Month: January 2020

Negative Space

Let us make a devotion to this darkness.
One faith matters now —
if only one could place it in humanity.
Are the birds all in hiding?
Are they coming for us soon?
You can’t will an angel into being,
so let the devil rake it in.
You cannot pray away your shadowed eye,
and you can’t call yourself a True Believer
if you’re not as willing as Job
to endure it.

---

1.26.17
(34/30)

juncos and song sparrows. bit of snowdust. brighter today. inside, i mean. this territory of resignation is difficult to navigate. continual silence begging to be broken. chickadee. kill them with kindness. can i not lose myself in it? little flock of goldfinches on the hill coming down to the pond. buffleheads on the pond. coopers hawk. mallard. another bufflehead, in flight. big flock of mallards in the riverbend, and canada geese.

It seems petty, and inconsistent, for a supposedly benevolent god to test a man so.

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about fieldnotes

fieldnotes was written at the Marsh beginning Sept. 26, 2016 and ending near the same time in the following year, collected in memo books over the course of many rambling walks.
Beginning on Sept. 26, 2019, three years after the writing, fieldnotes will be published in its entirety, with posts appearing as the corresponding write-dates occur.
(at least to the best of my ability)

Resentment Blues

Don’t look contradiction straight in the eye.
Too late, become stone.
Wrap gray around you like a blanket.
Focus on the words.
Focus on that melody fading.
Focus on your hands in warm soapy water.
Focus on these tiny vengeances.
Pretend there is no knife in your hand.

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1.24.17
(38/34)

whole little flock of song sparrows weaving in and out of the prairie plants. dozen or so and a cardinal. otherwise it’s almost still. quiet. ‘then you let your love abound and you bring me to my knees.’ goldfinches. robins hunkered down among the oaks. making Room. a little chaos a good sign. things you never talk about. dangerous territory to avoid. so. stew of resentment. bluejays. things you see so often you take them for granted. good to use the binos and really see them. silence a coin with two sides, standing on edge. it’d be nice now to come across some old coneflower… rub the seeds and smell summer again… goldfinch. canada geese and mallards in the river. cardinal. kingfisher heard. scolding a hawk. there he is, on a dead branch over the river. scolding me, now.

Notes:
Quote: (abound): Fiona Apple / ‘Shadowboxer’ from Tidal (1996)

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about fieldnotes

fieldnotes was written at the Marsh beginning Sept. 26, 2016 and ending near the same time in the following year, collected in memo books over the course of many rambling walks.
Beginning on Sept. 26, 2019, three years after the writing, fieldnotes will be published in its entirety, with posts appearing as the corresponding write-dates occur.
(at least to the best of my ability)

Stone and Jar

When do we cross that line —
when, instead of endings,
winter teases us with beginnings?
A bare sense of sky pushes against the gray,
and hundreds of robins mix with juncos, bluebirds and goldfinches.
And I harbor the healing,
but know deep in bone and blood,
a fever lies in wait.

It is as though your fingers have closed upon something once harvested
that sits in a jar on your highest shelf,
as you contemplate an indulgence,
put pressure on the lid.

And I am the loneliest in a crowd of bootprints,
making the prairie a part of myself,
and myself a part of the prairie,
running my thumb along the stone’s edge again.

How can we be so in and out of time at once?

Standing in the bent cattails overlooking the gray ice of the marsh,
we measure this weight: stone and jar.

---

11.19.17
(42/31)

an old metaphor comes to call. the sun is trying today. feels like maybe it’ll break the clouds any minute, but it doesn’t. another flock of robins with some regulars mixed in. the prairie at a distance: browns, grays, tans and copper reds. another flock of robins at the inlet. song sparrows. juncos. cardinal. singing chickadees. geese and geese, I hear a goldfinch. and yet another flock of robins in the mixing bowl. some goldfinches that already look at bit yellower than they were. a song sparrow. robins taking baths. busy busy robins. sharp shinned hawk. i hear nuthatches. gull of some sort. big flock of starlings. river still high but settled. chickadees. mallards. redtailed hawk. juncos. flicker. merganser! big flock of robins and very curious goldfinches. they seem playful today. juncos. cardinal with a scar, high on the left side of his breast.

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about fieldnotes

fieldnotes was written at the Marsh beginning Sept. 26, 2016 and ending near the same time in the following year, collected in memo books over the course of many rambling walks.
Beginning on Sept. 26, 2019, three years after the writing, fieldnotes will be published in its entirety, with posts appearing as the corresponding write-dates occur.
(at least to the best of my ability)

thank you

The meanings are stretched
until we no longer know how to define what we are,
another shattered shackle,
in its way.

The grass is still green,
the season’s tether loosening.
And it is raining on my feet.

The bluebirds meet me here and we make offerings of smoke and sky
to cold’s long decline
(it’s coming)
and to these things we can’t define.

Flex against the rope.
Tell the truth and let your blood rise like the water —
to fill but not to flood.
We are so much more in that fullness
than some simple shadow play.

And,
trusting you not to look too directly,
I can acknowledge this:

It is everything to me.

Not how you make me feel,
but how you are
(and long have been)
the cause of feeling.

(Our reasons are small, simple things.)

So, fill your lungs with January,
in all its identity crisis.
Oh, fickle winter.

Let’s make a study of fight and flight.
We might name the seasons whatever we want,
in love with suspended tension,
how a robin’s song in winter is anything but modest or mundane,
how it refuses to allow constraints on the indefinite.

---

1.17.17
(38/35)

nuthatch. bluebirds. goldfinches. chickadees. lots of flocking today. big flock of robins by the path out. and starlings. downy woodpecker. juncos and more goldfinches. hundreds of robins. how their song fills the winter silence. all the ways we measure time’s passing. cardinal (f). bluejay. curiouser chickadees. the water at the inlet high and fast (song sparrows). busy, busy brain. how everything is tangential. the robins follow, all along the south end. another cardinal. 6 canada geese fly over. milkweed pod shadows look like little birds. fox sparrow. cardinal.
(Identifying sparrows gets easier, I think, when you visit the same place regularly. You come to understand their habits, their seasons and timing.)
redtailed hawk coasting the treeline. V of geese. what are those blue thorns? more goldfinches. aha! muckity muck! reflections of trees in big mucky puddles. stomp stomp. is moss greener in winter? lichens and little round ledges of fungus. we are all eating each other. bluebird. another big flock of robins. singing. blue heron. water is high. chickadees. mallards. goldfinches. golden crowned kinglets. another blue heron. granddaddy on his river. bluejay.

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about fieldnotes

fieldnotes was written at the Marsh beginning Sept. 26, 2016 and ending near the same time in the following year, collected in memo books over the course of many rambling walks.
Beginning on Sept. 26, 2019, three years after the writing, fieldnotes will be published in its entirety, with posts appearing as the corresponding write-dates occur.
(at least to the best of my ability)

1.8.17
(2/18)

‘…putting on my gloves and bury my bones in the Marshland…’

bluejay. chickadees. song sparrows. frozen crabapples. 10 robins as my mind goes on about bloody hands and cactus trees. redtail hawk. ice still making funny noises. flicker in flight. overheard at riverbend. mallards and kingfisher scolding. i hear another from back in the woods across the river. big flock of canada geese flies in. 120 or so. more robins. chickadees. ‘smart tall functioning girl’ he says.

Notes:
Quote: (gloves): David Bowie / ‘Never Get Old’ from Reality (2003)

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Sung

The overwhelming cathartic —
for a minute
I cast a giant shadow.
The siren, in truth.

And then the clouds rolled in.

(In January you have no choice.
There is sun or there is warmth.)

It takes walking to work it out:
how you know this is true, too.
There is no future.
There is no photograph.
There is no memory.
There is no dream.
There is nothing,
because all touch but none can be
the presence,
the present.

(I look to the day
when this might at lsat take,
and another day,
the next.)

I put on my sleeves,
sink my bones in the freeze.

Maybe we are loneliest,
after all.

Keep this to yourself.
Turn it into cocoon food,
metamorphosis fuel.

It is enough.

---

1.9.17
(19/33), afternoon

chickadee. 2 redbellied woodpeckers. big flock of robins by the cattails. dozens. couple bluebirds mixed in. I take that back. there are hundreds. hundreds of robins. dozen or so bluebirds. chickadees. oh! northern shrike! redtailed hawks. brown creeper. redbellied woodpecker. coyote. ice still making funny noises. little flocks of chickadees. what are these fluffy seed things? (keep this for yourself) mallards and black ducks. another big flock of robins. nuthatch.

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about fieldnotes

fieldnotes was written at the Marsh beginning Sept. 26, 2016 and ending near the same time in the following year, collected in memo books over the course of many rambling walks.
Beginning on Sept. 26, 2019, three years after the writing, fieldnotes will be published in its entirety, with posts appearing as the corresponding write-dates occur.
(at least to the best of my ability)

Loneliest

‘…not me…’

Oh,
the clarity of cold —
this solidity of frozen ground —
blue-sky sun seen but barely felt.

Did I tell you how I played with the wind chimes?

Unturned pages,
regret
and regret.

Almost nothing is moving —
blood slow like sap.

We are here but hidden,
and still,
then briefly winging through the edge of the frozen bluegray
all along the wintergrass.

We find different depths —
how we know there are bluebirds in those oaks —
so neither is loneliest.

---

1.5.17
(13/3)

bluebird on a treetop by the south overlook. and this is the same spot where I saw my first bluebird. (note: first bluebird, nov. 8, 2011.) clouds like crystals, refract. nuthatch. redtail hawk. bearing the wind at the top of the hill, looking toward the oaks and beyond, to the marsh itself. winter is far more colorful than you realize til you’re in it. 2 mourning doves very close. too cold to flee, I suppose. how winter never seems entirely asleep. incipient energy. ink is freezing in my pen. brown creeper. chickadee. flock of bluebirds, by the singing trees. ice on the pond makes weird noises. like swallowing, but percussive, where the water bumps into the freeze. the wind. 3 black ducks. and mallards of course. about 15 each, male and female. one black-mallard hybrid. i will never have time for everything. is that resentment? are there ways to mitigate? or at least navigate? probably. bluejay.

Notes:
Quote: (not me): David Bowie / ‘The Loneliest Guy’ from Reality (2003)

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about fieldnotes

fieldnotes was written at the Marsh beginning Sept. 26, 2016 and ending near the same time in the following year, collected in memo books over the course of many rambling walks.
Beginning on Sept. 26, 2019, three years after the writing, fieldnotes will be published in its entirety, with posts appearing as the corresponding write-dates occur.
(at least to the best of my ability)

Resolved

It ends and begins with bluebirds.
Our breathing is strategic:
We seek to prevent further loss —
or transform it
into some small spark
to keep against the dark —
that wave that swells,
but never quite consumes us.
We vibrate at its edge.
Don’t go down.

Is it the vague immediacy of fog that erases our boundaries?
We spill ourselves over —
like ink,
like blood,
like water that seeks then escapes
a million banks and edges —
not a thing to be contained against our will.
We wax with it —
become a vapor that kisses the clouds —
then condense to hover close to what we love most.
We freeze to fill its voids and cracks —
finding all the ways into it.

Who says our hearts have no sentience?
We are made of more than we know,
you and i,
more than can ever become clear.
There is always some new boundary —
real or imagined —
to cross,
some sameness or difference to adore.
But love,
don’t we relish the finding?

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1.3.17
(39/19)

bluebird at the top of a tree. then two. chickadees. flock of robins at the marsh edge, singing. it’s melty today. goldfinch. song sparrow. sharp shinned hawk. big mixed flock with cardinals, goldfinches, juncos. At least a dozen cardinals, 30 or 40 juncos. 1 bluejay. song sparrow. birds constantly on the edge of hearing. robins. chickadees. all into the little thaw. mallards of course. the river high with melt. MUCK! bluejays. considering it’s january, i am impressively sweaty.

Notes:
Quote: (line 10, don’t go down): Nick Cave & Bad Seeds / ‘And No More Shall We Part’ from No More Shall We Part (2001)

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about fieldnotes

fieldnotes was written at the Marsh beginning Sept. 26, 2016 and ending near the same time in the following year, collected in memo books over the course of many rambling walks.
Beginning on Sept. 26, 2019, three years after the writing, fieldnotes will be published in its entirety, with posts appearing as the corresponding write-dates occur.
(at least to the best of my ability)