Monday, April 13, 2009

Singing Streams

Swans flew high this morning and I opened the window to hear their distinct voices. Oh, what are they saying? To know would make me feel less like a foreigner in the natural world. Two nights ago Dean was burning some rags from the shop and I added on some twigs and willed the fire to continue: it smoldered into smoke. I went to the woodpile and feltched pieces of bark and splinters of wood and Dean in the meantime had gone back into the shop and added to the smoking little pile of dampt twigs, some wood ends.

We coaxed flames and then sat around the fire as the sky grew dark. A wolf called out from downriver, from one of the islands. It was a longer sound than I normally hear when they are nearby in the field: this was one long wail and again, I longed to understand the words. A large flock of geese flew over low and I could the wind in their wings and the pounding drops on the metal barn roof of their droppings.

I said to Dean, I wonder if we'll be blessed: to have their droppings dropon us. Dean said (hoping it would not happen)...it would make us feel in touch right. Right, I said and meant it. So afraid we are oftentimes of getting stuff on us. Yesterdays rain was not cold and I cut some branches full of springs blossoms to bring inside the house: it was Easter afterall. I did not wear a coat and didn't mind my hair getting wet and it was such a freedom to move freely in the rain instead of dodgeing it as if I could.

I not longer want to edge around things, I want to walk thorugh them. I don't want things divided in my life by good or bad, or desirable or not desirable: more than ever I want to feel the wholeness of life. No more eating banana nut bread and picking out the nuts.
Am I feeling this way because it is Spring? I know that winter over my shoulder moving away, while ahead are the warmer days and the bluer skies. I am come now to seek color inside my home, to bring the brightness in.

The earlier rain has stopped now and islands of blue are cast about in the sky; the sky an ocean of white and gray. The fields are green and the bamboo green with glows of yellow. I like that the bamboo refuses to loose its leaves in winter. And oh, it's bending ways while a winter wind blows, throwing them forward and then backward. The black elm is budding out with leaves, as is the locust in the front of the house. The leaves on the locust are minitures of the mature leaf; they are waxy and shine and in them I see the life of the tree in motion. I see a moment of the trees' life. This tree that is one hundred years old. How many leaves have grown and shed and grown again on this tree?

Dean went into Lowes and talked with a woman who works there and lives down the road from us a mile. She said they had bought goats to eat down their grass in the field because they are tired of mowing and we wondered if one of their goat could be the dead one. Dean did not ask. So there is a suggestion of where the goat might of have come from but I cannot see a goat walking on Willow Grove Rd and making it a mile. It must have dropped off the back of the truck that was delivering them if anything.

The sun is shinning now and crows are whirling in the air: off as they always seem to be, to some planned pace. A great blue heron, it's large wings easily moving it's light body through the air has sailed by, gone now out of view. Think of all the lives that are going on out of view.

Think of a stream that is not seen and the life of it going on, on and on. How it flows over and swirls around the smooth rocks on the bed of the stream. It's a comfort to know there are singing streams even when we dream.

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