Go Picking Wildflowers

May 30, 2011 by
 On a lazy, rainy Sunday
I go walking to where the mountain spins gold.
I pour my heart into the dirt as I exchange pieces of myself
for pieces of earth charm.
To take is to give, to take without giving is the ultimate imbalance.

The meadow larks flutter their song and wrap their wings about the softness of each other.
A moose spells sanctuary and tranquility with each drooping movement of its velvet roman nose.
Over in the thickness of the draw, pheasant roosters crow endlessly about their handsome tails.
Hawk eyes see all.
I carefully select my bouquet.
I bruise, bend and snap stalks as I build a petaled trophy for the windowsill at home.
The wind comes in waves.
The clouds sail fast into Wyoming.
I bed down in the tall grasses,
like a tawny deer,
and watch the rain come down the mountain.





Filed Under: city creek, idaho, mountains, rocky mountains

Before it’s time.

January 4, 2011 by
At some point today, I looked out my studio window and realized that I needed to get closer to the sky.
I shrugged my way into layers of knits, wool, boots and tights, stepped out the door with Penelope and made for the hills.
There were two sharptail grouse sailing on a stiff wind pouring down from Kinport Peak.
Penelope chased voles through snow down into the roots of the sage.
 
 The flower skeletons rattled about in the cold.
I tried to identify plants in their winter garb.  
It’s sometimes difficult.
Have you ever had trouble recognizing people when the cold weather sets in?  I’ll see friends about town, friends I know plenty well, only when they’re wearing coats and toques it takes me a time to recognize them in their new wintry garb. 

It’s the same for the wildflowers and their naked little winter suits.  I have to peer closely to know who I’m looking at.
 I eventually left the trails to make my own paths.
I kept an eye peeled for furs and feathers and tracks and bird songs:  
Beneath one juniper, a clattering of chickadees.
 The loose coils of barbed wire hanging from my favorite fence line were drooping with cold.
 The snow was holding memories.
 As I walked, lines of poems jotted themselves down in my mind:

“…next time I will lean in to listen, as the trees do over deep waters…“
When my extremities began to hum with a faint numb
I made my way down off the West bench, through a wooded draw, across a road, through the streets to my front door.
My lips were dumb when I finally stepped inside the house
and already, the day was starting to fade, as winter days do, before we’re ready.
Before it’s time.
Filed Under: city creek, idaho, penelope, pocatello, winter

The magic…

September 28, 2010 by
…is in the details.














Filed Under: autumn, city creek, idaho, pocatello, rocky mountains, west bench

The Littlest Birds Sing The Prettiest Songs

April 19, 2010 by
Sunday was a day of discovery at The Gables.
I found myself working for hours and hours in my studio, completing old ideas, satin finishing projects I dug up from the depths of my workbench and when my work was finally through I tied shoes on my feet and flew up to the hills.
A steady stride carried me up through the sage, past hillsides of hip-tall Midas grasses, past the Russian olive grove, through the cool damp of the maples and the white limbs of the aspen, over one spring creek and then the next and then high enough that it was only the junipers and I aloft on down valley drafts and the heady scent of scaled leaves in the spring sunlight amidst stubborn patches of snow. I tried to watch the ground as I ran but my eyes were drawn up, time and time again, to the tree tips laced with Idaho blue, which is exactly where I was looking when I found this.

It took an easy climb and the quick snap of a branch to retrieve it. It fit in my palm so well, it was as though it was slip cast from my hand. Inside, the detritus of last year. Small, disintegrating grey turds and a pair of matched leaves; weathered and crisp. It was otherwise empty. A small grey abandoned house, slightly aslant in the wind, timbers hanging on by mere threads. (And in the corner of the bedroom a sun bleached nightgown fluttering on a hook.)
Who, in this world, takes the time to build a home of sticks, grasses and spit anymore, but for the birds? They keep our hope buoyant on their matchstick legs. Bright eyed. Beak clacking. Wings folded in prayer. Complex songs and offerings on their tongues, weaving melodies and warbles like women at looms. Balancing the world on their flight feathers, diving in the breeze and stalling in the gales. And at night, heads under wings and a soft coo to anyone who will hear.

And then in the garden, nestled between two tulips, memento mori, free of the stench of death, cobwebbed and crusted with dirt. The smallest skull with a perfect beak but a throat song long evaporated into the living landscapes of Idaho.

Translucent in the sun.
Creatively designed.
Placed there by the tides of time and the provident hands of God for me to discover and thoughtfully turn over and over again in my fingertips.

Birds of the past,
I wonder what wings my way in the future.
Filed Under: birds, city creek, idaho, memento mori, pocatello