November 1.15
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In Memory of John Parker
The last of 15 uncles died this week.
After his funeral, late this afternoon
I walked across the autumn fields alone
under windy grey skies.
There were crows calling in the distance.
Summer trees becoming skeletons again,
Cold wind tearing down the golden leaves.
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–Quilla
December 29.13
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Thoughts Late in the Year
Congested with illness, I sit outside.
Mild winter sunlight warms a tired face.
Weary with weakness, I deeply breathe
the fresh December air.
The chill night shadows of dis-ease
tighten my lungs,
leave a painful slowness in my bones.
Our dear ones came to be with us a few days
and now are gone back again to their lives
very far away.
We near the end of yet another year, recalling
joy-filled faces of light, spoken words
of healing love.
Soft winds sigh, and sigh the tall dark pines.
The fountain splashes, sparkles breaking ice.
A few white clouds left from rain in the night
drift across the deep blue Mind of love.
As always, crows are arguing about something,
sounding like television, or politicians.
Harsh crow-words shatter the winter quiet
like shards of a holy vase—dropped, or care-lessly
tossed, forever broken.
On a bare winter twig, a Whitethroat Sparrow rings
his tiny bell—a few notes inexpressibly sweet
with hope, ineffably true—given freely
in the blue December light.
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–Quilla
May 24.13
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The blue-green eggshell of a Thrush
for John Hotchkiss
It is late May, a fine warm windy blue day, the windows are open.
As we pack our dead father’s lifetime into cardboard boxes,
through the open windows I hear the constant click, clicking
of the gardener’s clipping shears, snipping the lush spring growth
from the shrubs beneath the windows, making the house look fresh
again, as it was when mother was alive, as if lived in by the living.
So we close this, their final human chapter, and with reluctance
and a sad relief not unlike late autumn, we put a sign up in the yard.
The three of us who sprang from their loving bodies
will store the heavy boxes of their earthly life in our separate attics, until….
Perhaps a few sepia photos will pose upon the shelves
of our own fleeting years, staring back at us, lost and frozen gazes
collecting careless and impartial dust.
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The windows are open, letting the spring wind
ruffle through the stale rooms.
Sunny blue breezes jingle the chimes.
A thrush is singing somewhere deep in the trees.
The gardener’s shears keep clipping, clipping.
Sometimes I hear him humming at his work.
I walk outside. Along the shady wooded path I look down
and find the pale, blue-green eggshell of a thrush.
It is the time of year when wild, winged things are born.
We find their empty shells fallen to the forest floor.
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–Quilla
The Day after Christmas
(For Farrah and Stephan)
Alone now, a quiet winter morning room. William Ackerman’s guitar deftly strums ‘The Last Day at the Beach’—in those chords I hear the sound of footprints softly washing away, the thirsty little waves always lapping at the watery edge of things. I strike a match to yesterday’s colorful gift-wrapping stoked in the stove. The Christmas paper fire roars and glows like burning rainbows.
An hour before dawn I woke to quickly dress and go downstairs and kiss good-bye, to hug and pray for my daughter and son-in-law, to send them on their way again, a hundred and five feet per second north on the 81, nine hundred miles. They were with us five short days.
Five days: a hundred-some-odd hours, thousands of words and smiles, sharing the gifts of ourselves—these dear moments now enter what we call ‘the past’, the process of becoming compressed into a rich but thin space in our minds. It is like one page of photographs in a much larger album, long shelves of large dusty albums in an ancient cathedral library. Sometimes we open the pages, fondly recall the images, the names and faint voices of those who are gone from us—even our earlier selves.
Now they are gone, I walk into their empty room, stand for a few moments, feeling the absence.
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O Father, how you have made us! And the whole Universe! —minuscule wands of light, galaxies spinning eons like fireflies through this mesh of night, from something and toward something, indeed Someone: infinitely brighter and more intimate than hosts of stars, the wastes of time, the cryptic rhyme of tides.
Surely the pathos of our footprints on this brief shore is precious to You. You watch us leave our gifts, our very selves behind us, how we grieve each love we’ve lost. Everything we’ve held dear both follows and precedes us, like our meager faith and deeds. All these are little lamps flickering before us into the vast dark. We walk in shadows cast by the mystery of perfect Love, unfathomable invisible Light.
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“Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I am fully known.” 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 12.
Winter is Closing In….
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From my Nature Journal: ‘December, and Winter Closes In…’
Tonight, just after sunset strong winds are blustering down our valleys from the northern mountains, the high Unaka range. The thermometer’s red line has dropped over twenty degrees in a few hours. Empty trees roar with night wind. Squalls of rain have quickly changed to heavy gusts of blowing snow. Winter is closing in.
First the green, and then the golden days took down their pretty things, and left. Suddenly the blue mouth of winter is howling at our doors. Reveling in its power, both the ‘inner child’ and the older one living in me thrill to start a new fire in Efel, our cast-iron Belgian stove. Twenty four winters now, I’ve fed her at least two cords of seasoned hardwood each year. But these last two winters, she’s gotten hungrier. In return, she keeps us warm, even during power outages, simmers our winter soups and stews, cups of evening tea. Late in the long nights, her fluttering flames and falling embers talk soft words of the summer sun. The stored heat of many seasons is released in one night from the burning wood. Few things kindle our primal connections to the ancient past more keenly than wood fire warming our homes on cold nights, the soft lights dancing on our dark walls. Something deep in us remembers far more than we can recall.
Once again winter is closing in on our high country like a pack of ghost wolves. Already the mountains have been coated white with early storms. Now we wait the harder cold, the deeper snows. As Earth spins closer to the Solstice—the day with the shortest daylight, usually December twenty first or second—the arc of the sun drops a bit lower each afternoon. The ragged purple-grey mountains move long shadows across the stubbled fields. Up and down the backroads from Indian Creek to Elk Shoals, threads of woodsmoke rise from chimneys into the pale, slanted light.
In colder months the sleeping land keeps a quiet serenity. All the summer birds have flown from the forests. Farm work in the fields is done. Dark comes early, nights are long. This winter, Venus gleams low in the west after sunset, Jupiter sparkles high in the east.
Just this week we’ve noticed that Juncos have returned to our feeders. These small charcoal-colored birds are often called “Snowbirds”. A scissor of white flashes in their sooty tailfeathers. Juncos don’t migrate long distances. Winging down to the valleys for winter, they return to the highest ridge tops to nest for the summer. One jingling note is their mating song, held long in the thin air, the ringing of a tiny glass bell.
In recent weeks I’ve also been hearing the sweet music of my favorite winter visitor, the shy Whitethroat Sparrow. Nesting far to the north, they winter here. I see them flitting to the feeder from wine-red tangles of honeysuckle and briars along the garden’s edge. Their song is a lilting dream of seven to twelve notes, with the wistful sense of remembered joy.
Some of my favorite December memories rise from those years we took our two daughters, my mother and father, and went looking for a fresh-cut Yancey Christmas tree. The best part was walking the hillside rows of live Fraser Firs together with my girls, choosing just the right tree to take home. Sometimes snowflakes were spinning out of the dark north, ravens squawking high above on the gray wind. I realized even then how quickly it all was passing; I cherished the excited beauty in my daughters’ cold faces, their little-girl chatter and laughter, my father’s quiet joy in all of us. We piled into the Trooper with the tree tied to the roof, and went into town for plates of good hot mountain food. Winter was closing in. But we were together. It was Christmas.
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–Quilla
Published in the Yancey Journal and Common Times
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Easter afternoon
Warm spring winds blow through the heavy twisted limbs of oaks, greening them
with April lace again: soft young leaves, a late spring afternoon.
Indigo Buntings trill those bright and wistful lyrics our summer minds recall across the blue distances.
Grey doves moan some deeper well in us the passing clouds, even the ancient oaks have never known.
Horses are frolicking with delight on the bright water-colored hills, like rocking horses they dapple
the deep green fields, grey winter hooves kicking mud into the golden sun.
These days and nights of Passiontide the swollen river rolls unceasing
through our waking hours and nightly dreams, unfurling musical pages of pathos and wild joy
down and through the greening hills. It sings some distant sea, long slow rhythms in the shoals
forever breaking stones to sand.
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A fine restaurant today. Through the west window, a crimson azalea blazes in the spring sun,
casting rosy shadows into the crowded room. Beyond them, cross-starred blooms of dogwoods
were dancing ghosts of snow in the warm April wind.
An elderly woman with thin blue-veined hands played old show tunes on the yellowed keys of the upright Steinway.
I ate thick slices of sweet spring lamb, savoring our joyful talk, the bitter salad leaves, the bread and oil,
the old piano music, dear family members once gathered here, now gone—
this very room, wooden floors sounding the dear old tunes, the air thick and redolent with the human family, the fragrant broken Lamb.
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Ruach 333, by Quilla 