Our Green Music
Waiting for this —
your healing sun —
I slipped through the door
and out into a gray wind,
but it was still just a ghost in the clouds.
It was 20 years of badluck birthday cake and blind paralysis.
We get too old and see,
but we can still swap our hands to warm them.
Mourning dove follows,
curious.
and the green is best when it’s growing into itself,
our floods not quite clockwork.
Everything that means something
means something else
and more.
We bury our motives —
bare hands in fat black dirt,
cultivated hymns,
mad chants —
when all we want is to be warm.
5.4.17
(53/44)
blue herons circling in. spring peeper. redtail hawk. redwings. goldfinches. tree swallows. barn swallow. white egret. the shyest sparrows. baby geese in the inlet. very busy fox sparrow. 2 peepers where the water is high. song sparrow. catbird. meadowlark. goldfinches are busy. oh! a bobolink! (a favorite favorite) cowbirds. bluejay. towhee. field sparrows. walnuts and some of the little spindly oaks starting to leaf out. more cowbirds. chipping sparrow. buzzy. cormorant. white egret. skunk cabbage starting to get big. marsh marigold is done. hundreds of swallows over the river. toadshade. valerian. wild geranium. large-flowered trillium. all the violets.
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)