March 18: Beach

I told someone recently that my preferred habitat is the beach. The combination of the expanse of sand encroached by the ever-shifting ebb and flow of waves, where land meets sea, makes for a dynamic place of constant change. At Clam Pass Beach in Naples, Florida today, I was in my element: terns, gulls, skimmers, and sandpipers flocked near our towels, shells piled up at the wave line, dolphins swam offshore through aquamarine waves, pelicans and frigatebirds soared overhead, sand scoured my bare feet, waves sang the rhythms of the deep, my nieces built sandcastles, and my husband was happily occupied fishing in a mangrove-lined inlet.

 

On the beach

even surrounded by people

I find my space.

 

Posted with Blogsy

March 17: No cat

Since we're traveling today, we had to leave our cat at the cat boarding place yesterday. Home a whole day without her there was a bit disconcerting, even though she'd probably have been tucked away sleeping most of that time anyway. There's something about having an animal in the house that makes it feel more fully inhabited. Maybe because, except for a few semesters of school, I've always lived with cat(s) and/or dog(s). Or maybe because when the cat's not there, I really am just talking to myself, not pretending to be carrying on a one-sided conversation with her.

 

Without the cat,

alone

in my own house.

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March 16: Contradance

I've never observed a contradance before, so when a friend decided to throw a big contradance party for her birthday as a benefit for a local nonprofit, I volunteered to take tickets so I could check it out. I didn't dance, but had a lot of fun watching. The music was rollicking (Perpetual e-Motion), the caller (Will Mentor) was great helping everyone figure out what to do, and a semblance of order was made out of the chaos of a big room full of people. It was a beautiful thing to see.

Whirling dancers
hold hands, swing partners--
patterns making sense from above.

March 15: Hooded Merganser

Ducks are migrating northward. After only seeing one or two for days, observed a big cluster of Buffleheads on the river late today, along with a half dozen Ring-Necked Ducks and one Hooded Merganser, a male, showing off his full "hood," strutting his stuff upriver in all his glory. A very attractive duck, but no females (of his own species, at least) were around to appreciate him. Also on the water were two pairs of geese and a pair of Mallards. It's that time of year.

Lone merganser drake
on full display.
Ice still edges the river.

March 14: Return

When I pulled into the driveway this evening, I was surprised to see a small brown bird fly up and into the yew bushes: Song Sparrow. I felt irrationally sure that this was the sparrow that spends the summer in our back yard, the one we see fly the same pattern over his territory every day, who sings from our brush pile. I could hear him scratching around in the dead leaves at the base of the rhododendron. I was filled with a strange urge to catch him, cup him tenderly, and feed him from my hand. Instead, I tossed some seed in his direction, knowing that if I tried to do more than that, it would only startle him. And he did, in fact, then make a beeline for the brush pile. A wild free thing. But his return makes me happy.

Touching a sparrow--
we can't have everything we want.
Even small things.

March 13: New Pope

Around here, white smoke rising
means a neighbor's
feeling that March chill.

March 12: Cursive

A friend's seven-year-old daughter was scrawling on her napkin at dinner, trying to write her name in cursive. I didn't think they still taught cursive in school. Doesn't everyone use a computer these days? I remember as a very young child, maybe still in kindergarten, being taught by my great-grandmother how to write my first name in cursive. I felt like I'd really learned something key to growing up. Then in third grade, the pleasure of filling that special lined paper with fancy capital F's with their extra slashes and Q's that looked like 2's. It was like learning a code, a code with flourish. A code that adults had all figured out, to the point that their cursive didn't look anything like the carefully rendered letters aligned on the school worksheet. They had it down so well they could improvise.

 

I once convinced a store clerk

that my signature

was written in Arabic.

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March 10: Daylight Saving Time

We set the clocks ahead one hour last night, which always messes with my sleep. (Though, admittedly, it doesn't take much--coughing no matter which way I propped the pillows didn't help, either.) Even my husband's soothing voice reading to me from a lengthy Russian novel couldn't work its usual magic. I felt like I was awake for hours, and, as it often goes, the longer I was awake, the more my anxiety grew about falling asleep...

Daylight Saving Time--
more than an hour lost
as I toss, sleepless.

March 9: Receding snow

Noticed that the day lily closest to the house, sheltered by the front step, has begun to emerge from the cold underground where it has lain dormant all winter, sending forth bright green tips that almost shine against the surrounding dead leaves and dirty snow.

As the snow recedes,
daylily shoots emerge.
I shiver.

March 8: Light

When I have a cold in the summer, my favorite home remedy is to fall asleep in the sun in my backyard and sweat it out. Home sick today, but with the yard still covered with crusty old snow, that wasn't an option. But it was mild enough to open the solid wood inner door to let the sun and light through the glass storm door. I wanted to curl up in it like a cat. My cat, however, preferred the couch.

Sunlight on the floor--
a honey lozenge
to soothe my cold.

March 7: Out the door

Even the cat (who is strictly an indoor cat) seems to be suffering from cabin fever.

Cat out the open door,
no hesitation
on the cold front step.