bliss

i can safely say there is some bliss happening

each day i wake to the sound of birdsong

and some nights i go to sleep to the sounds of...

er...

coyotes singing in the background as

a startled deer snorts

then

a gray fox

yodeling away with some firmness

i think she's a mama doing her best for her brood

and then

a very very angry raccoon

snarling and scritching for some time

probably has something to do with the gray fox and my empty barn.

once the convicts were found

the most local color took over.

and then there are the wildflowers...

a rich wet and cool spring has brought them on

brilliantly

in a way i can't remember!

and there is news:

Grampians Texture

the site is alive and kicking and the brochure is out,

the classes will fill up with some urgency

if i remember right from last time.

go over and take a look!

~~~

we work and work,

caliban press and me,

towards completion.

the map-fold book is done,

but some need a little stitching,

as per plan,

and the envelopes aren't complete yet

but it's almost done.

~~~

saturday i leave for my class 

at Women's Studio Workshop

am i excited?

you bet!

trivialities

pairs everywhere

 tonight's walk

these geese are in a different meadow

 baby sugar maples

all along the roadside and in my yard

the reward for walking

 killdeer playing keep away

 one nest box is empty

and it wasn't last week.

the other

not a bluebird

this morning

relocation project number 

700

chipmunk, again.

boro overalls

my sweetie keeps his work clothes

going.

the four days are almost over.

it was very good.
~~~
tuesday morning update:

brat!

walking ecotone

five walks in two days

bliss

 the first walk was near the neighbors

 and much, much later this sky

 and between, a monarch

 trapeezed about

 and then i walked out back

through chin high goldenrod

and vicious raspberries

 into the woods, where quiet ferns waited
fooling feet into confidence
(those hidden rocks 
making jokes)

 there was a tiny scrap of text

 and the stream was jungle overgrown and almost disappeared

 even the upper pond was low

 and this caller

screeched about me, maybe, or the coyote i heard bark.

do you know this bird?

there were two

too far for my tiny camera.

 and three gifts i brought home

and tonight's walk

wendy and me (two walks in two days!)

saw this moon coming up

and when home again home again

i heard a white throated sparrow,

a woods friend in the ecotone.

new and new

i have spent delicious time

inside a new book

reading and waiting

terry tempest williams has published this:

when women were birds

fifty four variations on voice

it is beautiful, hard, confusing

compelling, comforting, solid

and light as a feather.

(the physical book is also beautiful)

 the rock there

it connects me to what i've been seeing

birds birds birds birds birds birds birds

~~~

i watch the heron nest,

there are three fledgelings now

with wind sounding like ocean.

~~~

and at home i watch my place here

and the new place i will inhabit

in a year or so

a new ecotone

all ecotone in fact

an old farm

structures

long in decay

now a private place open to sky and dreams

and land. old geography, new to me.

we will honor a dream begun by a young family

but reshape it into

a place to grow old in

it will change

it will be the same.

~~~

little fiber, except yet more shifu

but spring and change is here.

long haul

caliban press poster
i am exhausted.

until friday, 

not one day at work 

has had any light in it.

not one. for weeks and weeks.

 morning departures

have been monumental
hard.

 this image
wild and deeply real

on my mind

and these

lovebirds.

yesterday i saw birds mating

on a telephone pole

kestrels.

couldn't get a photo

because i couldn't stop looking.
and this:

old foundation

waiting, waiting.