The wind almost tripped me today.
I start off my run YakTraxed ‘cuz as of late, it’s been so be-blizzardly and be-coldedly, so much so that I have needed to wear my ski jacket in the midst of all my Spring robin excitement. I find it is warmer today though, and the snow is wearing out at its knees like jeans, road surfaces knobby, more exposed than not, sloppy and thready. And, as my YakTrax are tightly squeezing my feet in an uncomfortable manner, I am wickedly relieved to happily remove them.
I do not mind carrying them for a couple of miles as I am used to carrying a small journal and pencils alongside the variety of things I have gathered on my daily runs. I stop for each precious copper penny I find, pocketing it for the Wishing Well I keep in my office/study/library/studio-depending-on-what-I-am-using-it-for room, and among the bags and bags of acorns and leaves I gather in Autumn, I have carried pinecones (they seem to me to drop more in the Winter-to-Spring turning of the Season’s Wheel revolution), feathers, marbles, and branches along with the small stones and rocks, even blocks of wood that have caught my fancy for my Cabinet of Wonders. And I have more than once even considered carrying the bricks I have seen from time to time, sorely tempted to scoop them up. What great bookends they would make, I think…or fabulous organic paperweights…or great plop-on-top-of-my-cookbook-to-keep-it-open-thingie while I am cooking…although when I am cooking rarely do I follow a recipe. It is kinda like my right-brained runs: I start with an idea of what route I’m gonna take ‘til I change my mind at the drop of a whim, adding twists and turns, compelled to add all the bizarre ingredients I might find in my run’s refrigerator.
Ahem…{cough}…ANYWAY. After contemplating the pros and cons of taking those bricks home on my run, despite their bookendedness, the cons literally outweigh the pros, so my Cabinet of Wonders and bookshelves remain brickless and my cookbooks flop closed…and I am content to carry my YakTrax…
Carrying my YakTrax, I loop west, and a gust of wind from north to south…or was it from south to north?... weighing more than all of me, cuts in front of me…and I almost trip, my shoe close to nicking my ankle. I catch myself…and do not fall…and am wickedly relieved to have not landed on the ground…so I decide to pretend I am frolicking in this wind among those saucy smarts crows… and, like those crows, make no apologies for it…
I Don’t Trip on the Wind Today and Other Things that Make Me Wickedly Relieved…and Happy
The orange of Spring’s robin that emerges from Winter like the orange that emerges from the Kraft cheese powder product that colors the bland beige combination of boxed macaroni noodles, milk, and butter…{happy sigh}…
That berry-eating orange Spring robin thru my BlackBerry viewfinder on binoculars. I A.D.O.R.E that picture.
The patches of slush and ice, like the splits mat halfway through a race that I pretend I am crossing…as long as it is mostly sloppy slush and not slicky ice.
The quick ten minutes it takes to chain up my tires of my purple Goddess-mobile (my third time this Winter) and the couple of minutes it takes to chain up my running shoes yesterday and the fewer minutes it takes to remove both.
The short shifts of the Moon these days as She rests, waning after long hours of Her working towards full.
Spring robin/jolly yellow cedar waxwing/crow chasing in Winter Snow.
And those gorgeous crows that ride the strong winds, holding their pose for minutes at a time on waves…preferring the tippy tops of those evergreens on which to perch.
Mary Oliver’s poem Crows
From a single grain they have multiplied.
When you look in the eyes of one
you have seen them all. At the edges of highways
they pick at limp things. They are anything but refined.
Or they fly out over the cornlike pellets of black fire, like overlords.
Crow is crow, you say. What else is there to say?
Drive down any road, take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind, die and be born again—wherever you arrive
they'll be there first, glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.
~
GL, 2/28/2011. Prevail.
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