nature walk
Delta Dispatch #6
I do not understand very much, cannot do very much, am mostly afraid most of the time -
There is right and there is wrong, those being right or left but life is still in the mix, this is it - I am - I am so thankful to travel out into the world, to go away - to be gone - to let the soul up to roost with the haints at the crossroads and the saints always in a horse barn, to let the soul pull as a kite, and to follow, string in hand, looking up.
“you better wake up, try to get wise, I done told you,”
Shy folks, happy folks, brimming to the top folks, reserved folks, nervous folks, quiet, talkative, stay at home and always moving folks,
love, loving, loved, all these folks;
The thing is, the thing I am trying to puzzle out is,
Every person is as fascinating as the day in the land, of the everchanging land, and in the same as as the same-old back 30 land, the light is never, will never, be the same, and gilding golden sunsets and cold glowing sunrises move different every day, the plants growing or dying, the sky playing along with it’s on whim and thought,
Every person is as fascinating as the day in the land
And even if we move toward knowing our own souls changing every day, a new ray of light shining and singing, how can we manage the earth-land-soul-sky-other-all of it?
Maybe it is easier to shut down and hate within simple differences -
I watch my own inner world shuffle and tumble and worry.
“Front door shut, back door too, blinds shut, what you gonna do? Gotta step it up and go, yeah, go”
Delta Dispatch #5
It’s a curious hunting. I just want to understand. That’s really it. Why did Smokestack Lightning singe me. Why does Hank Williams haunt me, why can’t I let go of Charley Patton or Robert Johnson’s faces? Out here scouring the land looking for the moment of maybe-knowing or beginning-to-know. Thankful for the kind world of waving strangers, that all seems like a good sign, from Cleveland to Clarksdale to Beulah, yes, I am waving to these world neighbors, who surely know better than I do, holding closer keys to the door of understanding.
“meet me in the middle of the air, if these wings should fail me, meet me with another pair,”
Oh the levee runs from Memphis to Vicksburg, all around New Orleans, where I come from, where I been, a land all full up on bridges and flood walls and rivers, full up of roiling life, and to me it all seems to fit together and likewise make no good sense,
A red fox across black blue road, near Red’s juke joint, against the sunflower river, another following, unworried and probably laughing at my amazement, the two of them playful and slow and living their own fox-lives in a Clarksdale winter, their dens warm and close and they are safe, me with the car running and Wilbur fixing to cut loose into a fit of barking, me up against the fence just watching, amazed and how unamazed the fox is,
The road carries on to a small town and all these places look like islands, islands against the levee, against crops, a whole land organized into infinity, defined by every season: winter, burning, tilling, planting, growing, weeding, growing, harvesting, tearing up, setting out, winter. The land sleeping now but ready when man is ready, when man has done the math and the science, but the land is always ready, just sleeping, waiting, not surrendered to man but not fighting it anymore, still there, providing.
The lights set out different here, the stars seem closer, the people friendlier, the whole land, every plot, every road, every cloud, perfect in it’s time and traveling on, maybe the building goes out at the state line, but the light and stars set out different here. I don’t know my own mind, my own heart, sometimes, and -
A round pen for horses so when they’re in training they can’t quit into the corner. This mind set in it’s own roundpen, tossing it’s head and kicking up dust, travellingtravellingtravelling in circles, until, I guess, eventually, it learns or quits -
All I can say is we go out walking on the roads, driving on the highways, searching. Searching. Looking for them ghosts that used to travel highway 61, wrote and sang about it, before It as new highway 61 and old highway 61.
“She calls it rumbling, I calls it falling down.”
Seen some death out here, seen some strange things, but Lewis Nordan knew when he said “the delta is full up on death,” but I think it’s more than that - the delta is full up, full up near about everything.
Maybe it’s just in the seeing-is-believing but that doesn’t make it science, but - seems like every other cemetery out here has a new grave, or two. Seems death is just outside the circle now and waiting, setting boar-hog traps and waiting, you could walk in - plastic flowers heaped into the woods, new flowers green and loving, crosses set, too sad to talk about too much, the whole world gradient into the ground of who and how soon and too young and - we have always been so lucky - we are still here now -
Autumn Snapshots 4
Autumn Snapshots 2
Twelve Oaks Residency 19
No one tells you in church that heaven ain’t all at once. Heaven is in stages and over a series of years and so quiet you caint always tell til it is gone.
And all the good and saved memory glowing.
A sweet satsuma off of a tree.
Reading back through so much writing it seems all last year i was lookin for rain and here it is just the same.
This house out here a heaven of overwhelming, light leaking up in the clouds, we see but never knew, it seemed. A quiet rooting to all of a sudden be so planted this way.
Roots carefully dug up, a summer garden, a summer tomato still making offerings. Roots dug up again ad again, hands knowing & gentle, that it is bound for a better place.
Knowing like all of earth knows when it is spring here in this hemisphere, and the pecan tree knows to blossom last thing.
The azaleas around here wilted, some of them dropped, after the cold. It feels like fall outside, sitting on the porch in the dappled sun.
Little bursts of flowers on bare branches. Winter left them for dead, but the ground and sun been all preserving through and through.
Ferns, each kind, and all of them, little fuzzy fists bursting from the ground, from the bayou, unfurling again from the trees. Strange dinosaur plants, shelled as they unroll into the sun. A garfish with roots, a season with leaves.
Green darlings sprouted over night, everywhere, steadily studying. Easy to get caught up in their capturing, once you are noticing.
No stop to stopping, once you start stopping.
All the sun seeking creatures coming out now. Me too.
There is light in everything here.
Peace & penance & prayer moving forward & watching everywhere.
Lists & listening.
Talking, a lot of talking, a lot of writing, a lot of barking. Silence broke up quicker than it falls.
Spring slow and steady though at first and in the moment it seems like lightning, but it is a month or two months and then maybe summer isn’t so quick as it used to seem, either. Always looking up the road instead of down, where we came from.
Done the workshop, and it was wonderful to see the house filled with warmth and smiles and patience and listening. The light was good and the people were the best, and family gets held close and we get to speak all of our names proudly.
Art under the oaks. Mother Nature and Providence partially present and smiling, they knew these Twelve Oaks had us in good hands. A sunny and warm and cool day fell into night and into Sunday, again sunny and overcast and kind. Running these roads and helping folks and seeing all the lives living out here.
Walking to the truck, i believed they were car lights from the road at first - surely. Some strange new light like sometimes happens out here in the darkening of dusk.
They really was there - it really were lightning bugs. Buzzing, glowing, blinking. In a trio, all alone, little paint spatters of phosphor, little sulphur butterflies for night. A dozen, thinking of Georgia, then Oxford, Mississippi, out near Faulkner’s grave, and Providence might be Providence or she might be God, too, and we all slowly moved by a gracious and knowing hand to land.
The lightning bugs began on the leap year day, in their own timing, in their own planning, and it is a dream all over again to be here among them.
Twelve Oaks Residency 18
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 9
There’s been gospel all through the house. Music quiet in the evening with raccoons scuffling around, maybe on the roof, my heart in my throat at two in the morning. But it’s just age old nature and her daughters, the trees dropping leaves & limbs in the wind, the raccoons and all of their kin out looking to eat. The trees and their canopies covering us at all times, in the pouring rain, where everything gets to be so glistening & bright, and new paths sure enough open up.
we was in New Orleans in November or December. And i was out in the French Quarter, the whole Mississippi river keeping me from home. And looking at those buildings. Tiresome just to get back. Tiresome to walk in all the pastel colors on the dirty pavement, and the tourist music shrouding in the humidity. I looked up with tremendous regret & sadness, that i had lost all of my love & wonder for a place that used to be my only dream.
The oaks here gave me new eyes. Sometimes those eyes come in on my heels, leaves all over the ground. Now in this time, this year, New Orleans echoing all of it’s ever-present love and even the terrifying river bubbling in chorus on the pavement shores. The colors & the light & the sound all vibrant and beautiful & embracing. Ducks and their partners all across the water, canadian geese loud & proud, a heron stretching his neck to croak low down across the river. Pelicans all strange and lizard-like on their piers. The river is high but the land doesn’t seem worried. They reckon they’re all the same.
We are here always at our crossroads, there is left & right, up & down, sky & ground. We are at another crux of winter & spring. Summer seems to still hold us in it’s loving arms. All of the tender green things are bravely curling upwards. Winter and it’s passing hanging down & skeletal, pine diamonds rainy & saturated. Brush washed down with water & tide & calling. All of these paths always opening to us if we are out looking for it. Vivid in the rain, living in the rain, all of these trees an umbrella, forgiving their weather-mother and letting some through down on us, happy and spattering in the water and mud. Trees is blushing with spring.
I was afraid and i am still afraid to lose my sight like i had with New Orleans. To go home and see Louisiana is another harsh shake. To be here at Twelve Oaks sure seems like heaven within all comparisons. The rain carried us back to Mississippi, just like a portal, again. We came through safe and glad. New eyes came to greet me, all the leaves, in the woods, in the rain.
We are here in the quiet resurrection, the restoring of life to death among the plants and animals. It is so silent out here. Birds and squirrels and other creatures quiet in their winter. The rain muted by the trees. The resurrection swelling from beneath our feet, spring is always promised, but before it is spring, it is mighty cold and mirrored, everywhere. All of nature watching and all of nature knowing just when to come through.
Blossoms just as beautiful in their pre-blossoming.
Twelve Oaks Residency 2
It has always been about home, home a function of love, love a marker for home. A goal here at Twelve Oaks is to learn some new things, eventually, hopefully. Thankful to have learned to linocut on Thursday, hopeful to grow this skill over the next year. Can’t believe i would ever be a live-oak-living-artist, but i believe i could grow to be a slash pine.
We are out in the woods every day. It has become familiar in the way a small trail will - the oaks cover and surround the house, it is always cool inside from their shadings. They shield and hug the house, they weave their leaves & tremendous arms together and it feels very safe. These trees are older than the house. They’ve seen it all before. They’ve sat and prayed during Sunday services, when the house was a church, they’ve heard the hearts of the congregation swell in praise and hymnals and gladfulness. Their roots are unfathomable underneath us all of the time. The trail opens up every day, i begin to name the trees, but they aren’t mine and they are beyond naming, any sort of conjuration here would be an insult.
We woke up this morning. It always begins with planning a dozen other routes to carry us to the day - walking, running, coffee, then to work. The woods always draw us in, winning out - checking the tide, hoping to see a waddling mammal of some kind, raccoon prints in the low-tide-side-mud. It is quiet out here with day-wildlife.
At night, a possum and raccoon and armadillo root and scrabble for bugs and things. The cat next door graces us with her presence. Moths dart in the light and fool me for car lights on a highway that isn’t there.
We walked our usual route, it must have rained last night but i have been sleeping so good i didn’t know. Wilbur is always crying up to the trees for squirrels, startling after so much silence. We go off the path sometimes, only because they are mistaken as part of the path. Finding the first gulf coast box turtle was just exactly like finding an opal. Yellow and brown like the pine, delicate & hand-painted-looking, nervous and bubbling at our approach. The lighter shell just the same as a butterfly wing pattern, but a whole home & not a cocoon. It was remarkable to find the next, darker, braver turtle. Their shells freshly washed and glimmering as the night sky, carrying everything across the universe with them, patiently, unhurried & unharried, too. His dinosaur eyes curious & unafraid at our approach.
Out of the corner of my eye i saw a woman in a white floral dress walk towards me. Out of the corner of my eye we walked within feet of a lazing slathering prickling alligator, but he was only a fallen worn out log.
Choosing our paths is bargaining and gambling, as though it will come up gone the next day.
A silent bald eagle glides over head. Everything is silent except us.
We ran our two miles and came home before the rain. A rainy obscuring end of the world erasive drive to the book store, and for coffee. Returning, the woods ushered us out, the trees promising it will be beautiful in the rain. They whisper that before long the snakes and bugs will be out. They’ve made this weather-blanket for us and we need to see it all. The tide has come back in and settled, collecting rain drops and we sit on our heels nearly into the mud and pine needles. Before this is all over i will put two feet into the bayou and tell it how much it means to me.