V E R S E and I M A G E

Trees are a gathering of circles.

If I touch this tree

say your name,

Light from the moon, the stars

will burn inside it.

Frost kindles its leaves to flame,

Spills them on to yellowing grass.

Unchanged.

From prehistoric times the ages

are inconsolable, so they turn.

Mantle shadows by truly seeing them.

I tell you this as I touch the tree,

circle this tree, say your name.

The tree and its golden mean listen

without an ear to hear.

As you wear yourself out

with a single essential thought.

Give.

from Essential, Redhawk Publications, Hickory, NC; © 2023

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Ah, February – enter the season of Romance! Naturalists will mark its approach with sightings of large red heart-shaped boxes lining the entrance to Food Lion. Outdoors we notice that, yes indeed, that gray squirrel robbing the feeder looks nicely plump: she will deliver her puplets in a high leafy nest on Saint V’s Day. Wood frogs and peepers, surprise!, have already begun to sing their amorous invitations to amplexus. Owls have a jump on the festivities, already nesting, while there is a general restiveness and revving among the yard birds.

For Linda and me, the end of winter and first blood flow of Spring are marked by a plaintive two note whistle issuing from the rhododendron. There it is again! A rising minor third, clear and bright, the introduction to a joyful motet, the Oh My! of Oh my Canada, Canada, Canada. The White-Throated Sparrow is tuning up.

Why do birds sing? All winter the white-throat has minded his own business, hopping in the litter beneath the feeders or posing quite sage in the azalea. Now he sings his first couple of notes, but within a few weeks he will have flown far from here to breed in Maine or Michigan or the infinite boreal forests of Canada. Why sing now? Obviously his whistling can’t be to establish a territory in our back yard. And it defies imagination to think he’d hope to attract a mate here in North Carolina and keep her by his side all the way to Quebec. Today’s song, to judge from the snippets and fragments he’s practicing, sounds like he’s just warming up tor the big date.

Here’s how I see him – my little White-Throated Sparrow is Jeremy Brett in My Fair Lady, walking down the street where she lives. He’s passed this way before, but today the pavement simply refuses to stay beneath his feet. Days lengthen and love fills his breast until it is impossible any longer to resist – it must overflow in song. And so although the street where she really lives is 1,000 miles from here, White Throat graces Linda and me here in the NC foothills with his opening aria of Romance. Ah, February!

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* The song of the White-Throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollia) comprises a couplet of long clear ascending whistles followed by three more rapid triplets, and can also be recalled by the mnemonic, Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.

** On the Street Where You Live, 1956, Lerner & Lowe, from the musical My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn & Rex Harrison, with Jeremy Brett as Freddy singing: “I have often walked down this street before / but the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before. / All at once am I several stories high, / knowing I’m on the street where you live . . . .”

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You were twisting and turning

leaping and swerving a flame

on each foot, on a field so green

so green – so gorgeously

green, the earth’s addiction.

And you, warrior Fox as you fought

you fought off the mysterious foe, rattled like

a shaman losing part of his soul.

You danced between spirit and spirit and matter

danced all parts of your body a spontaneous me!

When you finally stopped puffing

from chaos, from chaos and glee you flowed

a rhythm of stillness – so still

you stood as if in meditation

and mantra on what you created.

from Essential, Redhawk Publications, Hickory, NC; © 2023

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I have never met Jenny Bates but I imagine a visit to her home in the woods. Afternoon sun through west-facing panes is captured by glass in the colors of earth, sky, pasture, summer asters. We don’t remain indoors but take our mugs of oswego tea with local honey out beneath the pines. Dusk creeps in and we allow it to fill us with its silence. Creatures creep closer as well, wild but curious. If we were to threaten them, they would flee or turn and slash, but we and they simply remark each other’s presence and respect our distance. They go about their crepuscular business and grant us leave to be part of their universe. Being part of. Communion. Creating wholeness. The highest call and at once the most confounding task of the rational being.

This is also a visit to Jenny’s poetry in the woods. The universe Jenny Bates creates through words is one of deep acceptance and communion. Essential, from Redhawk Publications, continues her series of books which create a sort of natural theology. The You whom Jenny addresses in so many of her poems – is it God? A spirit familiar? A ghostly memory? Or is it the fox who stares cautiously from the edge of night? You might be a source of answers but more often is simply one with whom to share the questions. In this universe, there is no supernatural, only the fundamental reality that we are all one. One, that is, if we are able to open ourselves that much.

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Visit Redhawk Publications and purchase Essentials HERE

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I said to the Woodpecker

as I lifted it off the ground

cradled it for a half an hour, this

second Woodpecker to break its neck.

I’m no angel I said to him, though I’ve

been called it many times

a few drops of Be Bold I tell myself

when there is a need, but sometimes

those drops don’t soak in and I’m left

buckling to my knees.

The body will be gone by morning

and sure enough it was, yet still I

struggle How can one keep up with

death stare it in the face? Or program our

unconscious to react in certain ways?

Sweet smelling or dour unpleasant odors

are all we instinctively know, and here,

I’m not too Bold.

I placed the bird on one big leaf, hearing

another drum away

laid his head on dry curled grass

a pine bough for a wreath

both of us changed and changing

the pattern of our resonance.

Jenny Bates

from Essential, Redhawk Publications, Hickory, NC; © 2023

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But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? This morning I discover Romeo Sparrow perched in the Silverbell. He turns to gaze fondly at Juliet, perched one branch higher. Perhaps they have booked adjoining seats for the flight to their Canada!!

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