spring

Cry

/ Fran Haley / 28 Comments

Originally composed and posted as “The cry” on Saturday, February 27, with thanks to Ruth at SOS – Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog for the initial inspiration to “write fast.” Reposted here today as a reminder that revision is also writing…

I heard it again. It stirred me from my luxurious Saturday-drowse. A loud cryyyy cryyy cryyy from the backyard, or very nearby. I threw off the blankets and ran out on the deck, promptly soaking my socks in the day-old rainwater.

I dreamt, once, that I was standing here exactly like this, looking up at the northwestern sky, when an eagle flew by. Bald eagles do live around here. I have seen them on occasion. I’m convinced that an eagle’s (big, sloppy) nest is on the top of a water tower on the highway around the bend. In my dream, I was awed by the eagle and knew it portended something good.

But eagles don’t have the beautiful, poignant cryyy cryyy cryyy I am hearing on this early, pearl-sky morning. All other life seems to be slumbering but for this phantom bird, the lusty rooster across the street, and me. Day is just barely fading in.

It cries again, in the stillness. The air rings with its sharpness, with the curve and edge of it.

It’s a hawk. It has to be. I’ve seen several in recent weeks, since the turn of the year. During an icy spell in January, when I went for a short walk in thin winter sunlight that gilded the bare trees and glittered on the grass, I watched a hawk gliding low overheard, never flapping its wings, staying aloft as if by magic.

Returning to the warmth of the house in my sodden socks, I make coffee and settle at my laptop to search.

Definitely not an eagle. That call is feeble in comparison to the one I just heard. I know hawks’ voices are dubbed for eagles’ in movies.

Not a red-tailed hawk, though. What a hair-raising, harrowing scream.

Then… yes!

A red-shouldered hawk. Fluid, syllabic, downward inflection. Exactly what I heard from somewhere over in the smattering of pines between my neighbor’s house and mine, where I dreamed the eagle flew. I’d rather hear this cry even if I cannot see the hawk. The sound scrapes against my heart. 

It has something to do with the aching aliveness of things, despite the hawk being a predator. If I want to focus on symbolism, there’s a lot: intuition, spirituality, power…

But now, now, as the rooster picks back up with his daylong rusty-bugle solo (that’s one vigorous creature!), there’s a familiar cheep cheep warble at the front door, so happy and so loud that it seems almost to be in my house.

The finches! They made their annual nest in my door wreath last spring but didn’t lay eggs as in previous years, when I held my granddaughter up to see the nestlings. For some reason, they disappeared. And left me bereft. One more little layer of heartache in a deeply heartrending year. When I took the wreath down in the fall, I mourned over the perfect, unused nest.

I saved it. I couldn’t toss such artistry away.

I put my spring wreath up early. Like, at the end of January.

When I went to look for the chattering finches just now, I couldn’t see them any more than I could see that hawk this morning; I believe the little birds were sitting in the wreath, voicing (to me) their delight. 

There’s likely to be babies at my door by Easter.

And, I hope, somewhere high in the lonesome pines.

Red-shouldered hawk. Don Miller. CC B

*******

The annual Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers is underway, meaning that I am posting every day in the month of March. This marks my fifth consecutive year. I’m experimenting with an abecedarian approach: On Day 3, I am writing around a word beginning with letter c.

Periwinkle

/ Fran Haley / 23 Comments

Last week of February.

Winter wears on.

Trees hold up their naked, skeletal branches, exposing clumps of old birds’ nests. The world is colorless, like a vintage film, a study of grayscale contrasts. Only the pines, bent by a recent glazing of ice, remain green. My backyard is littered with their brokenness. Tufts of needles and a couple of large boughs are strewn across the dead, mud-puddled grass.

It is a time of enduring.

Little things go a long way.

I’ve written of the stab of joy on seeing a bluebird, that brilliant dash of color against this dreary backdrop, as something to treasure each day. Now, despite the cold, an unseen bird nearby sings a bright song to usher in the dawn while it is still dark: cheer cheer cheer… a cardinal. Another favorite bird. I long for its vivid red. Just this week I also heard the first metallic honk, honk of Canada geese, returning to nest.

Spring is afoot, aflight, audible, if not yet visible.

And then there is the flower.

I thought it was my eyes playing tricks.

In the old weathered pots on the back deck, amid the ruins of my geraniums, the trailing Vinca still lives. Pale, leafy strands spill across the boards like errant strands of hair. And in one pot… a spot of… what is that color? Lavender?

A closer examination: Two little periwinkle blooms. Five-petaled. Most unexpected. The vines weren’t blooming when I planted them in early summer. I honestly didn’t know they would. This necessitates research: Vinca blooms in “late spring through summer.”

Mine is blooming while it is yet winter. Surely a there’s metaphor in it. As in the cardinal’s bright song in the dark, just before light. Like the bluebird’s welcome spot of color, popping against the blah. More research, because for me symbolism has an irresistible allure: The color periwinkle represents serenity, calmness, winter, and ice. The flower itself, sentimental memories, nostalgia, new beginnings. I read that it can also represent mental acuity. That’s certainly welcome. In the Middle Ages periwinkle was associated with the Virgin Mary; look for these little blooms beside her in old stained-glass windows. The vine’s very name, Vinca, comes from the Roman word for “binding.” Garlands were made of it, for dead children as well as for criminals on their way to execution—good heavens. This pierces me; I shudder. More shades of Mary’s own story, that…we are, after, all barely a week into Lent.

I shall think of this as winter’s funerary flower, then. A little blue-violet garland on the season’s icy brow, bidding adieu.

In place of a eulogy for winter…note Wordsworth’s inclusion of the periwinkle in “Lines Written in Early Spring” (read the whole poem to see what it is really about):

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, 
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; 
And ’tis my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes. 

The birds around me hopped and played, 
Their thoughts I cannot measure:— 
But the least motion which they made 
It seemed a thrill of pleasure. 

All I know with certainty is that this little bloom, accompanied by increasingly-present birds, brings a thrill of promise.

*******

-with gratitude to the weekly Slice of Life storytellers at Two Writing Teachers, a bright spot in every week.
Here’s to the upcoming daily writing challenge in March!

First bluebird

/ Fran Haley / 19 Comments

Today
when I rose
it was
not dark

Windows backlit
winter-pale, eggshell
embryonic
but light

Still cold
beyond the blankets
when I open
the blinds

To find
a bluebird
resting on
old deck railing

Plump and poised
for one long minute
his feathers painted
with sky and rust of earth

Little harbinger
on weatherworn wood
-while it is yet winter
spring is yawning

I hold my breath
in shell-light, shivering
as the promise
takes wing, and flies

*******

A bit of rough-draft offering for Poetry Friday.
Thanks to Jone Rush McCulloch for hosting.

Photo: Bluebird. Rick from Alabama. CC BY. – because I couldn’t get to my camera in time. The poem is my snapshot.

The rocker

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

First, the light.

More of it each day. Driving the darkness away with its gentle appearing, rousing bright-eyed birds earlier and earlier, which respond in uninhibited chirps, songs, chatter. New day new day new day day day …

It’s a beautiful time to be alive. To be reborn. To mark having been born.

“What do you want for your birthday?” asked my husband.

“New rocking chairs.”

I’d been thinking on it.

The old chairs on the front porch are cracked, broken, portions held in place with wood glue. Time for them to go. Time for new ones. I want to sit outside in the light, in the breeze, even though it remains oddly chilly, to hear the birds, to see Papa Finch alight on the roof. I hear him before I see him; I wonder what his loud twitter means but I always answer, “Hi Finch!” Then there he is, tiny brown creature with his chest faintly dusted red, sitting high above the garage against the cloudless blue sky, looking directly at me. The porch is part of his domain. Sometimes from inside the house I hear his loud chirp; looking through the window, I find him sitting on the white porch rail. I suspect he’s eyeing the front door wreath for his bride’s nest. Although I took the wreath down for the winter, I’d left the old nest from last year attached. With the coming of March, and with great care, I put the faded, bird-loved wreath back in hopes that the nest would be reused. It hasn’t. So I removed it to make way for new.

Like my rocking chairs.

When my granddaughter visits now, it’s only on the front steps for a while, until the coronavirus social distancing expires. She comes with eyes full of spring light, as blue as the sky above my finch, who never fails to join our gathering and to add his voice to the conversation.

“That’s a loud bird!” says my granddaughter, age four.

“He is. Look, there he is, on the roof. Hi, Finch!”

And in these bright little moments, I revel in the poetry of life, that this bird (I wonder if he was one of the previous hatchlings from my wreath? ) should be a mainstay. Especially as my granddaughter’s name is Scout. Yes, from To Kill a Mockingbird. Whose last name was … Finch.

I want sturdy chairs on the porch, for resting. As a place to quiet my mind with the greenness of the grass in the yard and over where the path leads round the pond through greener trees. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul … To share with my granddaughter as she grows, to have coffee with my husband who almost didn’t live to see another spring. To celebrate living, being, enduring. To converse with generations of finches who’ve chosen to make my home theirs. To know, as evening falls, and I must go in, that I savored the gifts of that day to their fullest, their deepest.

My husband bought the chairs.

“We’ll put the old ones on the back deck,” he told me.

I wanted to say Why, they’re held together with glue, they’ll last maybe three days out there with no shelter, let’s just throw them away. But I didn’t. He wants to keep them, for some reason …

Truth is, the old chairs look kind of nice on the back deck by the flowerpots. For ever how long they last out there.

It was the rocker nearest the kitchen that made me realize.

Thump thump. Thump thump.

Dennis the dachshund woke from his sleep in a patch of sun-stripes at the back door. Ears perked.

“What is that?” I asked him from my chair at the kitchen table, where I was typing on the laptop.

Rising, looking through the window.

The rocker, rocking all by itself.

Thump thump. Thump thump.

The other rocker opposite sat motionless.

The wind, I thought.

Second thought: Why this rocker and not the other?

Third thought: Is the wind — or something — IN that chair?

It reminded me that I’ve always wanted to write a collection of ghost stories. An incongruous thought on such a bright, gold-green day.

Then.

How have I missed it?

For all the weeks—months—of the wind’s extended gusting and moaning under the eaves, unlike I’ve ever heard it before, I failed to notice it had stopped. All through the COVID crisis it’s been a grieved entity, swirling around my house in desperation, haunting my spirit with its voice, agitating the tall pines.

It’s still here, as my rocking chair can attest. But subdued.

Perhaps the wind has decided to sit a spell and rest. Perhaps the rocker was an invitation.

I am not sure we are friendly, yet, the wind and I, but I will offer it hospitality as long as it’s a benevolent guest. Is it taking up residence here, like the finches?

Perhaps I will take my coffee out there one afternoon and ask—begging the wind’s pardon, of course—why it cried so long and so hard.

But as I have no wish to stir anything up, maybe I’ll just let the wind rock to its heart’s content, in peace.

Morningsong

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

Waking
to grayness
rain slapping windows
winter wind crying
because it does not heed
spring
and life.
Wrapped in my blanket
I listen
to that unrelenting wind
daring
not caring
moaning
mourning
around the edges
of existence.

—then—

Through the
gusting gloom
wailing doom
a faint sound.
A solitary
little bird
singing
joy joy joy-joy-joy
honoring
the light
ever
how dim.

Bird singing in the rain. Andy Morffew. CC BY

On the finches not returning

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

Today I lift a line from Emily Dickinson.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
My finches, every spring—
On my wreath their nest awaits
New life they always bring—

This year —more than ever—
I watch for their return—
Yet the nest is empty
Of that for which I yearn—

I wonder what is keeping them
And if my charm is gone—
Do the finches know somehow
Life must keep moving on—

Come home, little finches—
Come home— if you will—
Hope is the thing with feathers
Where I’m abiding—still.

Note: “Charm” is the group name for finches.

Prayer for the nations

/ Fran Haley / 8 Comments

Today, a golden shovel poem: taking a line from another poem or work and crafting a new poem with the last word of each line comprising the original.

Mine is taken from a verse of Scripture in honor of its promises, spring, and the healers across the world on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis.

Prayer for the Nations

In newness the

tender leaves

of promise, of

restoration, of the

dogwood tree

uniformly were

donning white robes for

their works of mercy, the

bringers of healing,

bringers of comfort, of

life, as ministers of the

prayer for the nations.

*******

Revelation 22:2: “The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

In addition to its Christian symbolism, the dogwood represents strength and durability; it is able to endure adverse conditions.

Photo: Sunlight and dogwoods. Duane Tate. CC BY

April fool

/ Fran Haley / 14 Comments

Just some fleeting impressions while sweeping my porch … the beauty of the day in such stark contrast to what’s happening in the world …

While sweeping the porch this April day

there’s children at distant play

laughing, falling

voices calling

lawnmowers mowing

cool breeze blowing

flowers quivering

trees shivering

sun shining

life divining.

Joyous birdsong

like nothing’s wrong

as if only rebirth

sweeps the Earth

not humanity hurled

netherworld.

A spring reception

of such deception.

Beautiful day, you’re almost cruel

playing such an April fool.

If you were here with me you could see these pansies quivering despite the brightness of the morning. The name of this colorful, dark-eyed flower comes from French penser, “to think.” Pansies symbolize contemplation and remembrance.

Serpentina splendor

/ Fran Haley / 4 Comments

Chelydra serpentina, or common snapping turtle

The dogs raced along the backyard fence, barking and growling like fiends at something on the other side. My husband, upon going out to investigate, hollered with equal parts glee and shock: “Come see this! You won’t believe it!”

All I could think was It had better not be a snake.

No, but close.

Meet Serpentina.

The dinosaur turtle.

Okay, not really dinosaur, just the biggest snapping turtle I’ve ever seen. In my yard, in the clover. With algae growing on her shell.

And her head.

I am really at a loss for words to describe her. Monumental. In size, and in her likeness to stone.

And tell me this tail does not scream dinosaur to you:

My family gawked, marveled, shuddered until we could gawk, marvel, and shudder no more. We let our visitor be. I went inside the house and watched from the kitchen window. After a few short minutes, she began zipping—okay, not really zipping, but crawling a whole lot faster than I imagined a turtle could—along the outside of our backyard fence. Periodically she stopped, leaned up, put her front feet on the fence, and stretched her neck impossibly long (think brontosaurus). Down she dropped again to resume her steady clip.

She’s trying to get to the woods behind our backyard, I thought. The fence is blocking her.

Yet when I turned away from the window for a moment, she vanished without a trace.

I felt oddly bereft.

I mean, it’s not like she’s a snuggly sort of creature.

Several days later I read in a local news article that a record number of snapping turtles appeared in our area en masse, looking for places to lay their eggs.

Nesting, they were.

Old Serpentina—I don’t even know how old she is, she just looks like the ages, a fossil from the dawn of time—her sense of urgency was real.

Maybe that’s what sort of spoke to me, without words. Mother to mother. Living being to living being. In my recoiling was a stab of appreciation; my sense of wonder overruled my impression of fearsome. And somehow, in all of it, lurked a twinge of sadness for which I have no explanation whatsoever.

When Carol Varsalona extended a recent invitation and challenge to create digital inspirations for her #SpringSplendor gallery, I thought of Serpentina. She came along in spring, all right. She’s not what I had in mind at all. I had a beach sunrise in mind. A sprig of wisteria. Beautiful things.

But Serpentina has, you must admit, a splendor all her own.

So, my tribute:

Snapping turtle - Copy

Untoward grace

in algae carapace

seeking with care

a place

to lay new life.

 

—My best to you and your splendid babies, Serpentina.

I kind of hope I get to see them.