Category Archives: Nature

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Dodging Art

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What an amazing day!  Training at Old World Wisconsin included visits to the Animal Barn, the Garden curator, and the Collections curator.  I met two oxen, each weighing a ton, and stroked their noses and chins.  I was introduced to three horses who are each in their 90s in “people years”.  I saw a sow who had given birth for the first time just this week and her seven pink little piglets.   Oh, how their little faces captivated me (and made me wish I’d brought my camera)!  I visited a greenhouse full of tiny sprouting seeds which will become food and decor to an entire community, a future rooted in the present and informed by the past.  I browsed through shelves of antique artifacts that illustrate the lives and time of people whose stories encompass miles of external and internal territory.  So much to take in, visually, mentally, physically and spiritually!  I came home to my usual tasks of dinner and chores and a phone call from my darling youngest…and now I’m sitting at my computer and entering this century of technology for the first time today.  It feels kinda weird!  I can only imagine how this feeling will intensify as I spend more time in the Old World. 

I have one more week of the poetry challenge from NaPoWriMo to complete, and already I can tell that it’s not going to be easy to be in the mood to concentrate on composing verse each day after training!  Still, I hope to have a little time to dabble in the word pond.  Today’s prompt is to write an “ekphrastic” poem, a graphic description of a work of art.  “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a famous one.  I went through some art photos that I had collected for a game I invented, and this one caught my eye.  It’s a self-portrait by Van Gogh.  Here’s the picture and the poem, and then I think I’ll call it a day here in the 21st century and get ready to go back 150 years again tomorrow!

Freckled, wistful world

Speckled, swirling molecules

Boundaries camouflaged

Fits and bits punctuating disappearance

Addled, dappled, sparks in the dark

Furtive sideways glance to the canvas

Back to dabbing, daubing, repetition

Poking at the flat reality

Testing the surface, then

Bouncing off again

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Happy Earth Day, Earthlings!

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The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970 and marks what some consider the birth of the Environmental Movement.   Of course, cultures throughout history have celebrated and appreciated the earth according to their particular perspectives.  Harvest festivals, rain rituals, volcano appeasement, fertility festivals, river ceremonies…I can think of many ways that humans have venerated the earth.  Since 1990, when the Earth Day campaign went global, we’ve focused on the planet as a whole.   We are the ones who have seen it (at least in pictures) as a whole from outer space, and I think we are realizing more and more how our relationship to the Earth is effecting that picture.  Large scale weather patterns, extinction rates, pollution and population are just some of the issues that are “going big” in our consciousness.   This is all very well, and at the same time, each of us has a particular and specific and local intimacy with Earth that should never be overlooked.

NaPoWriMo is acknowledging Earth Day with its prompt to write a poem about a plant.  I have so many favorite Earth/Nature/Flower/Animal poems already dear to my heart that I’m having a hard time being original, so I think I’m just going to share a few favorites with you here instead.  The first one is a lullaby that my mother used to sing to me.  I have no idea of its origin.  I just hear Mom sing:

White coral bells upon a slender stalk,

Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk.

Oh! Don’t you wish that you could hear them ring?

That will happen only when the faeries sing!

Here’s one I wrote back in March as I looked at my lilac bush:

When will the buds appear this year?

When will the lilac be full in bloom?

When will that perfume make fair the air?

When will that purple bedeck my room?

Soon, oh, soon; let it be soon!

I’ve been wearing lilac oil from a little vial that Jim bought me when we were on Mackinac Island years ago.  A few drops on my neck assures me that the fragrance of my favorite flower will not fade too quickly from my consciousness. 

I took a walk yesterday to photograph some of my local earth miracles.  May I present:

White tail deer

Bleeding heart

Red Admiral butterfly

Tulips, daffodils, hyacinth

And to represent the hippie protesters and the environmental movement, I have to share one of my favorite earth songs.  Nanci Griffith, “From A Distance” (written by Julie Gold).  Socks with sandals, passion and integrity.  She moves me.

Love our planet, today and every day.  Treat her and all life with respect.  Please.

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Traveling Mercies

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Today’s poetry writing prompt is to write a travel poem about getting from Point A to Point B.  I took this with me as I walked with Steve to meet his mom for breakfast at a cafe on North Avenue.  Here’s what I came up with:

Suburban sidewalk, cement sanitation

Fighting blight from untidy dandelions

Writhing, withered stems polluted, poisoned

Preventing spreading superfluous seeds

 

Muddy raindrop crater-pocked parkway

Mini helicopter maples, twin neon confetti

Mossy black trunks, petal-splashed branches

Tinny worm smell, saturated iris-limp toilet paper

 

Hiking boots treading asphalt pathways

Longing for the purity beneath.

 

Yesterday’s rain has left a distinct damp chill over everything.  I miss the golden sun.  My mood is slow and overcast as well, but I think I’ve had an epiphany in the recent “relationship talks” we’ve been having.  A serious and positive epiphany, too complicated to explain.  I never knew that shock and denial could last four years and then drop in an instant.  I feel like a snail without her shell.  Perfect for crawling about a rain-soaked environment. 

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Summoning the Sand Man

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I am thinking about my oldest daughter today.  She has been sick with a terrible cough, possibly pneumonia, and left a message on my phone yesterday afternoon saying, “I just needed some Mom.”  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to contact her since to get more information although I’ve left messages.  These are those “Mom moments” that teach me how to manage anxiety.  Her voice actually sounded better than the day before, I know she’s on antibiotics, so my brain can convince me that there’s little evidence that something catastrophic is happening.  My imagination, however, cooks up a million scenarios that are “possible”.   My spirit tells me that I live in this moment, not any imagined or borrowed moments from some other plane, and so I act in the present as best I can.  Practicing living in peace with myself and the world, what I think I know and what I don’t know is an ongoing project.  At this point in my life, I do not need added drama. Reality is exciting enough. 

My daughter has always been open to engaging with lots of stimulus.  Even as a toddler, she had a hard time shutting her brain off at the end of a day, relaxing and falling asleep.  As a grad student, there are just so many exciting things to pursue, that I think she resists shutting down to re-charge.  She’s a fascinatingly energetic person to talk to, but she has a hard time slowing down.  No wonder she’s succumbed to illness, right?  I checked out the poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo this morning, and they suggested writing a lullaby.  Perfect!  I know just who to write one for!  I am hoping her phone is turned off because she’s resting, sleeping, meditating and healing.  When she was a little girl, I used to do a kind of guided meditation that I made up in order to get her to relax.  I had her visualize floating like a leaf on the surface of a slow-moving brook.  So, here’s a lullaby for Susan and pictures of the Sand Cave at Wyalusing State Park.  I apologize if this makes anyone sleepy in the middle of their work day! 

Lullaby for Susan

 

Float gently, float slowly, my baby, my dear

Like a leaf on the water, no burdens to bear

Gaze skyward to heaven while stars gather there

Like a leaf on the water, no burdens to bear

 

With mermaid hair flowing, glide slowly along

While Mama’s beside you, she sings this sweet song

Go slowly, breathe deeply, my child; nothing’s wrong

Your Mama’s beside you, she sings this sweet song

 

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The End of an Exciting Day

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For my second day of training at Old World Wisconsin, I got to finally get away from paperwork and training videos and get on site to see the historical buildings where I’ll be a costumed interpreter.  I gotta tell you, I AM SO EXCITED!!!!  My first stop was to see St. Peter’s Catholic Church in the Yankee Village area.   This church was built in 1839 and has a wood stove right smack dab in the middle of the center aisle of the nave.  No bridal procession is gonna get around that sucker!  One of my jobs will be to pull the rope on the carillon to start and end the day.  Swingin’!  I also got to play the pump organ.  I have never even attempted this kind of feat before today.  It was a bit like trying to pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time, as my feet had to keep the bellows going while my fingers worked out the four-part harmony, but I managed to squeeze my way through a verse of Amazing Grace without too much difficulty.  What fun!  After some consideration, I realize that hymn is probably not Catholic, although it may be from the right period.  I still have so much research and learning to do!

I had to cut my time in the Village short and ride up to the German immigrant area to see the place I’ll be working on week days and with school groups.  It’s an 1870s farm with a two-story house, bake house (or summer kitchen), granary, pig barn, regular barn, smoke house and three garden plots.  I will be the interpreter for all these areas.  I will be making bread in the big brick oven (it goes back about 8 feet!), tending the garden, keeping an eye on the pigs so they don’t escape, chopping wood with a mallet and froe, greeting guests and inviting them to interact with the place.  Oh, so much fun going on!  AND, I got fitted for my corset today!  I can hardly stand it!!

Came home to turn my computer on for the first time and saw more than a dozen e-mails.  Then I checked the poetry prompt for the day.   It looks like fun, but frankly, I’m too pooped to poet.  I have so much homework to do, so many questions to answer about the world I am stepping into.  Instead, I will leave you with these sunset shots from our trip to the Mississippi and let you think about settlers moving west into the unknown.  Why is history important… in the big picture?  Why is experience important?  Why is it important to share experiences through stories?

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Treasure Cave

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I was up early this morning and sat through 6 hours of information in training for my new job, most of it filling out administration paperwork.   My post today is a small escape into creativity, but I fear it lacks the patience and pace of a truly open process.  So be it.  The poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo for today was to write a poem inspired by a photo.  The site provided 3 photos, but I have my own to post, so I let them act as my muse.  I promised spelunking and sunsets, and posted a shot yesterday of myself disappearing into a cave in the bluffs over the Mississippi River.  Here is what I found:

Treasure Cave

Spreading fertile earth, penetrated by relentless drops,

Her fragile rock abducted by the wind,

Exposing a shameful cavity of twisted darkness.

The damp mystery in danger of collapse

Now sheltered in a chamber of aged secrets.

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Close Up

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There are a million wonders along the path, many of them missed if you’re traveling too fast.  You have to slow down to catch life in close up.  Our culture resists this vigorously, of course.  So I choose to live differently than most.  I suppose this difference has been highlighted this week while I’ve been filling out government tax forms, listening to party politics and preparing to step back into the 19th century for my new job at Old World Wisconsin.  I am not trying to move “up and to the right” like the business graph.  I want to follow a different trajectory.  

This morning I’ve been reading some blogs written by women who are caring for their aging mothers through stages of dementia.  My father died two years ago from Alzheimer’s, but I was not a care-giver in his life because I live halfway across the country.  I was a care-giver to my husband who died 4 years ago from coronary artery disease, kidney failure and diabetes.  The perspective of life across different physical, mental and psychological ages intrigues me, and provides the inspiration for today’s poetry and photos.  The photos are again from our trip to Wyalusing State Park.  The first one was something Steve noticed as we walked.  “Look,” he said, “little teenaged Priscillas!”  He was looking into a stream where some water striders were sheltering between the rocks.  My mother used to refer to me as a water strider when I was in high school.  The poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo was to write a sonnet, 14 lines because today’s the 14th.  I did not attempt to compose anything with a more formal frame than that.  No iambic pentameter or rhyming scheme, just 14 lines.  So, here we go with the pictures and poetry!

Skimming the surface, supported by tension

Riding the tide of everyone’s angst

A mere shadow in the depths, a dimple of contrast

Slender legs splayed out, weightless, of no consequence

A teenaged water strider, this youngest daughter.

What rock will plunge her universe,

Reverse the level of her lens and fasten her,

Securely, where the current flows and tugs?

In the wet of things, completely drenched

Attending top and bottom feeders, gasping, flailing,

Always moving, face in the water with wide opened eyes

Until another metamorphosis, an aged knife,

Severs the lines and sets her adrift

Above the ripples once again, that much closer to the sky.

Dutchman's breeches

Shooting star

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Over the River

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Happy Friday the 13th, everybody.  I’m not superstitious, but why is it that the printer is on the fritz today when I need to get my tax forms copied and out to the post?  Never mind.

I have selected another batch of photos from our camping trip to Wyalusing and found a way to tie in the NaPoWriMo poetry challenge as well.  I promise I’ll get to spelunking and sunsets, but not today.  Today, it’s about the river….or rivers, as the Wisconsin and the Mississippi meet up.  Riparian zones (as scientists call the interface between river or stream and land) are great habitats for lots of diverse flora and fauna.  I told you about the wild turkeys in my last post.  More majestic in flight and about the same size, I found turkey vultures (or buzzards) and a bald eagle also enjoying all the area has to offer.  Bluff skimming, aerial gliding and diving, wind surfing…I think it would just be a blast to be one of the soaring carnivores.  You have to forgive me for not being equipped with the kind of camera equipment that can capture some of that flight.  Imagine instead that a swift shadow passes your peripheral vision, and you instinctively look upward, like any small mammal might.  Your gaze follows this heavenly creature until the last feather passes from view, and you realize you’ve forgotten to breathe.  They do that to me.  I don’t even think about trying to take a photo.   I also didn’t photograph the little field mouse we saw on the path we had just trekked a few minutes ago.  It wasn’t there the first time around.  It was obviously dead, but not marked or chewed.  My guess is that it was a fresh catch that got accidentally dropped from the height of flight and left for lost.  That picture stays in my mind only, out of respect.

The poetry prompt for today is to compose a “ghazal”.  Here’s the description from the NaPoWriMo site:

This is an old Persian form of poetry, and rather strange if you’re used to European meter-and-rhyme forms. A ghazal is made of couplets. Traditionally, the the two lines of the first couplet end with the same word or phrase, and then that same word/phrase is used to end the second line of each succeeding couplet. All of the lines are supposed to be of about the same length, although there is no formal meter or syllable count. If you want to get super traditional/technical, the last couplet is supposed to refer to the poet, either by name, or through some kind of allusion.

Photos first, I think, then the poem.  Hope you enjoy!

High up on the hilltop, the breeze makes me shiver

Pushing cloud shadows gracefully over the river.

 

On invisible gusts, buzzards hover, each feather an instrument

Tuned to the wind, sailing the currents here over the river.

 

Spring greening the banks, sheltered nests in the reeds,

Weeping willows’ and cottonwoods’ pollen and seeds cover the river.

 

A sand bar glows golden, inviting for rest any swimmers

Grown weary in late evening’s quest to cross over the river.

 

As the light glances, changing mood, color and hue, I am breathless

And dreamy, entranced. Miss Priscilla, in awe, can’t get over the river.

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Woodman & Woodland

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Steve and I had a wonderful adventure driving across the state and ended up at Wyalusing State Park, where the Wisconsin River dumps into the Mississippi.  The wind was stiff and the air was cold, but the skies were cloudless and the wildflowers plentiful.  It did get down to freezing overnight, but that didn’t bother us.  We woke up at about 5 a.m. because the moon was so bright and took our traditional night hike (without flashlights), cheeks burning from the cold. We burrowed back into the warmth of the tent, well-padded by every layer of clothing we brought and woke up a few hours later after the sun had begun to thaw things out.  We spent a lot of time talking about our relationship and our future and came back after only one night because our energy had shifted to getting things accomplished at home and starting new jobs on Monday.   Why?  So we can fashion a life that allows us to travel further and get away from city life for longer periods of time.

I took over one hundred photos and will dole them out in little batches.  Today’s photos are of Woodman, Wisconsin on the Wisconsin River, population 89 (in 2009).  I give Steve credit for spotting these storefronts on Main Street and doing a U-turn so that I could take pictures. 

We also spotted along this road, which parallels the Wisconsin river, 7 wild turkeys.  Yesterday was the beginning of the first week of spring turkey hunting.  I jumped out of the car to try to get a picture of 4 of them in a stubbly corn field, but they trotted away.  Yup, turkeys trot.  Seems like they enjoy a healthy population and plenty of habitat.  I don’t know if anyone still makes clothing from their feathers or if they’re featured on the menu at the local diner, but I do know that the WI Dep’t. of Natural Resources posts access to public hunting grounds all along the riverway.  We took one of those roads and got only so far in the car, then walked the rest of the way to the river.  How far?  This far.

 

So, that’s the first installment of pictures and the first part of our trip.  Now for the poetry.  While I’ve been away, the NaPoWriMo folks have posted 3 prompts.  I decided to simply take my pick today and chose a topic that suited my mood.  The following poem is based on “an experience of the 5 senses”.

Woodland Awakening

 

Within the heavy, smothering cocoon of cotton, wool and leather,

My limbs begin to shift and stir.

A sharp, fresh draft of cooler air snakes through the cracks in my massive nest.

My nostrils flare to greet it like a seal’s in sea ice portals.

The tease is smokey and crisp, like the promise of bacon,

Enticing me to surface. I blink my barely moistened eyes

And try to comprehend the letters, upside down and inside out,

Imprinted on my nylon tent.

The blue light brightens there, the shadows growing more defined,

As rapid-drumming woodpeckers and the two-note chickadee

Introduce a chorus of individual calls crisscrossing overhead.

The crackle from my dried-out throat is sadly put to shame.

My tongue lies limp and listless, longing for a bathe in good, strong coffee.

My will and my reluctant muscles begin a lazy conversation,

Ignoring the foregone conclusion.

Stay tuned for spelunking and sunsets yet to come!

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You’ve Heard of Purple Prose….

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…well, today I present: Purple Poetry.   The prompt for today’s National Poetry Writing Month post invites us to compose a piece based on a color.  I have to admit that my first response was to think of the goofy beatnik poetry in Ken Nordine’s Colors album, which Steve has.  “Yellow was in trouble…” and “Green can be a problem..”  If you’ve never heard these, you must.  They’re just too much fun!

So here’s my own word association dream on The Color Purple (no, don’t think of Alice Walker):

Twisting tendrils pulsing poison

Bloody Portuguese placenta

      birth marks and umbilicus

      bruises rhyme with purple wine

      capillary coupling

People eaters robed in splendor

Atmospheric skies at sunset

      mussels in deep, hazy rain

      eggplant mountains majesty

      purple cows and penitents

Pimpernel-ish violet babies

Lilac lavender suspension

     (dot, dot, dot) of disbelief.

And for the shutterbugs, some photos, too!