Cardinal points

This morning I washed and dried my flannel-lined jeans, although I've learned better than to put them away for another six to eight weeks, despite the fact that today it's warmer in Minnesota than in my old stomping grounds in Massachusetts, and last night's local snow is melting on even the secondary roadways. Rain is in Friday's forecast!

female Cardinal at feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

A male Cardinal has been showing up under the front feeder for at least three consecutive days now, although there was no female in sight any of those days. I presume that he'll stake out a territory and one of these days start singing from near the top of a tree around here and one day a she will respond and they'll then start a nest. [UPDATE: as of 5:45 PM, a female is at the feeder with the male.] At ground level, it's getting to be time to think about turkeys gobbling, although we haven't seen any wandering by for quite some time. The Winter's been tame enough they may not be holed up in their usual haunts. Time again to ease off writing and return to cleaning and organizing fly-fishing gear, the season of renewal approaches. By this time of year, once the snow cover melts the ground starts absorbing warmth from the sun, making it harder for early Spring snows to hold their beachheads for any lengthy duration.

Caro Nome

By Kathy Fagan

Jets shake the air and snow

breaks off a tree branch in little puffs. One

cardinal. Cars moving slowly downhill on the ice.

It is always someone’s last day.

Dearest Bird, she read from the card she’d found unattached to the flowers,

Happy Day To Our Sweetest Hart. Love Monster And Beef Dad.

Their secret language.

Manischewitz, she calls me for the sweetness.

Manitoba, for the expanse.

Deer rest in snow,

charcoal muzzle to charcoal hoof, heads slung over

their shoulders like swans.

One is in REM. Look at it dreaming, she said.

Fern buttons unwheel in a dark place behind the snow,

a contrast she loves in me.

The sledding hill is closed, the days like an unused billboard,

but sunsets have been fantastic,

jewel-toned as the flowers unattached to the card, or hot like the cardinal

who pins the whole picture up

with your eye. Meanwhile,

her tree is an iron room with the moon inside. Its branches

have a mental disorder so sunsets keep dodging them.

I am the color of that tree

she loves and nearly as still. And my blood, which is not in this picture,

will soon cool, sunset winking out in my eyes and her eyes

welling in a language that once fell and rose

in drifts then melted, starry, she said, starry, into my warm coat.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Love the place you're at!

Happy Valentine's Day! Although it's not quite the same as a valentine, the Nature Conservancy gave me a pleasant surprise in the current issue of their magazine. I want to share parts of it with you as our valentine and a reminder that we need to care about places as well as people.

Valentine's evening sky 2013

Photo by J. Harrington

Amanda Fiegl wrote, and Stan Fellows illustrated, an article titled Writers By Nature. Here's a list of the writers, their writing, and the places written about that were mentioned in the article:

• John Steinbeck -- East of Eden -- Gabilan Mountains, California


• Ralph Waldo Emerson -- The Adirondacs -- Adirondack Mountains, New York


• Ernest Hemingway -- NA -- Ketchum, Idaho


• Willa Cather -- My Antonia -- Nebraska Prairie


• Rachel Carson -- The Edge of the Sea -- New Harbor, Maine


• Wallace Stegner -- Crossing to Safety -- Greensboro, Vermont


• T.C. Boyle -- When the Killing's Done -- Channel Islands, California


• Annie Dillard -- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek -- Blue Ridge Mountains

Poet's Corner

• W.S. Merwin


• Carl Sandburg


• William Weaver Christman

It came as a pleasant surprise to see that I've read at least something, if not the work listed, by most of these authors. In a different kind of surprise, I've always associated Sandberg with Chicago, but he's listed at his family farm in Flat Rock, North Caroline. I'm delighted to see two New England locations listed (Vermont and Maine) but disappointed to find Minnesota missing. (I think that's due to a lack of alignment between Minnesota writers and Conservancy activity locations here.) I need to, and will, add Cather and Stegner to my short list of folks to read this year. I also want to do some research and see if I can learn why there's no listings for Edward Abbey and the Southwest; or Beston and/or Melville and Cape Cod and/or the Islands of Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard or the Elizabeth's.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

By Simon Armitage

Compiling this landmark anthology of poetry in English

about dogs and musical instruments is like swimming through bricks.

To date, I have only, “On the Death of Mrs. McTuesday’s Pug,

Killed by a Falling Piano,” a somewhat obvious choice.

True, an Aeolian harp whispers alluringly

in the background of the anonymous sonnet, “The Huntsman’s

      Hound,”

but beyond that — silence.

I should resist this degrading donkey-work in favor of my own

      writing,

wherein contentment surely lies.

But A. Smith stares smugly from the reverse of the twenty pound

      note,

and when my bank manager guffaws,

small particles of saliva stream like a meteor shower

through the infinity of dark space

between his world and mine.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.