Category: Morning Meander

The dogs and I are locked out

but this time I am not fighting it. I am sitting for a few minutes on the lawn

overlooking the meadow.

Wildflower and the sounds of birds and Grace’s fan

interrupt the endless lush green.

I wonder why I never made a copy of the house key to leave in my car – I know just where I’d put it for just such eventualities.

Fortunately, there are pen and paper and books – so I write

If I were the kids, I’d just reach up and use…

oh…

NO. They have taken it away with them.

I’m glad that they want the house key.

I am sad that there’s an “away.”

Children are not meant to be Peter Pans, but to go on the appointed journey (hat tip to JRRT).

But I don’t know what’s next for me

I can imagine, but I don’t yet know.

Let’s imagine.

A day that begins with opening the OED is a pretty darned good day.

Not only does compromise come from “promise together”, as it ought, but to get there one must follow a beautiful rabbit hole of obsolete words including the verb-and-noun compromit, which I now dare myself to use in a casual sentence this week.

I began grumpy and self-centered and growling at the notion of submission which is in the first definition of the first word I checked…

Saved by words.

Saved by the beauty of words.

From where I was into wonder and laughter.

Keep this lesson, me gal, which is not poor grammar, it’s my gal pronounced before the Great Vowel Shift,

Keep this lesson. Let the words save me.

Now to look up gal.

Soft old moon was open this morning,

not closed off.

If genes turn on in time of trouble,

how do I turn them off in time of safety?

Remember whom I’m walking with,

Remember whom I’m walking with,

Remember whom I’m walking with,

Keep the name on my lips and tongue,

Remember the name,

Remember the name

Remember the path.

The body keeps the score…

and when I take one step forward and knock loose a bunch of old, stuck ligaments and muscles

I knock loose the wee monsters which stuck them in the first place.

Yep.

But it was only one step back. And a good night’s sleep made up the difference. Is this what they call resilience?

The bouncy ball has been placed in Time Out

under the picnic table, where I cannot reach it.

I just kept throwing it far away.

Apparently I am the reason we can’t have nice things.

#ThinkLikeAnAussie

Color grows in the milkweed,

I see more butterflies by day and fewer fireflies by night.

Brightwork.

She said “brightwork” and the words and works began to cascade, tumble, flow.

Ironwork, blackwork, firework (which is entirely different from fireworks, for discussion see my academic blog),

Stonework, headwork, wetwork,

Brightwork. Yes.

So many smells!

Dumped trash, coyote feet,

Squirrels and sharp squirrels and stink squirrels!

/*I beg your pardon. The dogs were typing. All wildlife is, apparently, a coyote or a squirrel. They were speaking of squirrels, porcupines, and skunks*/

Meadow grasses and milkweed blossoms!

The flowers are heavy compared to their stalks, a hundred blossomlets clustered together

And then daisies and black-eyed Susans next to one another, I think of them as Sorcha and Dorcia – bright and dark twins.

There’s something yellow and balloon-y in the meadow, too, low but bright against the green and there are red berries on shrubs without names and something viney climbs up something grain-y.

Over all, she reigns, Queen Anne clad in lace, bobbing tallest, nodding in the breeze to her sisters and to her subjects.

Have you ever tasted the root of this gracious, delicate flower? Have you looked beneath the perfectly formed discs of a myriad of florets, graced as often as not with a center drop of royal blood, below the intricately spun greens?

Have you found the taproot?

Tough as nails.

Stringy, strong,

and oh, so deep.

Have you tasted it?

She may be Queen, but her lovers call her Wild Carrot.

Real, real, real rain rocked me to sleep,

the sound, rush, gush, hushing over leaf and roof,

washing the air,

bringing in clean, clear dreams.

This was just right – a very early walk

even chilly enough for a snow-leopard cardigan

with humidity hanging cool between the bits of air.

I had dreamed of orange flowers, and I had wondered if they were day-lilies, and there they were, on our walk, un-self-conscious orange in a world of summer greens.

Now everything is back on track. The walks must be early, that is the magic.

I return from Right Walkies to receive Right Messages and Right Ideas in the Right Order. The spreadsheet of my mind is satisfied.

Very well, then.

The walks must be early. That is the magic.

Possibilities are coming apart,

and that’s okay, too.