My first recollection of country music was on the radio somewhere in New Brunswick, driving the two laners to Nova Scotia. Those were the only stations that came in, back in the pre tape deck day. Later trips we’d rocket up sans Dad and older siblings, but even when equipped with a cassette or CD player still we’d listen to those stations. The lyrics struck us as hilarious and we would sing along with gusto….
De Natura Rerum
Yesterday morning -15, tomorrow, 50. Tonight snow, tomorrow rain.
Quickly, a snow poem, while the snow is falling.
Before anyone from my past comes looking to take me to research rehab, here at last the citation for the Bonnefoy collection. The snow poems are from New and Selected Poems, Yves Bonnefoy, edited and translated by John Naughton and Anthony Rudolf, U. Chicago Press, 1995.
De Natura Rerum
Lucrèce le savait:
Ouvre le coffre,
Tu verras, il est plein de neige
Qui tourbillonne.
Et parfois deux flocons
Se rencontrent, s’unissent,
Ou bien l’un se détourne, gracieusement
Dans son peu de mort.
D’où vient qu’il fasse clair
Dans quelques mots
Quand l’un n’est que la nuit,
L’autre, qu’un rêve?
D’où viennent ces deux ombres
Qui vont, riant,
Et l’une emmitouflée
D’une laine rouge?
De Natura Rerum
Lucretius knew this:
Open the chest,
You shall see, it is full of
Whirling snow.
And sometimes two flakes
Meet, unite,
Or else one turns away, gracefully,
Into its humble death.
How is it that daylight shines
In some words
When one is only night,
The other, dream?
From where do these two shadows come
That advance, laughing,
One muffled in
A scarf of red wool?
time, Einstein, elasticity
Speaking with a friend over the weekend, the issue of not having enough time came up. He doesn’t have enough, can’t find enough. He is indeed really, really busy, with a demanding work schedule and at times unforeseeable hours. He feels like he pretty much ricochets from one thing to the next with not as much agency as he’d like….
snow, deep cold, slow cooking
The snow finally came, two delayed school openings in a row– that’s more a function of the timing than the amount, but still. Snow, finally.
The deep cold is on its way, highs this weekend forecast in the single digits. Whoa, cold. More wood on the way. Time to get some slow cooking happening….
early February, snowfall
Yesterday I posted about the early appearance of bluebirds; today winter is back, with a light snowfall that began early this afternoon and continues still.
This is the kind of snow that for some reason always reminds me of Joyce’s Dubliners “The Dead:” his line, raptly sorrowful, about snow being general over Ireland…
Here for the moment it is lovely and soft, the light of dusk and dawn especially magical with snow.
If it lasts, another snow poem sure to follow. And Mississippi roast in the wings xo
early February, bluebirds
Bluebirds are among the sweetest of birds to me: their extraordinary, unusual (in these climes) color, the shape of their body, their flight movement, their song. Their reappearance in early- to mid-March signals spring, and I am always sad to see them depart, usually sometime in November.
My latest 2015 fall sighting of them was December; this morning, February 7, a pair was checking out one of the houses– maybe the same pair who nested there last year– a full month earlier than usual. How mild the winter has been. And, looks like I need to get those houses cleaned out sooner than I normally would.
Grace and sweetness in their sighting; both concern at the strange weather pattern and gratitude for the less than harsh conditions the winter has thus far brought, especially given the past few.
Spring is a ways off yet, though. I will trust the bluebirds know what they are doing. And meditate on the hope their colorful wings carry.
whoa, back in the saddle
Well, January was not the ideal month to aim for daily (ah, ok, near-daily) posts, as I had scheduled site support for the life I picked that would preclude me, for a few days here and there, from actually being on the site…small scheduling detail that I overlooked. …
January bitters and a wolf moon
In a strange weather twist, the blizzard of 2016 bypassed upstate NY completely. The winter of no snow continues, while meantime two hours south Central Park has two feet and further south D.C. is buried. Here we have crispy grass and areas where my hardworking dogs manage to make mud between their warm snouts, their desire for tunneling rodents, and the sadly naked frozen earth.
Not anxious to shovel (no garage, no snowblowers chez moi) I nonetheless miss the blanket of white that softens and brightens the world when the thermometer hovers low. And gives respite for a month or two from the mud….
wassailing
January 17, as written here before, is Christmas on the Julian calendar, Old Twelfth Night. Wassailing was traditional on or around this day and still is in some parts of England….
not knowing
Thinking still of magnum mysterium, and the space of not knowing….
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