At the Last, Rain

A long, cool April, followed by the final thawing in May, stayed high and dry for the most part; there was a little cracked dust on the path between the lilac and the spruce.  But after many long, sunny days (for which we counted ourselves blessed: it is hard to want more clouds after the long winter gloom) at the last, rain. 

"Come over the hills and far with me,

And be my love in the rain."  --Robert Frost

"If I had the power the storms for to rise,

I would make the wind blow out and I'd darken the skies,

I'd make the wind blow high, and the salt seas to roar,

Till the day that my darling sailed away from Culmore." 
--Cara Dillon

"To the bad parts of America my love I'll go see,

For it's there I know no one and no one knows me, 

But if I don't find her I'll return home no more,

Like a pilgrim I'll wander for the maid of Culmore." 
--Cara Dillon

"I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

the nursling of the sky..." --P.B. Shelley

"One morning you found me, alone by the shore;

You harbored me, bleeding, heart-shaken, and sore.

You built me a thatched hut of white on green turf:

But loud in my ears drummed the sound of the surf."

--Ania, "The Song of the Selky"

"One nature danced to man's fiddle and pipe,

But another sang notes of a song's archetype.

With one self I longed for an anchor in earth,

But another was chained to the sphere of my birth."

--ania

"The ocean is dark, and the ocean, it's wild,

But the ocean is loved by the ocean's fair child."

--ania

"Oppressive, melancholy breezes sigh

With grays that cloud all clarity of forms

With memories and half-forgotten dreams

Like ghosts, or mist, or cobwebs in the light

Of early dawn."--ania

 

"I thought I had forgotten,

But it all came back again

To-night with the first spring thunder

In a rush of rain." --Sara Teasdale

"A raindrop falls, and nevermore the same

Falls from the self-same sky, or colored clouds--

As silver arrows showered once they came,

Another time with wind and thunder loud,

with stormy passion, flashing bolts of light,

They struck the shattered earth as with a fist:

And once a scarlet sun sank into night 

Among the hills and swirling rainbow mist."

--ania

There... and Back Again. A Flower's Tale.

"I'm going out to clear the pasture spring.

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may).

I shan't be gone long.  You come too."

-Robert Frost, "The Pasture"

My favorite tree!  an ancient European beech.

"There's not a flower on all the hills, -the frost is on the pane;

I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again."

Alfred Tennyson, "The May Queen"

"I wish the snow would melt and the sun come out on high-

I long to see a flower so before the day I die."

"The May Queen"

Lenten roses.

"My life flows on in endless song;

Above earth's lamentation

I hear the sweet tho' far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

Thro' all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing;

It finds an echo in my soul--

How can I keep from singing?"

-hymn, attr. Pauline T.

"What tho' my joys and comforts die?

The Lord my Savior liveth;

What tho' the darkness gather round?

Songs in the night He giveth."

"No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that refuge clinging;

Since Christ is Lord of heav'n and earth,

How can I keep from singing?"

"My life is like a frozen thing,

No bud nor greenness can I see:

Yet rise it shall-- the sap of Spring;

O Jesus, rise in me."

Christina Rossetti, "A Better Ressurrection" 

There... and back again. A flower's tale.

Squirrel Musings

apps.rhs.org.uk

Click, click, click- the voices lightly pressed from keys;

The house half-dark, the day half-dark, with winter’s gloom

With winter’s gray and graying afternoon,

Drizzling cold but yet it will not freeze-

Stubborn.  Squirrels are at the bulbs, out in the yard.

The wretched beasts will always take what isn’t theirs,

Fat and waddling from the trash can, in the city, dare

Accost MY bulbs… would have to keep a constant guard

To save the poor flowers.  The animal lovers never

Consider the wasted, ruined, slaughtered flowers.

To squelch my wrath takes all my latent powers-

If we were in the country they would quiver,

Quailed from the gardener’s righteous wrath,

The Fear of Man a lesson soonest learned,

When outraged woman stands her ground full-armed-

Treading out the winepress up the garden path.

Poor beasts.  Not meant to live on garbage, or concrete;

No more am I.  Both creatures out of place,

Out of the land that knows the hunt, the honest fight for food, the chase.

Here,  Nature does not sing and neighbors don’t eat meat.

"Squirrel Pie," jackhyde.com

Battening down the hatches... Ozarkian style

October 29th- Welcome ashore, Hurricane Sandy! Power outages?! Bah! This Missouri-born girl snaps her fingers at you.  What is a little wind and rain to good old-fashioned American fortitude, brashness, and "just plain thing-ness"? (quotation courtesy of Jeeves and Wooster!)

"Rain may fall and wind may blow,

And many miles be still to go,

But under a tall tree I will lie,

And let the clouds go sailing by."

-J.R.R. Tolkien

-Final roses in the front garden.

-My rendition and translation, edits included, of a favorite recipe (original in Polish):

Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake 

Crust:

3/4  c. chocolate cookies or graham crackers

1 tbsp. cocoa

3 tbsp. melted butter

3 tbsp. melted dark chocolate (chips or baking chocolate)

Cheesecake:

1 lb. (or about 2 cups) of cottage cheese, strained, or farmer’s cheese

3/4 c. white sugar

1 egg white

1/2 c. melted chocolate

1 tsp. vanilla (or almond extract, lemon juice, or other flavoring.)

Ganache:

1/2 c. cream

1/2 c. dark chocolate, chopped

Topping:

2/3 pint of raspberries (or other berries: strawberries, blackberries, currants, etc.)

about 1 c. seedless raspberry jelly or jam (or other flavor, complementary to berry choice)

1 c. heavy whipping cream

2 tsp. sugar

*Requires a 9” springform pan for baking. For a taller cheesecake, use an 8” diameter pan.

1.  Prepare your pan by greasing the bottom and lining with parchment paper.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In small bowl, crush cookies into fine crumbs (a potato masher is good for this, especially with crushing graham crackers).  Add melted butter, cocoa, and melted chocolate and mix.  Press firmly into bottom and sides of prepared pan.  Put into the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

2.  (In medium to large mixing bowl) blend or process cheese in food processor or with mixer until as smooth as desired.  Add white sugar and mix.  Then add egg white, followed by vanilla.  Separate out about one quarter of the cheese mixture into another bowl and add melted chocolate (to the smaller portion).  Stir until completely combined.  Take the pan with the crust out of the refrigerator and spoon the chocolate cheese mixture into the pan first.  Spread evenly over crust.  Then spoon on white mixture, and smooth the top, careful not to mix the layers.  Put the cheesecake into the oven, and immediately turn down the oven’s temperature to 275 degrees.  Bake for about 45 minutes or unti l the cheesecake appears fairly firm on top.  It may not look done; that is okay.  Turn off the heat and leave the cheesecake in the oven for an hour to cool slowly (leave the oven closed; the cake will continue baking for a while.)  After an hour, remove cheesecake from oven and continue to cool at room temperature until completely cool (or overnight).  It can be put in the refrigerator after it has cooled for some time at room temp.

3.  Spread the top of the cooled cheesecake with a layer of raspberry jelly and some of the berries (if desired), sliced.  Then chill while preparing your ganache for the next layer.

4.  Chop the chocolate finely and put in a bowl.  (You can also use a food processor to chop the chocolate coarsely, but make sure the chocolate is cold and you don’t process too long, or the friction will melt the chocolate.)  Heat whipping cream in a saucepan on the stove quickly over medium high heat, until it just boils and remove immediately (be careful not to burn or curdle!!).   Immediately add the cream to the chopped chocolate and stir completely.  Your ganache should look shiny and dark.  Add to the top of the cheesecake by pouring or spooning it over the jam and berry layer.  Do not spread ganache; just let it coat the cheesecake.   Return the cheesecake to the refrigerator or freezer for another chill.

5.  Meanwhile, whip your cream with sugar (I added a few drops of vanilla to this as well.)  Spread on to the cheesecake (Yay!! This is the final layer!)  And top with your choice of berries, curls of shredded chocolate, etc.  Refrigerate until serving.  Smacznego!!!!

"I sit beside the fire and think 

of people long ago,

and people who will see a world

that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think

of times there were before,

I listen for returning feet

and voices at the door."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

The Name of it is Autumn

"Beacon on Black Lake" by Steven Daluz

 Steven Daluz Website

 The name-- of it-- is "Autumn"--

The hue-- of it-- is Blood--

An Artery-- upon the Hill--

A Vein-- along the Road--

Great Globules-- in the Alleys--

And Oh, the Shower of Stain--

When Winds--upset the Basin--

And spill the Scarlet Rain--

It sprinkles Bonnets-- far below--

It gathers ruddy Pools--

Then-- eddies like a Rose-- away--

Upon Vermillion Wheels--

-Emily Dickinson

photo from MIT museum, Boston, MA, Sept. 2012

 

 

 

 

What a chill, wettish fall day does to one’s will to complete the everyday tasks!!  Mounds of dishes may abound in the sink, laundry may lie on the floor unsorted, work of all sorts and sundry may await at every doorpost, glaring ferociously… and still, what one wants is a cup of tea and a good book.  Or even to start a new project- blogging, designing works of art, writing poetry, whatever a person’s particular creative vent may be- or all of them!   

On an indoor-sy sort of day when the weather triggers the restless and mysterious impulses in us, away from the humdrum and toward the intangible, whether we front an adventure face-forward by pulling on our boots and coats and striding out into the rain, or whether we escape into adventures of our own imaginative creation, we dig out our souls and dust them off, remembering the extravagant grace, the divine touch, which makes us human.  

A bit of the vagabond comes out in me.  On such days I am likely to prate on about not being tied down, and owning too many things, and an urge to burn down a house and run off.  (I don’t ever really have the urge to arson, just the urge to be rid of everything I own; however, I am fond of exagerration.  It is a venerable tradition in the heritage of English literature).

On such days I envy cats.  Mind you, I don’t like them; I just envy them.  I’m too much of a kind with them, I think, to really like them.  They are fond of being worshiped; so am I, and there isn’t room for more than one goddess in a household.  But not to dwell on cats: still, on days like this, I wish I could “walk by my wild lone, and wave my wild tail” like they do.  

Autumn is the responsible party when it comes to referrals to burning down the house, though.  What a season!  Such blazes of wild, living, rippling color!  The sugar maples look like someone set a torch to them, particularly during the evening light just at sunset.  And Someone has touched a torch to my soul, too; inside a body I feel just as much afire and awake as the glorious trees.  I want to shake out the wrinkles in my being, stretch out my pen and write torrentially.  What about doesn’t much matter: just to be writing and alive and hear the rich wealth of words wandering around my world of thoughts again on golden paws.

You could say this is only the autumn fever; that my real self will come back tomorrow, or the next day, and continue to do what she always does: wash dishes, cook meals, tend the hearthstone and all that.  But there is this point which I think days like these exist to bring out in us: our real selves are not the jobs we do every day, the mundane considerations which we must make daily to earn our bread and shelter.  Our real selves are what we experience in these moments of many-colored, prismatic essence.  But by being brought to remember ourselves in this way, we light our everyday tasks with a little of “the divine spark;” we lend our essence once more to our existence, and make it Real.

 

Broken

flickr.com

Flowers lying on the ground. Stalks bent

In wind too strong to bear and broke.

It was a simple thoughtless joke

to zephyrs, that they hardly meant.

Pieces glitter on the floor.  No shard

remains much bigger than the dust.

Lost grip, wet glass, and gravity just

took the counter-top off guard.

A stiff dove lying on the sidewalk. Dead?

Her mate still flutters near to ask.

The futile nest lies cold, forgotten task,

For only one life gone, for one snapped thread.

Words spoken in the heart.  The unsought strength

to kill but more than flower, glass, bird,

Defeat the heart and joy of the beloved with a word

And it will not return for any length.