8 weeks and counting

 Spring is coming. Sure, Sure. I'm not writing about that though. We know spring is coming.  The hyacinths are tapping at the soil. The earthworms are thinking about setting the dial to defrost. But we know all that and more. What we don't know is if the menhaden are heading up this way yet or pooling around warmer waters.  Or if the osprey are waking up and thinking, 'Hmm, Jersey Shore, better get my place again this year.' It's the osprey I'm waiting for or maybe not waiting. Maybe I'm moving toward them. I mean, the least bit of sunlight these days, after so many days of darkness, and I'm not just talking past the solstice, but the country's trials, after so many days, I jump on sunlight out of the shadows I'm standing in and declare it feels like spring.  If that's not being too optimistic, let me tell you this too, out of a need for transparency. Spring is great. I won't argue that. But it's summer I'm heading toward. So I hope the menhaden understand, schooling around warm waters might be good for their members, but summer in Jersey is what they ought to head toward. If they move fast, I think spring will come sooner. And once spring is here summer get's the idea. This is how things really work. Summer is closer just thinking about it. The angle of the light is shifting toward a more dominant position in the sky. Oblique sunlight is losing ground. Who knows? Maybe it's the hyacinth causing all this. Praise be hyacinth. What a great flower. Just sayin'.  

New book installments coming soon.  

Be well. Hang in there. 

Summer is coming.

a blue streak about white bricks

The red bricks were painted white. An old kind of white paint mixed and rolled on the bricks before paints had so many names and stores competed with artist pen sets for all the colors one can find on a palette.  Milky white, white before the crystal shines through it; off white, egg shell, satin white, oyster. Every expression of color a competition for how mozzarella will tickle your tongue or niacin will creep through your blood and itch your neck. Any clam shell she had ever seen was white like a clam shell; not like milk; or every broken wave lighting white when the sun was at three or four o’clock and set to focus on the breakers like a spotlight. Rolling white and roaring white, as the blue green wave rolled through. It is not the water that moves but the energy through it.  Every wave is an illusion of movement; as if the water is moving from one area to another. The Indian Ocean eventually coming to the Jersey shore and every wetland on the coast holding something of the Mediterranean and the Aegean within. The Pacific, one Jupiter-sized ocean, carrying every river and Lake Baikal from Russia, even water off the deep sturgeon and all of it rolling into every otter’s paws like a cabbage of energy, that is really, layers and layers of energy and detritus of many oceans and currents, rolling into their paws or filtered through the feathery gills of baby clams.  Every leaf a wrack line and watermark from the Yangtze, the Yellow or the Seine rivers.  Why not bring Paris into it? After all, those kicks of the Follies surely moved the air and birds’ preening feathers loose caught this wind and moved onto the Seine and into the ocean and through the currents, rolling, rolling to the Jersey shore. Why not?  Or the Danube, blue dancing on the edges of the red cabbage. Well, where else would that blue come from except the Danube?  Dancing on the red cabbage like the white moths touched by yellow but owned by the air and moving through space, time and energy to your garden.  Wave and crest, colonies of Monarchs, moving through time’s patterns since their own generation did not make the crossing but left it to cascades of sparrows to wing through the air, stir up the cosmos and move the whole pilgrimage along the curve of energy, the ladle of abbondanza, the plenty crowding out of the great Horn and all of it, ending in the colors of the evening, the deeper blues before the dark, the warmer reds, the sweet colors of skin with summer on their nets and the lunar curve of children’s calves and thighs walking through the sand; small sprays of grains whisking past their toes, as one or maybe more look back for the dolphins, always ready to come to the surface when you’re not looking; always there the day before when you should have been.  The summer feeling like always.

Counting glories

There's been times I have been in love with spring and fall.  Those were surprising days considering summer is really it for me. It has been it for my whole family as well.  Until recently I never thought of families being identified with one season over another.  To be honest I never thought of my birthday as being in summer until this very minute. I was a September baby and once I grew up September seemed like the end of everything I wanted because it was the beginning of school.

Now that I mention the phrase "to be honest" I have to tell you that this one has always made me wonder how it came about.  Are there times when people are talking where it's the custom to spout lie after lie?  And then when you're ready to say something true you go "to be honest." It could act as a verbal signal to pay attention. When you're just shooting the breeze, not really saying anything true blue, well, the other person doesn't have to listen.  To have someone really listen to you is golden and why would they want to waste their riches of consciousness on you if you're just yakking.  Yackative people are good company but you know, silence is golden and if you're giving up some of your gold to listen to yakkers you might want to measure how much you want to give up. Therefore, you listen in and out. This allows your consciousness to get a rest. You don't spend yourself so much on yak yak yak and when the person that's yakking really wants you to pay attention they signal you. "To be honest."

I wasn't honest about the counting of the morning glories to my friend that has flower envy.  I told her I had ten and I did. But seven were on the backyard trellis and three on the structure. She's been so taken with these flowers that she started a contest and would give me the counts now and then. I'm the one that gave her the small plant to begin with. Her one orphan plant produced far more blooms than mine. But combined my plants are finally pulling ahead of hers.

If you look into a morning glory you can understand why a bee would walk all the way down that blue highway to get to the center of the flower. To be honest I'd like to go in there as well. It would be like playing fort within a flower. Just wait. Just wait and see if your cat or your brother or sister can find you down there under that blue blanket. Just wait. It will be summer again. This time I'm starting morning glories from seeds and I already told my competitor that I would share the seedlings with her. But she's not allowed in my fort.