Pumpkin Moon

This morning as I walked out the door to work I noticed that the front lawn was strewn with little white fleshy orbs - mushrooms had sprouted overnight! They look like common field mushrooms. It made me feel good, knowing that we were in for more wet.

I'm still walking and biking to work 4 days a week. I even walked this morning in the pouring rain. It makes me so happy, walking with the kids to Miller Creek, walking through the shady bay groves, over the bridge on the ever-rising creek, up the hill on Idylberry and in the valley among the oak-rich hills. Sometimes I see people I know like a mom from cub scouts or a mom of a kid in Alfred's grade. It makes me feel good.

The junipers berries are burgeoning now. The berries are becoming riper and riper. I like to pick them along the way and squash them into my wrists and temples. They have a sweet-astringent fragrance that I love.

In a couple of weeks we will have our Halloween party. Pumpkins are in all the storefront windows.

Rosemary in bloom

Juniper berries are coming out and creeping rosemany is in all its bloomy blue. Amanda came over today for lunch and brought some delicious golden green tea and a magazine about some jade sales going on currently. We went out to Bombay Garden for lunch. I told her about the Zoroastrians.

Schnapps

This week I am making schnapps from the remaining apples and pears that grew in the side yard.

Here is a wonderful website about schnapps.

Danish Schnapps

I may try making some herb schnapps too with the rosemary and oregano in the garden. Maybe even add the fruit and some honey. Experiment. There will be a lot to taste in a year or so. :)

Fireberry

It's October now. I started bicycling to and from work on the first of the month. The first day Alfred, who was off from school, accompanied me. It was his idea and it was an act of kindness. Sadly, during the trip he became distracted when another kid from his school biked by with his younger brother. Alfred tripped over a newspaper bag in the street and fell off the bike and on his face. He was in shock, was embarrassed in front of his schoolmate, and had to be taken home by a good Samaritan with a minivan. He fractured his elbow and now cannot play the trumpet or participate in gym. I feel very badly for him, but he gave me the courage to bike to work and now that is what I'm doing.

Art and I had a very absurd fight last night. He was telling me about how one of his theories about the Big Bang was recently vindicated. We discussed it and it absurdly led to a rampaging shouting match with wounded egos and general bad behavior on both our parts. We made up, but sheeesh..

The weather has been gorgeous. The quails visit our back yard each day in the late afternoon and they are fatter than ever. The fireberry (or pyrocantha) grows redder every day. They are predicting rain for tonight.

Last day of Applemoon

Almost all the apples and pears have fallen. Tomorrow I pick pick the very last. They will be sweet.

The small, sweet-smelling juniper berries are blue and ripe. There are many types of juniper around here. People think they're common, but I like them all.

The pyrocantha has also just come into red berry.

Autumn Sere

There was a rain shower last week. It's early for the season, and didn't cool things down for long. Today it's warm but lovely, sunny and in the 80's. Why am I so afraid to walk? I must eschew sweets. Yearning for the cool, pure rain.

First Rain

First rain today. Nice and gloomy. Nice and cozy in my roomy. Love those clouds. Love that gloom.

Socks and Dishrags

Non-stop y'all.

Charlie down at the Creek

Charlie keep busting out of the fence and going down to the creek to roll around in the mud. It isn't even that hot out. Yesterday he stunk like he had rolled in dead animals or feces or sumpin. Nasty. Andrew and Kent washed him off in the yard. Wet diggety dawg.

Fat Quails

Another sign of the season is the packs of fat quail that frequent our yard. They are their fattest at this time of year and can often be seen grazing on the seedy, dry meadows around our house. They graze in the seed-strewn meadow behind the house. The ground is the color of straw. Mostly they come in the late afternoon, around 5 pm.

The turkeys start coming out these days too.

I was lucky to have 3 coolish days in a row in which to do yard work.

Signs of Seretowet

Applemoon? Appeloon? September is the season of apples here. Apples and pears. What once upon a time were maids-in-the-mist, all blue and blowing, now are wee tan balloons brittle as papyrus. Some have burst tiny black beads - seeds are all around. I've started clearing the yard.

Sere-to-wet Pears

I'm making up my own seasons for where I live.

Seretowet

September 1 - November 30 is "Sere-to-wet", which begins with merciless, dangerous, dry heat that seres the hills to crispy tinder. It is a season of local harvest hurrah with the best of tomatoes, apples, pears, peppers. Seretowet begins the school year, celebrates the harvest, endures the height of fire season, revels in Halloween, feasts at Thanksgiving. The Jewish High Holy Days fall within its purview, as does the late November preparations for Yuletide. The colors of this season are orange, brown, yellow and green. In the latter part of the season, sometimes not until November, the rains begin.

Our pear tree gave a bumper crop of pears this year.

Gravid-stein

The Gravenstein apples are spilled all over the side yard.

Sant' Egidio Abate

Something strange happened this morning. I woke up early, at 5 am, to make Art a lunch to take to work. After he left I couldn't go back to sleep so I came into my office to knock around on the computer. Looking back into my browser history, I still can't figure out what led me there. I was updating some pages, then I was researching 2012, a date the mother of one of Alfred's friends assures me is "when it's going to happen." She is a New Age Mormon, a character of relative rarity, but if she were to be found anywhere, it would have to be here in California. Then again, I'm pretty sure I did that after I found the Linguaglossa link because I remember being really bleary when it happened. It was soon after I started browsing but how I got there I still don't know.

There was a link to Linguaglossa somewhere. Linguaglossa is a town at the foot of Mount Etna in Sicily, not far from Catania. My father's father Alfio was from there. Its name means "glossy tongue", as in a glossy tongue of lava lapping at its city limits. Suddenly I was in a Google satellite map of Linguaglossa itself, zooming in and out - in to the sere summer piazzas and small irrigated plots, out to the hard, curvy, volatile slopes of Etna. Then there was a Wikipedia entry. The patron saint of Linguaglossa is Saint Egidio, Abbot. Today is his feast day.

Saint Egidio (Saint Giles, in English), was a 7th century French hermit who lived with a hind ( a female deer) who sustained him with her milk. A Visigoth (or Frankish) king who was out hunting tried to capture the hind, but Saint Egidio managed to miraculously create an invisible shield to keep them back. The king came back another day with a bishop and one of his party, trying to shoot the deer, shot Egidio instead. The king felt badly and established a monastery for Egidio. Egidio became the patron saint of cripples, maimed people, lepers, the poor, and for some reason, weavers.

Today is the day, the first of September, the saint day of the town from which my father's father, my namesake, hailed. Part of me feels very Sicilian, which isn't surprising given that I grew up in a house with a Sicilian-American father and his immigrant family. Even though I am adopted, I feel this way. I talk with my hands, I yell, I hug and kiss, I worry irrationally about the evil eye, I attribute magical powers to olive oil. Linguaglossa, non ti domenticaro.


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Boston Angel

This is a photo of an angel is Boston Commons. I took it from a moving bus. Andrew and I spent a few days in Boston before and after spending a few weeks in Southampton in July with my sister. I like it there a lot.

Vancouver Island

Back at the Dogpatch on the Hat, in Malahat, that is. It is so lovely here and the kids like it too. Poor Alfred has been kvetching a lot about being overscheduled this summer. He had over 2 weeks after school ended to goof around and a few days between Los Angeles and Canada. Maybe he’s stressed about starting high school. In any case he and Andrew both adore Canada and seem to be relaxing quite effectively now.

Gretchen has one of her old students and his wife visiting and they are also good company. The husband loves to cook so we are being regaled with all sorts of homemade goodies. He told me about a "no knead dough" for bread which I will try when I get home in an attempt to resurrect my moribund dream of baking bread. He is a behavioral therapist for severely disturbed children.

Yesterday we made our annual pilgrimage to the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. It's August so everything is much more crowded than usual. The main exhibit is on the Titanic. What hubris to proclaim that it was "unsinkable". Many people died because they refused to go into lifeboats - they believed that it was indeed insinkable. Most moving were the testimony of people about the musicians who did indeed play until the sink went down, never running off for their own safety. It was amazing how many fragile things could survive for 73 years in a frozen ocean at the depth of 60,000 feet.

We also enjoyed the exhibit on northwest Pacific "First Nations" (what we call Native Americans in the US, or did.) They were mostly settled rather than nomadic. Some of their masks reminded me of Japanese Noh masks.

Later we strolled on crowded Government Street visiting Rebecca's Hats and Munroe's Books. I picked up 2 of my favorite Robertson Davies books which youc an't get as individual volumes in the states: "The Rebel Angels" and "The Lyre of Orpheus".

Third Family Trip North: California to Canada

Art's Dad moved to Canada a few years ago. This our third family trip up there, to lush, cool Victoria. On our first day venturing north we climbed a bit of dusty Mount Shasta where Andrew made his own native-inspired rock towers, balancing rock on rock on rock in improbable shapes. The second day we ventured to Crater Lake in Oregon, a glorious crystal clear volcanic lake far away in the wooded mountains. The lake is the deepest in the United States and the clearest in the world. There is a marvelous volcanic island on one side of it called Wizard's Island which looks something like Merlin's hat. On another is a lava outcropping called the Phantom Ship. In the lodge I read about parties that were held there during the full moon. I would like to visit the cerulean disk of Crater Lake during a full moon. I wonder if the water will still seem blue in all that bathing white.

The next day we stopped in Portland. Unfortunately I couldn't find The Mallory hotel (of Bastard Nation Measure 58 fame) in the AAA book. We visited the Oregon Zoo, which is blissfully shaded, and which has a very good collection of arctic and the usual global beastie wonders. A favorite were the Indonesian water pigs: black, wiggly, and endangered. Washington Park is home to the zoo as well as to several other museums. We took a steam train ride to the international rose test gardens and the Japanese Garden. Alfred loved to the Japanese garden and kept trying to get away from us to think for himself, moody, reflective adolescent that he can be.

Yesterday we visit the Museum of Aviation in Seattle. Art and I loved it and I suspect the kids liked it too, despite general grumbling here and there. It made me wish again that I had had a proper math and science education. It made me fantasize about making a machine to automatically scrub my kitchen counter and suck up Charlie's fur from various surfaces.

Today we are in Vancouver, Canada and it's not clear what we will do. The boys have been mostly well-behaved with some gloominess from Alfred and some brattiness from Andrew but they are good travel-mates on the whole and I enjoy the quantity time we are having together.

Southampton, Mass

I'm in Southampton, MA helping my sister with her twin baby girls. Andrew is with me. Wow, it's a lot of work. It's hot here too, but beautiful. For some reason they have no ice cubes. I'm exhausted.

Michael is trying to set up a Vinyasa yoga studio nearby. Baby Lucia and Mamma Sofia show their respects to Laksmi, Goddess of Domestic Harmony.




Andrew does his best to be a good big cousin to Phebe, who is in a less staid moment.

I really miss my kids

I really miss them. I wish they were here. I wish summer was over.

Pastel by Stephanie Wellman

Beauty is Truth

Working summer school is sad. So many of the children are learning disabled, retarded or neglected and angry. Sure, plenty are there just for remedial learning or babysitting, but enough are so severely challenged as to make me wonder how they will be able to function independently in the world. Perhaps I'm being melodramatic. Yes, there are at least twenty who are retarded enough that they probably couldn't even work at McDonald's. The rest will most likely be able to hold down some sort of service or construction-type position. I worry about these kids who cannot concentrate, who can't sit still. Not all are cut out for digging trenches or answering telephones in pretty dresses. The beautiful young man at Safeway who bags your groceries - is he drug damaged or naturally demented? More often they have Down's Syndrome or other, likewise more marked indications of idiocy.

"There but for the grace of God go I." Christopher Hitchens quotes this chestnut in his recent book, "God is not Great" and adds that what we often mean when we think this is, "There but for the grace of God goes someone else", with a sigh of internal relief. That's not so true for me. I always feel on the brink of potential disaster and am ever amazed at my luck - so far. Loving my children as I do is frightening. If one of them were to become an idiot I am sure I would develop a deeper sense of his soul, of the mind beyond the intellect, a sense I really already have, but which I have not been forced to face as acutely as I might.

One of my favorite books of all time, Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", revolves around a man whose mental functioning is sporadically impaired by epilepsy. In spite of (or perhaps to some degree because of) this, his sense of compassion is heightened and he is a model of kindness and human understanding. While he may be perceived as an idiot in one sense, he is genius of the soul. Interestingly, the only epileptic person I currently know is an embittered misanthrope who is so paranoid that he will not allow his son to do anything outside of parental purview. I feel sorry for this man, and his son. Another example of a lopsided soul would be Geneva's beau, an engineering genius with no apparent compassion for anyone. He is so deluded, drug damaged and wrong-headed in his solipsistic morality that I cannot even feel sorry for him. But he is the inspiration for another undertaking altogether.

One of the little boys I was working with this morning could not for the life of him figure out very basic math facts like 2 + 2 = 4, something very simple for most children his age. I sat by him, patiently trying to show him how to figure out simple sums on his own. Sadly, he simply could not grasp the abstraction. He did grasp my facial expressions though, and smiled in response to my smiles, guessed sweetly in response to my prodding. When we figured out a problem he showed pleasure.

There are some children who are the opposite, but few are in summer school. The autistic child I taught a couple of years ago was very good at math for his age and could pick up on patterns at the drop of a hat. He even saw patterns where others did not, to the point that it created paranoia. Unlike the child who could not do math, this child could not read emotions. Attempts at emotional engagement were more often than not met with blank stares or worse, frightened hostility.

Sometimes I understand why people rely on religion to feel better about what is sad and difficult. There are predicaments that are simply tragic, but that cannot be relegated to the domain of the demonic, even though once they might have been. It is arguably worse to have an evil child than an idiot child, although the evil child will probably be able to fend for himself in some manner or another. The child who cannot learn, and who will not be able to fend for himself as an adult, may be able to still help in the home, depending on the degree of disability. But this is all anxious speculation.

There is a touching beauty in many of the "special" education children, and even adults. At the risk of waxing maudlin, I'll end it here since I believe I've made my point.

Christ and the Birds

We were on a quest: a breathless, heart-pumping quest through unknown terrain in the wet spring. Rivers ran beneath quaint cast iron bridges adorned with birds, scallopped with sparrows in black filigree. Above and below real sparrows perched and swooped in the rain.

It was a classic scene. I had no idea what I was looking for, but was desperate to find it. The rain drizzled down and invigorated us.

Finally we came to an isolated cottage right across a small river. As we burst in through the door, there they were, facing us in all their provocative beauty. Paintings of Jesus in various erotic stances, leering at us seductively. None of them were graphic, but they all depicted him with an unmistakable "come hither" look, some even featuring him licking his lips or puckering them in a kiss. There was nothing chaste about this Jesus.

I have been trying to find the paintings on which the ones in my dream seem to be based. This Jesus was obviously very approachable and he seemed fairly well-fed too. Here are the closest I could find.

My Father's Room

Finally the house is starting to get in order. We got a new door. Paint with color is spreading across the upper floor of the house. The closets are being emptied. We are cleaning out my father's room. We are sleeping in my father's room. The room in which he lived when he lived here. The room in which he died. The room which we subsequently used as a sewing room and then as a cubscout materials storage room. The room which has been so full of cub scout boxes that you could barely walk in it. That room.

Last night I awoke at 3 in the morning. I heard rustling and scratching coming from the desk by the bed. Lots of rustling. I sat up in bed and it seemed that the desk itself was shaking. I went back to sleep.

In the morning I insisted that Art look in the drawers. One I had opened halfway and I saw that pages of my father's PhD thesis on Leon Battista Alberti had been clawed and gnawed. I was afraid to open it any further. Art opened it and yes, lo and behold, a nest of baby rats lay squirming in the tattered thesis.

An unpleasant scene ensued, but one undertaken with relative calm and aplomb by Art and my sons. It involved a bucket, bleach, some BBQ tongs and much squeaking. During the procedure the mother escaped to her crack beneath the dishwasher. The menfolk removed the main problem but I was left with the empty nest and the remnants of my father's various writings, shredded and shat upon. I sifted through them with the tongs, sadly acknowledging that they were the only copies and vacillating as to whether I should attempt to salvage or just chuck the lot. Finally I decided to save what I could and placed it in a bag for disinfection. I found other things in the drawer too; the usual nonsense I'd expect from someone like my Dad.

April Flowers

Amazingly, daffodils are still in the stores. There must have been a final flow, a bonus bloom that made so many available to adorn our homes in April, late for the daffodil season here.

Andrew earned his Arrow of Light on Friday and bridged into boy scouts. The Blue and Gold was a Casablanca theme and the boys received their awards as transit visas to cross the bridge. We had dry ice, the movie playing, music, lights flickering, and a veritable platoon of boy scouts ready to receive them. The Stoffers put together a magnificent Moroccan dinner and dessert complete with mint tea, ice cream and dates.

Now to pass on the pack. Our house is filled with seven years of cub scout paraphrenalia that needs to be distributed among the new leaders and parents. I'm exhausted.

Ah, no wonder..

Hope and disappointment.
A classic combination.
Why study Arabic indeed.

Ornamental Plum

Carmen on the Run

They're out to get me. Desperate housewives call me all hours of the day and night, inviting me to their houses when hubby is away, treating me to the movies, inviting me for lavish lunch at their house, staring at my tits, rubbing my thigh in the movies, licking their lips suggestively, bursting into tears when I explain that I can't see them - something has come up. I can't take this fucking shit anymore. I don't need any damn friends - these lonely horny bitches have got me all wrong. What, do I seem like that kind of girl? Honestly, I'm not leading anyone along.

Man, I gotta hatch an escape plan. Cub Scouts will be over in about a month. I just have to stick it out til the end of that for about 3 of these gals. I'll just keep it professional and only meet them in groups. One of my housewife admirers (the tit-starer who wants to travel around the world with me "without any men") is not in scouts but she's ok for now - I think she's under control.

I don't want to make anyone cry here, but I've had it. I must have some hallacious karma what with all the whorish mother figures and frustrated lesbians in my life. Once this school year is done I'm going all anchoress on these bitches' asses. It's me, my cello, Arabic and Anna Akhmatova. No horny whiners or idle chit-chatters need apply. I'm sorry, but that's how it has to be. I am losing my mind.

Anna Akhmatova in bed, 1924

Friendship

Here's a confession. Ever since I was a small child, friendship has been tied up with one of two things, if not both: sex and project planning. Just today I realized this and it is probably why friendship is so problematic for me as an adult. It's all fine and dandy when I have projects going on like putting on a play or running a spy club (childhood activities) or coordinating an activism effort or running a cub scout pack or planning some cultural event. Even ties that you think would transcend this rule, like the friendships I have made through the adoptee rights movement, can become strained and uncomfortable when not in the context of planning something.

Listening to other people's problems is something I do as a good deed, because I know I am supposed to, and friends are supposed to help one another. I know that if I should need to talk about some personal problem (which is extremely rare), or more pressingly, if I should need help caring for my children when I am unable, that my true-blue friends will be there for me.

This sounds selfish, and perhaps it's overstated. I enjoy having friends with whom to attend lectures, with whom to go to the movies and the opera. It is good for me and the kids to invite people over for dinner and parties, and it is good for us to be invited. Social ties are important and I enjoy and love all my friends. It's small talk that gets to me.

Small talk serves some critical bonding and information-transfer functions, I'm sure. Small talk about shopping or child rearing or home improvement or dieting is painful for me to listen to, let alone engage in. I tolerate it in some of my friends out of respect for our friendship, as I am sure they tolerate my cynicism and other odd traits.

My ideal friendship, alas, is not some comfy chair shoulder to cry on; it's not a health habit, and not a convenience. It involves common passion about something which is not mundane, something which is academic or artistic or activist, even something escapist, or at least something that involves tilting at windmills. Such a friendship seems to have a shelf life though, for, as passion wanes, so do the ties that bind. My family is a more appropriate vehicle for passion projects, which brings me to the subject of sex.

I started having sexual relations at an very young age with an uncle who molested me. He used to take me out for ice cream in his car. He died in a car crash when I was 7. Around the same time, if not earelier, my Haitian babysitters regularly molested me and I had a long-standing sexual relationship and friendship with the mildly retarded Irish-American girl across the street. When I was 9 we moved to Rome, Italy and I started up a relationship with an American girl there who was a complete mess, but our fantasy and sex life (and the fact that we didn't have anyone else), kept our relationship passionate and tormented. This relationship continued when we both moved back to New York City. I had many other sexual relationships and sexual friendships with males and females throughout my adolescence and basically until I got married at the age of 27.

It really is amazing that I'm not more screwed up. Perhaps it was the icing-on-the-cake of discovering, at age 13, that my mother was a topless dancer at the same club as one of my friends. Then again, my father loudly and obnoxiously coming out as a homosexual when I was 14 may have also contributed to my ultimate dedication to not losing control, to not being a persistent victim to other people's sexual needs and problems. Still, paranoia and delusions linger. I imagine that people are licking their lips at me, and making lewd suggestions. I force myself to try and be normal and even with the effort I make, I know it's only skin deep. I am afraid of people. Somehow I suspect that I share this trait with many other "leaders".

Espalier

There are ways to raise an apple tree.
You can cut it back,
you can let it be.
You can hold its arms
and make them wave
a barking bird, absurd
and prone to break.

It looks so simple
in the book.
You take a shovel,
toss some dirt.
Learn some seasons,
say some names
and engineer
if there's no rain.

There are ways to raise an apple tree
and I'll admit
I've let mine be.
Seasons come and seasons go
the birds and butterflies all go
in and out of its leaves.

There are times when I dream
of complete control
and apple cream
of apple arms
all stretched out wide
its fruit in ribbons neatly tied.

There are times when I think
inside my study shrouded low
panelled brown with burnished bark
hidden from the sun or snow.
It doesn't matter much to me
what's outside, sun or sea
and all the fruit I will not eat
grows in my head ever sweet.

There are ways to raise an apple tree.
You can grab its trunk,
You can tear its leaves.
You can spray and rake
and prod and mulch.
And hope your effort comes to good.

It sounds so simple,
plans be laid.
It's too bad
I'm so afraid.

Just swell

It's just swell
Blue and wide and brimming
side to side and beaming
all balmy with the sun
going down and I'm
inside safe and playing
my cello and all I see
is in my head
and that's just swell
it's safe here and
just as well I'm bowing
side to side and smiling
wide and wooden
between my legs it's
curving and swaying
and all I'm saying is that
it's swell my darling.
Just swell.

The Struggle

Too many plums will make you sick. Then again, maybe you weren't feeling well to begin with. Perhaps you weren't well is to begin with. Perhaps it's been a festering, sugar-coated state of affairs and the slivovic of reality has fermented to a now undeniable froth.

You know, I don't drink much. This isn't about drinking. It's about feeling. It's about doing. It's about living with the layers of complexity that crawl from time to time, one upon the other, each in some circadian rhythm creeping up to the surface and demanding attention, demanding importance, shifting up to the soap box of my cerebral cortex and screaming, "Me now!, Me! Me! Me!"

"Oh, fuck that" should be my response more often. If only I would learn to breathe. Meditate. Put things in perspective. Care less.

Kiss my Ash

The Rowan Tree (Mountain "Ash")

Vladimir used to make rowan-berry flavored vodka every year. The rowan berries are so red and pretty. There are also lots of beautiful English and Russian folksongs that mention this tree. It turns out that there is an awful lot of northern European folklore associated with the rowan tree. Vladimir said that the rowan berries are medicinal and that rowan (ryabina) berry vodka is considered not only delicious, but also as a curative for a variety of ills, mostly upper respiratory. When we looked up the translation for ryabina, the first listing was "mountain ash", although it is not a member of the ask family.

There is a lovely Russian folksong called "Tonkaya Ryabina" (Slender Rowan) that we used to sing in Moscow. Tanya used to play it on the flute, I played the balalaika, and the boys sang.

Here are some rowan tree links.

Species profile - The Rowan

Mythology and Folklore of the Rowan

Rowan - Wikipedia

We managed to get rowan branches in Stony Brook, I wonder if there are any around in northern California.

White Ash

The first table I bought myself in San Francisco was made of ash. It's so sturdy two people can lie on it. Now it stands in the kitchen burdened by hills of potatoes and dishtowels.

Ash is a hard wood. They make baseball bats out of it. Art keeps a baseball bat by the door in case we ever need to brain someone who comes in.

I don't think I even know what an ash tree looks like. They didn't have too many in New York City. I don't think we have them in the Bay Area either. This picture is of a "white ash". I Wikied it and it turns out that I might have seen it on the east coast, but as my arboreal education has been quite lacking, I probably wouldn't have known it had I seen it. In school they only taught us oak, maple, elm and the evergreens. I knew about mimosas because there was one in the neighbor's front yard.

This doesn't seem to be the more romantic, possibly less hard (and less likely to be used for braining or screwing) European Mountain Ash, or Rowan tree, which is another matter entirely and a worthy subject for a separate blog post. I leave you with an image of a white ash plank. Here it is: white and hard.

What a Birch

January

hey long legged trees
all white and lean
shivering in simple
stark groves between
empty fields.

Janus is a two-faced god, no?

Life's a birch and then you sigh.

Birch grove photograph by Arnoldas Jurgaitis of Vilnius, Lithuania