trees

Two cats

things I noticed

Two cats, both black and white but not brothers, emerge. Know them by their fears: sleek young one fears the other, his dash, his sudden flash of teeth, barbarity. The other fears me. Yellow eyes askance, we face one another. Black fur grey, an undercoat of dirt. He moves not. Half a cat facing, half hidden in the vert.

The sleek young one rolls on his back on the grass, ecstatic. The other glances, dismisses, retires.

Apples blossom.

The luxury of time to stand before a bloom for as long as is right, for as long as it takes to make the marks I need on my page and the state of my mind. To stand and slowly study light. Luxury, to breath in the wood in a season most alive, to care more for the light and the air than for when I will arrive. Luxury, to have hands that have learned to mark, eyes that have learned to see. To have this capacity.

Gratitude to past me. Only, there is no past. There is no “was”.

What if I am the only one that is? If there is only now, if was is only memory and memory is nothing but imagined sense, if reality exists only in perception, I am indeed alone.

At that thought: lonely?

A little.

Why?

No one is in the mirror.

Why need a mirror?

If reality exists only in perception, to be seen is to be made real. To see is to make real. I am made real by that one’s witnessing, yet even as (s)he witnesses (s)he is not real except in my seeing. Witnessing reciprocal, and therefore circular: therein its downfall.

A yellow smell: sun, new grass and dandelions. Cooler, greener under the maple trees.

Shallow curve of sound

things I noticed

Human double-tall, carrying son on his shoulders as I carry sun on my shoulders. Both in black, from behind they look like a great four-armed beast or being. Little fluff dog trots behind, familiar.

Mugs the sheepdog approaches with his human: pink-tongue smile, wiry long bangs, his rolling gait. He is the happiest and gentlest of dogs.

Goslings for the first time this year. Fat, fluffed and grazing on the grass like Canadian sheep. A Sheltie pup comes trotting and they eye each other, sit, amazed and sheepish. Alike in their tan downy coats, their unknowing.

Mother’s call is a shallow curve of sound, serrated.

New wet-looking leaves on the maples, still softly transparent and clinging.

The purple buds have opened up into bunches of white blossoms, still small. One half-bloomed cluster placed just at nose height, a heady scent of pear and something sweeter. Ice wine? Quebec cider. Light, sharp, neither heavy nor cloying but seductive to forest walkers.

First bugs buzz, here by the half-hearted creek in the heart of the wood.

Seat on a stump. They’ve been cutting again. Last year’s logs now green in the gaps of upped roots. These trees too vigourous to stay slain.

Scalloped edge on an old tree’s new face, trunk sawed straight to show bark split as the core once expanded. This tree fell quite lately, sprawled in weary dignity across the forest path. We climbed or scuttled under, we walkers, we runners, until men from the city came to clear the way.

Trees in this forest lean together drunkenly, murmur scandal to one another. The forest speaks in creaks and shushes, a language only they can hear. If there is a great awareness here, it is not in the beasts but in the trees.

Day made short

things I noticed

A high in long talking after absence, in trusting a mind not only to intend but to carry out kindness. A mind in kind, in playful games of chance with words, with mine. Meandering, meaning as the way in.

Twisted tree on the way like a vine, arms coiled around its own self to find what gravity is. Gravity scarcely holds, and shoots take flight. Leaves scarcely clothe it. Sit to trace the winding, wings of the wood unwinding, sanguine, stretching, with eyes half-closed.

Welcome stretch of arms upraised, the little crease at the shoulder between clavicle and laughter.

Day made short by looking at what matters. Filled with absence, lighter.

Our neurons fire

things I noticed

A shift in mind as I round the first bend to the park. Calming, slowing. Drop irritation behind me. I heard yesterday that our neurons fire in cycles of two beats per second, a hundred and twenty cycles per minute, and that these cycles can be influenced by faster or slower music. Walking to a slower beat, do I slow my manic neurons?

Coming again to a point of noticing gives pleasure, like a tonic note or a good joke. Half anticipation, half surprise, familiar. Let me pepper my walks with points of closely seen.

Sharp little buds again, but here another form – a vine wrapped over and around in loving tangle. Sharp-budded tree bent double, domed. Doomed? this amourous pair will grow together or perish, one or the other. But look, the promiscuous vine reaches already for another, the next tree over. This one will always land on its feet.

The forest is full of such romances.

Here, on the lee side, honeysuckle bear bundles of leaves already. Already, redheaded tufts beard the maples. Not long, now, to blossom. What will they do when the snow comes? Late snow in spring this year, again.

Over the bridge and up, steps to the library roof. The Christmas spruce is gone at last; only rust and needles left.

Walking back on the paved straight path, I close my eyes to head my beat, my breathing. Notice my head’s faint weaving, which I’ve never caught before.

Tying knots in the wind

things I noticed

Lop-eared pines.

Two finches tangle, bound together by a filament of air, tying knots in the wind.

New growth clatters under my glove, springs. Silver branches shimmer before a white sun.

Weight of a thought on my tongue.

On a path to the forest, wood chips rattle. Here, on the outside, brittle.

This part of the wood where the dead trees are. Bracken rises. Listen. The old ones creak. The water seeps. Wetland covers the forest floor, blackish. Rises. Listen.

Ebb and flow of rhythm. The colour of the music.

Motion in space with the music. Not dancing; crouching. How my arms wield paint, syringe.