July 31: Pollen

Last week I endured a battery of allergy tests. I thought I was done with all that when I was a kid, when my entire back reacted to almost everything on the scratch test and I had to get allergy shots for years. They seemed to work for a while, and most people with chronic allergies grow less sensitive as they get older.

Alas, not I. (I blame global climate change.) Hence, the day at the allergy doctor's office, where, once more, my back (and arms, this time) reacted to just about everything except a few things the shots seemed to have taken care of: no molds this time around, no trees except ash, no feathers. (Of course one of the biggest trees in my back yard, hanging right over the house, is an ash.) The usual trigger flowers--goldenrod, ragweed--plus "mixed grasses" and sagebrush (sagebrush?!) were also high on the list, along with good ol' cats and dogs, and that ubiquitous allegen, dust. Seriously, who isn't allergic to dust?

After being shown a video on how to dust-proof my bedroom (short answer: get rich, replace all your linens with hypoallergenic ones made by the video's sponsor, install an air conditioner, and hire a cleaning lady to properly clean your bedroom once a week as recommended because who has time for that?), I was given some new prescriptions and sent on my merry way. Oh yes, and I'm supposed to keep the cat out of the bedroom. Or get rid of her. Obviously, the doctor doesn't have a cat. I've lived with cats my entire life, so I'm going to work harder on avoiding the goldenrod instead. Because there's not much of that around when one is out in the field hiking or birding...

But I got some good new drugs out of the visit, and a renewed respect for pollen. We can't see it, yet it has the ability to make our lives truly miserable. At least the cat purrs and cuddles with you. Pollen just hangs in the air, insidious, waiting for that chance to enter your nasal passages...

So today working in my flower garden it was with no small horror that I looked down to see my left arm smeared with gold pollen. Big grainy pollen, gold as saffron, a beautiful color. Must have been from the day lilies. I seem to still be breathing just fine, so apparently it wasn't anything I'm allergic to... yet.

On my tan wrist, smear
of gold pollen, fairy dust,
a forbidden kiss.

July 30: Black holes

As I was driving home, the NPR announcer was saying, "Black holes suck up a LOT." Cue the  astronomer: "Black holes are the Las Vegas of the universe--what happens in a black hole stays in a black hole." An analogy about eating a lot and then burping followed. Who says deep space science isn't accessible to the average person?

My personal response: after I stopped laughing, this news blurb not only made me feel really hungry, but also now the song "Hotel California" is replaying on an infinite loop in my head...

Thinking of black holes,
I find myself wondering
what's on for supper.

July 29: Blueberries

Tonight I know I'll be dreaming of blueberries. Even now I can still see them in my mind, piles of the blue-red berries cascading off the winnower in a never-ending stream...

Coastal Mountains Land Trust, for which I work, runs an organic blueberry farm at its Beech Hill Preserve in Rockport. For about a month in the middle of each summer, we harvest the fruit to sell; the blueberry sales thus support the upkeep of the preserve, a popular place to hike and observe nature (it's on the Maine Birding Trail too--stop #31!). Although today was my day off, I don't often get to spend time at the hill when the blueberry harvest is going on. That's not my department. So I volunteered to work at the farm stand for the day just to be a small part of one of our more exciting and enjoyable projects.

Mostly I sold quarts of berries to preserve visitors while the farm workers winnowed. Our winnower is a behemoth of a machine that sucks in boxes of blueberries just as they were raked in the fields, with all the twigs, leaves, unripe berries, and other detritus, and spits out whole, clean blueberries at the other end. Here's a photo of me helping out a few years ago with the end of the winnowing process, quality-checking the final products (i.e. removing the rejects by hand) as the berries roll past one last time into waiting boxes:

In the photo above it doesn't look like there are a lot of berries there, but that's only because they had to slow the process way down for me, a non-professional, so I could more thoroughly pick out the unwanted berries that made it through the winnowing process and properly meet our quality standards. The farm workers--today a team of young women who have worked for us for several summers and really know what they're doing--can pick through a full conveyor belt of berries moving at a very fast speed while talking on their cell phones. The end result is quarts of super-clean berries of very high quality. What you don't see are the buckets and bins full of the reject berries and other material, twigs and little green berries and squished berries that stain everything--the machine, the workers, the floor, the boxes--purple.

To occupy myself today when not selling quarts, chatting with preserve visitors, or replenishing quarts from the winnower, I picked through several buckets full of the rejected berries, etc. to get myself a full quart. It took me most of the afternoon, and my fingers are now stained a deep purple. I'm literally marked by the experience. But I've got more fresh berries in the refrigerator, ample reward for today's work on the farm. 

Fingers tattooed blue.
Rolling berries, more berries,
when I close my eyes.

July 28: Katydid

We left the porch light on when we went out last night, and upon our return, discovered dozens of  moths, flies, and other winged creatures flitting around our front door. Among them, clinging to the screen, was one leaf-green katydid, a beautiful, graceful insect. We tried to catch it so that I could get a closer look, but it jumped away into the jungle of lilies alongside the porch. The voice of the katydid is a familiar part of the summer twilight insect chorus--I've definitely heard many more than I've seen. 

Here's a katydid that looks very similar to last night's visitor, albeit a species from India pretending to be a leaf:

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (Vishalsh521)

I remember feeling quite envious when my best friend Katy, who lived across the street from me when I was five, told me that there was an insect named after her--the katydid--which even sang her name. But then I realized it was OK because one of my mother's childhood nicknames for me was Cricket, so I had an "insect name" too. Now I learn, while looking for a photo of a katydid, that katydids, though they look a lot like grasshoppers, are most closely related to crickets and are called bush crickets in Great Britain. If only I'd known that at age five; it might have sparked a career in entomology. (I also learned that katydid species as a group are referred to as tettigoniids. Try to use that word in a sentence today!)

Under the porch light

green katydid shines brightly

amid dusty moths.

July 27: Late afternoon calm

Young crows do go on so. Lately I've been hearing their whining caws all day long. Even now, on an otherwise quiet Friday afternoon as I sit on my back step, work week done, and enjoy the sunlit leaves, rollicking songs of goldfinches, and the shining ribbon of the river trickling merrily past, I can hear the crows just upriver, yelling. What do crows want? I'm guessing food and companionship, in that order. Are we so different?

Leaf-filtered sunlight,
bright river flowing in peace--
why do the crows whine?

July 26: On the road

Driving through rural western Maine this afternoon on our way to Brownfield for a Greg Brown concert at Stone Mountain Arts Center, I couldn't help but try to capture some vignettes of what I was seeing out the window as we drove along... 
Denmark
 
In old roadside plots,
marble gravestones, names worn smooth,
still tended with care.
 
Faded red garage--
only the bare shell remains
and some scrap inside.
 
Brownfield
 
Hex sign on plywood
protecting those who live in
that rusty trailer.

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July 25: Small dramas

Recently when I commented on a "dramatic" cloud bank, my little niece asked me what "dramatic" meant. I told her that it's when something makes us say, "Oh, look at that!"

Last evening as we were going into Hannaford to get groceries--does it get any more mundane than that?--we looked up to see these amazing clouds massing over the store, illuminated by the setting sun. The photo doesn't do justice to this meteorological display. Neither does the setting, but perhaps the juxtaposition was what made it all the more dramatic at the time.

Another moment: looking over my garden, I noticed this lipstick-red, exotic-looking flower blooming between the echinacea and sage: 

A friend had given me these bulbs last summer, but I thought they were a one-season glory. I hadn't realized any had grown back this year until this flower appeared in full bloom right outside my front door. I don't even remember what it's called, but catching sight of it so unexpectedly provided another one of the small dramas that punctuated my day.

Don't forget to stop

and really look at the clouds,

the bright red flower.

July 24: Morning ritual

Although I love mornings--the light, the birdsong, the promise of the day ahead--I'm not a "morning person." I just wasn't made that way. So I try to follow a morning ritual, of sorts, to help me ease into the day calmly: a word game on my iPad, the daily New York Times crossword puzzle, my usual bowl of cereal (sharing the milk at the bottom of the bowl with the cat), perhaps an early round of the flower beds dead-heading the day lilies. Then, with everything in order, I step out into the rest of my day...

Slow start--dove's soft coo,
cereal with fresh berries,
a crossword puzzle.

July 23: Ice cream

This is the first post I've written in four days, because I've been on an island with my six-year-old niece. The combination of an intermittent wi fi link out there and having to focus all my energy on a small, active person prevented posts, though there were certainly many poetic moments. They will have to remain in my memory for now.

Tonight my poet friend Elizabeth and I met for our monthly poetry session so we could both feel like writers again for a few hours. To prepare for our scheduled time of intense sharing and discussion, we enjoyed drinks and dinner al fresco at a hip bistro near my writing studio, and after dinner, walked to a riverside ice cream stand for dessert.

I had to laugh, because my niece's favorite thing about spending the weekend with me on the island was that I let her get an ice cream for dessert after lunch and dinner every day. She ended up eating five ice cream cones in three days. So you'd think I'd have had enough ice cream. But there's something about walking the sidewalks of our hometown on a warm summer evening that made getting an ice cream cone the natural activity, somehow helping us transition perfectly from the mode of enjoying dinner out with a friend to a serious discussion of each other's writing.

Ice cream cone in hand
I'm in a child's state of mind--
open, word-ready.

July 19: Four crows

Leaving work after a long day I looked up to see four crows hanging out in the snag at the end of the parking lot. That dead tree is popular with birds. I've seen eagles, ospreys, blue jays, and flycatchers all perch there at one time or another, as well as a singing rose-breasted grosbeak and a winter flock of Bohemian waxwings. The crows are regulars. I thought they'd fly as I walked over and got into my car, but they remained, hanging out, as if resting after a hard day of loud cawing, stalking blueberries, and riding the gusts over the river and Mount Battie.

Four crows, all at rest--
the way a long day should end,
rocked by a cool breeze.

July 18: Reminder

Hundreds of people from the community gathered together today under a big tent in the hot sun at the Ragged Mountain Recreation Area to celebrate the life of Ken Bailey, a man who did it all: he was a loyal husband and father, Vietnam vet, editor and columnist of the local paper, owner of the town shoe store, policeman, fireman, Rotarian, Maine guide, avid hunter and fisherman, executive director of the Megunticook Watershed Association, and lake warden on Megunticook Lake and Nortons Pond. He had a kind word for everyone, and his life was an inspiration. He loved life and outlived his cancer prognosis by about four years, engaged and alert to the very end.

I stood in the shade of a spruce tree while family and close friends recounted their favorite memories of Ken. Up the mountainside a raven croaked several times, distracting me for a moment. As I briefly shifted my attention, I could hear a goldfinch twitter and dip overhead. It struck me how here below we were all thinking about mortality, grieving a loss in our human community, while up in the sky the birds continue to fly and sing: life goes on. Beautiful things still happen, even when we aren't open to recognizing them.

Above the mourners
goldfinches flit and chatter 
in the bright sunshine.