Monday, November 26, 2012

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

Sunday, November 11, 2012

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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Friday, November 02, 2012

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 . . . 







Sunday, October 21, 2012

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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Friday, October 19, 2012

Carmen Ohio - Song of Ohio


Central Ohio in the fall.



Proud to be an American.


Proud to own an American Jeep.



Wind-deposited whimsy.


Feathered Whimsy.


Follow me.

                                                                             
                                                   America.  Exceptional.
                       The people and the land they've made free and prosperous.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Washing Windows in Autumn













Washing Windows in Autumn

You know the job.
Balancing on a ladder,
trying not to notice
that the world's a wobblier place
than it was a decade ago.

Autumn’s light is steeper.
It reveals more than naked trees through the glass,
and tilts you into ritual cleansings:
the annual battle with detritus.

Face to face with it, the year returns.
While you drifted through the weeks,
the pines threw pollen, the spiders spun,
the neighbor’s garden sifted over.

And, despite your efforts, at least two birds 
thought the panes were air.
And now you've got to clear that moment away.
The worst:  the time when the phoebe
dove for the butterfly decal.
Bloody hell.

And then there are all the parent spiders
you try to gently brush toward the ground,
and doing so, watch the pepper clouds of babies
scrambling for their lives
as you hear yourself apologize.

When your shoulders start to ache,
and the ladder starts to shake,
a leisurely pace can't be maintained.

So, you focus on sparing that one spider
you've watched from inside the house
as she raised her tiny brood on the outside.

And finally, you wonder if God struggles as you do,
when you're deciding whom to save,
while merely trying to improve the view.


Cathy Wilson