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If you stop to look, you might notice the sun’s slant is a little more direct; less low on the horizon.  During the solstice days it slanted and slanted and never came overhead.  Shadows in profusion.

But now it is starting to climb and Inga asks “Mama, when is it going to be spring?”

In years past I wished these short days and long nights away.  Counted the days, the weeks, until the sun set after 5.

This year is different.  Long, starry nights are permission to curl up by our fireplace and read delicious literature while the fireplace roars and flames smile at me through the glass.   I read Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton.  I read Zeena, by Elizabeth Cooke, and I looked out at the moon, which was blue this last time.  And I thought, with some regret, that the days will lengthen and the fireplace will be dark before too long.  And we won’t be close together as we are, near the fire playing board games.  We will expand in the spring air and spread out.

But not yet.  It is still January and Imbolg is still 3 weeks away.

In the morning there are little bird tracks in the snow.  Laurent tells me they are made by black-eyed Juncos.  Little puffy dark birds.  They leave delicate little prints in the round, frenetic patterns birds make.  And this week two foxes in the snow.  Two!  Flaming orange, swift, graceful, and gone in a flash.   Like magic.

A breeze lifts the summer heat, bends ripening grass with its knowing kiss

blue skies slant, the sun’s eye now less direct

over chanting grasshoppers and cicadas

Soon the school buses will begin their rounds,  dropping and picking their boisterous cargo

black-eyed susans fade, shrivel, nodding toward our wood pile

and a single pumpkin, rogue offspring of last year’s jack-o-lantern, ripens on a fence by the garden.

Soon the nights will be cooler, silvery, longer,  and darker

but for now the heat remains

She sleeps

golden hair streaming on the pillow behind her,

tiny hand resting, innocent, quiet.

My youngest, spirit indomitable

brave in the face of fever

Facing down the swine that has come

Unwelcome to our house.

Her perfect skin is flushed pink with heat.

More beautiful, even, than the serene glow of good health.

Eyes flutter when I hover above her,

Feeling her forehead, listening for her breathing, reassuring myself.

Half of my life’s treasure there.  The other half at school.  Undaunted, unhaunted for now.

Thank you

for trusting me to care for you.  For dutifully blowing your nose and drinking your water

when you don’t want to.

Perhaps tonight we will sleep sweetly.

Here are the mothers fathers grandparents guardians

Waiting.  Quetly, watchful.

Inside, our children play together

Just beyond the glass window that separates us.

Some of us try to capture moments precious in their fleeting-ness with cameras

Instructors, young almost-still-children themselves

entertain, demonstrate.

They are energetic, playful, skillful

Our children laugh, jump, tumble run

While we watch, sitting quietly with our thoughts behind the glass

watching over them

thnking perhaps of laundry, errands, other worries

separated by our thoughts

But here, togther this moment,  for our children.

to hear from an old friend

or know that your safe with the ones you have.  your lovers.  your family.  your friends and peers.

it’s the just knowing

that you’re accepted.  loved.  needed, even.   When it’s like that

the past can just be.  the moment is.  the future is okay.

Doesn’t thrive in intimate spaces

it blossoms where there is distance.

Use and Care:

Attended to regularly, not overwatered, it grows.   It likes sun – best not to crowd it or stand between it and it’s light source.

Compost is helpful.

A single stream of sunlight comes in through dirty glass

A river of light distorted,  illuminating dust

immortalized, mummified, caught like ghosts.

Paths in the light echo what the room has witnessed and recorded:

Desires, Comforts offered, dreams and wishes forgotten by the one who forged them,

but not by the room.

They are kept there, in it’s quiet embrace.

As a mourning mother holds the memory of a child taken –

sleeplessly and alone.

Her mind is such a place,

in which

a father’s garden grows

It’s perfect rows of carrots still lovingly tended

The patterns for children’s clothes lay, pinned to their fabric, arranged on the floor

A girl gazes into the mirror of a dressing table, dreaming of a dance

and an old man’s pipe rests, still warm, by his abandoned rocking chair.

Dust in the light

Until the sun withdraws, leaving the lover silent for another day’s dreaming.

We.  The People?

The other day on the road I passed a bumper sticker stuck to the back of a road sign:

“We the People

Means Nothing, Anymore.”

It got me to wondering if there is any truth to that.  As I considered society, split as it is politically, I wasn’t convinced.  I am not sure there was ever a time Americans weren’t split politically and socially by their values.  There have always been moneyed conservatives, poor conservatives, cultural liberals, artists – that tension has, in large part, I think, driven this country.

But it’s true we’re much bigger and there’s a certain lack of involvement on the part of “average” people in local government, bigger government, the things that affect us.

In the end though, I decided the writer and sticker-onto-the-sign of the bumper sticker is wrong.  It’s not true.  Here’s why:  my friends (admittedly mostly of an artistic bend) are very aware, very opinionated, and usually relatively outspoken and willing to share their ideas, their opinions, their energy and time, and their art – for the things they believe in, invest in, feel for, they *do* gather and organize:  Local farming communities, conservation societies, women’s gatherings, political protests, writer’s conventions, comic conventions, church services, pagan rituals, local art openings and, yes, political rallies and canvassing in this last election.

I’m imagining that this last election cycle, with it’s divisiveness and the very strong opinions held by both sides, isn’t such a long way from the opinions held by both sides before the civil war and the revolutionary war.    We still fight for individual rights, racial equality, women’s rights,  social well-being.

And we still meet each other in that fight.

I think it comes down to what touches us  and what we trust enough to stand behind.

Who we are to each other

It seems like the most meaningful encounters occur by accident – the participants unwittingly playing into the hands of fate or chance as if – it was all intended.  It’s astonishing, really, to think about how we’re thrown together with people – no choice consciously made most of the time, really – and the stuff of our thoughts springs from those moments in which we experience each other.

Prone, really.

In choosing to work where I do, I unwittingly married into a family.  It’s dysfunctional and without discipline.   But there are people here who have, quite unwittingly, I think, pinched the cheeks of my days – brought color to them.

I give you Tim:

An Ode to Tim

Advice on practical matters

Such as footwear for the office

Can always be counted upon.

He plies amusing vignettes, help with my software environment, a helping hand.

Probably

I am the least of his concerns, with so  many people dependent on him for so much.

But let him not think that I do not appreciate him.   Or his flaming converse basketball sneakers.