Tag: Poetics of Place
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Ready
Autumn is a season of reaping what we have sown, but also of metamorphosis and recycling. A bittersweet segment of the cycle. Endings. Beginnings. Harvest. Compost. Ready or not, the reality is each day upon us. While riding this morning, a moment of clarity briefly abbreviated my bike time. I braked, stopped, jotted down most…
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Leaves of Grass
Rosslyn’s lawns and meadows are plentiful. Lots of leaves of grass. Carpeting open space. Receiving foot falls, paw and hoof prints. And yet we opt to plant ornamental grasses too. Few. Far between. But dramatic tufts of texture. Leaves or grass whispering in the subtlest of breezes. Leaves of grass gossiping, dancing, demurring. Leaves of…
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Misty Sundown
So many variations of a perfect sunrise, a breathtaking sunset, and yet — like spoiled children — we yearn for more. More colorful. More dramatic. More lingering. But, this misty sundown redefined the limits. Moody dome. Warm light, gently filtered. Colors few, but saturation intense. And mist. Ground-clinging, gossamer haze blurring the ground-to-trees transition. Mysterious.…
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Hedging
This summer of rain our evergreen hedges have rioted, sprouting enthusiastically, reaching upward and outward, unruly, wayward. Time for hedging! So much water and months of temperate weather have invigorated our well-established yews and hemlocks. As we’re only a week and a half from flipping the calendar from summer to autumn, we decided it was…
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Drizzly Day
A September drizzly day after a summer of drizzly days — drizzly daze — like no other in collective memory. Cultivating contemplation. Still more questions than answers, but there’s a subtle coalescence of ideas, words, convictions. A year and more of liminal space. And a journey that’s only beginning to begin. Drizzly Day Poem Drizzly…
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Heart Rot Haiku
After the cloudburst, the lightning, the raging wind, a sunny morning. Calm. Calmer. Picture perfect, except for the debris. The damage. The shattered trunk of an immense old maple tree. An ancient maple —gnarled noble, hidden heart rot —hallowed, hollowed husk. Still absorbing the loss of this monumental maple. The second and last on our…
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Morning Dew
After weeks of rain, we’ve enjoyed two glorious August days. Summertime splendor all the more apparent for the contrast with two months of incessant drizzle-to-downpour conditions. Sunny. Bluebird skies. Hot. Light breeze. Lower humidity. And morning dew on the decks and lawn when I take Carley out in the morning and when I wander up…
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Rhyming Relics
I was just looking at a pair of glass artifacts, two Rosslyn relics among so many we’ve discovered and inherited since the summer of 2006 when this old house became our new home. Remember the ferry posters in my “Relics Rhymed” post? These are similar. And different. While the differences are apparent, perhaps the similarity…
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Gate & Aerial Atelier
Some days rays illuminate unfamiliar nooks and crannies rendering them familiar. Other days weather wobbles transform the familiar into the unfamiliar. When on both sorts of days we yield, make ourselves receptive, exchange judgment for wonder, then an aerial atelier opens up to us inviting us to experiment and play and create. Aerial Atelier Surly…
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Rain-Swollen Summer
For weeks we joked semi-superstitiously about forty days and forty nights. Drizzles. Downpours. Rain-swollen summer defying even the most cynical armchair forecasters. Lawns boggy; vegetable garden anemic; air thick with suspended moisture like wading through water; foliage flush, overgrown, greener than green; docks swallowed and gradually dismantled by higher, higher, higher lake levels. When forty…
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Pam’s Poem
This morning after clambering up onto the icehouse roof not once but six times in a row — installing Starlink satellite dish, rooftop rack, and four surprisingly heavy ballasts — I headed inside to work on the stairway railing. In the coffee bar I discovered a surprise: Pam’s poem with a bottle of bubbly. I…
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Misty Morning
Much more rain than sunshine these last five or six weeks since we returned to Essex from our cross-country walkabout. Drizzly slow-soakers and sudden gully washers. Never-quite-dry, musty mushroom weather. Lake Champlain riding almost three feet in a couple of weeks, anemic artichokes in the garden, poppies stunted with blooms battered. Rainy day delays compounding…