Of the field and fall
from grace we yield
the summer-sated grasses
and the golden-hour lasses . . .
Letting go the season
has come to pass
What wouldn’t I
do to spare you?
The Earth drops her gown
from green to gold to ground
but the last thing She’ll see
is blue . . . remembering
a world She once knew
. . . all the women do.
© LGS 9/14
(Bolstered by my writerly colleagues at http://www.lakeeffectwritersguild.com, I post this for my girl, and for all us girls)
Last night, Kit and I went to the Full Moon Drumming, which was particularly wonderful during this, the Blood Moon. There was a big turnout. Instruments of all kinds were spread out on the ground for any newbies (like us) to borrow—fully engaged participation is the unspoken expectation. Interspersed were various art supplies that had presumably been used to put up promotional posters about the event, at least that’s what we figured the markers, scissors, etc., were beside the tambourines and maracas. Yet there was a tin can, fly swatter, knitting needles, and a knife sharpener, so who could be sure?
I’m not a musician but I can keep a beat, at least I thought I could. Then the tattooed guys with pony tails started beating rhythms out of the congas, snares, steel pans and African drums that were powerful and primal. Everything I tried to sync to that skewed highchair-baby-with-spoon. As soon as the first session winded down, I switched to cow bell and spent the next session trying to keep Will Farrell/SNL images out of my mind.
Maybe the fourth or fifth “drum conversation” in, I was finally getting the hang of it. I had settled at last on the triangle because…well, I just didn’t think you could mess up on the triangle. It always sounds nice. After a while, Kit gave me a look that inferred otherwise.
“Play something different,” she hissed.
“This is the only song I know on the triangle,” I replied.
“No, I mean a different instrument…anything…like a skein of yarn.”
She looked around desperately then handed me a glitter-glue stick, but I just tuned her out.
4/2014
Now recovered from the jetlag, and the miserable sick that I was while abroad last month, I shall post some pix and remember how beautiful the Alps were (and still are).
Hallstatt is a a wee postcardian town that for most of its phenomenally long existence (its salt mine has been continuously worked since hundreds of years BCE) remained accessible only by boat over the Hallstattersee.
It’s hard for me to imagine ordinary life in such an extraordinary place. How could anyone struggle with the mundane when every view or scene is magnificent?
Of course, I know better but that’s what’s so amazing about traveling. The sensory responses on every level change the way my heart beats . . . from tha-thump to a full percussion of feeling.
Seaver Creative 