These days, the Moomin characters have turned into a global franchise; and yet when I think about my own relationship with these books that were so formative of my imagination, I realise that what I owe these books is something much more private and intimate, a philosophy of sorts. Because in Tove Jansson’s books, when I re-read them now, I find a fierce recognition of the importance of solitude; an expansive sense of friendship—not a friendship that erases solitude, but one that is a kind of mutual recognition within it; a sense of delight in the world, its seasons and its changes, that doesn’t require any form of transcendence; and a hospitable generosity of spirit that manages, in one way or another, to accommodate even the most awkward and tricky of characters—not just eccentrics, stove-dwelling ancestors, hemulens, free spirits and oddballs, but also genuinely alarming creatures such as grokes and philosophers.
Remnant heat in flickering pools
below the horizon— Driving back
once more in the haze of evening,
it seems so simple— The engine
of intention presses forward
into the dark, the road unfurls
like breath. A line of white
reflects the right-hand border.
Steady at the wheel, all curves
taken in increments. At higher
speeds, the windshield stipples
with dusty ochre and green.
In response to small stone (132).
Self-portrait with new blue socks
Yes, it’s cool enough here for wool socks (and today, long underwear).
This is my favorite self-portrait to date, I think. The blues make me happy. “ASUS” is one letter away from “ASS,” which I often am. It shows my front porch at mid-morning, which is where and when I feel most at home in the universe. And I like the comic inversion here and the suggestion of asinine ears. The only way this could’ve been improved, I think, would’ve been if I’d thought to take my shirt off and use a compact digital camera, as if this were a “sexting” shot.
The photo was both planned and unplanned. Rachel had asked me several weeks ago for front-porch photos of both pairs of socks she’s knitted for me so far. (The other and far more glorious pair can be seen on Flickr.) The light conditions yesterday morning were perfect, and since I was wearing the blue socks already, I was inspired to grab the camera and snap some pictures. But then I set the camera down and picked up the laptop… You can imagine the rest. Curiously, when I went to upload the photos to my laptop for processing, I discovered that the initial two or three shots of just my feet in the blue socks were missing, I’m not sure how or why. So I was forced to take seriously a photo I’d shot as a joke, on a whim.
Pitcher plant heaven
(August 18) I’ve decided to remove the original introduction to this post to try and hide the location of the bog from plant thieves. My apologies for those who didn’t get a chance to read it before the re-write.
Continue reading “Pitcher plant heaven”
A hawk circles over the ridge
higher and higher, until the line it draws
is thinner, fainter— Plumed, taloned, sprung,
targeting; on the way to becoming gone, out
of sight, and finally out of feeling’s range.
Something of that wild heartbeat once burned
its bronze tattoo from the inside of my chest.
See the gouge-marks on leathered flesh?
Evidence it wasn’t all fetters and stays.
But oh that velvet hood is soft and hides so well
the liquid glint in the corner of each eye.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Words on the Street
The hummingbird isn’t the only bird
with jewel colors. And the dead
cherry still plays host to insect life.
The sign that points the wrong way
isn’t necessarily wrong. You know
what it’s like to pick at the same scab:
play the music in the same way. Don’t get
ahead of yourself— for a change,
let the day worry about its outcomes.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Knots
With some trees, the knotholes
are among the last things to go.
You can find them staring up
from the ground, eye sockets
that never belonged to a skull.
It makes sense that trees would grow
their hardest wood around the weakest
points in their architecture.
This is called the branch collar,
& it is woven with wood
first from the branch
as it overlaps onto the trunk
& then from the trunk
as it overlaps onto the branch.
Behind the collar, in the parent
trunk or limb, the branch core forms:
a cone of decay-resistant wood
shaped like a spear with the flared
base facing outward, keeping
the agents of rot at bay
long after the rest of the branch
has fallen off. This is the knot.
Arborists talk of intergrown
& encased knots, loose & sound
& pin knots, red & black knots.
We who know them only from lumber
might imagine hard pills the tree
had been unable to dissolve.
We would not be wrong.
Each time a tree says yes to the sun
a no begins to form, firm & sharp
& pointed inward.
Based on a photo post from March 2011.
Despite
“… who needs a needle
to thread the seamless labyrinth
of the rose?” ~ D. Bonta
Because they bent
too far across the walk
and scratched your cheek
or arms whenever you passed,
I tied the roses back
with twine; and yet
their flushed and creamy
scent is warmer still,
more than the radial glow
of motion sensor lights.
In response to Via Negativa: Thorn.
Thorn
Thorn begins with thorn,
a dead letter from
the Old English alphabet.
It’s an aborted branch,
a weaponized nipple. It draws blood
instead of expressing sap, Mother
Nature red in tooth & claw,
rose-hipped or hawed.
But of course it doesn’t bother the bees,
for who needs a needle
to thread the seamless labyrinth
of the rose?