so I wander, looking for anything that might safely spare a specimen or two. This plant, that smells like a mint but looks nothing like the mint common to gardens, grows in profusion. All along the edge between woods and lawn, I figure I can cut a few stems. Like a hot-house diva, they droop immediately. But when I get them into water, they show their resilience again.

~*~

200: July 18

~

Two green herons perch

along the telephone wire.

One flies – squawk! – away.

~

Across the pond, green herons seem to have successfully raised a brood. The youngsters – a little more frowsy with their white-streaked feathers, have begun to roam. The range of calls reminds me that these creatures, too, have their own thoughts, their own feelings, their own ways of talking.

~*~

201: July 19

~

There must be millions,

tiny as a downy seed,

spiders from that sack.

~

It's a bit freaky, I confess, this mass of spiders – light in color – on the lintel above my office door. I don't know exactly when they arrived, when they emerged from the desiccated mass loosely attached to the wood. But I hope they'll be gone by tomorrow. hen I first saw them, I figured it was merely the myriad seeds from one of the wild flowers growing just outside the door. Then they moved. If they were only on the outside, it would be one thing, but seeing them inside, too,… It's possible I'll need to do something.

202: July 20

~

The half-moon hangs peach

against a darkening sky,

witness to warning.

~

It's been dry, so dry. Even the old trees seem to shrink into themselves. I consider watering the Asian pear, a tree I planted a decade ago, a tree that's given us plentiful sweet fruit and fed many wild things, from a wasp-ish thing to a fall-famished bear. It's barely hanging on. I drag a hose from the side of the house to transplants, still fragile in their new-immigrant status. I turn the spigot, but the water doesn't come. I turn it off, check for crimps. Nothing. Inside the house, low pressure gives way within seconds to nothing. We have no water. I turn off whatever I think might automatically try to draw water - only the ice maker, which needs cleaning, anyway. I capture the ice into a clean cooler – better that than let the melting water go. And I empty the small dehumidifier in my office onto perennial herbs that feed pollinators mostly these days. I've never seen the well go dry. And without proper tools, you can't see into its depths. We pack up and go to a hotel of sorts. It's a rich-people, white-people kind of place. The golf course is green, the well-planned gardens blooming, the swimming pool bright and clean. It feels surreal. After dinner, I sit in one of a long row of deep Adirondack chairs. It's an exquisite view, facing toward the distant Blue Ridge Mountains, barely visible through haze. No one sits here. No one is here, on the whole north side of the property. I am alone with this moon, an eerily warm color, over the broad slate roof. In the middle of the night, my husband speaks clearly: There's no water, he says. I ask him to repeat it. Here, too, the pipes have emptied. I lie in this strange bed and think: of course. And: I'm still not ready. In the morning, the sprinklers are going full boar. There's coffee. I ask about last night. The only answer I get: They're fixing everything now. No, actually, "they" are not.

~*~

203: July 21

~

Morning haze renders

the mountains invisible.

Our secret: they're there.

~

I sit savoring the miracle of a cup of coffee, a glass of clear ice water. My husband lined up a water well service company to diagnose and hopefully address the lack of water at the house. There's good reason to believe it's dry – we haven't had meaningful rain for a very long time, arguably all summer. Still, it's surprising. Maybe it's the pump, maybe something else. But in my mind, I hear the echo of a friend's report from the day before last. She lives in a neighborhood not far from ours – a place where the community shares a well, she tells me. And it's run dry. Too many households insisting on watering their lawns, taking long showers, laundering obsessively, she says. And I remember the last night, when this place too (where we've come because we have no water) – not so far from our house in a topographical sense - lost water for some hours. Why? No one gave me an answer. I wonder if we share a water table – her neighborhood, this property, our house,… I sit here, marveling again at the near absence of anyone else, despite the full parking lot. Across the sloping lawn interrupted here and there by sweeping old oaks, I can barely make out the smallest near mountain of the distant ridge. The others are lost to the haze. Something about knowing that they're there nonetheless lifts me. It's like we're in cahoots, like those ancient mountains have let me in on something, something important and wise.

~*~

204: July 22

~

This could be haiku

about number two, an out-

house situation.

~

After some back-and-forth deliberation, I've decided to make this today's haiku, after all. Two reasons I hesitated: one is that I have those few rules for myself about this project, one of which is that the haiku is anchored in some observation about the nonhuman natural world. It's a stretch, but I decided that since defecating isn't limited to human beings AND said outhouse offered up the following reading material – a large flying thing, pale in color, wings together behind its back at rest, long limbs at least four to either side; and two painted lady butterflies fanning their wings and walking the walls,… it (arguably) qualifies. The other reason is the subject matter – hardly elevating, AND YET as my friend Gigi observed, the great Japanese haiku masters of yore left us many haikus about poop (true)! So I stand in a long tradition,… Anyway, on account of not having water on our property, I have availed myself of the facilities at the nearby natural area. I sure am glad of it! Meanwhile, in water-news, it was indeed the well pump that had failed. Despite the drought, we've still got a good bit of water down there, the repair guy tells me. And that it's a mess, in need of some serious updating. For another time.

202: July 20

~

The half-moon hangs peach

against a darkening sky,

witness to warning.

~

It's been dry, so dry. Even the old trees seem to shrink into themselves. I consider watering the Asian pear, a tree I planted a decade ago, a tree that's given us plentiful sweet fruit and fed many wild things, from a wasp-ish thing to a fall-famished bear. It's barely hanging on. I drag a hose from the side of the house to transplants, still fragile in their new-immigrant status. I turn the spigot, but the water doesn't come. I turn it off, check for crimps. Nothing. Inside the house, low pressure gives way within seconds to nothing. We have no water. I turn off whatever I think might automatically try to draw water - only the ice maker, which needs cleaning, anyway. I capture the ice into a clean cooler – better that than let the melting water go. And I empty the small dehumidifier in my office onto perennial herbs that feed pollinators mostly these days. I've never seen the well go dry. And without proper tools, you can't see into its depths. We pack up and go to a hotel of sorts. It's a rich-people, white-people kind of place. The golf course is green, the well-planned gardens blooming, the swimming pool bright and clean. It feels surreal. After dinner, I sit in one of a long row of deep Adirondack chairs. It's an exquisite view, facing toward the distant Blue Ridge Mountains, barely visible through haze. No one sits here. No one is here, on the whole north side of the property. I am alone with this moon, an eerily warm color, over the broad slate roof. In the middle of the night, my husband speaks clearly: There's no water, he says. I ask him to repeat it. Here, too, the pipes have emptied. I lie in this strange bed and think: of course. And: I'm still not ready. In the morning, the sprinklers are going full boar. There's coffee. I ask about last night. The only answer I get: They're fixing everything now. No, actually, "they" are not.

~*~

203: July 21

~

Morning haze renders

the mountains invisible.

Our secret: they're there.

~

I sit savoring the miracle of a cup of coffee, a glass of clear ice water. My husband lined up a water well service company to diagnose and hopefully address the lack of water at the house. There's good reason to believe it's dry – we haven't had meaningful rain for a very long time, arguably all summer. Still, it's surprising. Maybe it's the pump, maybe something else. But in my mind, I hear the echo of a friend's report from the day before last. She lives in a neighborhood not far from ours – a place where the community shares a well, she tells me. And it's run dry. Too many households insisting on watering their lawns, taking long showers, laundering obsessively, she says. And I remember the last night, when this place too (where we've come because we have no water) – not so far from our house in a topographical sense - lost water for some hours. Why? No one gave me an answer. I wonder if we share a water table – her neighborhood, this property, our house,… I sit here, marveling again at the near absence of anyone else, despite the full parking lot. Across the sloping lawn interrupted here and there by sweeping old oaks, I can barely make out the smallest near mountain of the distant ridge. The others are lost to the haze. Something about knowing that they're there nonetheless lifts me. It's like we're in cahoots, like those ancient mountains have let me in on something, something important and wise.

~*~

204: July 22

~

This could be haiku

about number two, an out-

house situation.

~

After some back-and-forth deliberation, I've decided to make this today's haiku, after all. Two reasons I hesitated: one is that I have those few rules for myself about this project, one of which is that the haiku is anchored in some observation about the nonhuman natural world. It's a stretch, but I decided that since defecating isn't limited to human beings AND said outhouse offered up the following reading material – a large flying thing, pale in color, wings together behind its back at rest, long limbs at least four to either side; and two painted lady butterflies fanning their wings and walking the walls,… it (arguably) qualifies. The other reason is the subject matter – hardly elevating, AND YET as my friend Gigi observed, the great Japanese haiku masters of yore left us many haikus about poop (true)! So I stand in a long tradition,… Anyway, on account of not having water on our property, I have availed myself of the facilities at the nearby natural area. I sure am glad of it! Meanwhile, in water-news, it was indeed the well pump that had failed. Despite the drought, we've still got a good bit of water down there, the repair guy tells me. So that's good. And that the well's a mess, in need of some serious updating. Not good. For another time.

~*~

WEEK 30

205: July 23

~

Four wasps flit around

the corpse of another, hum

a mourner's Kaddish.

~

As I get ready to push the kayak away from the dock, I notice these wasps – if I'm not mistaken, the kind that build comb-like hives on the undersides of roofs, gentle and busy in their ways. I don't see a hive but I see one, belly-up, dead on a board there. Around it, these others fly near, land, touch, and alight again. They're clearly preoccupied with the dead one, but I don't know why. I do know that we humans have long assumed wrongly that non-human beings don't have the kinds of emotions that move our heart and souls. We know now the capacity of others to worry, to plan, and to mourn. I wonder about these wasps as I push off. When I get back they're gone. The corpse, too.

~*~

206: July 24

~

Hungry bees, giant

black wasps, and painted ladies

eat without fighting.

~

It's astonishing the number and diversity of insects that visit the seemingly modest flower heads of this "Virginia mountain mint." It's a plant that's escaped browsing by those who've decimated so much else – the groundhogs, rabbits, and deer. And the pollinators that visit must number in the thousands each day. Equally striking – they don't bother each other. Sometimes they run into each other, banging and bouncing off bodies or wings. But their focus is entirely on the flowers themselves. I researched some – these giant black wasps, for example. They look terrifying – coal black with wings that look cobalt blue when the light hits just right. But they pay me no mind whatsoever. And I learn that they are indeed gentle, nonaggressive, and great to have around for pollinating of course but also to control the cricket population for which other of my plants are most grateful. The mason and honey bees I recognize; but there are oodles of others. And the painted ladies are only one of many varieties that sup here. A common table with enough to eat for all. It seems a peaceable thing, all right.

~*~

207: July 25

~

Vultures perch high in

the branches of a dead tree,

shoulders slumped, quiet.

~

It was quite a morning sight – seven or eight of those impressive birds hunched motionless and quiet in the spreading branches of an old oak, long ago succumbed to the girdling of beavers up off the reservoir below. The look every bit mourners accepting the great round on which we ride – birth and death and birth and death,… Was our image of a sickle-wielding Death, shoulders round beneath a black cloak informed by these creatures? I can see how. An hour or two later, I look again to find them gone.

~*~

208: July 26

~

The persimmon's leaves

are glossy green, the fruit just

beginning to blush.

~*~ 

209: July 27

~

The apple tree leaves

curl in on themselves like cups

waiting to be filled.

~

Thunderstorms passed through the region yesterday. Still, we got no rain. I've lost count of how many days of sun, of heat, of dry we've had this summer. I can count on one hand the rain. The plants seem to retreat into themselves, withdrawing to conserve and endure. Some won't make it. I triage what I'd planted. Some get watered, some don't. The plants that feed gobs of pollinators and birds (directly, or by extension, by eating the insects for example) get watered. So, too, some of the other perennials – trees and shrubs I'd planted and nursed to a more resilient maturity over years. Some are too unwieldy, and I can only hope they're finding reserves somewhere deep below the soil surface. Right or wrong, I water the apple trees. They're among the youngest, and the effort I've already spent planting, fencing, mulching, and otherwise supporting calls me to more now. But there's a point. I let the blackberries go despite years of work to get the formerly luxuriant patch we have. It amazes me how long some of these plants can go, how much they can tolerate. I know there's a limit. I just hope we haven't reached it yet. Still, the clouds move over and on without rain.

~*~

210: July 28

~

To call it a house

finch sounds so mundane, plain. My

husband says, "Come look!"

~

It's a small bird alight on a rim of the chicken wire fence. "Come look!," Craig calls to me from the window at the sink. The colors are just shy of dazzling – rosey red, mauve in heather brown. Beautiful. And just another ordinary neighbor in this extraordinary world.

~*~

211: July 29

~

A golden leaf floats

down then, surprise! lifts again.

Ah, a butterfly.

~

I'd taken my lunch of deviled eggs and cool sautéed zucchini planks out onto the patio with a cup of sun-brewed Red Zinger over ice when out of the corner of my eye, this leaf. It dropped so slowly, so gracefully riding an invisible current of light breeze. Then suddenly animated – an eastern yellow swallowtail butterfly, it flapped and angled up and over to the brown-eyed Susans. I think: sometimes a slow decline isn't what it seems. The butterfly unfurled its long tongue into the eye of a flower, then rose again and headed toward the woods and the dam.

~*~

 page.

WEEK 31

212: July 30

~

All day the sun gives

energy for the taking.

Say, Yes please. Or not.

~

The sun's energy has been fueling growth on our planet for as long as there's been anything capable of growth. Human beings discovered that some of that past growth, since fossilized, can fuel our industrious enterprises. The trouble is such fueling (via coal, oil, and natural gas) has brought us to this. As I write, the western United States is on fire. So too, huge swaths of Canada whilst the waters rise all over the globe. I met a guy this morning who traffics in solar power. Every day, the sun rises, tracks across the sky, and falls again. (More accurately, our blue-green ball turns to face then hide again the great burning star that is our sun.) He showed how easily we could gather the energy it offers, how immediately substitute it for electricity generated by burning fossil fuels. My plea: cover all available paved (think parking lots) or roofed (think shopping malls) surfaces as soon as possible. That's the second prong, though, with simple efficiencies which anyone can do immediately with zero additional cost or materials or,… I can no longer entertain nay-sayers. We're all in this together. And the stakes of denial and doing nothing, my friends, are simply too high.

~*~

213: July 31

~

His antlers are still

soft, covered in that living

velvet, the blood dried.

~

Someone hit a buck along the bridge near our property. It must have been the night before last. A buck, doe, and fawn nibbled their way across our front yard and ambled into the woods beyond, a few days ago. I suspect this is he. And I'm sad, so sad. He's just beyond the guardrails, his antlered head, underneath. I saw his body as I drove over to walk the trails beyond. And I saw him as I drove home afterward. Again, today, I see him there as I come and go. And I can't take it. I can't take worrying if he's still alive, still suffering. And if he is, I know he won't rise again. Soon, the vultures will come and risk their lives in the traffic to clean up our mess (his body all but in the road still.) So I buck up (as they say), and through a break in traffic, jog the strip of road to where he lies. I see that there's little land, only a couple of feet or so and most of it steep bank on the water side. He had no options when the vehicle came on. His eyes are wide, so very big, his mouth open just barely. The soft velvet on his summer antlers is torn in places. In those places, it's pink with blood. Blood pools around his tongue, and his eyes stare vacant. He's dead. Still I talk to him. "I'm so sorry that this happened to you," I say. And, "You are so beautiful," as I take firm hold of an antler, "I'm sorry," over and over again. His body has swelled and except for the way his fur is scraped to skin, thin over parts of his bloated body, I see little injury, until I tug. His shoulder and left front leg are badly broken. "I'm sorry," I say, and tug him as far from the road as I can. "I'm so sorry," I say, and prop his body against the slim trunk of a sapling to keep from sliding into the reservoir. I look down. My palms are speckled with the stuff of those antlers. I jog back to the house and wash my hands.

~*~

214: August 1

~

Green Heron watches

quietly with Turtle, all

this human labor.

~

Among our neighbors are some who seem particularly enamored of their large equipment and particularly intent on cutting things down. All afternoon, the whine of chain saws and ripping chug of some bush-hog vehicle thing fills the air just over the drive near the pond. I walk down to see if I can tell just where they're working. (A couple years ago, they inadvertently [?] clear-cut our land abutting the pond, too.) What I see is a stick along the pond's edge, visible in the low-water drought and on it a green heron standing facing the action, a turtle at its feet. They're sweet, this companionable pair, taking in the drama across the way. Of course, I cannot say what exactly they make of it. For my part, I wish they'd stop – the humans with their engines and this incessant, indiscriminate clearing.

~*~

216: August 3

~

Suspended in air

this scrap of moss and leaves

swings on silken thread.

~

Walking through the woods, I encounter a speck hanging face-level above the path. It doesn't fall, and it doesn't rise. Up close, I can see that it's a bit of plant detritus, flecks of moss and leaf scrap dislodged from somewhere higher up that caught the ephemeral thread of a caterpillar's doing or a spider's maybe. I lean to one side as I walk past, leave it hanging there.

~*~

215: August 2

~

Hummingbird hovers,

weighing its options, then dives

without turning back.

~*~

216: August 3

~

Suspended in air

this scrap of moss and leaves

swings on silken thread.

~

Walking through the woods, I encounter a speck hanging face-level above the path. It doesn't fall, and it doesn't rise. Up close, I can see that it's a bit of plant detritus, flecks of moss and leaf scrap dislodged from somewhere higher up that caught the ephemeral thread of a caterpillar's doing or a spider's maybe. I lean to one side as I walk past, leave it hanging there.

~*~

217: August 4

~

So black they're almost

blue, these wasps bump each other

but there's no ill will.

~

It's with real effort that I tear myself away from the mountain mint that's proven so attractive to local pollinators. The drama is endless. Among the most entertaining are these jet black wasps. Their semi-translucent wings catch the sun in such a way every so often as to appear blue. There are so many and they're so intent on the flowers that they frequently collide with each other. But I've never seen a single one take umbrage. Their singular focus on what nourishes seems to rule out anything as useless as conflict with each other.

~*~

218: August 5

~

A bucket of brown-

eyed Susans brightens the room

for a time too short.

~

We're heading out of town – a trip of some days – and I'm in preparation mode. One of the items on my list of things to do is "bouquets," which means dumping them outside. After all, the water gets murky and the flowers wilt sometimes to the point of malodorousness if not tended. But they're so pretty! I love this bunch especially in a tall bucket in the sunroom. You can see it from across the room, almost from across the house. They angle whimsically near the plush armchair I like to read in. We won't be gone all that long, I tell myself. So I clip the ends, freshen the water, and we head out the door.

~*~

WEEK 32

219: August 6

~

Scuffle in the leaves

beneath the thimbleberry –

Chipmunk! It's all yours.

~

Walking on a trail through the boreal forest along a river, one of many that tumble and reach and run their way to Gitchee Gumee, I enjoy the sweet treat of raspberries and thimbleberries ripe and ready on bushes flanking the path. My dad walks these trails nearly every day – two miles, weather permitting. Today, it is my great pleasure to join him in it, and not only him but my husband, a Virginia native, too. I take up the rear the better to pause or stop for this or that, then jog to catch up again without interrupting the casual conversation and steady pace. I've been nibbling my way along and am just reaching for a particularly promising ripe thimbleberry when activity along the ground below stops me. The chipmunk is too short to reach the berries, but I realize that within moments a berry such as the one on which I have my eye is ripe enough to fall with the slightest jostle. So I leave it to the chipmunk and wish it a bountiful afternoon.

~*~

220: August 7

~

The sand forms ordered

lines of peaks and valleys my

feet can't help but mar.

~

In the town where I grew up, there on the tip of Lake Superior, is a stretch of sand we call simply Park Point. As it is, it's the longest stretch of fresh water sand beach in the world. This afternoon, a small wedding party angles for photos, a couple of preteens snorkel, a few dogs chase toys, and two women sit side-by-side, facing not the lake but the setting-sun-catching dunes as they talk for all the world as if they're the only two in it. I take it all in, cooling my feet in the shallow water and keeping an eye on my husband swimming strong a few yards out. The ridges of sand give grudgingly underfoot. Through the clear water, I can see roughly where I've stepped – interruptions in otherwise perfect lines fashioned by the invisible push and pull of waves across the surface.

~*~

221: August 8

~

Ka-shush, swish, quiet

again until shush, swish,

another wave comes.

~

Morning and I slip outside before the others have woken. Yesterday's high winds have given in to something lighter, steady, with a bit of spit from low clouds and a marked drop in temperatures. Such is the weather here on the Lake. I've come to the shore to the long flat rocks, reddish and smooth from centuries of waves rolling over them. Ice has left chiseling marks here and there, nature's graffiti. It's too cold to stay long, but still warm from bed and from the hot days we've had, I stay longer than I might otherwise. I want to remember this, when we leave again. I think I'll step closer, closer to the water's edge; but the waves come up to meet me, wetting the rock right at my feet. So I stay where I am and listen to this Om.

~*~

222: August 9

~

The naked ladies

are shorter this year, yet they

bloom despite the heat.

~

There's a bulb that someone planted years ago along the edge of the driveway – a flower that emerges and blooms like a lily long after the other bulbs have come and gone. My husband tells me they're "naked ladies," which has elicited loads of off-color fun, as you can imagine. In this year of great heat and slim-to-none rain (and the fact that we have no watering system apart from the manual effort we might or might not make), I had no expectation of seeing them. Yet, just as in other years, these Amaryllis belladona emerge suddenly, a bare stalk rising straight out of the ground. (As it turns out, their foliage had been there all along. The flower stalk emerges after the foliage dies back.) Within mere days, the top opens into the wide blooms of a pink amaryllis. This year, they're about half their normal height. But the flowers are just the same – exquisite, boldly fanning out, as if there's nothing to worry about at all.

~*~

223: August 10

~

Carolina wren,

so small, even your tail's short;

but your song is big!

~

I've become a bit addicted to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's "Merlin" app – a wonderful use of digital technology to enable amateur bird watchers like myself to identify by sound who are the avian neighbors talking nearby at any given time. I find these Carolina wrens to be charming – little bundles of activity, their tails squared off and usually standing up high behind their tawny round bodies. To look at them, one might expect a timid peep or something like the chickadee's chick-a-dee. But no, they remind of the Jack Russell terrier I watched play along the sand beach of Duluth's Park Point – big dog in a small dog body. I still can't identify the bird each time I hear it sing, but with practice and that expert help, maybe one day.

~*~

224: August 11

~

No one has to tell

Redbud the drought is over.

It just stands straighter.

~

A few years ago, among the volunteer saplings that popped up on the property was a redbud that came up right where I would want it, in a bare-ish spot, a kind of bay among azaleas against a curving low brick wall. It grew quickly, awkwardly, one limb - its primary - lengthening at an odd angle over the edges of the azaleas that flank it. But autumn, it had leaned so far that it threatened to fall. That winter, I lopped it off – the top few feet of that gangly trunk. It sprang right up and has assumed a most handsome shape in the few years since. I've never watered it, of course, or otherwise given it anything special. I watched as this summer's drought took a real toll. As the weeks passed without rain and unrelenting heat, the redbud like so many others, seemed to curl in on itself. Its leaves hung limp and curled, thin branches drooped. Then yesterday afternoon and again just now, the sky darkened and rumbled and flashed, and rain fell in great big thick drops, lots of it. And the redbud, like an outcast who's finally gifted a genuine compliment, has bounced back, for this moment strong in its perseverance. And that's enough.

~*~

225: August 13

~

What a crash this pine

must have made when it broke, fell,

though I didn't hear.

~

Last night we had another heavy dousing of rain, more crazy winds, blowing hard this way and then that. In the calm of day, in the late afternoon, my husband walked with me to the compost pile. What a surprise it was to find that in the area just beyond the formal-ish back yard and before you reach the fenced garden, the great spreading limbs of a pine, its needles still dark green with life, lay covering the expanse. Somehow it fell just shy of the power line, away from the pump house, away from the garage. It broke off high, the main trunk, without any sign of a lightning strike. It simply couldn't hang on in the driving wind tugging every which way, I suppose. The area is redolent with its scent. I don't want to look too closely. I think I remember seeing the wide nest of a predatory bird among the branches that now lie broken all akimbo across the ground. But I do look at the trunk – irregularities near the break (bark interrupted, a fissure a couple inches deep) suggest weakness. But otherwise, it's full of life. The hand I rest to steady myself, picking my feet among the limbs, is sticky with dripping sap. Somehow, though the pine crushed its wire enclosure and the top foot or two of growth snapped off, a chestnut sapling stands straight, a few green leaves suggesting that it just might survive.

~*~

WEEK 33

226: August 14

~

So constant the buzz

of cicadas, summer's sound-

track, I barely hear.

~*~

227: August 15

~

Berries fall into

my hand saying, Take me, eat!

I will, oh, I will.

~*~

228: August 16

~

Turtle walks his dome

of marbled gold across my

path, stops to watch me.

~*~

The perfect dome of this turtle was the color of high summer sun, streaked by dark lines into irregular blocks. I didn't see it until I was close enough to have worried it into retreat – stock still and retracted. Another few seconds and its head emerged, feet and legs and neck. To my surprise, its skin matched exactly the patterning of its shell. At my greeting, it tightened but didn't go all the way back into its shell. Then slowly, it swung its head on a wrinkled neck to watch me pass.

~*~

229: August 17

~

Goldfinches lift off

the brown-eyed Susans while blue-

gray gnatcatchers hunt.

~*~

230: August 18

~

Crimson red among

leaves of green, this dogwood branch

auguries autumn.

~

It's mostly green around here. Days of rain have restored what still has life after the drought (amazingly much). The temperatures are still summer-time hot. But there is this branch – really only a bit of a branch, a distal twig on the old dogwood outside my office window – that stands out. Unlike the rest of the tree and of the trees all around, its handful of leaves is a striking, bright red. Like a prophet wandering into a complacent community and calling out, The time is coming! this lone branch heralds the turning of a season. Change. I've been wrestling with my own kinds of change lately, physical like this tree I suppose, adjustments in the course of time. Medical stuff that needed doing leaves me different, which makes me anxious, which makes me search for the wisdom to accept change, adapt, and adapt again. My eyes, which feel different and see differently now, return again and again to that small bunch of leaves.

~*~

231: August 19

~

Just when these flowers

begin to fade, admirers

by the thousands come.

~

The brown-eyed Susans outside our front door grew tall, thick, and oh so bright this summer. I've enjoyed their cheery faces through the windows, in my coming and going, and in bouquets throughout the house. But while their neighboring oregano, mint, yarrow, and sage have had insect visitors by the hundreds, only occasionally have I seen a bee, a yellow-swallow-tail butterfly or goldfinch happen by these rudbeckia. Until now. Now, just when their petals look a bit ragged to my eye, and they can't last but a day or two in a vase, they're among the most popular in the garden, their stalks bobbing with land and rise of finches, and their heads a-buzz with pollinators. I'm eager to see what autumn brings.

~*~

232: August 20

~

The summer sun's hot.

In the shade of an old tree,

I adjust my cap.

~

In an effort to protect my healing eyes, I toggle on this walk between wearing a ball cap and wearing a bandana. Both catch sweat, but the bandana can handle more while the ball-cap offers protection from the sun. Sometimes I wear them both, but that's awkward and pushes down harder than is comfortable. Under these circumstances and so many more, I am grateful for the big old trees all around me. Here, I think they're mostly oak of several varieties, tulip poplar, sycamore, and beech. At another stretch of trail, scraggly holly saplings mingle with red cedar, too. Most of the miles I walk are in shade. For this next stretch, though, there's sun. So I stand in the shade of an old oak, leaning from some long-ago event (wind, maybe; maybe years of reaching out from the shadow of another now gone), lift off the bandana, adjust the cap, and step out again.

~*~

WEEK 34

233: August 21

~

After the storm: pine

needles on pitch-thick twigs will

make good mulch here.

~

Heavy rain with driving wind took the top of a grand old white pine tree down and with it, great branches still bearing lush bundles of long green needles. I spent some hours "cleaning up," as we humans say – moving branches and brush from where they fell (the back yard). My SvenSaw, an invention of my dad's makes quick work of trimming branches from the main trunk, but it's heavy labor, and limit of my arm muscles is what brings me to a halt. Along the way, and as a final move, I gather up sheaths of the smallest branches, twigs covered in needles and bring them to the cozy caves created by boxwoods now ten feet tall. I spread them - thick blankets on the ground beneath. If it weren't for the sticky sap, I'd lie down under here. I keep moving – back to the heavy limbs, which I cart to an area near the driveway, and trust that some critter will enjoy the shelter and bedding those boughs provide.

~*~

234: August 22

~

After rain, after

wind and human folly, Spider

weaves her web anew.

~*~

235: August 23

~

In this alley where

cars park, a great tree extends

mighty arms in grace.

~*~

236: August 24

~

Rabbit runs zig-zag

through the alley from a man,

sees me, and runs left.

~

Walking the tree-lined sidewalks of old Richmond at dusk, I come to the intersection with a grassy alley. Glancing right, I see a small rabbit, fleeing in my direction from a man who happens to be there at the alley's other end. Though neither of us, mean the little creature any harm, it can't know that, and in a wink changes direction again to disappear under a thick hedge.

~*~

237: August 25

~

White-eyed vireo,

tufted titmouse and wood thrush

sing somewhere near here.

~*~

238: August 26

~

You remember this:

An old-growth forest cannot

happen overnight.

*

And a humpback whale,

evolved over the ages,

cannot just come back.

~*~

239: August 27

~

Somewhere on the trail

Sister Mary Charles pointed

out a smell like this.

~

I'm walking in the piedmont of central Virginia, trails near our house, trails I've walked countless times before. But suddenly, this smell – slightly floral with an herby sharpness – launches me back to my childhood in northern Minnesota and summers attending "Sister Mary Charles's School" – a day camp kind of thing with a beautifully creative Catholic nun. With her we made pottery ashtrays (it was the 70s), painted mushrooms on boards, made wood block designs (none nearly so wonderful as hers), and walked the convent's acres of woods and garden. She taught us bird songs and also how to identify – by sight but also by smell – many of the region's native plants. I wish I could remember what it was that smelled just like this. Something here is kin to there.

WEEK 35

240: August 28

~

Its feathers every

which way, a tiny young wren

lifts its throat and sings.

~*~

241: August 29

~

Groundhog, did you learn

in your backyard wanderings

there's a new pup here?

~*~

242: August 30

~

Ouch! Who stung me? Ouch - 

again?! Okay, I'm leaving.

Please, call off your friends.

~*~

243: August 31

~

The wind comes first. Leaves

rattle out of branches, limbs

bow before the rain.

~*~

244: September 1

~

You've outdone yourself,

Spider! This web you've hung just

makes the window pane.

~

Thank you. It's a marvel, a real beaut. And what good timing, taking a hurricane's aftermath of spitting rain only to add to the wonder, strung as your work is in a thousand tiny, glistening beads. Thank you. I rely on beauty such as this.

~*~

245: September 2

~

Has there ever been

a morning so clear, so bright,

as this - after dark?

~

Our first taste of autumn – a cool morning, and the air so clear. The tail of Hurricane Ida has passed, and I got my first full night of sleep after bringing our new pup Peaches home. That and other hard things, less tangible, less out-there have eased. Ease indeed and a lightness to this day's beginning couldn't be more welcome. I'll take them! And on ~

~*~

246: September 3

~

Inches off the ground,

suspended in air, Swallow

flapping catches bugs.

~*~

WEEK 36

247: September 4

~

High above, a hawk

couple scream, angry and fierce.

I beg them, Don't stop.

~

I work ever harder, the labor of digging, of clearing, of hauling heavy wheelbarrows of mulch up hill, dodging yellow jackets, pushing through sweat that soaks the bandana around my brow. I labor in fury and resentment, willing those feelings to tumble with the mulch, be covered over anemic under the moist, dark wood chips, when high above me, unmistakable cries pierce the air over and over. I see them fly, swooping and darting, two red-shouldered hawks screaming. Ahhh, thank you thank you, I say. Yes yes. And, I will forgive.

~*~

248: September 5

~

Tear a fig apart,

soft and ripe. Eat. You'll agree

There's nothing like it.

~*~

249: September 6

~

Persimmons that fell

in the storm too early

sweeten just the same.

~*~

250: September 7

~

May I offer you

a ride, dear sir? The praying

mantis steps aboard.

~

I've been chipping away at an area in the front of the house, preparing for what I hope will be a more permanent landscaping situation (permanently dynamic, of course). Years ago, we had to remove magnolia trees that had been sending their roots through the house's foundation and acting like a fulcrum slowly to break it apart – the brick wall, tiles on the shower walls, a marble threshold,… I had a dump truck of local dirt brought in and at great labor, divided it between the two plots, and spread evenly only to have it dug and removed by our pup of that time. In an effort to thwart him and gain some time in figuring what could withstand the other wild critters here, I laid chicken wire, grass seed over that, and made space for native flowers and herbs. Now, with that pup (our Charlie, died of cancer in Jan) gone, I've been peeling back the chicken wire, pulling up the grass, and preparing to plant what natives my experimenting suggests can survive the deer, groundhogs, and rabbits. In the course of it, I try to spare the diverse beings who have taken up house in the patch of natives. Among them, this praying mantis, clamboring over stalks and leaves at the edge. I'm afraid I'll swoop him up and crush him in my clearing. So I offer a hand. He accepts with dignity, climbing those long legs up the back of my hand. He waits patiently while I transport him to safety among the oregano and brow-eyed Susans where he step by step disembarks.

~*~

251: September 8

~

Too early for light,

feet in the dew I watch stars

while the puppy pees.

~*~

252: September 9

~

Repacking the dirt

round this seedling, my back hurts

less to hear the bees.

~*~

253: September 10

~

Little Miss Goldfinch,

is it hunger that makes you

brave; or do you know?

~*~

I'm watching a female goldfinch in the brown-eyed Susans just off the front patio. I sit here with the puppy Peaches, wriggling and wandering and gnawing and flopping down again. She is the only finch I see this late morning in the stand of dying stalks, their flower heads brown and full. She's silent as she flits and pecks pecks pecks, flits a foot or so and pecks some more. I try to move slowly so as not to scare her away. But she's not frightened, and I'm glad. Maybe she's so hungry that she'll take her chances so close to we terrors to her kind. Or maybe she knows we're all just enjoying the morning here together.

~*~

WEEK 37

254: September 11

~

Light falls between two

trees, towers of green that mean

the same here as there.

~

All over the news have been recollections of twenty years ago today – New York City, the Twin Towers, and all that happened, all that was done to undo a world. The World Trade Center. Meanwhile, trees.

~*~

255: September 12

~

They pour out of holes -

great big bees with yellow stripes.

We walk swiftly on.

~

Parking at the natural area where I frequently walk rings a strip of earth where several deciduous trees have grown large. It's not far from the house. In an effort to help the puppy overcome a predisposition to carsickness, I drive her the quarter mile or so there to take her out again for fresh air and to regain equilibrium, I hope. You're not supposed to have dogs there (I approve), so I keep her – still a bumbling ball of fuzz – to the parking area. She goes straight for the trunk of a tree. That's when I see the bees, and they've already seen her. The line heads her way. I'm able to scoop and scoot her just in time, but I see they're in more of the trees too. I don't know what kind of bees these are. They're not yellow jackets, not mason or bumble or sweat or honey that's for sure. And they look like trouble. Nevertheless, we enjoy ourselves in the late day air, and head home again without incident.

~*~

256: September 13

~

A monarch, perfect

in form, sups agastache

I bought this morning.

~

I realize, not for the first time, the profound satisfaction I experience tending what bit of land falls to my "property," my care. Specifically, to apply with true physical labor whatever I can learn of what's best for the greater community of living things here to what I promote and where. These flowers, so attractive to fragile pollinators such as this remarkably perfect monarch butterfly, I situate away from the road, hoping maybe to mitigate the traffic fatalities that used to be so common as to be a nuisance. (I remember as a girl cleaning the Plymouth Fury's grill after a road trip, peeling countless butterfly fragments from the sedan's merciless progress. I never imagined a species that numbered in the millions then – 4.5 – would dwindle to a mere 2,000 only a few decades later and likely go extinct before I'm even old.) I'm grateful to the local nurseries that stock native species and the kinds of "wildflowers" so crucial to the lives of millions of others. It's satisfying to crouch low with dirty knees and knobby hands to winnow out the inhospitable bullies of the plant kingdom, to plant and nurture instead what plays well with others. Not for the first time, I notice the magnitude of my ease and pleasure at such tasks, how the thrills of exotic vacations never quite measure to this, a simple tending after beauty and food. We ate our figs, Asian pear, and persimmons last night with a local sausage and cheese, a pasta of local rye, water-wheel milled in a lemon cream sauce thick with our own fresh basil. Why wish for more?

~*~

257: September 14

~

Here, in the damp shade,

mushrooms of all sorts emerge,

muted pall bearers.

~*~

258: September 15

~

Hummingbird rests while

big birds who do not journey

far busy themselves.

~

I'm watching a hummingbird sit on a leafless weeping cherry twig out side my office window. It's been there a while, longer than I've ever seen a hummingbird sit still. It's warm, hot even, in the eighties maybe ninety. But I imagine this little gal and now I spy another are on their way in a migration that boggles the mind. I have a few things here for them to eat – fresh nectar in a feeder, some salvia, the agastache just planted, but I fear it's not enough or that they face so many obstacles of a human nature between here and south America (!) that,… Well, for now they can rest, eat a bit. Meanwhile, our native cardinals that look by comparison to be lunky avian tankers fly in and out of my field of vision. The hummingbird watches them, too.

~*~

259: September 16

~

This mushroom, so thick

and broad yesterday is full

of holes and insects.

~

Our new pup has a perilous predilection for mushrooms. Within these first couple of weeks, I've fished two or three from her mouth each day despite peering as sharply as I can at the areas she roams and attending closely to her every waking minute. She'd be a valuable truffle hound, I suppose, and could probably be trained to suss out the local morels. As it is, my goal is to shift her interest away from their siren song. To that end, I now carry a bottle of bitter apple spray whenever we're out on the acres that are her yard. It's supposed to be environmentally friendly and safe for her, too, even in the mouth (ugh). But I don't know. For one thing, it comes in a plastic bottle with a plastic pump – a mechanism that isn't even recyclable for starters. For another, I wonder: there are so many millions of tiny beings that contribute to healthy soils and such. I hate to hit them with this mix whose first ingredient is isopropyl alcohol. So it was with real reluctance that this morning I sprayed this mushroom I'd seen yesterday – a grand one, tall and thick in its cap. Already, within 18 hours or so, it had begun its decay, pitted and scarred in healthy decomposition – just the stage that I've learned she loves. The pup made a beeline. I sprayed. And cringed to see the panicked exodus of a whole lot of small black bugs. Peaches veered away, immediately repelled. It works, this spray. For that. But I feel bad for the bugs and for whatever other wild creature might eat mushrooms, might even depend on them. I just hope she's dissuaded from the whole business soon, and we can put the stuff away.

~*~

260: September 17

~

I am careful now

around the old stump, careful

to give the wasps room.

~*~

WEEK 38

261: September 18

~

Scrubby juniper

or maybe they're red cedar

rise, plucky and tough.

~

There's a big beech tree just off the driveway between the house and the road under which I spy a mini-forest of spike-needled evergreens. The shoots are new this year, somehow emerging with a tough hold from the ground knotty with roots and out of drought, no less. I'm impressed and already wondering to where I might transplant them.

~*~

262: September 19

~

Its eyes are tight shut -

by nature, this vole, or in

death? I'm not so sure.

~

And I'm not sure the nature of its death. The little thing lies on an asphalt trail through fields and a wood behind a set of houses. I think how easily we humans procure and use the poisons that we're told we must lest god-forbid we share our living space with any living thing other than what we call and control as a pet. Maybe it died because I hawk picked it off,… and dropped it for some reason. But to lie like this – I don't know.

~*~

263: September 20

~

Hummingbird, so bold!

hovering here in my face

I'll fetch your food now.

~*~

264: September 21

~

The night rain is warm.

my pants to mid-calf are soaked.

In wet grass I stand.

~*~

265: September 22

*

Later and later -

the sun takes more time these days

to crest the beech trees.

~*~

266: September 23

~

Scarlet tanager,

swamp sparrow, yellow warbler

really, are you here?

~

Among the birds just outside my back door that my "Merlin" app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology identifies are these. I would never have guessed. They're unusual in our area, and I don't see them; so though I hope that's who's calling in tones I don't recognize, I'm not sure. I read frequently now how diminished the numbers of the wild things with whom we've shared this planet. So I hope these folks are here,… and well.

~*~

267: September 24

~

The dogwood is ripe

with red berries calling, Here

birds please please come here!

~*~

 page.

WEEK 39

268: September 25

~

Brrr! The night air holds

less of day's heat, hints of days

cooler still. Ah, fall.

~*~

269: September 26

~

The Bradford pear is

mulch now, a heap of wood chips

much better for here.

~

There's a line of Bradford pear trees that runs along a border of this property. Sure they're striking in spring, all white blossoms and green leaves. They're old – planted by someone before my husband bought the place, so well before it became my home, too. The power company regularly hacks them back from the lines, and one – down by the mailbox had over recent years become another. It's not a tree that does much for the non-human natural world around here. Not at all. Arguably, on the contrary. So it was no-love-lost to mulch the errant tree and "clean up" a few of the others some months ago. Best of all, I've got a heap of mulch to use around the place – best use yet of a Bradford pear, 's far's I'm concerned.

~*~

270: September 27

~

So long as there are flowers,

in the front or on the drive,

the bee doesn't care.

~

I recently learned that "it just isn't done" at proper Southern homes to plant flowers in front of a house or at least nothing other than white and green. Me, I've never been much of a traditionalist when it comes to gardening. After a few grade-school years of planting in rows, my gardens – wherever I can make them – tend to be a hodpodge of things – flowers, shrubs, herbs, vegetables, perennials, annuals. Sure, I give a thought to how they look, but I've come to appreciate that my idea of beauty strikes some as out-of-control, wild and even "weedy." I don't deny it. At the same time and on the other hand, I could take issue with each. But who cares? Oh yes, the bee. And the praying mantis and the caterpillar and butterfly and bird and salamander and and and. And I do, too. Besides the play of textures and colors, the bouquet-ability of some, and all that, I find beauty in the wild folks who come to visit, the others who make a home in this midst.

~*~

271: September 28

~

Your cheeks like sunshine,

little bird in goldenrod,

are you heading south?

~

I didn't recognize the bird working its way through the stand of goldenrod on the side of my outbuilding office. So to the books I went. An old Audubon guide that I keep by the sink and double-checking on Google leads me to think it's a black-throated green warbler. If so, I suspect it's on its way to a warmer wintering ground. I hope it's getting what it needs for the journey ahead.

~*~

272: September 29

~

The cypress tree was

thirty-five hundred years old.

None of ours compare.

~

I read this morning about a bald cypress tree in Florida that folks called "The Senator," which stood nearly twelve stories high and had lived for over three thousand, five hundred years. It was named "The Senator" for a man who, with many other white men in the early twentieth century made a fortune from cutting down nearly all the others. In 2012, a woman who had loved the tree all the decades of her life crawled into its generous hollow, dark and cool, to take a hit of meth. The match she lit for light ended the tree's long life. The woman was, as you can imagine, reviled for it. She even did prison time for it. What a wonder such a tree! How I would love to walk in a forest of them. The woman whose match ended The Senator was not only heart-broken but viciously punished for it. I look around. I consider the forests I know – here in the mid-Atlantic, the east coast, even the wildernesses of northern Minnesota and Canada where I grew up. We have "old" trees here and there, grand, tall. But with few exceptions none is older than our nation. What of the rich white men who cut them all down? What of we today who insist our economies would collapse were we to forgo the fossil fuels whose burning is burning the oldest stands of forest across our country and beyond? What of what remains?

~*~

273: September 30

~

It's not much to look

at in rusty brown, but boy can

that little wren sing!

~*~

274: October 1

~

On the forest floor

a mushroom sprawls thick ribbons

where there had been none.

~*~

WEEK 40

275: October 2

~

Persimmons bend boughs

with orbs of orange-ing fruit

in the cool, fall air.

~*~

276: October 3

~

Boldly Spider walks

her tightrope between flowers

and a bowl of fruit.

~*~

277: October 4

~

In the early dark,

toad explores the patio,

hop and squat; hop, squat.

~*~

The pup is wound up. Still learning the ways of house training, it could be a sign of needing to go out. So I take her. Actually, I open the sliding glass door to the patio, then root around for my shoes. Mere moments, and she's captivated, pouncing. A squeak. She's already plucked the toad before I can reach her – and released it again, preparing for what she finds to be exquisite fun. The toad has fallen to its back and lies still, clutching its arms and legs tight to its chest and belly. I hate this sort of thing. But I gather the pup quickly, get her back inside, where through the window she watches every move. I try gently to lift the toad. Again that squeak I'd heard earlier – a chirp. That motion flips its right side up, and it hops – yay! but smack into the leg of the Adironack chair. I coax it, hopping to the edge of the patio, dreading how it might handle (or not) the steps. It doesn't do well. Off it goes and falls, pip-chirp onto its back again. Again, the pathetic clutching to itself. Determined now, I gather it as gently as I can, touching as little as I can, and carry it chirping all the way to the tall dewy grass. That's all I can do, I think, and watch it for a little while hop away.

~*~

278: October 5

~

Bees, thick as my thumb

gnaw through fruit sweetening by

the day – persimmons.

~*~

279: October 6

~

The horse chestnut sheds

brown leaves. Now, the hummingbird

feeder is quiet.

~*~

280: October 7

~

The hum of small things

at night seeps through the screen door

even when I sleep.

~*~

These cool evenings are one of life's great sweetnesses. When the house's HVAC is off, silent, and I can open it up to breathe with the world around, the hours feel deeper, more full. I'm not sure that I always rest better, but when I wait for sleep, I do so with more ease. We had a handful of cool nights some weeks ago, but then it got hot again. And my husband, who likes to sleep with the covers piled around but not on him, is sensitive to temperatures much below 65. So the nights that apply,… Well, I enjoy them when I can. There is a whole different soundtrack to the nights here than to the days. There are cicadas, for sure, for a good many months; and amphibians – frogs and toads from down around the pond. Crickets are part of it but also birds – a low honk here and there; my "Merlin" app has picked up screech owls – and foxes, I suspect are what yips and barks every so often from the woods. It's not exactly wild here, not as much as I'd like for the non-human neighbors that we have; but at least the nights, some, belong a little more to them. I fall asleep to the hush and whir of their busy-ness and wake to it again.

~*~

281: October 8

~

This evergreen white

pine broken on the ground, its

needles gone to rust.

~*~

WEEK 41

282: October 9

~

Somehow the chestnut

crab apple finds space enough

for roots on this hill.

~*~

The property where we live has likely had a house on it for a couple hundred years. One can see vestiges of the former occupants – the cinderblock square of an old foundation, a small brick circle, antique bottles that the groundhog digs up on the bank above the pond. Gardening is a hit-or-miss affair: the soil just outside my outbuilding office (the old kitchen) is great- loose and rich; whereas the soil where we'd plotted a vegetable garden is rock-hard clay. Next to it, just under a thin layer of topsoil is a the gravel of an old driveway. And here, in what seems to be strip down the hillside is a run of what looks to my unschooled eye to be chips of coal – hard and black as tar. It's where I chiseled out a spot to plant a chestnut crab. Painstaking work it is to lay the posts for its fence. But somehow the tree survives. Each year it climbs higher. I hope next will bring some fruit.

~*~

283: October 10

~

Hydrangea blossoms

turn to tissue, dusty rose,

in early fall air.

~*~

284: October 11

~

Talking through the woods

I notice less. Still, it's nice

to have company.

~*~

285: October 12

~

Squirrel clucks and scolds

from the safety of a branch

high above the path.

~*~

286: October 13

~

The great white pine lies

prostrate on the ground, broken

for others to eat.

~*~

287: October 14

~

Like hanging garlands,

pileated woodpecker

swoops the woods in flight.

~*~

288: October 15

~

With another turn,

the sky stains fuschia to pale

day again, but new.

~*~

WEEK 42

289: October 16

~

High up, on branches

thick and thin, squirrels dash like

there's nothing to it.

~

Gray squirrels are so common in our world that I rarely pay them any mind. But every so often, I stop just long enough to follow the quick flash of a tail, watch the little creature dart and dash through a maze of tree branches. Sometimes I take an extra minute to appreciate what beauty is theirs, and what bold athleticism! that they can run full tilt to the end of branch, hang on as it bends, and jump to another, all at several stories above ground. Here, now, two chase each other in wild pursuit along the limbs of the massive beech tree where, far below, mere inches off the ground, we've strung a hammock, so inviting.

~*~

290: October 17

~

Cut the persimmon

from a high branch, and it falls

with a solid thud.

~*~

Some of the best persimmons are out of reach. (Isn't that the way of things?) But my husband, a creature of handy gadgets, shows me the long clipper on a pole that's lived in the garage for as long as I've been around this place (longer). A string works the mechanism. So I stand with my feet splayed in the grass yet wobbling a bit this way and that – the gadget gets heavier with each foot I reach – until I've snagged a branch. With a controlled tug of the line, and a bit of luck, the peach-y orb comes tumbling through the branches to land on the rain-soft ground with the satisfying thud of a solid thing, if not at my feet, then somewhere around here,…

~*~

291: October 18

~

Leaves fall in treble

clef; the creek a clear tenor –

music in the woods.

~*~

292: October 19

~

Mist in the treetops,

mist over the water; sun-

rise sweeps it away.

~

Night times have rather suddenly become cold. Last got down into the thirties,… and we lost power. My husband woke me before six to say he'd called the outage in and was heading out. I lay in the still-dark and listened to the puppy, awake with a whimper from the floor next to the bed. There wasn't much I could do until the sun rose, and the bed was still warm, so I reassured her and we lay quiet in the dark. How soft the pillow, warm the covers, how cool my nose. I thought about the day ahead, the HVAC service call in the morning that I'd have to cancel, how I could make coffee with a match to the propane range and how little electricity mattered in the feeding and care of the dog. Her water bowl is full and the morning promised to be clear and warming too. When the first bits of light brightened the shades, we got up. I added a layer of clothes and walked in the heavy dew, grateful once again for the rubber boots I keep by the door. My breath rose in thick puffs of steam while Peaches darted about, nose to the ground, smelling the news of who'd passed through in the night. Back inside, with a steaming cup of coffee and the pup comfortably settled, I raised my head from yesterday's mail and today's news. Down the hill, across the water, high in the valleys between the banks of treetops, mist shifted. I never tire of looking at it, nor at the fingers of mist fluttering over the water's surface. Neither do I tire of watching the sun make its way (or rather, our planet's turn to reveal it) over the horizon and the tall beeches lining the lower drive. We'll have warmth again soon - the sun through these big windows – as the mist disappears.

~*~

292: October 19

~

A messy chevron

of geese stops the puppy in

her play with wild cries.

~*~

293: October 20

~

Mist in the treetops,

mist over the water; sun-

rise sweeps it away.

~

Night times have rather suddenly become cold. Last got down into the thirties,… and we lost power. My husband woke me before six to say he'd called the outage in and was heading out. I lay in the still-dark and listened to the puppy, awake with a whimper from the floor next to the bed. There wasn't much I could do until the sun rose, and the bed was still warm, so I reassured her and we lay quiet in the dark. How soft the pillow, warm the covers, how cool my nose. I thought about the day ahead, the HVAC service call in the morning that I'd have to cancel, how I could make coffee with a match to the propane range and how little electricity mattered in the feeding and care of the dog. Her water bowl is full and the morning promised to be clear and warming too. When the first bits of light brightened the shades, we got up. I added a layer of clothes and walked in the heavy dew, grateful once again for the rubber boots I keep by the door. My breath rose in thick puffs of steam while Peaches darted about, nose to the ground, smelling the news of who'd passed through in the night. Back inside, with a steaming cup of coffee and the pup comfortably settled, I raised my head from yesterday's mail and today's news. Down the hill, across the water, high in the valleys between the banks of treetops, mist shifted. I never tire of looking at it, nor at the fingers of mist fluttering over the water's surface. Neither do I tire of watching the sun make its way (or rather, our planet's turn to reveal it) over the horizon and the tall beeches lining the lower drive. We'll have warmth soon - the sun through these big windows, when the mist disappears.

~*~

294: October 21

~

Across the water,

one bare trunk catches the sun

and lays down its twin.

~*~

295: October 22

~

Kingfishers dart – one,

two – back and forth as if they

alone have the sky.

~*~

WEEK 43

296: October 23

~

Spider darts across

the page composing a tale

only it can read.

~*~

297: October 24

~

Horses trot along

the rise, heads bobbing, nostrils

full of autumn air.

~*~

298: October 25

~

The dogwood flames red,

sassafras in gold. Mocking-

bird flits between them.

~*~

299: October 26

~

Chickadee alights,

hops its round body front, back –

and is gone again.

~*~

300: October 27

~

This morning, the path

is even brighter with leaves

of gold than before.

~*~

301: October 28

~

What makes me look there

into the woods I don't know,

but a buck stares back.

~*~

302: October 29

~

Straight down the rain comes --

a world of pearls caught in sun-

light and the sky blue!

~*~

WEEK 44

303: October 30

~

"Like an elbow," we

say – this branch that overhangs.

But it is all tree.

~

There is a thick branch, moss covered where its bark doesn't see sun, that overhangs the narrow paved walkway at the edge of the natural area where I often walk. Today I walk with company – a wonderful friend I'm grateful to my husband for bringing into my life. She makes films and is in town only a matter of hours during our annual film festival. We talk about these things – stories as we saunter. She remarks, as so many do at the grandeur of this tree and at the peculiar branch that some time years ago jogged down, not up like all the rest. The result looks every bit like a human elbow. But of course, that's merely our anthropomorphizing at work again. The branch, beautiful and a marvel of physics against gravity, is pure tree.

~*~

304: October 31

~

The moon a sliver

slides in and out of my view

from behind the clouds.

~

Without alarm, I rise before the dawn and wander into the kitchen. I can't see her, but I hear the soft padding of our pup behind me. I fasten a leash to her collar, to her - exciting every time. It's not necessary the leash, not for her sake. But I wonder who among our wild neighbors might be in the yard somewhere in the dark, whom she might see and threaten in the ways our pets so cheerfully and unwittingly do. We stay near the house. She does her business without delay, and we head inside again. That's when I notice the moon. Standing at the kitchen island, it's a perfect crescent of white through the skylight. I'm not much for pictures, but the framing is too good to pass up. The automatic flash goes off to my dismay. I figure out how to disable that, and try again. The result is fuzzy. I simply watch for a while. Turns out, visible to me only by the hide-and-seek of the moon, clouds at the tail of the big storm we had the day before last still play across the sky. I get a good shot and send it to my sister. Mornings like this, I feel so lucky.

~*~

305: November 1

~

Turtle lies sunning

across the pond log until

we arrive. Then, plop!

~*~

306: November 2

~

Water fills the bowl

outside when morning mist gives

way to steady rain.

~*~

307: November 3

~

Frost bends the green blades

while bushy tails of golden

grass catch the first sun.

~*~

308: November 4

~

The path is winding

and dark; above, a lone bird's

call lifts up my eyes.

~*~

309: November 5

*

Leaves like paper bowls –

empty, ride the wind across

my path, catch again.

~*~

Presently underway.

WEEK 46

317: November 13

~

Atop a fence post

the red-shouldered hawk sits still.

Wind lifts its feathers.

~*~

318: November 14

~

Hawk hops in the grass, 

looks down - did it get away? - 

flies, holding nothing.

~*~

319: November 15

~

Fruit like ornaments,

jewels on the naked tree,

her skirt on the ground.

~*~

All of a sudden, the persimmon's branches bear nothing but orange fruit. The leaves fell gradually, then all at once. I can see the tree through my kitchen window, out over the grassy gravel where we used to park our cars, past the dog kennel where I've been waging war against English ivy, across a rocky stretch I'd planted in spring with myriad native wildflowers only a few of which made it past the foragers that roam here,... I can see the orbs on angled branches. And I think, Beautiful. Some little critter's been getting to the sweet fruit at night. But we've already eaten so many! and still there are more. I walk out to fetch a couple, still perfect. All around the trunk, in a graceful sweep across the ground, leaves lie – still with a hint of green – like the skirt of a woman undressed without shame.

~*~

320: November 16

~

Beavers have taken

alder from the bank spurring

new growth from old stumps.

~*~

321: November 17

~

Wood chips from the mulch

pile cascade under my spade,

weigh the wheelbarrow.

~*~

322: November 18

~

From where did these clouds

come – storming the horizon

while I stand in sun?

~*~

323: November 19

~

Onions shed paper

skin, dirt to dirt. Underneath

the white root is sweet.

~*~

WEEK 47

324: November 20

~

Squirrel hangs upside-

down turning a black walnut

bite, bite, watching me.

~*~

325: November 21

~

Long grasses bend low

in clumps the puppy explores –

like a hidden world!

~

It's cute, her fascination with pockets and tunnels in the grass, bent low now with age and winter's weight – burrowing her nose here, leaping to burrow there,… But I confess a certain ambivalence, new to me as I've begun to pay closer attention to the nonhuman natural world around. In short: our pets disrupt what is wild. I suspect that Peaches has found the scent of small mammals seeking shelter, warmth, and food in a trying season of cold and scarcity. Maybe she's following the scent of another's hunt – a fox, perhaps. Since bringing her home, I rarely see the old neighbors – the rabbits, groundhogs, occasional fox, the shy deer with their knock-kneed fawns. Some would say, Good riddance! to the digging and browsing in the garden and yard. But no. No longer. We need the wild and wild spaces as we never have before. Or rather, now that we know how rapidly they're declining, disappearing,… I'll enjoy this pup, enjoy her delight and circumscribe her effect as much as I can. She comes when I call, happily, joyfully joining me inside.

~*~

326: November 22

~

The woods are quiet

save for a few wintering birds

keeping company.

~*~

327: November 23

~

The sun rides low now,

finds new paths through leafless trees

to brighten short days.

~*~

328: November 24

~

Still the persimmons

hang, ever sweeter, frosted

anew each morning.

~*~

329: November 25

~

Wind in great gusts swirls

the Japanese maple leaves - 

a spiraling red.

~*~

330: November 26

~

A blanket of leaves

rust-colored and brown rustles

the trail where I walk.

~*~

WEEK 48

331: November 27

~

Stalks of goldenrod,

brown and dry, quiver with birds

on the search for food.

~*~

332: November 28

~

Out of thin air, drops

Spider on invisible

line she rappels down.

~

It's breakfast time, and I'm moseying around the kitchen gathering this and that – my coffee, some thick buttermilk, the last of the stuffing left over from Thanksgiving,… The sun shines straight through the sliding glass windows. I linger with pleasure in its heat, feel it softening my muscle-tight back, when a black speck drops straight down in front of me. It's a spider – perfect in form, its legs pulled in close. Near as I can tell, it's come all the way down from the high cathedral ceiling, a reclaimed wood panel with oodles of cracks and crevices for such a one to hide. I cannot see the thread that tethers it, so I run my hand like a magician, above it, and in this way, now hanging from me, I carry it to the garden outside. I hope it's not too cold, hope it finds good living out here.

~*~

333: November 29

~

Milkweed pods open,

spill their white silk parachutes –

hope, hope – to the wind.

~*~

334: November 30

~

What is this – white bits

outside on the chairs, table?

Foam? but no – it melts!

~

Eight-thirty, and the sun had barely crested the trees on the eastern slope. I noticed those tiny white pellets – a few here and there, scattered over the Adirondack chair, the wobbly wood folding table (that we never fold) with its semi-permanent cooling rack for a rotation of stock, pots of Bolognese, beans,… I noticed them with dismay. Bright white and perfectly round, they lay light as that Styrofoam that packs any and everything, that Styrofoam that never ever goes away, and I thought – it's here. The wind has carried the detritus of some package delivered nearby. But when I reached for a piece, Joy! it melted in my hand. Not quite snow, not rain, not sleet or freezing rain, but something in between, something for which some polar peoples surely have a word. For this morning, it's relief.

~*~

335: December 1

~

The sky hangs low with

a kind of waiting. I can't

help but hope for snow.

~*~

336: December 2

~

Among the dried husks

of flowers spent, dead a pair

of mockingbirds flit.

~*~

337: December 3

~

A doe grazes close,

and I can almost touch

wrens – but I'm too slow.

~*~

Is it the season? Deer who would bolt to flee or at least jog a distance from we humans hiking the wooded trails, stand seemingly unfazed as we walk by. And these birds – foraging low among old flower stalks wing only short distances. For my part, I'm slow, too. Oh, I can step lively on a walk. It's not that. It's the getting to the walk, getting to chores, getting to work. I'm trying to accept that this, too, is okay.

~*~

WEEK 49

338: December 4

~

Down steep banks, a stream

flows thin and covered with leaves,

but the dog finds it.

~*~

We've discovered a new trail not far from the house, a place I can bring the pup to get good and tired (tired and therefore good). It generally follows a river. Off that river tiny streams run to or from. This is one. A wooden foot bridge spans the banks. But the dog darts down and with muddy feet, drinks. You can tell it's a thrilling novelty to her, the feeling that she's discovered wild abundance. I hope her kitchen-tile, Turkish-carpet-padding paws don't disturb those for whom this stretch of fecund wet is all they have of food and home.

~*~

339: December 5

~

A cluck, cluck somewhere

in the thicket calls the bird-

watchers from their path.

~

Among my favorite stretches of this regional trail system: a broad field to the left, readying for native plantings to restore woodland. To the right, a broad swatch of scrubby trees and shrubs. Further past that, the river runs. From trail bends every so often, you can see the water – here wide, here narrow, fast, and slow. Other people are rare along here. But today, small clusters, bundled, binoculars around their necks and clutched in mittened hands walk and stop, walk and stop and lift their faces with all the adoration and hush of reverence. The dog and I pass quickly. When I hear, another quarter mile or so, a winsome clucking of to the right, I can imagine the delight, the eager attendance of those gentle bands of folks, and it gives me hope.

~*~

340: December 6

~

Wind whips through the beech

rattling the leaves as if

to say, almost time!

~*~

341: December 7

~

Between the steep banks,

over a ribbon of stream,

wren flies small and quick.

~*~

342: December 8

~

Pearls of sap trailing beads

harden along a gash stripped

naked by deadfall.

~*~

343: December 9

~

I've disturbed the hawk,

who rises with a wing-whoosh

screaming her grievance.

~

We're training the pup to recognize her property-play line. So, I'm focused on that, the leash-grabbing, bouncing bob of early morning energy. Suddenly, to our right, a flurry of wings, that distinctive whoosh. The red-shouldered hawk lifts from the grass and flies, crying, into the near woods. There she sits, high on a leafless branch, and berates us for so interrupting breakfast. With these cold nights, food is extra-critical. I can't blame her for the fury.

~*~

344: December 10

~

On the north-facing slope,

frost still coats the grass elsewhere

wet with beads of dew.

~*~

WEEK 50

345: December 11

~

In the early dark,

I cannot see the mouse but

hear it leap, now free.

~

There's a crunch to the lightly frosted grass. So even though I can hardly see the trap I've laid on the ground, can hardly tell that the doors are open, and cannot see at all the small dark shape of the portly mouse inside, I wait. A second, two, and there it is – the quick rustle of its body in the grass. A hop, and I know it's free.

~*~

346: December 12

~

In the crumbly dark

compost, hidden but not far

surprise – potatoes!

~

I'm a lackadaisical compost-tender, rarely "turning" the pile as advised, paying little attention to the optimal mix of "green" and "brown." I simply dump kitchen scraps and sometimes a heap of leaves raked from an area we prefer to green. So, today, when I actually determine to bury the stuff (including gone-bad grapes that I worry might make a wild thing sick), I pull back a thin layer of creeping Charlie (like I said: poorly tended), and drive in the pitchfork. Lifting the lush, dark dirt (still seems a miracle to me, that transformation), there it is – a perfectly formed potato dangling roots and babies, too. There are oodles, I discover, all volunteers from some old cast-off months ago, its above-ground plant now shriveled. I pull a few, replant some, and have them for dinner. What grace this earth extends. I don't deserve it.

~*~

347: December 13

~

Perfect paws, tiny

as the spots on my hands, step

shy into the world.

~

It's hard, toting young ones, the barely-not-a-baby mice, out into the yard to release them. Alone. But that's who's tripped the basement trap. The mouse's forehead hairs are smooshed a bit, like a part down the middle or a child's unruly cowlick. I think it's from pushing against the side of the trap. My heart hurts for the little guy, and I consider putting it back, returning it to the basement. I know how silly that is, though. Still, I lay out my hand thinking, If you step here, I will put you back to where's familiar and warm, maybe catch you later, full grown. And the tiny mouse does. Gingerly, its ribs panting, I feel those tiny feet the tinier toes, step onto my palm. Then, in a flash, it hops off again, burrows not quite out of sight. I turn my back and leave it there.

~*~

348: December 14

~

Fast, but unhurried,

the hawk sails inches over

the ground, up again.

~

My car heaves awkwardly over beech roots to a stop where I park it for the day. I've been in a foul mood – too little sleep, ornery over our persistent human failings, mine most of all. I've been flailing at the day so far, hustling but aimless. And I see it. The red-shouldered hawk, swift and smooth, no wasted effort and with perfect focus sails past me into the woods. God knows why, but I feel better for the sight of it. Sure, grateful.

~*~

349: December 15

~

Mountains like rippled

fabric drop away below

me, here in the sky.

~

It's really something, flying over the Blue Ridge Mountains that I so love to see from the ground. A person can almost imagine the push and pull of the earth's crust millennia ago as what I experience to be permanently fixed shifted this way and that. From here, those mountains could be the wrinkles in a tablecloth when you add that dining table leaf and push it back together for the holidays.

~*~

350: December 16

~

After rain, snow, and

great wind, the trail draws me while

the creek rushes on.

~

I've come to Duluth, Minnesota, where I grew up to help my parents settle into a new living space. Arriving last night, fog nearly obliterated the road. I expect snow here, snow everywhere. There still is snow around, in the fields and woods. But not much and shrinking. It's warm, in the high forties. My parents and I fret about travel – whether or not I should spend the night as planned in their old house; or to sleep on the sofa in their new apartment; whether or not we should all pack up and head down to the old house. The forecast calls for radical drop in temperatures, rain turning to snow, then wind. We stick with Plan A, and the weather delivers as planned. But it's more dramatic than I could imagine. Thunder, lightning, rain pounds the roof, the walls, the windows like a living thing angry and desperate. Somehow I sleep. In the morning, it's snow – but not the fluffy friendly stuff I remember. These are tiny flakes, pelting down and sidewise in ever more frigid temperatures with a wind that bats at the car I drive with both hands. I abandon plans to visit a friend and crawl the Prius up the hill to my parents. I slide past their driveway, make a three-point turn in the middle of the quiet road, and try again. The warmth of their room, their smiles are balm. After coffee, I bundle up. Walking is an adventure. Only a couple of blocks takes me to the head of the same creek-side, wooded trail we walked and sledded in my earliest memories. These woods are sheltered, quiet. Snow has gathered, hushed and white. The creek rushes under ice here, over rock there. My feet know the way. I'm home.

~*~

351: December 17

~

It's many stories

high now, this pine tree my dad

planted years ago.

~

We're early. It's cold – on the 'teens. My dad and I are meeting my sister and niece to walk along the creek trail I walked yesterday. But it'll be a while, and cold to simply stand here at the top of the creek, so we walk the short bit over a bridge and up the street to the first house I ever lived. We do this sometimes, to visit the tree my dad planted those fifty-odd (sixty-some?) years ago in the front yard. Today, the house's present owner is out, putting the finishing touches on holiday yard art: two tomte or trolls. They're adorable. Composed of sweeping pine branches like hair and beard, he's put red caps and mitts on them, potatoes for noses. I compliment him on them and introduce us. My dad tells him the story – he brought this great pine tree as a tiny seedling from a canoe trip in the BWCA, from Triangle Lake. The man pays close attention. "Triangle Lake?" he asks. He says he wants to remember. He's a forester and delighted to learn. I'm happy that he has.

WEEK 51

352: December 18

~

Moon and stars could not

be more clear tonight, over

the lake while I bathe.

~

I have never taken a bath in the tub of my parents' old house. Their bathroom has one of the best views of any in this house on the shore of Lake Superior. Tonight, on my sister's urging, I do. It's been a time, shuttling heavy and awkward objects from one place to another. My neck and shoulders ache, my thighs are tight, and I admit it's all a bit stressful. But I run a hot bath, light a candle for the corner, and ease in. Angled just so, I can rest my neck on the cool tub, while the heat of the water eases all my muscles, loosens the worry, too; and I can see the big moon so bright against the clear northern sky. For a time, there's no time, just the animal of my body suspended in simple water, gazing at an ancient sky.

~*~

353: December 19

~

All is still except

steam rising from my cup this

one morning moment.

~*~

354: December 20

~

The holly tree grows

thick along the low branches

I cut for Christmas.

~*~

355: December 21

~

Clouds cover the sun

but the wild things surely know

this night's the shortest.

~*~

356: December 22

~

Ragged blackberry stalks

stand dark against a golden

field waiting for trees.

~

Along this stretch of the local Rivanna Trail, volunteers have prepared a floodplain field for planting. The tall grasses and wildflowers have died, leaving a swath of pale stems and leaves that catch the sun gold. Rough stems of blackberry, dark, and ragged at the tops where a mower hacked them interrupt the golden tableau. In the midst, volunteers have planted hundreds of native tree saplings. I try to imagine how the years will transform this place. And more.

~*~

357: December 23

~

Along the sand, waves

roll in and out like ocean

breath. It stretches, sighs.

~

We've come to my husband's hometown of Virginia Beach for Christmas. Already, plans have changed. His mother, with whom we'd planned to stay, has Covid. We're lucky to get a room at a nearby hotel (due to a Covid cancellation, as it turns out). The hotel isn't quite on the ocean but close by. So we visit, of course. Standing on the shore, I feel the stretch of it, the long view, time drawn out further. We stand without speaking, and I can feel my breath match the waves. I could stay here long and long, but it's time to go back, pick up what pieces we can.

~*~

358: December 24

~

On the bay, one white

bird bobs up and down like

the waves that crest.

~

My husband's sister and husband live in a neighborhood tucked some blocks away from the ocean. It's a remarkable area. The size of the trees, towering pines especially, strike me every time. Their house is on a bay that's part of the greater Chesapeake Bay. The water shimmers this morning with sun and the white-capped waves of a windy day. I watch a bird surface and dive, surface and dive, every bit like the waves around. It feels like a game to pick it out from those white caps. Sometimes I find it, sometimes I cannot.

~*~

Week