In spite of grey skies, blueish snow and early- morning, under-cloud- light combine to color my garden several shifting shades of blue-grey.
Light grows and the garden starts to whiten. No deer as yet, but they aren’t far away.
Two big ginger cats, I think at first they are foxes, stalk their marmalade path through the trees towards the road. I have never seen them before. New neighbors?
One crosses the road but the other hesitates, then flees, as flashing school-bus lights bring normality back to my early -morning dream-filled world.
Fell softly, quietly, soundless, in the night. I knew it was there. A lightness in the air, a subtle change in the quality of light. Now everything has changed: yesterday’s bare trees wear their winter dresses, frilly tresses garnished with garlands of snow.
The deer will arrive, sooner or later. They always do. They troop from right to left, west to east, as day turns to night, then troop back, east to west, in morning light. They step dark and diligent, flitting shadows beneath snowy trees, one after another, forging a single passage from yard to road, crossing it, then vanishing into dark woods.
I saw them one night in a midnight dream. They stood on their hindlegs underneath the mountain ash and danced, so delicate, reaching up with long, black tongues, to steal bright berries from lower branches. They danced in a full moon’s spotlight and filled my heart with joy and pain. How I long to see them dance again.
Sometime, make the time to drive to Alberton where the Great Blue Herons stand thigh deep in the incoming tide. Lobster boats spark stars from the waves.
They white-water surge through a gap in the sandbank where the lighthouse stands red and white, outlined against blue sky, golden sand, sparkling bay.
Follow the fast-eroding coastline, a little less each year, past Jacques Cartier Park to Kildare Capes. Black-backed gulls ride shotgun on the red sand beach. Piping plovers charge up and down the wind-rush of surf digging for treasure, the crustaceans that will fill their bellies and enable them to survive their long journey south.
Head north past Sea Cow Pond to North Cape. Quixotic windmills wave their arms, like giants. The sand and pebble reef stretches its low-tide footpath out to the lazy seals basking in late summer warmth. Sea-birds seethe in great white clouds while fishing boats bob on wild waves and a black horse hauls Irish Moss off the beach to be sun-dried on the shore.
An osprey hovers, drops its lightning bolt to spear a flapping flounder on sharp claws. The magic of that great bird’s fall and rise will drive a wedge through your heart and split it open.
My family never forced me underground. Nobody ever made me kneel at the coal- face altar and worship, on my knees, that grimy god with its coal-black soul.
A child in body and heart, nobody ordered me to squirm down diminishing seams, much too narrow for men or machines and fitting only for the smallest child.
Fitting indeed, an early coffin, made to measure, lying in wait for the slightest slip of the rocks above or below. Tight fitting, indeed, no wiggle, wriggle room.
Billy Blake, my mate from Trinidad, younger than me, saw the black faces of miners emerge from the mine, enter the pit-head baths and come out white.
He, too, wanted to be white. He dug underground, grew even blacker, went into the showers, gouged his black skin, drew rivers of blood, never changed color.
He died when the roof above him fell without warning. They pulled him out. Brought him to the surface. Prepared him for burial. Wrote on his tombstone:
“His body was as black as night, but oh, his soul was white.”
Snow geese falling, plummeting from the sky, dropping like leaves, slowly and tumbling, swiftly and twisting, spiralling down. Fresh snow on the ground, their seasoned arrival.
Some land on water, others on the earth. They gather in groups, snow banks of geese, ghost-white, frightening, true sky lightning, celestial, striking from its ancestral throne.
Always some sentries, necks stretched, eyes open, alert, watching, guarding their needs while the flock feeds. One honks “Who goes there?” the flock looks up, watching him move.
Slowly, at first, they waddle from the walkers, then faster and faster as the man unleashes his hounds. An idiot woman, grinning like a death’s head, points her cell phone and barks instructions.
The dogs run at them, barking and growling. The snow geese panic, run ever faster, taking to the air with a clap-wing chorus, honking and hooting. The woman laughing, shouting
and shooting. “I’ve got them, I’ve shot them,” she calls in her pleasure. Frustrated, the hounds take to the water. Whistling, calling, the man cannot catch them, not till they tire of the chase,
no match for geese, not in air, nor in water. Joyous the couple, their videos made, hugging, cuddling. They get back in the car, dogs shaking, spraying them, baptismal water, cleansing all guilt.
One of my best friends came over today and we talked. We also went out shopping: blinds and curtain rails. I can no longer put them up. He can. We had a fun time. So much exchange of information in the car and in the store and afterwards, coming home.
We left the mounting of blinds and curtains for another day. But I invited him to choose a painting from my collection to recompense him for his time, his care, his attention, his help, and to thank him for his friendship and his reaching out. He chose this one, Spirit Dance, the one above, quite unique, one of my favorites. It was one of two that he liked. This was the other to which he aspired.
I asked him to help me choose a painting for the cover of my last book, Stars at Elbow and Foot, and this is what he selected. It is now on the cover of the book. He has a great eye for art. Well, it matches mine and he chooses my favorites. So I am happy with that.
But my Thursday Thought is this: in writing we say “kill your darlings”. Meaning, there are some great ideas in our poems, stories, novels, but they don’t quite fit. We love them. But we must kill them and cut them out. Sure we save them for later, but oh, do they ever belong.
I have never sold a painting. I cannot say ‘money talks’ like another of my friends, because to me it doesn’t. El Poema de Mio Cid: ‘partieron como la una de la carne‘ — they parted like the nail from the flesh. But, as another friend of mine, a preacher, said, when I visited my father in hospital: “there are no pockets in shrouds — you can’t take it with you.”
I am grateful to my friend for accepting the gift of my painting. I know he will cherish it and that it will be happy with him. But oh, I miss it. No: I don’t want it back. I want it loved and appreciated and yes, I know that when I go, I will not be able to take it with me. Nor any of the others. Does anybody want to adopt them, my beloved children?
Water: does it remember when the earth was without form and darkness lay upon the face of the deep?
Water gathered into one place and the firmament appeared. Then light drifted apart from darkness and with light came The Word, more words, and then the world …
… the world of water in which I was carried until the waters broke and my life sustaining substance drained away ejecting me from dark to light.
Here, in Oaxaca, the valley’s parched throat longs for water, born free, yet everywhere imprisoned. It languishes in bottles, tins, jars, and frozen cubes, its captive essence staring out with grief filled eyes.
A young boy on a tricycle pedals past my apartment. He carries a dozen prison cells, each with forty captives, forty fresh clean bottles of warm water. “¡Peragua!” he call out to me. “¡Super Agua!” he holds out his hand and asks me to pay a handsome ransom to set some of these captives free.
Real water yearns to be released, to be set free from its captivity, to trickle out of the corner of your mouth, to drip from your chin, to slip from your hand and seek sanctuary in dust and sand.
Real water slips through your hair and leaves you squeaky clean. It is a mirage of palm trees upon burning sand. It is the hot sun dragging its blood red tongue across the sky and panting for water like a great big thirsty dog.
I have been revising lots of mss. but haven’t done anything new, apart from revisions and paintings. Very little has appeared on my blog recently and this is the first post after an absence of five days. Oh dear. Facebook has been barren too. Still: can’t be helped. Better days are on the way.
Here’s Worm Squirm. It’s part of my series of Pocket Paintings / Peintures de Poche, so-called because they all fit neatly in a pocket. They are easy to carry around and yes, I have something bright to look at, even when the skies are grey. Inner grey or outer grey, there’s nothing worse than a grey day. Everybody needs a spot of painted sunshine to brighten a grey day when it dawns.
It’s been a great year for painting foliage, too. Nothing better than to carry a pocketful of painted leaves to remind you of the natural beauties of our picture province. So make it a sunshine day, even if the skies are grey!
Who has seen the early spring wind drifting its thought-clouds across the grass, moving shadows over the lawn’s green, thrusting spikes.
Sometimes, I speak my thoughts aloud, hoping that nobody can hear or see them as they leave migratory footsteps across my mind.
Autumn now and I watch the wind twist leaves from the tree. Yellow and red, they flee from me. I do not understand their reluctance to stay, their urge to tear away and leave. The birds must leave for they cannot bear the cold, cannot stay without food.
At night, when I close the garage door, I sing hymns to the trees and to him who always hears. Each note forms like a pea in the pod of my throat and launches itself skywards, migrating upwards, in a feathered flock that celebrates in songs.
Words, migrant birds, their flight unplanned, will not stay still, will neither perch, nor gather, nor feed from the outstretched hand.
rogermoorepoet 