une title

red-tailed hawk riding
the thermals,
tracing the perimeter
of a freshly gleaned field


We saw two fledgling bald eagles in the near cottonwood yesterday - we don't often see them this far from the river.  They travel as a pair; they make the hawks look like sparrows by comparison.  We also spied a couple of rooster pheasants on the edge of the cornfield over the weekend.  They are not common any more in this area, as the fencelines are all down and cover is rare.  All sacrificed to the corn crop.  Don't get me started.

home again, home again, jiggity jog

I grew up thinking I would be a farmwife - that I was well-suited to be out in the country with a flock of laying hens, a bunch of kids, and bread baking in the big kitchen where we always ate our dinner at noon and supper at night and after the dishes, the kids would spread their homework all over the table until bedtime.

I had a run at that life in North Dakota, but early learned that nothing I had to say was as interesting as the ten o'clock weather (not to mention the farm report) and that women were pretty much left in the kitchen, whereas I really liked to operate the farm equipment and be outside.  Sometimes I was allowed to drive the grain truck, and I had a run at disking one of my father-in-law's smaller fields:  I later suspected someone might have been indulging me on that assignment.  Eventually, we left the Dakota plains for the Rocky Mountains and learned that life doesn't turn out the way we imagined.

I'm now back in the midwest watching the sun set behind bluffs and the rolling valley to the west.  We live in the driftless area, where the ancient glacier spared the hills and palisades and left the great river that has tugged at my heart my life-long.  I don't miss the chickens and the kids are grown and gone and homework doesn't clutter the kitchen table.  I toast every sunset and bless the sparing glacier and the red-tailed hawk and the gifts of my life, various and unexpected, and ultimately, leading home.

autumn

autumn comes in patchwork along the palisades and bluffs - the river sluggish and muddy with recent rain.  the lemony-leafed walnuts turn first, then the buff hickories, pale, drab in comparison.  cordovan-colored sumac graces the ditches...now and again bittersweet, but without so many fencerows, the bittersweet is rare.  showy maples blaze orange and crimson, the big oaks are reticent.  they will come along, brown and bronze and stately.  they will lose their leaves last, and late.  some are early touched with yellow and red paintbrushed tops, show-offs.

i have seen oak leaves and maple leaves wider than my palm, falling gracefully to the ground, silhouettes in the blacktop roads.  i tuck them into the old bible, where they lose color before you close the pages, fading between layers of waxed paper - believing a somehow just once they will retain their brilliance.

believing just this once i will capture them, their fleeting scent and vibrant colors will stay...and autumn will be more than an ellipsis between august and november.

Octobertime

hawk on the wing
sketching the perimeter
of a freshly gleaned field