nature preserve
Twelve Oaks Residency 16
Twelve Oaks Residency 13
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.
Twelve Oaks Residency 10
Well the muse, or Providence, as i believe she must be named, went off walking and swam into Old Fort Bayou and went in under the mud among the painted terrapins and gulf coast box turtles, and all of the creatures she has always know & loved. Same as sisters.
Silent bald eagles and speckled hawks over head.
Providence with her toes sinking in.
We went out looking for her. High tide, low tide, in the morning and out through the night.
The storm obscured her and it got cold and she was sinking down, all of her fine fingers lightning into the bayou causing spring to begin rearing all around.
Providence belongs to no one. Even Walter Anderson meant to keep his island. We are only human.
We hung lights in the trees, and stars all lanterned for us. We worked into the night, hoping we could bring her back inside.
She moves spring and she carries slow winter on her back, a fuzzy and drowsy child. She pulses spring to us but she must uncover it from the muck first. It’s been moiling for so long under that muck.
We saw the pine tree muted and knew we would not see a halcyon day.
Out in the woods waiting for heaven to be realized.
Jellyfish on the beach like old lost souls, slimy sea-suns on shore, dangerous & prickly no more. We poke them with our toes and imagine the sand grit of their land skin and the tangles of their insides. Their skin showing everything within.
Two porpoises, sent perhaps by Providence herself, asking us to stand at the shore and watch. Asking us for patience. They move in no pattern and appear where they will. In the same way the pine tree told us to be patient, today was not our day. Watch, wait. Heaven is all around.
(pelicans on tide totem poles, they know their hour.)
The filtered light, the cloudy light, the rain, the moon, the stars, the morning sun, the mid afternoon sun, these oaks catch every bit of it and i am beginning to believe they must be moving slowly all of the time. Their wooly coats highlight them fine as lines, fine as lightning, living.
He knows his boat rides smooth but the pine already told us to stay home.
We are out closely looking for patterns among the tree’s skins. Hoping that realization also comes from within.
Twelve Oaks Residency 6
Been reading Lewis Nordan’s “Music of the Swamp.” He made me remember all those times in the woods with my old dog, Tanner, and we used to go all the time. It seemed then as i know now as a levee road, holding in the little Tallahassee lake. I tried to build a deer blind in those slight woods, just to watch. Never seen much. Only ever found. Used to go to them woods, like i do now, if it’s not every day it’s pretty well near. All of the excitement of their shade and stories and hope building up to where we practically running to get there. Used to go - and Lord did i cry when they cut some them trees down. Just a few, here and there, no particular apparent rhyme nor reason. Weren’t enough to make a difference, probably. But i cried. Because it meant, eventually, surely - they’d be gone. Couldn’t fathom i’d be long gone before they was.
They didn’t seem to have bramble out there like they do here. And it doesn’t rain anywhere on earth like it does out here in the bayous. Met my first liar out there. Couldnt - cant - understand. All them walks. All them tadpoles and that little alligator before the 4th of July. Out in these woods in the ouroboros we walk and walk and now we feel like friends, maybe, i might be acting too familiar. All of these beautiful things obscured by the next beautiful thing.
Birds sing, crickets sing, frogs sing, we sing. You might find me out there if you’re walking, i’m wondering. Sometimes i catch Wilbur staring and i begin to stare as well. Between the wind and the branches, the birds, frogs, all of these hidden creatures, we are listening so that we might begin to see. You might hear me saying, often, in the squelch of the marsh, “i believe! i believe i’m sinkin down!” and Robert Johnson rolls his eyes again. Never fallen down on my knees and raised up my right hand in this swamp, just at least not yet.
These waters is gentler waters. (this land is your land) and i been dreamin so good out here. Carrying you on my mind as all of these fern-coated oaks green & dream-misted, “holding patterned” waiting for our storm & it still ain’t stormed. Out wondering and staring and listening in these woods, quiet in the morning, birds shaking dew from their feathers as they sing in the trees, the trees showering us in our dawn and at a night a boy and his boat circle and circle, ripples find us in the grass and we sure-nuff sinking down, squelching, searching, one day these vines will be summer snakes and these logs alligators but i wont know til i know.
The promise of fireflies in March. The promise of spring and threat of summer. Alligator tunnels, nutria, fox, raccoon, rabbit tunnels, all around us, turtles waiting for the turtle hour. Snakes for the snake hour. We will see (eventually.) I am here among my southerners and alone all at once. A man and his motel room. An artist and her tree house. A person and their land. Waiting for blessings.
stories stories stories, the whole world stories. i want to hear all of your stories, all of them. i see what i know now - looking and hunting for stories and i got some but the priority is stories- books books books - all of your stories. Make this world more perfect with your stories; amen, hallelujah, praise God, amen.