The Blue Reaches of Heaven , , ,

Marilee says it's coming, and we should just get with the program. . .

It is a little harder for me this year, because we never made it back to Michigan

where they really put on a fantastic show for that season!

These pictures are from last year.

Above is the view from the house of the South Meadow.

And this is the view, from the porch, of the West Meadow and the Great Bowl of Sky!

And now I am putting Peter Everwine back on the shelf, reluctantly,
because the books don't travel. He is a new discovery this year;
I am very happy to have found him.

AUBADE IN AUTUMN
  
This morning, from under the floorboards
of the room in which I write,
Lawrence the handyman is singing the blues
in a soft falsetto as he works, the words
unclear, though surely one of them is love,
lugging its shadow of sadness into song.
I don’t want to think about sadness;
there’s never a lack of it.
I want to sit quietly for a while
and listen to my father making
a joyful sound unto his mirror
as he shaves—slap of razor
against the strop, the familiar rasp of his voice
singing his favorite hymn, but faint now,
coming from so far back in time:
Oh, come to the church in the wildwood . . .
my father, who had no faith, but loved
how the long, ascending syllable of wild
echoed from the walls in celebration
as the morning opened around him . . .
as now it opens around me, the light shifting
in the leaf-fall of the pear tree and across
the bedraggled back-yard roses
that I have been careless of
but brighten the air, nevertheless.
Who am I, if not one who listens
for words to stir from the silences they keep?
Love is the ground note; we cannot do
without it or the sorrow of its changes.
Come to the wildwood, love,
Oh, to the wiiild wood as the morning deepens,
and from a branch in the cedar tree a small bird
quickens his song into the blue reaches of heaven—
hey sweetie sweetie hey.

Peter Everwine
                                   (Born 1930)

Listening Long and Late, 
University of Pittsburg Press, 2013, pages 70-71.

My own father used to sing Annie Laurie,
about the braes which are bonny. Do you remember your father singing? jhh