June 19: Solar Power

This afternoon my husband and I assembled our solar clothes dryer, otherwise known as a clothesline. I already had a small one on the back porch, but I wanted a bigger one on which to dry a blanket and some towels in today's sun and wind--it's a perfect clothes drying day. It took some doing, as there was no obvious anchor on the end away from the house, but we finally found a workable tree and now it's up. My view from desk to river is filled with a colorful string of swaying towels and assorted clothing items. In a funny way the clothes on the line echo the prayer flags strung up on the shed and the porch--really big flags sending their own blessings for energy efficiency and more of these beautiful summery days. And soon we'll be able to enjoy the brisk feeling of wind-stiffened towels smelling of outside.

Clothes on the new line
soak up sun and wind. Flapping,
become bright pennants.

June 18: Eiders

In the middle of the night I half-awoke and was vaguely aware of my cat's soft snoring at the foot of the bed. It occurred to me that the sound was kind of like the cooing noises I've heard from flocks of common eiders. I let myself imagine the eider hens gathered together in the waters around their nesting islands with all their babies among them. Eiders tend their young communally, with many females (even those who didn't have a nest that year) caring for the ducklings in groups called creches. Having many eyes watching over the flock is a big benefit for a species that's heavily preyed upon by gulls, eagles, seals, and other pelagic predators.

The word "creche" brings to mind cradles and Nativity scenes--and I think the image of these fluffy baby ducks swaying in the waves, watched over by their many mothers, was what lulled me back to sleep at last.

Cat's midnight snoring

reminds me of eider ducks'

soft calls in the creche. 

June 17: Oak

My neighbor across the street has a big oak tree in his backyard, and its leaves are shimmering right now in the late afternoon light--many-fingered green hands fluttering in the breeze. Oak trees have long been associated with spiritual power, most particularly with those gods who wielded thunder and lightning. The Druids believed that oak trees had a particular magic, as well, and held sacred rites in oak groves. To the right ears, the sounds made by rustling oak leaves were supposed to be some kind of augury, an arboreal oracle. To me, there are few trees more majestic than an old spreading oak laden with twisting, leafy boughs, standing in the middle of a sunny field as if overseeing its domain. The King of Trees. The King of Summer, just four days from his Solstice coronation.

Broad oak leaves whisper
of centuries of sun, wind,
and acorns to come.

June 16: Begging Crow

I could hear the cawing outside my office window for a while before I finally got up to see what was going on out there. As soon as I saw the two birds, that incessant calling made sense. On the lawn a juvenile crow was begging from an adult bird. If it hadn't been begging, I might not have recognized it as a "young of the year." It was just as large as the adult, but a little bit of red gape still overhung the smooth edge of its bill, giving it away as a youngster. Also, it was close enough that I could see its eyes were still blue-grey, unlike the dark eyes of the sleeker-looking adult that appeared to be studiously ignoring this big, loud crow baby despite being closely followed by it.

The whining of hungry young creatures seems universally understood. There was no mistaking what that bird wanted. I have heard them beg and cry on the lawn like that for half an hour at a time. Crows are a very family-oriented bird. Because they don't reach full maturity until around four years of age, young from past years will hang around and help raise their parents' young of subsequent years. The family group around my office seems to contain about half a dozen birds, probably of varying ages. The adult being harassed by this young crow may not have been one of its parents, but could have been an older sibling.

I was hoping to see the adult eventually feed the bird--surely the impulse to shut it up by stuffing some food down its throat must have been strong. But they soon noticed me watching from the window and flew off.

Even I want to
respond to the begging crow,
quiet it with food.

June 15: Bird at the Bank

Sometimes birds will make their presence known in unusual places. A shift of focus, and suddenly I'm aware of birds around me where I wasn't looking for them. Like today, while I was paused at the bank drive-through window. Because it was going to take a few minutes, I'd turned off my car engine and was just sitting there with my window down, waiting for the teller to process the deposits. Turning off the car meant that my car stereo was also off, so I was waiting in quiet. Gradually I realized that a red-eyed vireo was singing in the trees at the edge of the pavement. Red-eyed vireos will sing all day long, each warbled phrase sounding just as merry as the last. This tireless bird brightened an otherwise dull moment. As I listened to him, I became aware of other birds singing in the distance: goldfinch, house finch, crow.  (Isn't there always a crow?) It was a simple matter of quieting the rest of my life so that what had been pushed to the background could come forward. And most of the time I think I'd rather have birds be in the foreground of my daily life.

Like the song sparrow that's been fluttering around my office windows for the past two days. He seems to just want to rest on the slim edge of the window frame, because he stops fluttering once he gets his balance. Then he looks in at me and pauses a moment before flying off. A while later, he's back at it, my companion throughout the work day, keeping an eye on my progress in his frenetic way.

Silence, then birdsong--
quieting body and mind
reveals what is there.

June 14: Dawn

This morning I awoke at the ungodly hour of first light, sometime around 4 a.m., and for some reason was wide awake for almost two hours. The overcast sky was just whitening through the screen of leaves. I tried to let the soothing rush of the river lull me back to sleep, but I was just too alert.

While I lay there trying to will my mind to emptiness, I didn't hear any birds for a long time. No dawn chorus. The spring fling is over. I became aware of the avian silence because I realized that I could hear the distant call of the foghorn, such a poignant early sound. I don't think there's a foghorn in Camden, so sound was resonating well on this still morning.

Eventually a crow flew through the back yard, cawing briefly and softly. A bit later a titmouse whistled repeatedly for a few minutes, then stopped. Later still, as I was contemplating whether I should just get out of bed for the day, I heard the tremolo of a loon flying over the house on its way upriver. Finally, as I was drifting back to sleep at last, I heard a sharp thump on the roof and then the patter of little running feet--one of the many neighborhood squirrels was up and at 'em. Good morning! The last thought I remember was wondering if flying squirrels live in our neighborhood, gliding unseen among the trees in the half-light of these early hours.

Distant foghorn moans.
Even the crow sounds muted
on this grey morning.

June 13: Under the Skylight

Last night I stayed at a friend's house in a guest bedroom with a skylight. After margaritas, a late dinner, Moroccan rosebud tea, and much talking into the wee hours, I retired to my loft under the stars. The clarity with which I could see the vast clusters of bright stars made me realize how different--how utterly profound and amazing--the night sky can look in a place with no light pollution. There were so many stars swarming in my field of vision that I couldn't even pick out constellations, but just let my eyes enjoy the spectacle above me. A little later, as I was drifting off to sleep, the call of a loon drifted in from a nearby pond. I fell asleep feeling blessed by these things, and even more so when I awoke this morning to hear hermit thrushes singing in the woods just outside my room, and off in the distance, the cries of ospreys fishing in Somes Sound.

Loon calls in the night.

I sway in sleep's open arms

watched over by stars.

June 12: Night

When I was out for a run this morning, I noticed the plant deadly nightshade blooming along the side of the road. As a kid I was fascinated by this plant with its garish purple and yellow flowers and colorful berries that looked like tiny tomatoes (nightshade is in the same family as the tomato). We used to collect them, imagining ourselves as potential poisoners in that macabre way that kids have of focusing on creepy things.

As I was running and musing on nightshade, my mind made the perhaps logical verbal leap to thinking about the night-heron, a big brooding bird that is creepy in its own right. Night-herons are indeed nocturnal, and they use the cover of darkness to stalk their prey. One night-heron can come in and wipe out most of a nesting tern colony's chicks in a night. The bird is the bane of seabird island managers. But to birders the night-heron's also fascinating, hunched over with a dark look in its red eyes, beautiful in flight.

And what about night crawlers? We used to collect them from the front yard at night to use the next day as fishing bait. They're just big worms. And yet, Night Crawler is a popular comic book superhero, a mutant who fights bad guys alongside Wolverine and the like. He has powers of teleportation and being able to crawl up things, but there's still that dark edge to the fact that he too can kill.

Such were my musings on this humid June morning. Isn't it amazing where your own mind can take you, as your feet simply follow their usual route through the neighborhood?

My bright morning run
somehow inspires thoughts of
deadly night creatures.

June 11: Ripening Fruit

My co-worker Joe returned from the Beech Hill Preserve today with what he called "something scary": a sprig from a blueberry bush containing a few berries already turning blue. Coastal Mountains Land Trust manages about 20 acres of fields on Beech Hill as a MOFGA-certified, organic blueberry farm. We sell 10-pound boxes of berries by pre-order, and the profits are used to help manage the preserve. Normally our blueberry harvest takes place in early to mid-August. The fact that Joe is finding berries already ripening indicates that the harvest will be several weeks ahead of schedule this summer. (That's the "scary" part, because it also means he may have to pull together a crew of blueberry rakers and packers a lot sooner than he thought.)

This morning a family of Canada geese was grazing along the edge of the Land Trust parking lot: the two parents and three half-grown goslings. They were big enough that I had to look twice to pick out the adults.  These too seem ahead of schedule. I guess early berries and big fat baby geese are the benefits of the beautiful warm weather we had for much of this spring. It gave a few things a head start. Other flora and fauna--many songbirds, for instance, and sea birds--seem to be on schedule, so there hasn't been a complete shift of the natural order. But enough for nature observation to be particularly interesting right now.

Ripening to blue--
handful of crazy berries,
this early June sky.

June 10: Cardinal Love

The last lines of a favorite bird poem, "The Cardinal," by Henry Carlile:

In the bar's dark I think of him.
There are no cardinals here.

Only a woman in a red dress.

And now when I see cardinals I think of that poem, with its wonderful, racy final image. I thought of it today, in fact, when a pair of cardinals was at my office window feeder. I looked up from my desk to catch the male cardinal passing a seed to the female. A simple, romantic gesture, almost like flirting. Then he flew off, leaving her to eat alone, her rouge-red bill bright against her drab khaki plumage and the black sunflower seeds.

Red feathers, rouged beak--
there's just something sensual
about cardinals.

June 9: Cuckoo

My co-worker Joe, who spends most of his time these days working at the Land Trust's Beech Hill Preserve, reported that he heard two cuckoos calling while he was on the hill today. The cuckoo is traditionally found on season-lists of words (kigo in Japanese) used in haiku that are associated with summer. Hototogisu, the Lesser Cuckoo, was used so often throughout many centuries of Japanese poetry that it became a cliche, standard poetic shorthand to indicate summer.

Here's an 8th century cuckoo poem by Otomo no Yakamochi, from "A Haiku Menagerie" by Stephen Addiss, in which the use of the cuckoo resonates beyond that of poetic device:

In the summer mountains

on the leafy treetops

the cuckoo sings--

and echoing back from afar

comes his distant voice.

And a lovely haiku by Ryota, written a thousand years later (causing me to pause in awe as I consider the tremendous history and tradition of poetry in Japan):

The cuckoo

with a single call

has established summer.

On Beech Hill cuckoos aren't heard often enough to become a cliche. Perhaps the ones Joe heard today were trying to tell him something: time's passing and summer's almost here. The passing of time and the ephemerality of life are often the Zen-like essence of haiku. And one thing we understand here in Maine is the brevity of summer.

Draw one more poem

about cuckoos and summer

from that deep old well.