When the Seasons Overlap

One goes down in orange flames,
the other arises in wet white and
the melancholy creeps into your present tense:

The autumn your bones hurt to the marrow,
the winter you bloomed in the brief daylight,
with mouthfuls of bitters, eyefuls of beautiful children.

The days you lost, the reinvented joy,
the unopened books,
a bird singing in the night.

Out of purple darkness the world
turned to face the sun again, and
everything and nothing had changed.

The miles and years like graffiti on your skin,
the generosity of prayer days,
bent on your knees before a creation sky.

And this is what God does:
sends you on a journey in a homeward direction,
makes the dark a light in you,
sings you resurrection songs
until the urgency has passed.

Look Up

Pull your eyes away
from electronic interlopers.
Stave off all urgent replies and forwards.

Gently lay your burdens down
as a baby enveloped in a crib
of blankets and soft comforts.

Guide yourself out where
the humid winds move through you
like shape-shifters,

and the spring peepers
noisily mate in the twilight.
Look up, look up.

Don't wonder how it happens
every night of your life.
Don't say it's beautiful.

Say nothing at all.
Forsake the moment.
Disremember the day.

Look up, look up.

For the Love of Winter

My abundance is in winter.
I dwell in the peace of the silent snow,
sitting by the yellow light of a lamp
with a blanket and a book,
or comfortably close to him on the love seat.

I find joy in the lack of humidity and
the offensive noise of lawn mowers.
I feel happy covering my homely limbs
with sweaters and jeans instead
of sticky sunscreen and sweat,
and justified in drinking another hot tea.

There is beauty in the stark outline
of trees and squirrels against whiteness,
or watching my little dog sniff deer tracks
and race inside with a snowy nose.

To come out of the quiet cold
into a warmth of a home,
to hear the furnace kick on,
to snuggle up to a warmer body
under chilly bedsheets
is the abundance of winter.

Reluctance

by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the wood
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less that a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

It's Finally Spring in Cleveland!!

I just read a book by Mark Winegardner called "Crooked River Burning." It's a novel set in Cleveland and mentions every single Cleveland memory I have and every Cleveland event and celebrity from my childhood. Interesting. Here's a paragraph from the book that I could really relate to:

SUMMER NIGHTS! What is there to say about summer nights in Cleveland. This: Rock it, daddy-o! In Cleveland there is no spring. In Cleveland there is winter, then a wetter, meaner sort of winter (to be a Clevelander is to have a story about a ten-inch snowfall in April that you endured with good grace, a story you tell whenever the chance arises, to horrify Sun-belt pantywaists.) Then one day winter/wet-winter ends and, bingo-bango, it's summer time. After enduring what a person made of less-stern stuff than a Clevelander would confront in five winters, ten winters, maybe even a lifetime of winters, you've by god, earned your nine and one-half paradisiacal weeks of nighttime glory. You're Goldilocks baby, and you've spent some twenty-some weeks in the too-hard bed and twenty-some weeks in the too-soft, and you hit the sheets on Baby Bear's bed and you can't believe how heavenly it feels to feel just right. Just right!

But this an't no fairy tale, jack. Get your fairy tales the pantywaist hell out of Cleveland.

Summer 2010 Miscellany

We just completed our 8th annual bocce tournament to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association. (Yes, we have an 80' court in our back yard) This is Nick, one of our scorekeepers. Through the great generosity of neighbors, friends and family we raised over $5000 this year - in the pouring rain. My husband and stepson will present the check at the local station for Jerry Lewis's Labor Day telethon. (You can see the coveted bocce ball trophy on the far left.)

These fellows were sitting outside a Starbucks, untethered, waiting patiently for their master. I don't know about you but I've never had a dog that would do that.

I enjoyed the fragrance of this gardenia bush all summer. If I brought one blossom inside it would fill a whole room with its lovely scent.

A hybiscus is the most generous plant I've ever had. It gives you new flowers every single day. It particularly enjoyed the heat and humidity of Summer 2010. (I did not however.)

Turnings

This is the poem I wrote for my son's wedding.

They started in the last season of childhood;
she in a red dress, he in a white suit,
a lovely Mexican flower, a boy with drumming passion.
The spring sun enveloped them in its light and warmth;
a harbinger before the changes, before the growing,
in a sacred turning only God understands.

Now, in this summer of committment they have brought
unguarded hearts, burgeoning dreams,
and Providence has arrived.
Surrounded by fragile hopes and tender mercies
the thread between heaven and earth is spliced into
this moment, tethered to the cradle of a united life.

In the sweet shelter of autumn, some days
will be hungrier than others, and on those days,
burrowing into their home, folding into each other,
they will lift up their eyes, palms raised and open,
and weave themselves together like a bountiful basket
as if they could hold love in their arms.

The winter solstice has not yet come,
but when it does they will not be alone.
Traveling through wind and snow, coming home to love,
they have found something as never-ending as the seasons,
for brought to each new awakening is the
fellowship in mere living, the survival of being loved.

Earth Day - TULIPS!

A Prayer in Spring

Robert Frost (1915)

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

The Long Winter

Winter had lasted so long that is seemed it would never end. It seemed that they would never really wake up.
In the morning Laura got out of bed into the cold. She dressed downstairs by the fire that Pa had kindled before he went to the stable, They ate their course brown bread. Then all day long she and Ma and Mary ground wheat and twisted hay as fast as they could. The fire must not go out; it was very cold. They ate some course brown bread. Then Laura climbed into the cold bed and shivered until she grew warm enough to sleep.
Next morning she got out of bed into the cold. She dressed in the chilly kitchen by the fire. She ate her course brown bed. She took turns at grinding wheat and twisting hay. She did not ever feel awake. She felt beaten by the cold and storms. She knew she was dull and stupid but she could not wake up.

from The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
(now doesn't that make you feel better?)

Winter

Slash of scarlet
bird in a mass of gray twigs
deer, like tree stumps blend
at rest on a cold cotton mattress
bough to toothpick painted
to the edge white to the tip
heavy laden and bowing to their Maker

a robin living on the piece of
startling green by the septic tank
picnic tables smothered and flying creatures
clutter and waltz at the feeders
sunless months our skin
as sallow as the sky
quiescent neighborhoods hibernate
in primitive search of warmth

on the silent journey
flakes continue like fairies lacking restraint
in a freefall to earth
circling down slower than gravity allows
and sometimes a tuft is released
from a branch carried by the cold
across our path in the unchanging
quarter pattern of the Ohio winter

Winter Wonderland

I love snow and always revel in it, but I honestly cannot remember a winter as beautiful as this one. For a week the snow never stopped. Over 25 inches accumulated here. But the amazing thing was that there was no wind, so every flake stayed right where it landed on its journey from heaven. Unusual creations were formed on every flat surface, and on every tiny twig of each tree and bush. I could not stop taking pictures of the beauty outside every window of my home and I wanted to share some with you - although photographs don't really give you the wonderment of seeing it all around you as it has here since New Year's Day 2010. In the last photograph - those two white bumps are our picnic tables! And in the first and third pictures there are chairs and a grill under those white blobs.

December Lament

It's the funeral march towards the end of the year,
just a number, just a month, with joy to the world

and a slithering trail of regrets gaining on me
like a holiday rattlesnake about to strike, sending poison

to the veiny, icy backs of my hands. Visions relentlessly
knock at the frosted windowpane in my mind

not of fairies and plums, but that first wet snowflake
on the windshield, that sudden chord of a song,

a broken ornament, children who are no longer children,
what the year was not and someone who is not here.

Silent snow falls on my winter sorrows, until I look up
from my lament and see God in your eyes.

Random Photo Saturday

Stella rolling in the grass - must be nice to be a dog...

Tinker's Creek Gorge in Bedford - a view like this is pretty rare in flat northeast Ohio. It was a misty night, but still a lovely sight.

YELLOW (around my house)

NEO Leaf

I've lived in northeast Ohio my entire life and I don't think I've ever seen a leaf this big! It's a yummy-smelling sycamore (just the leaf, not my foot.)

Lake Erie

A last summer day on the shores of Lake Erie. Cleveland always gets a bad rap - but look what we have so close to home.

More Memorial Day Weekend

The beauty a surprise every spring.

My new swan planter.

I painted the bocce court yesterday and my back is remembering today.

Half the pile gone, half to go!

Memorial Day weekend is a time for homeowners to get the mulch down, rake out the leftover leaves of last fall from the gardens, paint decks, drag out hammocks and chairs - but in our hearts we're saying "thank you" to our veterans, old and young, with a prayer that someday there will be no more new veterans to thank.

To This May

by W.S. Merwin

They know so much more now about

the heart we are told but the world

still seems to come one at a time

one day one year one season and here

it is spring once more with its birds

nesting in the holes in the walls

its morning finding the first time

its light pretending not to move

always beginning as it goes

Lake Effect

One of the wondrous things about living in Cleveland is that there are two distinct sides - east and west. Everything is different about these two sides including the weather. The eastern suburbs, where I have lived all my life, are blessed with something we like to call "lake effect weather". Here is what happens: some sort of weather comes waltzing down from a northern state or country and dances its way across Lake Erie. While it is over the lake it gets thrown around like a chicken breast in a bag of Shake and Bake. Then the bag unceremoniously dumps its contents on the eastern suburbs, usually in what we like to call the Snow Belt. Here is a poem I wrote a few years back about such an event. If it's a warm sunny day where you are just get down on your knees and thank Someone.

It snowed all day on April 24, 2005

in spite of the fact that I was wearing

my flip-flops and would be doing so

straight through October, no matter what.

My feet literally free of

winter's ponderous burdens.

Easter was long gone and we

were wearing white again.

That day and the next

remains of daffodils did not peek

out of the snowdrifts with happy faces

reaching towards the sun

but were splattered and flattened into

soggy piles of mud and ice.

Hardwood boughs broke, pines and willows

were amputated of every appendage.

I saw the pink of magnolias in full bloom

fill the bed of a truck. The yellow forsythia

swooped to a ground view they had

never seen before.

Baby leaves were murdered and ripped

from their nourishing twigs.

Yards littered in wooden crisscrosses, like

giant toothpicks or as in a game of pick-up-sticks.

There was no electricity or school

as we waited for power lines

to be disentangled from leaning towers

and aberrant formations.

The next day is was 50 degrees and the melting music

of thumps and thuds and power saws played all day.

In a battle on the Northcoast

of Ohio, the trees lost.