Warming
Low, circling,
only the redtail hawk to see.
Quick! —
while no one else is looking —
into the woods!
Once in,
take your time —
never be too fast for knowing.
Un-name, then new-name everything.
Be of it,
even when to do so means to share its wrongness.
(Let the others manufacture sin.)
We thought we were on the brink of failure,
but in truth we’ve fallen far past it,
and it’s a deep well.
Who knows how far to bottom?
2.23.17
(57/38)
redwings and redwings and redwings and redwings. 50 degrees at 9 am. ‘drink from the old well’ big flock of blackbirds — grackles? noisy canada geese. pair of buffleheads. mallard flocks. maybe a shoveler? chuckling nuthatch. quiet bluebirds. robins high in a tree. surely this warm spell can’t last much longer? redwings staking territory. song sparrows. hawks on the thermals. vernal pool. coots soon? bluebird and redwing. big flock of grackles flies over. and another. cardinal. a call i recognize but can’t i.d. honey locust. ‘who walked the curve of the world.’ dandelions just poking through. cool shell. no frogs. good. garbage though. i hate that. robin. mallards. cardinals. something gray and too fast. redtail and again that known but unnamed song. little black sluggy things. redwings and robins. redwings. crows. redwings. ‘be a part of all things’
Notes:
Quote 1 & 3: (‘old well, all things’): Jesca Hoop / ‘Cut Connection’ from Memories Are Now (2017)
Quote 2: (“curve of the world”): Patti Smith / ‘Beneath the Southern Cross’ from Gone Again (1996)
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)
looking for roots 