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.
North Wind descended from the pole sending its wolf pack through snow- bound trees. Listless, they stood there, then wind and wolves came, cutting and shuffling, playing snap-the-branch, chase-the snow-flake, and strip-jack- naked. Wolves danced on their hind- legs, round and round, shaking trees, biting at branches, testing winter games until trees stood naked, stripped of snow, tresses and garlands gobbled and gone.
Oh the wickedness of winter, its cold- cut cruelty, the lash of the wind, ice- pellets hurled, picketing fences, pecking a wild winter-song, forlorn in its fury, its pace, its power, its reckless race to hurl everything away, out of its way, snow twisted, tormented, twitching its snake-way down barren highways devoid of secret places in which to hide tender faces from the North Wind.
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.
Just out today, thanks to my good friend Jared who turned a difficult task into a simple one. And yes, this is my first art book, though there are two more, at least, to come. Thanks to Patti too for the delightful portrait of the author as a flower-child. That was some time ago. This is a very limited edition. Best friends only – BFF. NB The photos are rotten. I apologize for that. However, the cartoons are very special. Here are the two on Climate Change, much debated, sometimes denied, but all too true for this poor snowman.
Climate Change aka
“I won’t believe in climate change until April or May.”
This was a totally new experience: a poem written over a painting that linked visual to verbal. I tried several versions of the words and have come up with a better one… but, once the words are on the canvas, it’s so hard to change them. The spoken word, once loosed, can never be recalled.
Our New Brunswick leaves have gone already. We are looking at ships’ masts, sails unfurled, in an anchored harbor. Further south, Thanksgiving is here. My distant neighbors and friends are contemplating turkeys and family gatherings and all that is good about harvest festivals and the end of the productive year, the agriculturally productive year, that is. Below them, in Mexico, the land of four continuous harvests, growth continues.
The cycle of the seasons rolls on and on. In the British Isles Woodhenge has turned into Stonehenge. Four thousand five hundred years of history measured in stone circles, seasonal star and sun points, times for sowing and harvesting. Absolutely bewilderingly marvelous. More than 5,500 standing stone calendars can be found in those islands.
And here, in my painting, leaves, letters, words deliver a message of intertextuality. Change is upon us. We live with it, focus on it, describe it in words. Each letter, each word, is a leaf on the tree, falling or soon to fall.
Autumn Leaves
Catch them if you can.
Catch them while you can.
Autumn Leaves. Don’t grieve. Close the door when she is gone.
She surveys her empire from a tall tree, then steps into space, plunging her body’s weight downwards, diving into fragile air.
A feathered arrow, she makes contact, feet first, and pins the unsuspecting robin to the ground. His shrill shriek emerges from a beak that shreds failing life.
The hawk’s claws clench. Her victim weakens. His eyes glaze over. One final spasm, a last quick twitch, the robin is gone.
One wing drags, flaps weakly, borne skywards in the hawk’s triumphant claws.
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.
rogermoorepoet 