WINTER... IT WILL COME...

This autumn, I have experienced some days when temperatures are barely 60, and yet the sun is shining from a blue, blue sky with very little breeze; or none at all. Such a day can be so beautiful, I have to be outdoors as much as I can be, to feel the weather.

I've also known some days with those same temperatures, and skies so bright and blue and mellow that, once again, I'm drawn outside to be there. BUT OH! I find instead a cruel north wind that slams like ice onto my skin and shuts my eyes against the beauty. The wind is all the difference.

That sort of day can make me think of an old English epic poem, The Vision of Sir Launfaul (James Russell Lowell). It was on a nasty winter day many years ago in elementary school, when I "met" the Lowell poem, and I worked to memorize a section of his poem that so well described how I had felt as I walked cross-town to school that very bitter winter morning. Here is part of what he wrote:

"Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,
From the snow five thousand summers old;
On open wold and hill-top bleak
It had gathered all the cold
And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek...

                                 (Et cetera)
 
I have remembered those words. After I was grown and married, when my husband and I would walk outside into a bitter winter wind, I would quote those words aloud theatrically to him. And if I didn't, the time came when he would remind me! He hadn't met Lowell's words until I spoke them, but after that on bitter winter days, it seemed those words would speak to him as well.

Now that my Bob is no longer with me in this world, he will miss the coming winter, and I will have to speak those wintry words theatrically to Mick, my dog. Will he understand them? Possibly. 

After all, he is a very-short-haired breed, without an ounce of fat to warm him!

MICK ON THE OHIO WINTER TUNDRA

OCTOBER MORNING...

I sit here in the early morning at my window, gazing out into the woodland, and I wonder: How does this new morning find a way to create a sunny sanctuary in the deepness of the inner woods, when the trees and undergrowth around the budding brightness still stand dark?

I watch the morning mist, rising thickly from the morning creek, and the morning sky begins to sip it up to clear the day; blue sky grows bluer and more crystalline.

I feel and inhale the serenity and beauty, and then my peace is suddenly and rudely shattered by a rescue helicopter roaring overhead, shaking me, my house, my  windows and my peaceful relaxation; and warping all the beauty, peace and stillness into which my morning spirit has been sinking...

Reality assumes control, to remind me of the saving mission of this noise-producing, man-made medical machine, and I see it as the angel I know it really is; and not a harsh intrusion.

I  salute it and send out a prayer; and I rise up to my feet and begin my day.

"THINGS THE LITTLE CHILDREN SAY" ...

The words of children were, for me, a joy of long ago, when I still had little children in my household. 

I was reminded of that recently as I was waiting in a check-out line, and I listened as a pre-school child in the cart ahead chastised his mother:

"Mom," he said quite sternly, "I think you're wrong. You CAN call Heaven. Yesterday you called and talked to Gramma for a long, long time, and she lives far away in Florida. And all you did was poke the numbers on the phone!"

STAINED GLASS, OCTOBER EVENING...

OH, HOW those brightly colored leaves outside my bedroom window gleamed this morning in  the early daylight, before the sun had risen. AND NOW in dusky twilight, as the light fades  after sundown, those leaves still shine for me,  as lovely as a stained glass lamp. TIFFANY himself could never have created any  shade to stand before me with more elegance  and lovely glow, as I slip into my evening sleep.    --Rose Moore, in an evening of October 2017

LIKE AUTUMN BUTTERFLIES...

   My dog and I sat on the deck today, watching hefty breezes pulling leaves from off the trees.
   The leaves fell brightly all around, fluttering and then descending to my gardens, like butterflies that somehow had forgotten to leave for warmer places when our nights turned cold. 
    My dog was captivated. "That's the closest we can come to having butterflies in our northeast Ohio at this time of year," I told him. 

   He looked up at me and raised his ears and listened, as if he understood what I was telling him.
   And perhaps he did.

   

                                                                     ---Rose Moore, 10-04-2017