Sunset Doves, July 5.16
*
*
*
*
*
Under bright summer clouds
the evening doves flutter down
whistling wings,
breasts glowing the softer colors
of the sunset clouds,
cooing shadow-songs to the coming dark.
*
*
–Quilla
Moments from November. . .
*
*
*
From my nature journal, November 5: A mild and moist November morning, no wind, low clouds, the pungent smell of fallen leaves. Most of the brighter leaves were torn down by recent windy rains. Only the tall pear tree in the lower garden lifts its limbs with fire colors, like painted flames of praise, into the somber morning light.
With a wide variety of subtle textures and sounds, rich browns, rust and deep maroons, late autumn quietly thrills us, if we give ourselves the present of pausing, listening, actually seeing the kaleidoscopic world whirling around us. November calls us to quiet our hurried hearts, to appreciate the natural rhythm of the seasons, this waning of the natural year. There is an essential ebb and flow, rising and falling, a delicate timing for everything. We enjoy the annual cycle in the bright pageantry of passing flowers—from the first snow-white bloodroot blossom in the late-winter woods, to the last pale asters lacing the edges of November.
Across the oyster shell of morning sky, a ragged stream of vultures flows silently from east to west. They’re flying out of night-roost deep in a pine grove behind the old white clapboard Methodist church. These dark wide-winged scavengers fan out over the land with ghoulish silhouettes, soaring in all directions with sharp eyesight and keen sense of smell, scouring the roadsides, farmlands and riverbanks for dead animals.
“Buzzards” perform a necessary sanitation service, cleansing the land of decaying flesh. Their gut is specially designed to handle the deadly bacteria breaking down the carrion. In this cathartic process, the fallen energy of death is transformed, lifted into the aerial life of vultures and passed on, nourishing the hungry earth, which feeds everything under the sun. Only bones are left, to bleach in the sun and snow, gnawed by woods-mice for the mineral salts. I stand in awe of the wisdom and quiet majesty revealed in the interwoven layers and rhythms of the created world.
October 31: The last of my fifteen uncles died this week. After his funeral, late this afternoon I walk across the autumn fields alone under windy gray skies. Crows are calling in the distance. Summer trees have become skeletons again. Cold wind tears down the last gold and crimson leaves.
November 6: A pleasant “Indian Summer” afternoon, late-autumn, the sun descends slowly through the bare trees, making long thin shadows. Above the garden a glistening ball of midges spins up and down, revolving in the warm air. I hear the high whistling of whitethroat sparrows again, returned just this week from nesting far to the north. They are here for the colder months, lilting wistful songs all winter. A slight breeze rises and falls, making a dry whisper of November leaves—a sound like someone stepping softly through the empty woods, walking away…..
*
*
–Quilla
*
–Quilla
A Redbone Hound and the Crescent Moon
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
“A Redbone Hound and the Crescent Moon”
From my nature journal, Monday October 27: Unseasonably warm. The gold late-October sun burns down to smoky topaz. Low stratus clouds blaze fire colors across the blue mountains. Mild wind rattles the thinning trees. In the dry dusky air, temperature drops quickly.
Even as I watch, the sky-flames fade, lose their glow. Clouds smolder into threads of gray-blue smoke, scattering shreds like ash. The fires of day are cooled and swallowed by approaching autumn darkness. In falling shadows the fluttering silhouette of one small bat darts and dives, catching the year’s last flying insects. The first blast of winter is predicted this weekend. The woodshed is stacked with split dead locust and red oak, summer-dried, out of the rain. Let winter come.
In purpling light a sliver of new crescent moon gleams silver as a sickle through naked trees. I listen to one Katydid scratching out a rasping husk of pathetic, yearning music. He reminds me of some ragged streetcorner troubador, screeching a sad tune on a warped fiddle, an empty basket at his feet. We share a thin, existential scratch of his aloneness, as another golden summer is gone. Killing cold comes. Still, clinging to a bare twig the single Katydid keeps scraping worn wings, plaintive scraps of song. It is a poignant moment in the great movements of the turning year.
A quarter mile up the road, a neighbor’s Redbone hound howls into the day’s gathering gloom, under the cool slice of descending moon. The penned dog pours out her deep-throated song, recalling the lost music of scent and chase, slathering tooth and gnashing claw. Somber mountain hollows echo the primal sound. The hound makes soulful blues for the wild at heart, haunting something buried in our civilized bones. The howl hearkens back to an earlier time when many men were hunters. They’d come dragging in way after midnight, or just after dawn, the best dogs cut and whimpering, wild game treed and shot, fresh-killed and gutted.
A strong woman was there to cook the slabs of bloody meat on the hearth or stove, to fill the gnawing craws of her home-born, rib-boned family. My mother’s Yancey County mother often sang over her cooking, sweet and low with earthly sorrows, stirred with hoped-for heavenly joy.
Often I think that sounds have colors. The Redbone’s low-pitched baying paints the blue, moon-sickle dusk ancient tones of blood-maroon. The dark moon-shaped howl wakens ancestral connections. I hear a deep guttural requiem to the vanquished ways of much harder but simpler ways of making life, sharp pain washed with raw beauty. Something in us still wants the wild creatures, their fragile secret lives protected in remaining bits of wilderness.
Saturday November first: Everything has suddenly changed. As predicted, a fierce storm from Canada, first of the winter, comes squalling like a black Banshee into the rainy red Halloween night. Roaring trees wake me long after midnight. I get up and open an upper window, hold the flashlight out into the raging dark. The light-beam glitters thousands of swirling snowflakes. Icy crystals prickle my hand, instantly melt on my warm bare arm.
I close the window, crawl back under the quilts, a caveman hunkered under thick furs a thousand winters back. Woman is curled close, sleeping and warm. North wind howls in the night, bending the big trees. Windows moan, whispering whisks of driven snow.
Drifting back into sleep, my dreams are colored the night-sounds of deep autumn. Artic indigos howl with gray wolves. Yet there are scarlet stains of dying leaves, the last gusts of summer blowing gold and crimson blooms. November’s windy pages always are scrawled with fading blood-rust, brushed with frozen flowers, scratched with icy claws.
*
*
–Quilla
October 5.14
*
*
*
*
Woodbine
Again, a thin blown vine remains—
woven twine of summer leaves
gone scarlet, winds down
the tall black pine.
A gold sun sets, blazing
the fiery colors of fear, dying down
to embers at last, letting go to night,
to winter, everything we’ve known
of warmth: tender faces, flowers
—all the things we lose each year
but the timeless love of God
*
*
–Quilla
Appaloosas
*
*
*
*
Appaloosas
Soft, amber notes, like late piano songs
are falling around us now, like leaves.
From the year’s longer, thicker strings
comes a resonance, those richer tones
released from the deep rings our heartwood.
Listening, we weep with a quiet subdued joy,
watching these descending strands
of gold, strum like strings, the evening light
upon our broken hearts, the fallen land.
Several rust-brown, snow-patch Appaloosas
gallop across the yellowing thatch of meadows.
Long tails of shadow follow the fast horses
into the coming night.
What few leaves left on trees are rustling, quietly.
Like the last fans at a lost game, sadly gathering
their things to go.
The autumn sun diminishes, a gray layer
of stratus shadows, finishes the day.
A few insects still rasp such feeble songs
as this, in the yellowing blades of grass.
Across the gold-dust haze of distances
crows are cawing lustily—raw bloodcolors
stain the grove of rusted oaks.
A far neighbor’s dog is barking.
The brown and white Appaloosas run
with the strong and easy grace given them:
Hard hooves thrum the soft harp-strings
of sunset light. Shadows follow them,
silent blue shades of autumn night.
*
–Quilla
*
“The unfolding of Your words gives light.
Turn to me, and be gracious to me,
Establish my footsteps in Your word,
and do not let iniquity have dominion over me.” –Psalm 119: 129, 32
*
*
*
–Quilla
Hattie, a Young Snowbird-Cherokee Woman
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
8
Hattie, a Young Snowbird Cherokee
Quietly, she laid the pieces before us.
Exquisite hand-wrought Native jewelry:
glass beads, glowing fire of smoky coral dawns,
sliding blackness of rattlesnake caves,
a bear’s small eyes gleaming starlight,
slow blue mists, lifting
over rainy mountain streams—
all these strung on sterling silver wire.
We held them each, admiring, but unable
to buy, gave them back into her
deft and gentle fingers,
soft and strong brown hands.
She coiled each one back inside its little box
on beds of cotton, closed it, and quietly smiled.
There was silent understanding in her eyes.
Nearby, the stream kept falling over ancient stones.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Tuesday Morning December 7: The Color of Mourning Doves (revised)
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
This morning in early grey snow-light I stood at an upstairs window, looking out into blustery snowy air. Large flakes whirled through the limbs of the birch tree beside the house. The window was partially steamed, but I could see a dozen or so Mourning Doves close by in the bare branches. They bowed like the devout silhouettes of old Franciscans, praying against the desolation of the day. The bleak winter sky loomed over the huddling silence of the doves. Gusts of wind moaned at the window, shook the black tree and the birds. The doves rocked and swayed on their thin perches among the frozen catkins of next April, but they did not fly away.
^
The low December sun was completely hidden in heavy snow clouds. As if we’ll not see it again til Spring. The rolling land lay drab and harsh, dusted with more snow blown down in the night. I could not see the horses in the pasture, or the old donkey; they were sheltering close together, somewhere down in the wooded hollows out of the wind. This kind of morning makes winter seem a curse, the land stricken hard by the blue wand of an evil white witch with fierce icicle teeth. The lashing dragon-tailed wind is her unchained mongrel. She has not known love or a warm touch in a thousand frozen years.
^
At the window, looking out at the shadowy land, my eyes lingered on the delicate pastels of the breasts of the doves. Molded feathers of pale roses and ash, the doves glowed softly like winter sunrise on the underbellies of smoky snow clouds. Those pale colors curl inside old ocean shells held up to the light. And we find these same hues hidden as earth-shine on the rounded dark side of a crescent moon—an iridescent shade glimmering soft translucent rouge. This dark winter morning a faded rose blushes the breasts of doves.
We stand in wonder, and must respond to ineffable mystery. With childlike brushes, we crush and mix our paints, lyrics and tunes as if they were divine syllables that must be spoken. The earnest desire fueling our art is to return a few shreds of the immense and intricate glory shown to us, these fleeting days and nights.
^
I see from their fullness, the doves have filled their little furnaces with the handfuls of yellow millet I threw to the frozen ground for them last evening. Deep inside their sleek and rounded bodies hunched in the icy wind, the gold seeds are burning, returning the stored sunfire of grain fields grown tall under a summer sky. Sun flames become millet blades and seed, transforming into winter Morning Doves— those glowing rose-grey breasts, plaintive moonlike songs, softly whistling wings.
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
Images of August
Jonas Girard’s splatter wall
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Thunderhead
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
NC Arboretum wall
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Jonas Girard, 8.14.10
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Mussel shells, dried river-silt
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Farrah’s favorite quilt, NC Arboretum
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Stephan
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Passage II, by Leigh Wen, at Haen Gallery, Asheville NC
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Zoey with a bagel
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
August 14.10, #II, by Jonas Girard
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Rocks, South Estatoe River
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Tiger Swallowtail, Butterfly bush
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Rails
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Goldfinch bathing
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
2010, III X by Stephen Pentak, displayed at Haen Gallery, Asheville NC
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
The last sunlight
*
*
*
Ruach 333, by Quilla 