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

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

These pictures were taken the same day.  In the AM I encountered the 'curious' business acronym at the gas station and later that afternoon my brother recorded my butterfly kiss as the winged-one apparently was enjoying the minerals in the suntan lotion I'd just applied. 

The Birds and the Bees

The Love Cove


"Hey Baby."



"Hey Baby . . "


"Do You Like My Pink Feet?"



" I Can Do The Shimmy . . . "


"How's About a Kiss ?"


All In a Blur . . . . (Have the children leave the room . . . - PG 13 . . )


Privacy . . . . Please !


. . . . . . . Please . . . .!


We . A Pair.


________________________________________________________________

Who knew? Birds eat snow.

This from Henry David Thoreau's March 2, 1859 journal entry:

" . . .There may be a month of solid and uninterrupted winter yet, plenty of ice and good sleighing. We may not even see the bare ground, and hardly the water, and yet we sit down and warm our spirits annually with distant prospect of spring. As if a man were to warm his hands by stretching them toward the rising sun and rubbing them."

So while we wait for spring, we record the fading beauty of another winter.

Do watch THIS VIDEO of a female cardinal eating snowflakes.

The Blessings of The Horizon

Voices

My sister's voice,
on a silver thread
of wire and air,
hovers around me
and is transformed.

And the gray outside my house,
the chairs and tv, are gone,
and time is gone.
Her words are indiscernible,
the words that cross the plains
from her car as she waits for children
in a distant time zone, beneath a snowy peak.

So dear a connection
requires this momentary madness
where a heart is so amazed
and filled with gratitude
for the mysteries that bring love on wires and air,
that the words lose their meaning
and pierce the gray as music.


Catherine Wilson

_______________________________________________________________

As I age, beauty unexpectedly distills out of moments where I'd not expected transcendence.

I may be rung like a bell during a walk to the curb to gather the newspaper before the sun is up, or in the middle of a phone conversation with a kid-sister.

The little things, the daily turnings, are somehow more precious.
In literature, it's Scrooge's awakening to life's joys and possibilities after his encounter with death - that carries a bit of my sense about this._______________________________________________________________

Sanibel Birds

Great Egret and Sanibel Lighthouse



Snowy Egret at Sunset



Strutting Great Egret



Fish Crows


Fish Crows lunching on Palmetto berries



Stair-stepping Brown Pelicans


Immature Yellow-Crowned Night Heron



Fishing Buddies (Great White Egret)

Marianne at Northveiw Diary introduced me to this bit of whimsy. We are to take the first sentence of the first post of each of the past 12 months and line 'em up thusly. It's a hoot. And just maybe I do have too much time on my hands :)

Some say the world will end in fire.
Not playful, nor baleful . . .
I found this gem in the most unlikely place
No lights in the neighbors' windows yet.
One couldn't help but to see the beauty despite the damage
I wonder if the little bee,
It's been a long ten years
When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it."
Deep summer
The tarp on the garden moves like a stranded sea creature.
Too much time on my hands .

Fairy-loving Birds

>

Too much time on my hands :)

Tricks the Autumn Wind Plays

                                        Tricks The Autumn Wind Plays

The plastic tarp on the garden

moves like a stranded sea creature.

It breathes and flaps in the wind.

Its rock-tethered arms,

tremble to be released into this breeze

that teases it with freedom,

and memories of watery depths,

and now, the dream of flight,

having tasted air.

         

                               
                                              Catherine Wilson