at night,
pine branches scratch
the gibbous moon.
velvetine mouth, the opening dark
I am not the only creature
stirred from sleep: far off,
a grosbeak whistles.

the fragment of winter in me
drips.

Today the sun stared down around me. The light I saw through wasn't of the yellowish warm kind, or the blue tinted light that speaks of summer coming, nor was it gray like those days that make me long for something else.

Today the light that I looked through was clear like mountain water. I saw the tree for what it is. A tree with hands that reach out to be touched. With leaves the air needs for breathing. A tree for perching.

Today I saw a snow-white butterfly upon a yellow daylili. The butterfly had no markings. The lili stood in the shade of my porch. I remembered that in the fall when butterflies chase each other, it will be time for the fishermen to gather their nets repaired during hot summer months and return to the sea. The white butterfly reminded me.

Today I saw a hummingbird with a ruby necklace darting around my empty feeder. The one hanging out front. I took it down and refilled it with cold sugar-water from my fridge that I keep in an old milk bottle. I refilled the one out back, too.

Today I watched a blue grosbeak splashing in a clear pyrex baking dish that I keep water for the birds in next to my feeders. The grosbeak bathed while a male cardinal watched, spitting sunflower seed hulls onto my wooden deck. A housefinch waited patiently for water and a turn at the mixed-seed feeder.

Today I saw ants crawling on the dried dead body of a wasp. This made me like the ants. They like their wasps dead. So do I. Eat up, guys, I thought.

Today I saw that the breeze had scattered petals from my rose bush across my porch. My dog dozed on the petals. That made me smile.  Reddish pink petals clinging to a black dog when she walked onto the grass. The breeze smelled of roses.

Today I saw clearly what the sun was staring down upon. Things that need watching. Remembering. Today, I saw through a light clearly.

5/25/14

On this day, which seems a portal to the rest of life,
A pair of Rose breasted Grosbeaks come to the feeder
Under powerful white beaks, their throats are brilliant red.  
And Pound’s words: “What thou lov’st well” come to mind.
“What thou lov’st well”
Words I recited to Janey when her husband died.
To myself when I lost my house,
And that job, thirty years ago.
When mother’s white hair signaled her mortality
Now, this beautiful bird
And coffee
And taking breaths
An oriole in the apple tree
Picking nectar out of May blossoms...
“What thou lovest well remains,

the rest is dross

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee

What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage”

GIC to HAR**

It is late at night, cold and damp
The air is filled with tobacco smoke.
My brain is worried and tired.
I pick up the encyclopedia,
The volume GIC to HAR,
It seems I have read everything in it,
So many other nights like this.
I sit staring empty-headed at the article Grosbeak,
Listening to the long rattle and pound
Of freight cars and switch engines in the distance.
Suddenly I remember
Coming home from swimming
In Ten Mile Creek,
Over the long moraine in the early summer evening,
My hair wet, smelling of waterweeds and mud.
I remember a sycamore in front of a ruined farmhouse,
And instantly and clearly the revelation
Of a song of incredible purity and joy,
My first rose-breasted grosbeak,
Facing the low sun, his body
Suffused with light.
I was motionless and cold in the hot evening
Until he flew away, and I went on knowing
In my twelfth year one of the great things
Of my life had happened.
Thirty factories empty their refuse in the creek.
On the parched lawns are starlings, alien and aggressive.
And I am on the other side of the continent
Ten years in an unfriendly city.

In the bleakest sorrows,
you bring graceful elegance.

Maroon feathers catching upon
vacant scenery, stilled by seasons.

Rowan do your eyes attended to,
feasting on luscious  berries.

A wonderer of the skies dancing upon
flurries looking for your next meal.

I heard something today.
And it was not like anything I had ever heard.
It wasn't,
The song of a grosbeak,
Or the rustle of spring leaves,
Or the whisper of morning breeze,
Or the deafening silence of the sky above,
Or the patter of rain on a gloomy winter eve,
Or the crackle of that fire,too visible in my eyes,
Or the throbbing of my heart,seeking someone,
Or the static from somewhere unknown,
Or the hush,descending over a crowd;of faces all too alien to me,
Or the echo of familiar voices under that autumn-struck tree,
Or the footsteps of a mother rushing towards her crying child,
Or the Quiet singing to someone in the wild,
Or the beauteous music of the Orient,
Or of the Occident.
All these sounds sound humble
Before what I heard today.
.
I heard your voice!