Saturday January 10.15
To the Drunken Muse:
No.
Leave, take your enticing cup of lies,
leave the room of this life,
close the door and go, do not return.
I want nothing to dull or dazzle
this beautiful mirror I’m given.
These reflections, perceptions
are to be keen with physical edge,
and with Spirit: from here I can see
in the low meadow there
the wild grass-blades, shining and sere
in lean winter sun, stirring slightly
with sharp curled knives of wind.
A Red-Shouldered Hawk is perched high
in the Black Walnut, folded and still, waiting
intently watching, for his very life.
Many autumns ago, far to the north:
I sit beside a deep, high-mountain lake
alone, long after midnight.
The yellow moon is glowing
above a jagged black forest of spruce.
The golden light reflects perfectly,
silently, on the black windless water.
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–Quilla
A Great Horned Owl and “The Long-Night Moon”
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From my nature journal, December 4: Before going to bed I close down the house and walk outside for a few minutes to stand and listen, to hear the evening hush of the dark December hills. I breathe deep and smell the night. The air is mild for this time of year, cool and moist with the musk of fallen leaves and loamy earth—thawed again, after hard November frosts.
The vast bowl of sky is full of slow clouds, curdled milky opalescent blue. Wisps of smoky rust stain the tall moon. From the west drift shadowy vapors, not thick enough for rain, nor dense enough to completely darken the ancient stone face of light. In winter months, when the sun rolls low across the sky, the moon rides high.
From deep past beyond all remembering, native peoples called this the Long-Night Moon. The time in the earth year we’ve squared into a grid of numbered boxes and named “December” has always known the shortest days, the longest nights. Can we imagine living by a “calendar” closely tuned with the moments and silences of natural cycles? —a “clock” that ticks with spring’s first exuberant fluting of the Wood Thrush; the raspy summer night-music of Katydids; silky ears of corn sweetened in the husk; moonlit wolves crying across the milk-blue crust of snow. So the indigenous tribes named the thirteen moons of the turning year. The round rock satellite rolling above us always reflects the light from the buried sun. The moon’s soft or sharpened radiance, whether the color of ripe melons or of icicles, sketches the shadows of plants, of animals and the transitory movements of man wandering, warring and loving in his brief seasons upon the earth.
This particular night is quiet, and still. Only one sound haunts the deep woods, the night meadows and the grey-faced moon: a Great Horned Owl hoots somewhere on the black wooded hill. The large owl’s booming notes drum muffled echoes across the deep hollows. I stand still several minutes, listening to his throbbing song, over and over, every twenty seconds. (And I wonder how he knows when twenty seconds is up?) The fearful imaginations of native peoples conjured forebodings from such ominous night-words. The dark sound stirs something in us primal and wild, living beneath the level of language.
Tonight I do not hear the female owl answering with her higher-pitched staccato tones. Suddenly the male stops calling. All is quiet but the faint river sighing in the distance. I wait and listen, but the great owl has gone silent. From somewhere in the pastures of night, a horse snuffles.
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–Quilla
June Sixth
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As the Lights Go Out
Midnight thunderstorms, silently
move on, flickering back into the darkness
beyond the northern mountains
Through shreds of opalescent mist
the early summer moon descends
into the black, dripping trees.
The lamp burns by the window.
I close the last book of the long day
and listen: small brown moths
bump and flutter against the screen.
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–Quilla
January 19.14. . .”The Wolf Moon” . . (published in the Asheville Tribune)
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Wolf Moon
From my nature journal: Moonlight fills the room. I wake late in the midwinter night. From an upstairs window I look out on steep fields and black forest. A skift of fresh powder snow has fallen while I was asleep. I go downstairs and stoke the woodstove, put on heavy coat and boots and walk out into the frozen night. The moon sparkles millions of prismatic crystals, draws sharp tree shadows across the snow. Hard cold burns my lungs like breathing fire, or ice. The deep silence and cold of space has fallen. In the keen solitude, I sense that relatively few modern humans enjoy this extreme celestial beauty.
The glistening January darkness represents the most entrancing scene in the turning of the natural year. I appreciate the richly varied scenes and textures of spring, summer and autumn. But nothing approaches the exquisite crystalline delicacy of a snowfallen winter night, gleaming under a bone-white moon. The Cherokee called this the “Wolf Moon”, when wolves howled in hunger around the native villages, so many moons ago.
Above, and behind me: the stoked wood unfurls fragrant smoke out of the chimney into the starlit stillness. The only sound is the faint sigh of the full winter river flowing under the solitary moon, descending into the trees. Songbirds are huddled and folded, fluffed in their breast down, roosting in the shelter of dark firs. The sharp-edged silver night severely tests the lives of wild creatures.
The wide clusters of winter stars are now at their zenith, cosmic jewelry glittering across unfathomable space. These unknown worlds of fire we see each clear night are burning farther from earth than we can imagine. The nearest star to earth other than the Sun is Alpha Centauri/Proxima, “only” 4.5 light years away, or about 26 trillion miles. Consider this: our fastest spacecraft, traveling constantly (if there were fuel enough) would take well over 50 thousand earth-years to reach it. And that is the closest star! Most of the lights in the night sky are much more distant. The farthest object visible by human eye from earth is the Andromeda Galaxy, a tiny snowball blur of light in the winter sky, spinning over two million light years from earth! The dim radiance we receive from her tonight began 20,000 centuries ago. And she is considered a “neighbor”. The Hubble telescope has discovered billions of galaxies (each with millions of stars) beyond our home ‘Milky Way’ spiral of lights. Even the “known” universe is infinitely more expansive than the human mind can begin to fathom. We have no frame of reference for endless distances.
Faced nightly with such imponderables lost in deep indigo, we content ourselves with naming a few of the closer, more recognizable features appearing in the winter night, the clearest skies of the year. We call these somewhat arbitrary arrangements ‘constellations’, literally ‘to shine together’. The small star-cluster Pleiades (Seven Sisters) twinkles like a child’s handful of fireflies. The great Hunter, Orion, followed by his bright dogs Sirius and Procyon, rising over the eastern trees each November is an ancient and recurring mystery of joy. The Great and the Small Bear, Ursa Major and Minor, (Big and Little Dipper) circle round and round the North Star, the endlessly turning seasons of earth. For thousands of years, diverse cultures around the globe have recorded intricate mythologies woven from the seasonal movements of stars, and have used them for agriculture, navigation, and a host of arts and religions. One of the rewards of astronomy is the expanding perspective of living on a small watery blue planet spinning in infinite space, comfortably close to a star. This deepening awareness can change your thinking, about many things.
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Equinox, and the ‘Full Corn Moon’
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From time beyond all knowing, native peoples called this ancient annual luminary the ‘Full Corn Moon’, lighting the fields of tall maize, moonstruck blades in full ear at the end of summer. Supplemented with a wide variety of wild foods, corn provided essential energy for the survival of indigenous tribes living close to the land under the burning, freezing skies.
Throughout the year the moon normally rises about 50 minutes later each evening, coming full-circle through its phases every 28 days. But around equinox the full moon rises only about 30 minutes later than the night before. This natural ‘heavenly’ grace gives several “full moon” early evenings close together, with heightened brilliance when it was needed most by those working the fields, harvesting crops. Most of us don’t notice this critical difference in the September moonlight. We gather our produce from local grocery store shelves under fluorescent lights. In a few generations of “progress” we’ve lost touch with earth and sky—all the volatile turning lights and weathers.
So just what is autumnal equinox? Literally meaning “equal night”, equinox occurs when the sun appears to cross the celestial equator, when day and night are of approximately equal length. The seasons result from Earth’s tilt of 23.5 degrees off of vertical as it revolves around sun. Autumnal equinox (first day of fall) happens halfway between the Summer Solstice of June 22 (first day of summer) and the Winter Solstice of December 22 (first day of winter). Only on equinox does the sun rise nearly due east, setting due west. Each dawn, each sunset, the sun appears and disappears at a slightly different place along the jagged mountain rim.
So I get out of bed, put on my old barncoat and walk into the cool darkness to watch the full September moon crossing the zenith of sky. The round white face of light moves slowly but certainly, like real time, through the tall birch trees, tracing serrated edges of their leaves, cutting them into a fine black lace of midnight silhouettes. In a month or so, those limbs will be bare sticks again, like thin empty fingers of abandoned women, wanting something to stitch, and do. Winter winds will give them plenty to talk about. But for now this mild September night sings like an autumn festival, jingling the end-of-summer calliope of a thousand rasping, mating insects, male and female making young, burying their seed in the ground before the killing frosts.
A mile to the east, the four-lane is mostly quiet this time of night—only a few big trucks rolling down the dark. A half mile to the west, the wide river that roared so full of rain most of the summer has fallen to a soft low sigh.
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–Quilla
The above post appeared in a modified form in the Asheville, Hendersonville, and Weaverville NC Tribune newspapers, the week of September 25.2012
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April 26.13
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Sakura . . . . .
(Cherry Blossoms)
For my daughter Natallie, on her 20th Birthday
There is a gleaming light
in the windless stillness of 3 a.m.—
Face of the full April moon
shining through the fragrant lace,
ten thousand snow-white cherry blooms
light my upturned face.
There is the endless spring night sky—
a delicate powder shade of dark, between
ancient pewter and indigo, the deep
oceanic silence of stars, infinite
like the fathomless heart
of Father God, listening:
There is a soft roar—the mountain river
rushing down its gorges, full
of highland snow and long spring rains;
there is the whispered mid-night prayer
of thanks, of blessing—a father
for his golden little girl, now grown
a woman, her strength and beauty
shining like the April moon,
the delicate cherry blooms,
these graceful gifts of God.
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“The greatest of these is Love”
-First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13
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–Quilla
March 27.13: 4 a.m.
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Four A.M.
On the darkened walls
of the quiet room
firelight flickers gold
On pale blue fields
of freshly fallen snow
spring moon softly glows
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–Quilla
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“I will give you the treasures of darkness
and hidden wealth in secret places,
So you may know that it is I
the LORD, the God of Israel
Who calls you by your name.”
–Isaiah 45: 3
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January Twelfth
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After Heavy Rains, the Winter Moon
Gently the Spirit wakes me from my dreams.
The house is asleep. Finally the rains have stopped.
A mild winter night, I sit by an open window.
A soft moonlight shape lies silent on the floor.
Dark hemlock trees are standing very still
out in the bright moon-mist.
Down the hill the small stream rushes
full of winter rain.
A half mile away, the river roars
down dark gorges toward the sea.
A long train rolls upriver slowly
rumbling through the moonlit night.
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–Quilla
After the Movie: An early Christmas Gift–Raindrops in Moonlight
Last night, after watching a movie I walked outside into the cold darkness to breathe and stretch,
to refresh myself. Whenever I spend an extended time in the world of pretend, no matter how well the art
is expressed, I have a hunger to re-enter the natural world and make contact. I need to look at real things
and consider what I have just seen.
I’ve willingly loaned my soul, my mind, for a few dear hours of life—to a group of people, to let them make
an impression on me, to tell me their story. But now that I have watched, and listened, I want my soul,
and my senses back. Tonight was no different. I opened the door and walked outside.
^
A brief cold shower had just fallen. The wet grass and brick walkway were shining in the low moonlight.
Iridescent storm clouds the color of opals and charcoal were breaking up, drifting like smoke across
the large white waning moon. It had just risen over the woodshed, over the glistening silhouettes of the
tall bamboo. There was not a breath of wind.
I stood there in the scintillating night with my right arm stretched out in front of me as if holding out a
greeting, or a farewell. With my hand I blocked the sharp brightness, to better see the winter stars,
glowing faintly in the luminescence around the brilliant moon.
^
Standing there, I became aware of a random, gentle tapping nearby and to my right, every few seconds.
Walking toward the sound, I realized it was raindrops, falling from the limbs of the large birch tree to the flat
surface of the trampoline. I walked around the wide aluminum circle to the far side, directly under the tree
branches, and stood there. In a few seconds, a large cold drop splashed on my forehead. Yes, I was fully awake,
and quite present, for the very real display of beauty I was about to see.
^
The closest branches of the birch were immediately above my head, and motionless, directly in front of my face.
As my eyes focused on their nearness, I could see each black twig was decorated with one or more large raindrops,
swollen and ready to fall. (Indeed, some of them did drop, even as I watched them.)
^
Looking toward the east and into dark shadows, I saw instantly that inside each liquid droplet, a miniscule moon
was captured, sparkling. The actual brightness of these many ‘moon-drops’ varied like that of the winter stars
themselves, gleaming in the black sky. A watery prismatic splintering of the white light even cast pale hints
of color into the constellations of reflections, further enhancing their resemblance to yellow Capella, blue Rigel, etc.
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At that rare moment, I was standing literally inside a miniature galaxy of rain-stars! But the most dazzling
feature was their three-dimensionality. We are accustomed to viewing the stars as if they were all the same
distance from us, although varying in brightness. It’s as if they were pin pricks of light in a black ceiling,
with no perception of depth or distance. But at this moment, my head was surrounded by minute glittering
lights—a most wonderful and exquisite sensation.
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Because the closest raindrops were only a few inches from my eyes, and the furthest up to several feet away,
I was viewing a spectacular host of star sizes and brightness. As I slowly moved and turned my head,
the star-drops moved at differing degrees, according to their various distances from my eyes. This created
a truly three-dimensional visual perception of these tiny sparkling stars of watery light. I was completely dazzled,
delighted with wonder, like a child. My knowledge of what was happening, and how it was happening, was
overwhelmed, transcended, by the sensation of awe at such delicate beauty.
^
Inside this little galaxy briefly given to me, I flashed back more than five decades to a timeless moment as a
small boy. A few nights before Christmas that year, in my pajamas I crept into the living room alone, and crawled
under the fully decorated magical tree. There I lay down on my back and looked up—into the whorled layers of limbs
and twinkling lights. And there I wondered and dreamed, as only a child can wonder, and dream.
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Ruach 333, by Quilla 