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The Golden Hour

March 9, 2023 by Cynthia

Weekend morning, quiet. Peerless blue sky as the rising sun stretches into my space.

The light illuminates the desert colors of this room, lingering longest on the desk at which I write.

The desk, a tiger oak C-curve roll top, is far older than me. I am a part of its life, which will continue when my journey is ended.  On days like this, the sun’s spotlight beckons. The wood glows with a patina gained only through quality craftsmanship and decades of use.  The gravity is inescapable.

During the Golden Hour, the busyness of life is clear and the profundities of the seasons of human life felt acutely. Reflection too, is inescapable.

My laptop rarely visits this desk. This is a handmade corner, where pens, pencils, and paper still hold sway.

Desks are uniquely human. They hold, motivate, and provide. Desks are made of wood, metal, plastic, and found objects. Rarely appreciated but faithful nonetheless, especially during the Golden Hour.

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Sunset

February 23, 2023 by Cynthia

It was cold today, 25F.  The clouds are closing the distance on the setting sun. Above the cloud deck, a patch of vibrant blue sky.

Chasing the sun down the vault of the heavens, a vibrant contrail shines in the bending light. A brilliant shooting star tracking toward the horizon before the clouds pull the curtain.

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Vignette

February 19, 2023 by Cynthia

Snowfall overnight.  Only the streetlamps are bright, cloudy with a few stars.

Walking in tire tracks, I turn the corner on an untrammeled snowy road.  Four inches of unbroken snow blankets door to door and down the street.  No tire tracks, human, or animal prints.

Walking down the middle of the street, the snow glistens. The impossibly unplanned sparkles that dazzle even in low light.  At street end, the tracks of a car leaving for work breaks the spell.

Behind me, a solitary braid of footprints leads from where I once was. A lifetime in a glance.

Footprints made of water last no longer than those held by tidal sand—a presence momentarily registered on an endlessly changing canvas.

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Lucy Atop the Clock

February 13, 2023 by Cynthia

Lucy waits each day away

Darling Reginald came not to play.

Nor even say “hello.”

The sun has come and sets again

Each morning Lucy rises alone.

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If Wishes were Horses

November 8, 2022 by Cynthia

The dried seed head of Allium cristophii is the size of a small cantaloupe. In bloom, the silvery violet florets create a globe atop a single stem that bears a strong resemblance to stars.  The common name of the bulb is Persian onion or “Star of Persia.”

Dried, the flowers that formed the sphere give way to a multitude of spokes, each ending in a star-shaped array that nestles a tiny niche of seeds within.

One such seed head resides in my office.  Dust is caught in its starry arms, even as its seeds quietly wait.

This seed head was once a magic wand in the hands of my youngest. I remember the last wish he conferred before he grew up and blew away in the autumn wind. That was years ago.

Only the wind can restore magic to this wand, and the seed wishes that remain. Stepping outside, leaves impatiently rustle under foot, the wind is high under a grey sky. I ruffle the seed head. The spokes break, the seeds are released from sleep to continue their long-lost journey, and the stem drops to decay.  Last wishes.

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Killing Frost

November 5, 2022 by Cynthia

It had to happen.

On this morning, the flowers are more brilliant than before.  Brittle frosted petals, leaves, buds. Deepened color in the autumn garden, a medieval sketch of high linear detail, a confection of final color — red, blue, yellow, green, orange. No feature missed. Paused in perfection, flowers held taut in icy fingers.

With the day, the frost relents, the flowers sag to brown mush. A slow exhalation of the garden into the coming season.  Until next year.

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Autumn triptych

October 24, 2022 by Cynthia

I

Bright burnt-orange and yellow leaves swirl off stories-high maple trees.

Some race upwards as others billow wide on a playful breeze.

Like children released at recess, the leaves seem set to begin a new journey. Summer days and nights in moonlit trees have passed.

Peerless blue sunny sky, the ephemera of autumn.

II

The sun has set but radiant light lingers about the tops of the trees.  Red-orange canopy doing a slow cha-cha in the evening breeze.

From my ground level office, I can see the changing garden.  No killing frost yet. Roots that steady and sink deep. Still-luminous Zinnias, gold and red.    

Agastache, licorice scented stems and leaves sag, laden with berry pink flowers.

A perfectly timed V-formation of geese passes through.

High in the sky, the maple dresses for autumn as the garden mellows into rich color.

As above, so below.

III

An afternoon walk in a suburban neighborhood.  Halloween bling every few houses.

A mild breeze, temps in the 70’s, and color on the trees the likes of which have not been seen for years.

Walking the dogs, we scuttle with dry but still colorful leaves down the street.

The perfection is timeless, seamlessness between self and sky that renders human transparent.

These are the moments for which we take on skin—to see and sense with no understanding, no cause or conclusion, nothing but the transitory joy that Is.

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The Illusion of Earthbound (or—the view from a flying machine)

October 22, 2022 by Cynthia

The airport. Untethered, reasons differing, luggage struggles, life-worn faces, regardless of age.

Sunrise behind stratocumulus cliffs over an ocean of clouds.

The pilot announces a two hour and 52-minute flight at 38,000 feet.  Plenty of height for perspective.

Excellent cloud day. Cotton soup with tiny towns below.  Cloud handshakes reach across the aisle and march on to the west.

Bejeweled circuit board subdivisions far below.

Hills and slopes stretch into prehistoric fossilized leaf prints.

Piano key agricultural strips.

Popcorn clouds dense, render deep and dappled shadows on a bone-dry landscape.

Souls aloft for this moment, in this lifetime, sustained by a metal can.  The illusion of earthbound.

Clouds changing and taking form.  Despite its seemed impermanence, water vapor is as close to immortal as anything on this planet.

Below, one cannot resist the thought, when looking at sprawling, spreading cities, that humans are an invasive species.

Modern agriculture:  Wind farm

The perfectly rendered eye of a hippopotamus in the landscape, then quickly covered by clouds.

Dense, vaporous clouds below the horizon, bright blue sky above.  Horizontal duality as far as the eye can see.

The broken routine—by travel, by incursion—specializes the moment outside of our routinized world.  Frees the mind to the new scope, what is arriving on the horizon.

If I had my way, I would traipse this firmament more often, exist outside the tunnel, work at seeing the invisible patterns to better describe what is visible to me.

Escarpments licking down plateaus, red orange against limestone yellow, grand anthropomorphic illustrations, courtesy of erosion.

Reverie concluded. The captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign to begin our descent.

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The Spinner

September 26, 2022 by Cynthia

About 4’ in height, the garden spinner has three wheels of descending size.  Polyester ribbons affixed to each wheel were once brightly colored.  The flag at the base of the spinner, a stitched red ladybug atop a green leaf, points to the direction of the wind.

For the last 20 years, the spinner has held court in the corner of the summer vegetable garden using the breeze, or the winds blustering through, to proclaim its presence. A gentle breeze moves the largest of the wheels first.  A thunderstorm madly propels all three. 

The spinner delighted young children playing in their sandbox or tending the garden. It gaily provided ornamentation at their high school Open House celebrations.  And it stands now, bereft of color, but still fit, in its garden corner.

The spinner has welcomed and harvested the winds of two decades.  It awakens in the Spring, grows quiet as Summer goes to ground in Autumn, and dreams away the Winter in the garage.

At first glance, it is now a tired old spinner whose day has passed.  Is it an artifact too long held for its memory?  While it enjoyed its sunny days, the bluster that overtook this place blew away its color and its more nimble nature.  Visiting this summer, my oldest remarked on its longevity and rightful place in the garden.  Just now, a puff of air moved its wobbly wheels, as it easily pivoted to reveal the direction of the unseen quality that powers it.

The spinner remains.  As stalwart as the day I assembled its plastic and polyester pieces, it fulfills its purpose to translate what is unseen to the visible world.  Not as pretty, but still a structural, kinetic marvel that defies a date with the landfill.

Things change, and sometimes, things remain.

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If you really look…

April 30, 2022 by Cynthia

A half sunflower seed shell appears as a carved-out canoe.

A platform of fallen bark shards accompanied by curling and broken twigs as sturdy as old fallen logs.

The soil, so solid from above, is strewn with composite pieces, glittering jewels, colored, clear, dark, and stacked deep.

Stray autumn milkweed fluff tucks in under the creamy yellow petal of a spring crocus.

The lilliputian delights of the soil become visible when a photograph is repurposed as a computer background.

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