Serendipity

I had a stack of pictures I'd taken over past decades.
Put them in an album.
Cloud and sky pictures together..
Sat down in the front window to enjoy them.
Sun came through the antique window my brother gave me.
All but one of these rainbows came from the window prisms.

The only real rainbow is the faint arc low on the eastern Colorado horizon.

I love serendipity.

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After a long winter, signs of Spring . . .

Something starts to whisper during March.

  When drawers and closets and pantries become 'interesting' . . .

Theres no disputing it, when the mallards show up for the 4th year.

   It was a little shadowy at first . . .

               But, at last,  there it is  . . streaming through the windows . .

                              Happy Easter!    Happy Us!   We made it.
                 Wishing you and yours Light, Smiles, Laughter and Love.



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They Were "Us" . . .

These color photos of the '30's and 40's (clickable) just emerged from the Library of Congress.

Haunting.  Haunting.  Why should color from the past - make it so much more real?

The anonymous people, our ancestors, battlefields -  were always 'then' . . . the 'past' . . .  a strange 'before now' time . . that peered from black and white photographs.  And now this.

Why does it affect me, so?   Perhaps because the same sun that colors our lives, now falls on their faces, on their shining hair, on the fields they plow.  It is a world of blood, sweat and tears.  No longer just a black and white recording of others in a strange other time.

It's unsettling to see these wraiths as no different from me.  After all, they lived so long ago . .  . in that less nuanced world .  . that static two-dimensional world where ghostly images drift.  And they are probably gone - vanished into that gauzy black and white world.  Surely different laws reigned over their lives, than do mine.  But no,  I am now disabused of the notion that  I am more 'now' than they could ever have been.

Truly.  I am moved and amazed at the difference that throwing the palette of common daily life across the past, makes in my perception.

Thank you, Laura.  You should have seen it in color.  Click for a very poignant song.



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This Is More Like It !

Hubby made it upstairs with his new knee.   It was the siren call of his flight simulator that got him to the top of those steep steps.  I thought I heard him calling.  Raced to the bottom of the stairs.  "There's a bird outside my window with a red head," says he.

"Groan." says I.  Plod up the stairs to see what I know will be a Cardinal, a House Finch, a Red-bellied Woodpecker . . .

But waaaait . . . something's wrong with this bird.   A leucistic finch?  No.  There's more than one.
Holy Kamoly.  Grab the smelling salts!  My first White-winged Crossbills - Evah !

Thank you dear hubby.

AND.   In googling images of Crossbills . . . ended up on this unbelievable Flicker River of Indiana bird photography.   It goes forever . . . just like the perfect dream should . . . during the heart of January.

It's the Indiana Audubon Society's Bird Gallery and Archive
(That's a clickable link)

Update:  Did want to mention that after failing to get a pix of them in the tree limbs .. . they dropped into my birdbath . . whence . . . voila ! ^

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A Poem Born of Fatigue

Do not read this if you're feeling tired or blue.   The title and sense of the poem have been in my head for a few years.  The fatigue of the last days . . . settled onto the page.  Life is good,  just a little tough sometimes . . . and surely, too short.


                                  Falling Away

Some things don't change.

Mid January.

The sunlight finds a path
through the clouds 

that blanket the horizon.

The patterns it creates on the walls,

falling through winter branches,

are familiar.

It's the sun.  
Pushing back the covers.

Stretching its broad back

to start the year over again.

In this house, for years,

I've watched the seasons

blur one into another.

Buckling soil above greening shoots,

rhapsodic bloom,  resultant seeds, 

endless lawns,

leaf-drop.

Mid January.

I sit watching patterns.

Timeless.

Only I, have changed.

Only the family pictures,

on the sun-drenched sill,

mark time . .

falling away.



























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Just a new knee, but prayers please . .UPDATE :)

MADE IT THROUGH SURGERY IN AN HOUR.   ON ORAL AND VENOUS PAIN MEDICATIONS AND A NERVE BLOCK AND CRACKING US UP AND STILL TAKING CHARGE.

My best friend.  He's getting a new knee Thursday morning.

After the holiday . . .

After everyone is back at work and the leftovers are gone . .

You try to be grateful for just the sun on your shoulders and  try to remember spring.

                                                                         

                                     And hope that everyone you love - knows it . . . .
                                       November makes it all seem more important.

      November

Leave us something of yourself,

sweet trees, indifferent bees,

spiders wrapping up a summer’s job,

now listless in the chilly breeze.

Leave us something of yourself.

Do not forget these eyes that traced

your dewy webs and pollened toes

and watched you love the sky’s bright face

with fingertips that airily rose

to brush the clouds with leafy lace.

Leave us here believing

in the hills aglow, again,

and in a churning freshet searching

for what it cannot know,

but then, again,

knows.

It is this season’s yearnings

that foretell Spring’s bright returnings.

Catherine Wilson

November Light

Sunrise as we never see it before leaf fall.

Fairy lights . . 

Truly magic.

Later in the day over the same field - a new light.

The wind picked up and things seemed to get away . .

It got scary.  I wanted to call the Fire Department.

The neighbors  finally got it under control.

Still later in the day, a fainter glow . . .

Brother Bob's and Sis-in-law Robin's home.

He built the gazebo . . just painted and installed the upper lights.

                                                     
                              From our house . . their light is our night light.
                            Their family creates the glow that brought us to this hill                        
                                          overlooking Loudonville, Ohio



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Ghosts!

Interesting thing this cusp between October and November.  Some cautioning inward-turning awareness . . . of the shorter days . . . the wind scrapping branches against the siding . .  . and the sense that your yard birds are in on it.   Yeah.  The little goofs.  Poking around the jack o' lanterns and flitting away leaving only ghost images on your lens.   

You could tell by the looks on those faces that something was afeather . .  uh that is 'afoot'.
A closer look . . .   Yep!

                                                                             
                                                                                   Nuthatch Gremlin

                                                                                 Chickadee sprite

Nuthatch Banshee

                                                                   Titmouse Terror

After the morning feeding frenzy .  . things started to come into focus.

Not so scary after all . . . 

Little Mr. Intention

Little Mr. Intention

How could the little titmouse know,

holding seeds between his toes,

that further out along the limb,

he makes the leaves twitch on their stems?

His tufted head pounds up and down;

the careful listener hears the sound,

of sunflower seed yielding up its heart

to a pecking, determined dart.

The poplar leaves, out at the tip,

tremble gold beneath each dip

of beady eyes and feathered crest,

before they drift to autumn's rest.

Catherine Wilson



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