When my husband left to go hiking this morning at 7:00, it was dark, and I stayed in bed till the light pulled me outside. The first thing I saw was the sky covered in downy clouds.
I could see the sun beginning to show itself through the trees, so I walked around the house to get a better view.
I had to wait for a few minutes, which was fine with me. The birds were singing up a musical storm, and I realized how much I'd missed hearing them during the winter days.
Then, there it was-- the big sunflower of the day.
The nearby mountains began to shed their fog.
Time to go inside for a cup of coffee but not before walking out to the garden to look at the spinach plot my husband planted yesterday. Today will be broccoli and cabbage day.
That's pretty good-looking dirt, don't you think? It made me remember a poem I wrote soon after we moved here, "Potatoes." It's in my first book, The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, and these are its last four lines:
"Today, I keep saying. Today
and today. We live here
by this patch of plowed earth
and we'll eat potatoes all winter."
6 comments:
This is so beautiful. It feels strange to be a hour ahead now, but to be on God's time as you said in your post makes it easier.
I see you are reading Czelaw Milosz, I am too. I was moved by this quote from his beautiful To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays:
"I am here. Those three words contain all that can be said- you begin with those words and you return to them.Here means on this earth, on this continent and no other, in this city and no other, in this epoch I call mine, this century, this year. I was given no other place, no other time, and I touch my desk to defend myself against the feeling that my own body is transient"
The last four lines of your poem made me think of that, thank you.
When I was a kid, I knew this elderly lady (Mrs. Smith) who would never change her clocks. "I was born by this time, I'm gonna live by this time and I'll die by this time," she would say.
I really wish we'd stop the time change thing in a way. But, it can be a good way to mark the changing of the seasons...we know warm weather is just around the corner when we "lose" that hour, and cold weather if approaching when we "gain" it back.
Hello Evening Light, I love those Milosz essays; they may be my favorites of his prose, and the quote you emailed is an example of why I find his words so moving and powerful. Adam Jagajewski reminds me of Milosz a lot in his view of the world. Perhaps it takes going through what the Polish survived to make writers more attuned to the here and now? I don't know, but I do know that reading these E. European's poems and essays touch me in ways most contemporary American poets' words do not. They are so broad, expansive in their historical and literary perspectives, too.
Thank you for this comment!
(Do you love the Platters' Twilight Time" as much as I do? I've been listening to them again lately. Those songs bring back a lot of memories.)
Susan, my grandparents were like that too, and so was my father at times. Leave the clocks alone! But I think you have a good take on the time change. These days we are not nearly, if at all, aware of the way the light changes, the soltices, equinoxes, the way the sun moves across the horizon as it rises and sets, so having the time change makes us notice, if only briefly.
My husband told me tonight that this is not really "God's Time." We just left that time to move into DST, but I like to think it's all God's time, sacred time.
Have you put Mrs. Smith in a story? What a great quote.
Mrs. Smith isn't in a story as yet, but is always rattling around in the back of my head. I have a couple little things about her I plan on using. It's amazing that some of my best friends as a child were actually my elderly neighbors instead of kids my own age. I guess even then I knew how valuable the older generations were.
Kathryn,
I am enjoying your pictures and missing the Carolinas, a lot. Yes. Please bring me home! (Well, close to home, as I am from South Carolina).
Thanks for your excitement about both the book and my keys...crazy happy times.
Happy Tuesday,
DeLana
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