Manual Labor in the Sunshine

Well, we have our Christmas tree! Accidentally on purpose and early. Today my husband and I worked in the sunshine chopping up the snapped pine tree in the yard, and taking down the remaining branches. Trunk and roots will have to wait for another day and heftier equipment. We have hunks of firewood, branches ready for the city to take to its compost heap, and the Christmas tree--the top of the pine, saved for this purpose, to honor it.

Some of you know that I leave the Christmas tree up for rather too long, but only when it is artificial. This one is up early and will go down early, too, by necessity, I imagine. But it is so fresh and smells so good that I think it will make it to Christmas. If not, we will have loved it for a while longer.

Meanwhile, the neighbor's tree still lies fallen in the back yard, most of its leaves still on it--yellow, red, and green! It's beautiful, too, but we are worn out for today, and don't know where to put it, so fallen it will remain. (We hope to hear from our remote neighbor eventually, but we don't mind the large presence in our yard for now!)

Heart goes out to those in Washington, Illinois and East Peoria and many communities in the Midwest hit so hard by the storms. Heart still out, hovering, in the Philippines. Our hearts hover together, a cloud of love and sympathy, that sometimes rains down some practical help. Thank goodness.

Again, in honor of the fallen trees, images by William Lemke.  You can see more here and here.

Great Blue Heron Tree

What a wild weather weekend. (And now a sky Blue Monday.) Illinois was hit hard with the bad storms that hurried across the country yesterday.

A pine tree snapped in two in our front yard, and our neighbor's tree fell over into our back yard, crushing the fence. But we are fine and feel twice-blessed, as something similar happened (and at a similar tree-to-fence-to-yard angle) some years ago at a house in Chicago! That time, the tree narrowly missed a second-floor back bedroom where my husband was working. This time, my husband had just come in from cleaning the gutters (realizing while he was on the roof that this was a really bad storm) and was looking out the patio doors into the back yard when the tree fell into it. I was in the church basement, where we had gathered when the alert came through via cellphone (and did you know that a cellphone can have "Assisted Light" on it, a very bright flashlight?! Well, now I do!). We cheerfully continued our fellowship and then went home to our various messes and power outages, glad to be alive.

A poem of mine went up at Heron Tree, and I found it there this morning. And I found this heron landing on a tree at birding information. The poem is about a tree. A sweetgum tree! We have one in the back yard, and the neighbor's tree missed it as well as the house. Today we put out more leaves for the leaf-sucking machines, creating room on the median for branches. Tomorrow, perhaps, we begin chopping up the pine tree. Today, I made a wreath with some of its branches.

And, if you didn't see these already, take a look at William Lemke's photographs of trees at Escape Into Life.

Angel Oak

Please take a look at the new Artist Watch feature at Escape Into Life! Photographs of trees, including this beautiful Angel Oak, by William Lemke.  Can't you just imagine living in this tree?

Well, so could Truman Capote, who wrote The Grass Harp, about living in a tree. It was adapted into a play, a musical, and a movie. And Italo Calvino wrote The Baron in the Trees, about a boy who climbs up and does not come down.  And Carly Simon sang about "Boys in the Trees."

But I just like the tree, as is.

Saudade

Ah, I remember learning of the Portuguese word & human emotion, "saudade," and, more recently, the Welsh word, "hiraeth," for a similar emotion akin to nostalgia. Saudade is a sort of longing for an absent someone or a missing something, that maybe no longer exists at all, or never did...  Hiraeth is sort of a homesickness for a home that no longer exists, or perhaps never did... See how they are like nostalgia? And see how they are linked by melancholy longing? And you know I am of a melancholy nature! And that I love words.

Anyway, I used both words in this review of Darling Hands, Darling Tongue, by Sally Rosen Kindred, a chapbook that revisits Neverland and its inhabitants and visitors, Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Tiger Lily, Wendy and her brothers, and the Lost Boys.

Here is another "lost boy," missing Naples in Saudades de Nápoles, by Bertha Worms. (And above is Saudade, by Almeida Júnior.) And did you know there are a jillion movies called Saudade, or with "saudade" in the title, at IMDb? One is a Japanese comedy! Thank goodness for Netflix. And for Wikipedia, the Google Art Project, and the public domain. 

There's so much to learn, I don't even know what I'm missing!

Making a Date

I have a new poem out there in the world, "Making a Date," based on a photograph taken by Eudora Welty in Grenada, Mississippi in in 1935. It's in the new issue of the museum of americana, a fabulous literary journal that is celebrating Americana in creative ways. And how about this bee making a date with a hibiscus in a fabulous photo taken by my daughter this past summer in Michigan?! For more of her pix, go here!