Today:
You can tell by my words and every photo before, i am no flower photographer, but all of this all at once, like a secretive new beginning to the world, this thing that happens every year without fail, on a predictable but unpredictable schedule, too beautiful and new and hopeful to neglect as it bright greens all around.
This past fall we lost an uncle, and two days after i was sitting with a great-uncle, he was approaching his 90s. We was all at dinner in the mountains, and he knew every mountain’s name, and every road that brought you to them. He was named after his father, and i was named after his father, and this new baby was named after his father, too. He smiled, leaning, sitting, “Look at him, not worried about a thing.”
Here is spring:
Get your gladfull glasses on and get along.
You can see Providence been mighty hard at work. Must have finished up in the bayou and began to call down the rain. From the low tide to the muddy land to the trail, green is coming up all over. Before long, you’re right, she will have touched every part of her earth and it will be spring. Vines will curl in close and even the devil’s walking stick will be in bloom.
(worse monsters to come than winter, life all short and good for teaching.)
(February 7th
Everything too beautiful to understand, too breathtaking, beginning to know, beyond realizing: heaven is here. We just built up all of our own so much, we cant hardly see it anymore.
February 8th
It would be so troublesome to be in love with an island.)
Night creatures tap tap tapping into my dreams - morse code to a soul to get along, a generous spirit in the land, a generous spirit in the house.
Out here steady walking all of the time, even the most attentive eye won't catch all of these sudden blooms.
i believe if i put a face to Providence she would be beautiful but she would also by my grandmother or great grandmother. Soft, her most important feature in her heart, soul, back, hands - working hands.
Mother nature’s face is different to everybody, so goes Providence.
In North Carolina, mother nature is a cool blue morning in the shade of the mountains and walnut trees. In Louisiana, a cypress in muddy water, secretive cypress knees and a cloak of bright humidity.
In the Delta, she goes on forever, obscuring her face with generosity of fertile ground & threats of flood and wind.
Here on the hidden coast i am in her arms so i cannot see her face.
But Providence moves all around and i catch her eyes smiling in the sun and while it rains in the woods.
We was out runnin the levee in New Orleans and i was glad and surprised both, to see the city deep in the fog of the river. This is how it goes, another non-day, another dream of living in New Orleans when i should be in the woods. Fighting my own sleep the whole day. Providence is awful loud if you can see how to listen.
A flock of whistling ducks in the new moon night. Irises blossoming in the ditch. The cool of the river reaching us in the fog, we are breathing in the Mississippi and shaking hands. Out of the levee and down the road, humidity weighing down our clothes.
We borrowed us a boat and went down to the water. The mud generous in it’s giving - soft and stickless and turtle-less and we sank down before we lifted out and in, on to the bayou. Now i have seen much of the trail from the inside and the outside. The trees once distanced from me by water and marsh-grass now next to me and smiling.
The brown water holding all of it’s creatures in safe obscurity. Little bubbles race ahead of us, and lazy bubbles follow our paddling. We came to an arm of the bayou where pollen had collected. We traced our trail from the water until the kayak breeched and we back-paddled.
Mazes of marsh grass, inlets, outlets, muddied platforms for surely nutria, and probably our last great land lizard. A turtle balancing on a root fairly flailing to get back to the water. Twice a blue heron startled us, knowing our approach before we could dream of his. Great blue wings to the sky, a great clattering rising.
Another unseen creature loudly leaving near the water. Pouncing, our silent approach still startling and alien, this is the quietest we have ever been out here, on the water instead of traipsing the woods, and still scaring all things out and away.
All of the trees nearer and closer and looking down to us. Eagerly & strangely growing in their mudflats. An egret flew up into their arms, starry against the green needles and grey sky.
Quiet. No one on the water. Not a soul in the woods. Traffic buzzing and droning up river and side river and down river. One egret and me, and all the untold things beneath.
Providence splashing in the water and whispering to the strange creatures in the roots. Strange creatures i can’t hardly see and can’t puzzle to sense.