If you had expected that Seeker might have a new face, well, I have the art of procrastination down pretty well, and I keep putting those thoughts aside and besides, I happen to love the masthead. When I think about changing it, I ask, to what? So, there's no new avant garde look erupting at Seeker. At least, not this month.
There have been times this past month when I've wondered just where I was and who was nearby. Was another sister just down the road or was my friend June nearby? Would I be able to attend this event or was I a hundred miles away? It's feels much better to be in one place now. We've discovered that we still have too many things, all seemingly essential to our way of life. By next summer, when we expect to move again, we promise to have less.
One recent misty morning, I drove a favorite East Montpelier road (the one I lived on) and came home with the realization that, indeed, I was, at last, in Vermont.
Returning
cup webs fill every opening in a mounded barberry bush
I stop and photograph their droplet lines
orb spiders have woven ragged webs in tall, dead grass stems
beside Chapell Pond
the chitter of a kingfisher maintains a vigil
from tree to tree to telephone pole
the surface shimmers from a slight breeze
that also bobbles orb webs
blue-black striped dragonflies come close
catbird cries and raven's soft croak
blue jays call in passion
autumn pond has not one redwing blackbird
left to call of summer
water-killed trees hold bare branches
water lily pads encroach the tree-reflecting surface
red leaves darken the maples
and goldenrod brightens the old grass
each instance is small
each note of this nature is sure
yet sings of change
no blackbirds reflects the reality that
I have returned to a place where
seasons are strongly marked
in Colorado redwings spend all winter
in the willow shrub at a certain bend of Big Dry Creek
come March they sing and move to
spring nest building
at Chapell Pond, redwings have gone away
by this fifth day of September
I wait patiently and with yearning for their return
harbingers of the spring flood of returning birds
