Spring Equinox 2017 - Clouds

(This is an essay related to the poem Clouds posted on the fiction side of this blog).

Early in my engineering career, I had to travel a bit. Not as much as many people I knew, but enough to call air travel regular. ’88-90 and ’93-94 were particularly heavy years. Back then, a full service travel agency occupied a suite right inside our admin building. We could use them for official trips and for vacations.

When I was a kid, I used to love flying. I think because I remember dropping off and picking up my father from the old airport in Orlando. Way back before there was security or even x-ray machines, when you could still meet someone at the gate. Seems like a geologic era ago. Back then, air travel still felt exotic, perhaps a carryover image from the ‘60s. My father flew all over the world, sometimes for work, sometimes with my mother. Dunoon, Sunnyvale, Paris, Frankfurt, Nassau, Charleston, Boston, Madrid.

Anymore, I’m not as fond of flying. Mostly, it’s a hassle between security, the lines and the cramped conditions. As well, one or two rough landings have put me off a bit. Particularly one in Seattle which is the only time I remember the pilot standing outside the cockpit as we disembarked and refusing to make eye contact with anyone. Looking back, I think he was lucky to get the plane down in one piece. He had two distinct opportunities to screw that up. I’m glad he rose to the challenge even if none of us were particularly happy about it at the time.

Back in the ‘90s, flying occupied a kind of gray area with me, somewhere between romantic and required. Routine. It was something I did, not something I thought much about. Often enough that I could identify Waycross, Georgia, from the air. I’d been there (on the ground) a couple times for game research. It has a very distinctive five-point road pattern and lies along the flight corridor from Tampa to Maryland and the northeast.

For work, I mostly flew alone. There might be other coworkers on my flight but in general we never sat together. Which was fine by me. Because of the nature of my job, rarely could I do any work on the plane. Mostly I read or caught up on sleep. When neither of those felt inviting, I’d stare out the window. I wasn’t much for chatting with strangers. Just not in my nature. It wasn’t until years later when we started flying back and forth to Dragon*Con that I purposefully set aside that time to write.

Sometime in there, I started carrying a notebook with me when I traveled. I just found that first notebook in the back closet as I sought out information for this essay. I can’t say how long I’d been carrying it. A date in ’92 appears about a third of the way through it. A draft of Clouds comes a few pages later. I distinctly remember that one being inspired by the view out of a plane window, though I have no memory of which trip I might have been on.

Which means it could have taken as much as two to three years before I thought Clouds was finished enough to scribe into my little tweed book of poetry. It likely got set down for an extended period before I was in the right mood to pick it up again. Such is the nature of me and poetry. I only have one draft of Clouds in the notebook which means I likely typed it in and worked on it electronically. Or more likely printed pages to mark up and retype in. If you think it’s bad now, you should have seen how it first came out. That’s pretty much true of most things I write. 

So why post this poem now? What is it that still appeals to me? Clouds still resonates with me, especially the final line. I think it captures the way I felt then about flying and about my life at that particular moment. There is a different world up there if only we are willing to see it. A world where you can leave any troubles in this world behind. And yet not become so unanchored or so lost that the illusion blocks out reality below.

As I reread it, I think about Larry Niven’s novel, The Integral Trees, which I read in college. He created an exotic science fiction world in which there is no ground. It’s set in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant where indigenous life formed which was subsequently colonized by humans. I can tell his vision influenced me. More, it built on an imaginative influence already present.

When I was young, I used to lie on the floor in our living room and stare at the ceiling. At some point it struck me exactly what it would be like if the world turned upside down. The ceiling was bright white popcorn yet completely clean, clear and unobstructed. There was no furniture to dodge, no patchwork carpets, no cluttered surfaces. Inverted doorways became hatchways with a large lip you had to step over like watertight doors on a submarine. I remember laying there for quite some time imagining walking on the ceiling, complete with its sometimes inset, sometimes bulging light fixtures.

In our current home, the ceiling fans and dining room chandelier make for interesting obstacles. As does the drop ceiling in the kitchen that transforms into a step.  And the fairies, dragons, crystals and oil lamps hanging from monofilament threads and chains that become stalagmites.

I’ve done this in every place I’ve lived, though I don’t do it often anymore. It still takes a second of conscious thought to reorient my perceptions to up being down. But once it’s there, it sets like concrete. In the same way that once you see one of those old 3D images buried in black and white static noise.

I think most kids do this or something like it. Something that involves their unique perspective, or one they create. Children are imaginative. It’s how they learn. I’m not entirely sure why we fall out of it, those of us who do. Perhaps we’re eventually admonished for it being, well, childish. Perhaps the novelty of it falls away as we grow and our perspective stabilizes. Or perhaps the skill simply rusts from disuse over time.

And yet, especially today, I think it’s important to attain and retain that perspective. There’s escapism in it, recognition that there’s only so much in this life that can taken seriously. In troubled and troubling times, whether personal or political, that balance of the real and comfortingly imaginative perspectives is what will see us through. Combined with the sense of renewal it offers, for me, captures what the spring equinox is all about.


© 2017 Edward P. Morgan III

The Sound of Silence (Fall Equinox 2015)

The Sound of Silence (Fall Equinox 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)

Just over fourteen years ago, I was standing out in our front yard listening. All the planes had been grounded. Even living many miles from a major or even a minor airport, I was struck by how much background noise that normally emanated from the sky had simply disappeared. It became more notable in its absence.

Even traffic on the nearby four-lane roads sounded light. Our house is bracketed by several major roads within half a mile in three directions. The slightest breeze from the east, north or south brings the monotonous low hum of tires treading pavement. Few people were moving around that day if they could avoid it. Like a major holiday, most hunkered down wherever they wanted to be.

Uncertainty tinged the air like a corrosive chemical spill. Like the aftermath of a mass migraine, the shock and numbness of the previous day’s pain had not worn off. Media outlets had exhausted their sources of new information and devolved into increasingly dramatic speculation. Rumors surfaced in real time only to submerge hours later when someone finally did a fact check or sought official confirmation. Video that most of us never wanted to see again played on continuous loop in the background of every broadcast like a traumatic childhood memory we couldn’t get unstuck from our collective consciousness.

Almost everyone I know remembers September 11^th. I remember September 12^th.

That morning, I had turned off all the receivers. I knew from previous crises that no new news would be forthcoming soon. The professionals were gathering and sorting through information as they prepared for a response. No one knew exactly what would happen next. Events had spiraled well beyond my control.

Still a bit shell-shocked after spending the previous twenty-four hours cataloguing scenarios, I sat with my coffee at the dining room table looking out the front window. A flash of red drew my eyes toward the hibiscus hedge. A cardinal flitted through the foliage, playing hide and seek among the scarlet blossoms. A blue jay soon joined him, sparking a bit of a territorial skirmish.

Then I noticed the scurry of squirrels chasing each other up, down and around the pine tree and across the front lawn. One noshed on a mushroom like an ear of corn in the shadows of the hedgerow. None of these animals either knew or cared what was going on, or what it meant to me. Their lives went on uninterrupted. I drew comfort from the thought.

That’s when I wandered out into the front yard to soak in the silence. I knew I would want to remember that day, that I was unlikely to experience another with the white noise of civilization missing. Where the softer sounds in the symphony of life could finally rise above the diminished noise floor. I found the music that bled through that previously unheard silence reassuring. Our daily anxieties don’t matter in the larger context of life.

Since then, I’ve learned to take solace in silence as a way to regain perspective after a crisis. Or so I thought.

I spent much of this summer shrouded in a different kind of silence, one that felt more judgmental than reassuring. As I’ve said before, silence often has a quality, one I’ve grown accustomed to interpreting.

When people don’t know what to say, they don’t say anything. They quickly adopt a don’t ask, don’t tell policy with anything that makes them uncomfortable, anything they don’t want to think about. They convince themselves they aren’t that close, that anything they have to say would be unwanted. That others will reach out so that they don’t have to. That all you really want is to be alone.

Most times, they are wrong.

After I posted the Summer Solstice message, a profound silence descended. A few people touched base with us as a couple but only a handful with me as an individual. People whose friendships I thought I’d cultivated remained silent. As if to say nothing I’d gone through carried any weight. I knew it was coming. Not the first time. And probably not the last. But rarely have I felt so isolated and alone.

So when record summer downpours unexpectedly cooled the air outside from subtropical to something more temperate, I snuck out on the porch to smoke. Just loaded up my pipe with black Cavendish and sat staring at the green across the ditch, listening to the rain on the metal roof. Watching the odd squirrel take shelter on the gutter spout beneath the eaves. Stroking Nyala or Mara when they curled up beside me. Time slowed to the pace of smoke rings drifting away on the faintest currents.

I didn’t return inside feeling refreshed or rejuvenated so much as if I’d paused my fall farther down the chasm for a few precious moments. My focus was shot, my motivation faltered. Consistent stretches of writing were measured in minutes, not hours, days or weeks.  I spent most of the summer struggling to regain my balance through simulated, secondhand human interactions: watching movies, reading books and playing games. Or just synchronized napping with Nyala who rarely left my side.

I still find I am more easily exhausted, as if I’m recovering from a physical wound. Even now I don’t want to write this. I’d rather crawl back into those entertainments. Not because what I have to say is so difficult. Because saying it feels completely futile. And largely, it will go unread.

Several times over the past three months, I almost stopped writing completely. I came close to tearing down all my sites and walking away from the brand I’ve built. Retreating from revealing my thoughts and experiences to an at best ambivalent audience. Echoing silence with silence.

Most, but not all, of that temptation has passed. Though in all honesty, some days the coin remains in the air. But writing is something I do instinctively, for myself and for Karen. I need to remind myself that everyone else is just along for the ride.

So while the balance between light and darkness has returned to something nearing normal, the intervening silence has likely shaped me in unanticipated ways. In music, the rests define the notes. In writing, empty spaces create the words. In art, it’s best to focus on light or shadow, and avoid the middle values that just muddy up the eye.

But as I learned fourteen years ago, what I do or think doesn’t really matter in a larger context. In the words of Amul Kumar, a professional photographer and friend whose creative instincts I very much admire: “In three words I can sum up everything I know about life: It moves on.”


© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Fighting the Tide

Fighting the Tide - a reading (on YouTube)

There are forces in this life we cannot resist, though we feel compelled to try. Some days, it’s as though an ancient, unseen god wants to show me things I don’t want to see, take me places I don’t want to go. Events turn unexpected and unpredictable. Lightning, tornadoes, threatened furloughs, benefit cuts, utility breakdowns, oak pollen, borderline migraines. Entropy in a word. A tide of distractions rises, threatening to sweep me out to sea.

When I was young, somewhere under ten, I went to the beach one weekend with my parents and their friends. I don’t remember much about how the day started out, only how it ended. It could have been spring or fall. I honestly don’t remember. Rafts of seaweed and sargasso were strewn along the tideline. Storms churning somewhere offshore had whipped up the gray Atlantic. The waves were four to six feet and choppy, breaking full force right upon the shore. The wind was stiff and steady, the water chill and white with foam. Everyone opted for the shelter of the pavilions in the lee behind the Australian pines. Everyone but me.

I started the day building sandcastles, as I was often wont to do. One by one, half completed, they fell to the advancing tide. Annoyed, I started building a longer, sturdier line to defend against the sea. I scavenged seaweed as filler instead of dredging deeper into the sand. I found the sargasso added strength to the barrier I was constructing. With each course of damp sand, I layered in more seaweed until the barricade was high enough for me to fully crouch behind. Finally, a rampart with a shallow moat and refused edges stood before Poseidon like a provocation.

The wind whipped the surf into a reenactment of "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice." Dark clouds loomed over the ocean. Lightning sliced across the sky. As the rain slanted sideways, I huddled behind my open-sided shelter, which kept the spray out of my face and eyes. The tide advanced steadily, driven higher by the storm. Soon, waves were crashing into the moat, then onto the front facing of my wall. The sargasso lent the structure the integrity to take the pounding, which meant I could enact hasty repairs before my battlement melted back into the sea. Its flanks resisted being undermined even as the waves began to wrap around the refused edges. My wall seemed indestructible. Behind it, I felt invincible. I was so emboldened that I began to taunt the storm and sea.

By the time my parents came looking for me, the storm had slackened. It was time to abandon the beach for the safety of our home. The lightning had passed inland and the rain had abated to a steady shower, though with the threat of more to come. The tide had retreated leaving my wall standing and intact, only slightly weathered for its encounter. My parents thought I’d sheltered in another pavilion. Had I spent the entire storm out here exposed on the beach? Didn’t I know to come in from of the rain?

These days, I have no taunts left in me. My life feels like the flotsam and jetsam tossed up from Poseidon’s angry sea. When each crisis ends, I am reminded of my mortality. I can sense the time that’s been washed away, the sand that’s slipped through the hourglass and drained beyond the shore. I wish I could reclaim the days I’ve lost in some sort of time renourishment project. But know that I can’t.

If I’m not careful, my feet get mired in a sandy past as the water swirls around them, each wave sinking them deeper until it takes the strength of a colossus just to break them free. Once I get unstuck, I backfill as much enjoyment as possible into my life by doing the things I long to do, and seeing the people I love to see. Games, puzzles, movies, books, art shows and explorations, coffees, wines and dinners. I purposefully layer the positive memories with everyday sand to reinforce the bulwark behind which I’ll shelter when I turn to fight the rising tide again one day all too soon.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Spring Equinox 2011

Spring Equinox 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

A crow sits atop a signpost, harbinger of the naked power grab occurring in the springtide court. His companion drinks from a muddy, roadside pool. On bolder days, he station-keeps in midair beyond the light pole, battling a strong south wind to a standstill. He tucks his wings, hovers and peels off back to perch before stepping into the wind again. Nearby, his mate calls her prophetically phrased monitions.

No one pays attention to her harshly worded warnings. The madding mob prefers the melodic cooing of mourning doves or onomatopoetic calls of the whippoorwills crying through the night, not recognizing the ominous note of either. Now is the time of the green plague. The last of the old, brown leaves have been discarded, pushed out by the green and new. An orgy of pollen sows confusion through the land. With each unrelenting gust of wind, golden storm clouds gather beneath every oak and pine.

A hawk glides low and silent through the front garden, a dead dove clutched in its talons. As her raptor-sisters patrol above, a woodpecker circles a tree as a shield then abandons her half-constructed nesting hole to return when the skies are clearer. Garden predators prowl unhindered in a triple-witching of instinct, occupation and feigned domestication. Quick, sharp claws lurk beneath their soft gray paws.

At night, two steady stars like uneven eyes, one heavy-lidded, peer back from the dark horizon. The old god and his messenger steal glimpses of their former demesne. The aged face of the winter solstice melts away as her younger sister begins to blossom. Soon, too, her shine will fade and we will flee back into the arms of her jealous, pale white twin. By then, the summer sacrifices will have been gathered, stirring restlessly within the wicker man, certain of their fate.

Behind a screen of purple Persian shields, azaleas bloom pink and white and red. Lavender lantana pop in tiny clusters that form a fuller flower, crawling down the stalks like tiny Roman legions whose whole is accentuated by the congregated discipline of its parts. The first brace of yellow alamanda trumpets the coronation of the radiant maiden-princess who has finally overthrown the cruel ice queen. By Lughnasa, they will blast martial in oppression as she, too, will be named a tyrant and usurper.

Camped in their winter bivouacs before the spring campaign, her green-jacked soldiers share cold coffee and dream of returning home to kiss their wives goodbye. Ignorant that they'll end their days blind and toothless, they still believe their cause is just and their vengeance justified. Until the scales of war tumble from their eyes, they dose in the warmth of the maiden's brilliant smile, blinded by visions of her fast maturing beauty, praying that her brightly colored revolution will never meet its end.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Summer Solstice 2009

Summer Solstice 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)

Shadows slant from north to south as the sun continues its annual progress, a celestial pilgrimage through this sublunary realm.

The morning whispers in pearl white velvet as shadow cardinals dance behind the blinds. Outside, a knot of butterflies chase through the grass like a cloud of mischievous faeries playing tag on the wing. From ground level the lawn looks like a jungle, the ants a distant tribe of hunters pursuing their quarry high into the canopy. Elite arachnids in bright green and orange uniforms parachute down upon unsuspecting prey. Tiny wrens twitter warnings against each intruder lurking behind the morning leaves.

Suddenly, a gray stillness descends as though the world outside has paused for breath. Thunderheads obscure the horizon. Stormbound light casts long, double shadows directly south. The sky grumbles in strobed slow-motion with unheralded flashes of freeze-frame anger that capture the world in thunderously burning violet. Raindrops ripple and shatter the world's reflection in the mirror of an ancient pond.

Green leaves glow against a slate of purple clouds as the downpour trickles away into torrents of slanted sunshine. An indigo silhouette swoops in below the rooftops, an iridescent shadow with an offering of bread rinds it sacrifices at the hanging pool. At the bottom of that restless, rippled basin, in a spot of sunlight no larger than a silver dollar, a thousand summer dreams swim free.

As the sun melts and runs into an orange lake, a lavender sky oozes through the trees as evening slowly slips toward night. Beyond the field of twinkling, midsummer lights, the voices of the dead call as whippoorwills, a reminder that this time is brief and must not be forgotten.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

Beltane 2009

Beltane 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)

In darkness there is memory. In shadows, a witness to our reflections. At moonrise the shadows coalesce into the shapes of trees disguised as men, hungry and threatening, their sylvan fingers scratching at the window. In the forest, gathered green men turn their faces eastward to catch a glimpse of the sun king reborn.

The wind whispers colors across the morning sky, telling tales of all the places it has been. A golden fanfare of allamanda echoes off a slate gray ceiling. The sun peers through a fine leaden veil as the wind traces the shadows of her face with a delicate lover's touch. When the veil parts and the morning brightens, new leaves perch upon the branches like hundreds of yellow-green butterflies drying their wings, poised to take flight. Near the moss cloaked statuary, fallen flames of honeysuckle litter the grass like discarded votives at an unnamed shrine.

The morning air has the cool edge of a little used knife scraping slowly against a pale blue stone as the seasons prepare for battle. Summer and winter have once again entered the lists to settle their annual dispute, this time to the death. Two men, one armored in multicolored ribbons with a willow wand, the other armed with only a shield and blackthorn switch. Like ancient rivals at a watering hole, each circles in silence, cautiously waiting for the other to respond. Between the need-fires their melee erupts, and none too swiftly ends. The green man claims the victor's cup, quenching his thirst with honey mead, sweet water from a holy well. The straw man has been scattered, at least for a time. From winter's corpse we sow the embryonic seeds from which the barley king will rise so we may sacrifice him later in the year.

In the west, the sun peers shyly around a pale purple curtain, her face half concealed. She retreats demurely, divergent rays shining outward from radiant eyes behind a gold-lined mask. As we bow to the antlered king, she sets the sky afire in his name, burning a rainbow of amber to apricot, lavender to ash. The last a reminder that deep within the thicket, a wicker man is born, stalking among the roses, and all too soon will be coming home.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

Vernal Equinox 2009

Vernal Equinox 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)

Last night I dreamed I was standing on a knife's edge, a precipice. On one side lay darkness, on the other, brilliant light. The division between the two was so sharp it could draw blood. I stood on a narrow threshold, slightly dizzy, longing to embrace the light but fearing that if I turned away the horned king would pull me backward, consuming me in his fury. I stood like a deer before a hunter, unmoving, unblinking. Then the dream faded into uneasy sleep.

I woke this morning to a tornadic kitten clawing a swath of destruction across the bed. Amber light seeped through the blinds. A jar of Tupelo sunlight had overturned in the office, it's honeyed contents pooled upon the desk. The world beyond the window is softened by the morning. Light slants gently through the trees as shadows cling to every curve and crevice and the haze gives form to both.

Outside, the hibiscus has unfurled a bright red pennant, declaring itself for spring. Spider webs flash coded messages from the mailbox to the trees. Higher now, the sun sparkles off bright new leaves, a forest of tiny jewels, a private tribute to a crystal anniversary. A cardinal descends to the feeder then flits to the bare branched myrtle, sharing kisses with its mate. Flurries of oak flowers descend, forming drifts across the driveway like ropes of dirty snow.

Inside my sanctuary of glass, I watch swirls of steam rise from my coffee cup, lambent in the morning light. I reflect on my dream from the night before, and remember a similar threshold many years ago. One spring from Imbolc to the equinox, I haunted a wooden bridge across a quiet stream in a botanical garden at school with a novel between classes. On the near side was the domain of daylight, cultivated paths, constrained rivulets, maintained shelters. On the far side, the domain of night, fallen trees, the wilds, the clearings where we performed our youthful rites and ceremonies behind a veil of darkness. Below was the stream, always the same yet ever changing in swirls and eddies, rising and falling with its principal seasons, rain and dry. Upstream was the rope swing where we would splash once summer solidified its grip. Downstream were the dorms where soon I would go to live.

But it was the scene above the bridge that captivated me as I stared into the sky between chapters. At first the view was clear, obstructed only by denuded maples. At Imbolc, I saw nothing but the piercing blue of a crystalline sky broken by a web of branches. As the days fluttered by like pages of a unattended novel riffled by a spring breeze, I noticed a faint red blur clinging to each branch. The blur became a fuzz that each day became a little more distinct as tiny, red leaves unfolded to seek the sun, their winter slumber over. Week by week, I marked their progress as they grew then slowly transformed from red to yellow-green, half a shade each day. By the equinox, they were a full, bright green, their canopy completely shading the sky.

I relish the memory of those tranquil spring days after a series of harsh winters. Like the new, red leaves I remember that spring, I draw comfort seeking the sun, knowing that until summer ends I no longer need to fear the darkness. The wind outside brings changes. The night king's time is over; the sun queen's reign has just begun.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

Imbolc 2009

Imbolc 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)

Today is Imbolc, the first day of the Celtic spring.

Each year I've used that line, I've been greeted with rolling eyes and gentle laughter. "Where I live, spring is still many weeks away."

I think that is the difference between the Celts and the Christians who co-opted their festivals. The Celts saw two distinct signs of spring today. They saw the light had returned to the level it was at Samhain (All Hollow's Eve). They saw the ewes lactating, a sure sign that lambs were on the way. Their traditions survive from the cold and desolate places where they lived, Ireland, Wales, Scotland.

Theirs wasn't a Nordic cold. The Norse didn't have much use for a goddess of poetry anyway. Winter for them was a time for sharpening weapons and preparing the longboats to launch once the thaw came while the skalds inspired them with the sagas. An egalitarian people, they didn't discriminate on whose lands they raided, on whose books they liked to eat.

The Celts were more in tune with nature than our Christian ancestors. In Christianity, today is the Feast of Candlemas, the Purification of the Virgin. Where the Celts focused on the quality of light outside, I think the Christians saw only darkness, saw only another day to burn candles against the pagan night. Some see seeds, where others see only soil.

Here, a bright yellow fog of pine pollen drifts in front of the windows with every gust of wind. Soon, that wind will turn amber-brown as the oaks join their cousins' arboreal fertility rite. Brigid's flame sparks the red unfolding in the new leaves of the maples, and fans the yellow-orange embers dying in the oaks. Fallen leaves reflect the sun like so many water droplets splashed across the road, like so many tiny candles strewn across the lawn. Crepe myrtles wander naked through the landscape, their limbs barren of all but last year's empty husks.

Cardinals dot the branches, vibrant reminders of the season just begun. They disguise themselves among the hibiscus, sheltering near solitary blossoms. Orange honeysuckle lift their trumpets toward the sky, the first flowers of a coming symphony. Azalea's pop with recently forgotten colors, purples, pinks and reds.

Eagles and osprey call their mates to nest. They return to the same haunts year after year, latticeworks overlooking the rich hunting of a tidal basin, pines towering above the stone-strewn field of human dead. Soon their nests will blossom with young in ones and twos like the wildflowers dotting the lake shores their parents hunt. Young heads will cry for life to feed their insatiable hunger, their need to see a future as bright with promise as their piercing eyes.

I hope today you will turn your own eyes toward the horizon and search for the subtle omens that spring is on its way. Like the alpine flowers whose blossoms burst through snow, the signs are there for those who unchain their blinders, and choose clarity over night.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

Lost

Lost -a reading (on YouTube)

Some weeks seem so full of problems, plans and appointments piled one atop another day after day that when they are all resolved, I'm uncertain what to do next. I feel like a child searching for direction, striving toward a goal that he has lost sight of or never completely understood. I'm not sure if it's the pollen, the weather, or some other internal or external factor. The feeling just envelops me like a fog until my world becomes unclear and indistinct. I feel as though I'm still waiting, stuck circling in an endless holding pattern. The runway lights are visible but I never receive clearance to land.

On days like this, it is hard not to feel completely isolated and alone. I belong to no pack, embrace no herd, have no clan to call my own. I feel like a one-man play with no supporting cast, no Greek chorus to warn me of my folly, no social safety net to catch me if I fall. Instead of exploring new or undiscovered countries, I circle back along the fringes of familiar places, uncertain whether to stay or go.

On Sunday I had an unexpected visitor. A young, gray tiger came knocking at my front door. When he saw me through the window, he immediately started crying as if I had been remiss and left him out all night. It was cold outside that morning, at least for a cat born in Florida. I thought to offer him a little food, something to warm him a bit until the sun could take over. As soon as he heard the cabinet open, his ears perked. He sat up on his hind legs when he heard kibble rattle against the ceramic bowl.

When I joined him on the front porch, he was friendly but cautious. He had obviously been around people and knew what he was missing in regular meals and a warm bed. His fur, thick, rough and a little gritty, gave him away as spending most of his time outdoors. His white socks were just an off color of gray. He had scratches along his nose from defending his territory. He was comfortable at being petted, though somewhat skittish of any sudden movement. When he turned his attention to the bowl I set before him, I could see he was an unneutered male.

He dove into the dish like a man just rescued from a deserted island. He finished every morsel, sniffing along the ground for any crumb he'd left behind. When I retreated back inside after he'd eaten and washed, he sat staring at the front door, waiting for it to reopen, waiting for an invitation to follow me inside. After several minutes of disappointment, he trotted behind the house to stalk the top of the ditch in the now bright morning sun.

I don't know his story, don't know whether he was a stray abandoned by his owner, a wildling raised around people, or simply a semi-neglected pet forced to spend his life outside. He comes around some nights and cries at the back door as if surprised to find it closed. It's heartbreaking not to be able to open it and let him in. The other two just wouldn't understand.

Many days I know how he feels. I've been outside polite company for so long that I am cautious when the opportunity presents itself. But I haven't turned completely feral. Some instinct drives me back toward the door and longs to be allowed back inside, despite my uncertainty at what I might find within. Despite my reluctance to enter lest someone raise a hand to me again.

In that way, perhaps we are both lost, caught in the twilight between a shadowed world of solitude and self-reliance, and a brighter one of constant warmth and companionship. We beg at the door, accepting any scraps laid out before us. Perhaps, if we are friendly enough or gentle enough, if we purr loudly enough, someone will accept us and let us in. Or perhaps we are merely trying to convince ourselves that inside is where we belong.

So we linger beside the door, hesitating at the threshold when it opens. Afraid that if we enter we will become trapped inside, losing our identity or our independence. Afraid that such a prison within is worse than the one we've already constructed for ourselves without.

Gripped by indecision, we wait in the fog, gray and indistinct, until the sunlight burns through to warm our spirits, and we wander off to hunt or play alone.

© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

Winter Solstice 2008

Today is the winter solstice. Last night marked the starting point of a ten-day transition to the beginning of a new year. For us it is a magical period when each moment seems to stretch and slow. It is a time of reflection and preparation, a time to celebrate and to relax.

On the morning of solstice eve, we wake to find our world obscured by fog. As we allow it to envelope us, whirlpools and eddies swirl around us, much like events of the previous year. Its tendrils caress our faces, weaving masks before our eyes, requiring us to rely on other senses. Its silver spell alternates between a blanket and a shroud, in some moments providing comfort through obscurity, in others an obstacle as we stumble our way through it by feel. Mostly, the fog acts as a veil, concealing what lies before us until we are ready to confront it. In that way, it acts a blessing.

In the translucent air, lily pads float on a glassy lake as unrippled as a pan of mercury reflecting a silver sky. Only the narrow trails behind mallards and marsh hens allow us to distinguish the water from the fog. A thin veil of marsh gnats dance in elaborate figure eights like faeries practicing school figures as they celebrate the air.

Cobwebs form strands of tinsel and dew bejeweled garlands that drape across the cypresses and red cedars, visitors in our home from previous winters that we have set free to take root in the wild for others to enjoy. As we approach, they rise like sentinels from the fog, emerging like monuments on a battlefield, reminders of our past glories and the comrades that we've lost. Upon closer examination, individual pearls of dew transpose the scene behind them, reflecting an upside down world come to rest upon its head.

After a time, the fog rises into a looming cloud in a transition as stark and steady as a gray curtain ascending, an airy barrier between clarity below and obscurity above, with only low hills and shallow valleys providing any topography between the two.

As the day grays, the fog drifts into an overcast of hammered pewter. While we prepare for dusk, distant angels of snow arrive with messages that tickle our noses, reminding us to laugh. Even our elders remember how they once had fun and are delighted to share their antics with us like the children they once were.

By twilight, a high wall of clouds rings the horizon, a seemingly insurmountable rampart. But the sun glints through a chink in its mortar like a brilliant candle blazing behind a keyhole, waiting only for us to peer inside.

On our journey home, an infrequent friend gives us an infrequent greeting, reminding us of another who recently was lost. Were we to strike a candle for every missing friend tonight, we would swim in yellow light. Beyond the windows, we erect a barrier of candles to barricade our minds against the pensive mood that begins to settle as this longest night descends. Tiny lanterns provide a beacon through the darkness as a revitalized mist seeks to infiltrate our musical celebration with melancholy, with marginal success. We leave a single sentry flickering to watch over us as we sleep.

The first day of the winter dawns with the sun capturing the barest shadow of yesterday's fog in its misty rays before they eventually burn away. With clearer eyes, we brew the mead that we hope will decant the light and magic we feel as gift to share with our fellow travelers as we stumble down the road together.

No matter how dark or obscure today might seem, we know tomorrow will dawn a little brighter as we are slowly reborn into a new cycle. Yesterday's fog was like a faerie mist bearing the gift of forgetfulness to everything it touched, unchaining us from the previous year's remembered pain. For a few days, we are light and free. The past is set aside as we focus on the future, until it, too, transitions to a memory as another cycle burns away.

As always, no matter how dim your previous day or evening, I hope your Solstice will be warm and bright.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Fall Equinox 2008

One by one, acorns trickle from their parents in a slow, steady hail whose sound is amplified by the intervals of silence. Some fall to the grist of stony ground, some to fallow. Some are scurried away, stored in shallow graves against a dark and needful day, or slumber until awakened by the warming fires of spring.

The first flame of autumn blossoms in a tiny, tangerine rose, its reddish-orange petals curling back toward yellow at their edges. A short-lived, daylight candle echoing the lantern that guides our spirits home.

As evenlight spreads toward evenfall, numina and peris grow restless in their garden. We sacrifice fresh herbs to ease their dreamless sleep and mark that we remember. In camera obscura, their unwinged avatars purr contentedly toward the living, an admonition that darkness always follows evening, a promise morning always follows night.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

The Margins

When I set down the phone yesterday, I remembered the place where I grew up. Not the house where I lived, but the places I went to escape it. As a kid, I spent as much time as I could somewhere else, exploring the wilds along the fringes of suburbia. Most of that land was overgrown pasture broken by a grid of windbreaks on some sides, drainage ditches and dirt roads on others. A patchwork of weed-choked fields interspersed with palmetto brakes and pine scrub forest, all laced with trails worn by the passage of many small, quick feet.

In that world, the children were the natives, the adults the invading Puritan settlers. We blended into our surroundings and watched their continually encroaching world from behind the borders of our childhoods. We were seen only in flashes, heard only in laughter before disappearing deep into our tribal territories where we ran wild and half naked in the sun. We divided ourselves into clans based on neighborhoods whose boundaries in the margins ebbed and flowed with the tides of our interests, ages, explorations and numbers.

Ours was a bright world bordered by darkness. Bright long and wild grasses, bright, hot sand baking in the bright Florida sun, bright green palmetto fronds, all fenced by double rows of dark, Australian pines that whispered in the wind like Celtic spirits singing a lament in a Grimm Germanic forest, and tannic waters that flowed just above stagnation within moat-like ditches patrolled by the alligators and moccasins we thought would defend our primeval world from mass incursion. In winter we kept to the marches close to home, tunneling through seemingly impenetrable saw grass to hollow out natural shelters from the wind. In the summer, we dug like wild dogs, like angry gnomes carving out chambers with sandy gray walls that we would roof with plywood to disguise. The cool pits served as our refuge from both prying eyes and the blazing sun. Each spring and fall, we felled small trees to bridge the ditches after our parent-settlers had cleared them away. We kept our crossings half submerged to conceal them, knowing the Puritan giants didn't like to wet their feet. Beyond the bridges, we built forts and temporary shelters, migrating from isolation to isolation as our gathering places were discovered.

Alone or small bands, we crossed that bridge and explored the windbreaks farther and farther back to the where an earlier generation had sunk a standpipe to free an artesian well rich with sulfur and other elements that trailed in yellow and white streamers flowing along the dark and rotting detritus that had settled from the trees. The windbreaks ran for miles, broken by twin-rutted roads with grass between their tracks and weeds climbing along their shallow embankments. Deeper to the east were the berms, a perfect backstop to perfect our aim with BB guns or the occasional .22 caliber rifle. Some were topped with scrub oak sheltering high and narrow trails rife with rumors of arrowheads and Indian mounds, signs of our adopted brethren.

In isolated stands of woods between neighborhoods along the now-paved back roads and trails we took to school, we found older, abandoned settlements. Rusted barbed-wire lay coiled between rotting posts that once fenced primitive, three-sided barns that had sheltered horses just a few years before. We would seek refuge beneath their corrugated roofs when they rang with the rain that brought out the faint traces of horseflesh still embedded in their dark and deeply-grained posts. We scouted two-story homesteads with collapsed roofs and open walls, complete with moldy furnishings and housewares, the artifacts of failed colonies that gave us hope that a war against progress could be won. To us they marked a high-tide, the wrack line of an unsuccessful invasion into our wilds at some distant point in history. We didn't realize that the nearby orchard of houses were heavy with fruit ready to drop and spread their seed through our demesne.

I haunted that under-populated territory more than most. I spent my evenings, weekends and summers there, sometimes in the company of friends or rivals but more often alone with a book, a gun and some food so I wouldn't have to return home until dinner or dark. The woods and wilds were my escape from the more dangerous, common world safely hidden from view. The margins became my sanctuary.

Now that sanctuary is gone, built up and paved over. Year by year, the bulldozers have uprooted the trees we used to climb, leveled the ditches we traversed and filled in the abandoned quarry where we used to swim. They have pushed the border beyond the interstate into the last stronghold of original homesteaded pasture being sold off by the parcel, places our feet never ran unless they were prepared to dodge rock-salt or birdshot while being pursued by galloping hooves. Soon, that border will migrate to the river dividing one county from the next until the margins, squeezed from both east and west, shoot up along its banks toward the urban sprawl astride its outlet to the sea.

I don't begrudge these new settlers their homes. Progress marches onward whether I approve or not. New families need new places to live. Our families were once the intruders on someone else's sacred childhood. But when events in my life stir unpleasant memories like decay from the bottom of a still pool, I wish I could escape to the solitude of the margins, and the sanctuary they provided.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Lughnasa 2008

The year moves in cycles, a wheel with eight spokes, eight standing stones dividing spring from summer, winter from fall. An eight-act play in which we accept the roles for which we read early on and hope our lines make sense, the hero and her fool.

Today is Lughnasa, the watershed cleaving summer and the fall. The first day of the harvest whose bountiful berries preserve a taste of sunshine beyond the bitterness of snow. The last of idle somnolence as the dream of midsummer fades like the faeries whose whispered conversations murmur beneath the rain.

Sprites and water nymphs frolic in the jeweled world of a sun shower encased by tiny beads of glass, fragile. Like iridescent dragonflies, they hover and flit, dodging raindrops above the misty road whose destination they dare not reveal. Their pearls blossom in a grove atop the jungle of grass, casting starburst reflections off a spider's radiant loom as she weaves in omens to snare the Norns. Raindrops echo across the rippled surface of a pond casting uneven images like a hand mirror to the wyrd. As sunlight sparkles upon that dappled water, an empty hammock beckons in a cool but gentle breeze, a foreshadowing the fall.

One year ago we strained to read the oracles thrown at our hero's feet as her long battle waned toward victory. Her sword and banner have been returned to the stones above the watchtower mantle, polished yet stained by weather. Outside the vines have grown thick and heavy with midnight fruit, concealing her former encampment, softening the scars of her erstwhile war as the gloaming slants across the hazy forest path shrouded beyond the wall.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Shadow Play

I talk a lot in these messages about the natural environment, flowers and trees, birds and squirrels, snakes and hawks, light and shadow and color. Generally, they provide my inspiration. They anchor me.

When I started this message, I had a different exercise in mind. Books on writing dialogue recommend exercises in eavesdropping to get a feel for how people actually talk to one another. The point is not to capture the exact manner in which people converse, it's more to get an impression of it, then distill it down to its crucial elements, boiling away all the ers and uhms, the pauses and non-productive tangents to capture the essence of the exchange.

When I sat down to write this, I had a particular theme in mind: watching the people outside my window and what I could learn from the few seconds they are within my sight each day. My notes included things like who had become pregnant, who had hired a nanny, who had gotten a new dog. A husband and wife walking together but separate, her several feet behind as though they shared a completely separate world. Who had started on an exercise routine, who was trying out for cross-country. Who was gleaning extra money by picking through their neighbors' recycling.

The first rule of inspiration is that it's capricious. The muse changes direction without warning or explanation, like a butterfly on the wing. At first I felt resistance, though I couldn't figure out why. Resistance turned to judgment, the idea that the original concept had never been worthwhile and never would be, not matter how long I struggled with it. It is easy to tip from there into melancholy, doubting everything from my talent to my purpose, my direction and my voice. Those are the inglorious moments that few people witness. The joys of being a writer.

I set the message down to salvage another message, another errant child who didn't want to be led down the path where I thought it should go. If anyone is looking for an insight into writing, into creative endeavors of any kind, it is that sometimes you have to force your way through the resistance no matter how wrong it feels. Not your original idea. If you get too rooted in that you will get frustrated and give up. You have to travel where the river takes you, not swim against the current, and trust that you will end up at a pleasant destination. So I sat back down with this message and kept typing, just to see where the stream of thoughts would lead.

People tend to see nature as something different from their everyday surroundings. I'm not sure a bright line exists between natural and man-made environments. Where does my yard end and nature begin? Do the snakes notice the lines of demarcation, or do they just circumvent them like so many thickets and brambles and fallen logs? Do the squirrels notice any difference between the acorns in the oaks on either side of the ditch? Do coyotes discern between a cat on the prowl in the park and in my yard? Does a fox care where it finds a rabbit? Does a hawk think of our chainlink fence as anything more than a cool and slippery perch?

We like to think we control the environment around us, but we don't. Sure we clear land, build houses, transplant non-native species, exterminate pests. Everything we do has an impact. At the same time, other species, pigeons and cats, squirrels, roaches and rats, are at least as adaptable as we are. While we push some creatures to the verge of extinction, others flourish in the margins we've created and thrive on the detritus we leave behind. I'm not saying our impact is value-neutral. Nor do I see it as an anthropocentric manifest destiny. As long as we see ourselves as separate from our environment, we will continue to cause unintended consequences as we alter the complex systems upon which our lives depend. As long as we see ourselves as separate, we are benign dictators, Marie Antoinettes trapped within our Versailles gardens while the countryside erupts and the flames entertain us by casting shadows on our walls.

That was the beginning of my tangent as I sat back down to write. I wasn't sure where it was going or what it had to do with watching people, so I set it down again, waiting for another inspiration, some combination of man and nature to draw it all together.

On Saturday morning, our neighbor had a yard sale. She had one last weekend but didn't get the numbers she'd hoped for so she advertised and tried again. This week the turnout was brisk. Cars came and went, parking on both sides of the street, often across our driveway. But there was not so much traffic as to scare the blue jays off the birdfeeder out front. While we ate breakfast, Mara, our youngest cat, sat in the front window watching them. A car parked beyond our mailbox and a couple got out to see what treasures might lay hidden amongst the castoffs scattered across our neighbor's drive.

For an instant, those elements of man and nature came together. The sun, just high enough to reflect off the curve of the car's windshield but low enough to sneak beneath the trees, passed through the low, bare myrtle branches, then through front window and past the cat to paint a perfect silhouette in shadow on our living room wall. Something about the balance of images caught me, the crosshatch of muntins defining the window broken by the sweeping curves of branches, the shadow cat below with ears erect balanced by the squares of light above, all overlaid onto the everyday items that occupy our painted wall. I pointed it out to Karen who, in her own creative moment, captured the portrait with her camera. A moment later the couple returned from their outing and drove away. The scene before us faded.

Some days, I only get a glimpse of an inspiration, cobbled together from the elements at hand. Like a signpost on a switchback path, the way is only visible for a moment before it darkens and is gone. Like the sunlight dancing across the wall of Plato's cave, that shadow play made it difficult to tell where nature ends and man begins, which was real and which an illusion. Or whether the combination of both had created something else completely.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Summer Solsitce 2008

Bright red cardinals engage gray and white mockingbirds in a territorial war, each flicking from tree to wire, singing out their borders with madrigals of battle. A colony of jays erupts in a riot of shrieking blue until a vestal white egret stalks innocently from their lair. Ospreys haunt an aerial highway concealed below a canopy of adjacent trees and homes as they hunt the margins between more bountiful lakes. A dusky heron stands in water as still as the reeds concealing him while fingerling fish dart between his legs unaware of the danger until his yellow bill flashes like lightning from a clear, blue sky.

An opalescent halo shines through brush-stroke clouds, masking yet defining the sun reflected on the water like a sheet of hammered gold, lighting the hazy horizon like a candle in the fog. As the neon mist disperses, the sun sets a bush ablaze in the spaces between its leaves, like an omen or promise. Or a voice.

The full moon precedes the solstice by two full nights, a waning prophecy diffusing the shadows with its soft, continuous light.

A night breeze climbs a spider strand in a shaft of reflected light, like a violin being tuned to the perfect pitch of the starry sky. A tandem of creeping meteors tracks across the darkness, watchfires from distant outposts, flickering reminders that our farthest colonies remain intact.

A pair of crows disrupts the moonlight, the precursors to a murder, large, indigo and iridescent. One splashes in the stone basin while her mate picks at the lavender flowers of the myrtle to which it's chained. Thought and Memory, All Father's ever present eyes and ears, taunting me, laughing at my troubles. I echo their laughter back at them, the mingled sound of joy combating the sorrows of this life.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Unseen Colonies

When I was in high school, I used to eat lunch outside the cafeteria. At the time I attended, Rockledge High was one of the older schools in the county. Many if not most of the other schools had been modernized and updated, but not this one. There had been additions but they were a somewhat haphazard collection of improvements that had grown organically based on the needs of the time, like a nest or hive, rather than having the appearance of a pre-planned, educational complex.

As a result, around the steps to the cafeteria concrete slabs had been poured well after the building foundation had been laid. Looking at it, you would assume that there had originally been a walkway from the open-air halls to the steps of the cafeteria, and then later, as more space was needed, someone paved over the open ground so that students could eat outside.

As you know, concrete is often poured within a wooden framework, a framework that building contractors, especially ones employed by the county, don't always remove. You occasionally see a sidewalk with a section of one by two embedded in it. Or, more accurately, you see where that one by two used to be. In Florida, exposed wood doesn't last very long with the humidity and high insect activity. Ours is a prehistoric land ruled by reptiles and insects which humans have only recently begun to colonize in significant numbers with the advent of controlled environment technology, which down here we call AC.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the contractors did a perfectly acceptable job according to the local standards in putting down these slabs before time and gravity weighed upon them as they lean heavily upon all the Ozymandian constructs of man.

Either way, running from the corner of the building to the steps themselves, a gap blossomed from the thickness of a sheet of heavy construction paper to perhaps half an inch, so that either the patio or the building now seemed slightly askew. I'm not sure how the foundation of this building was constructed. Many older buildings in Florida have crawlspaces built beneath them. Though I don't believe that this one did, it definitely was no longer completely married to the ground.

Occasionally, I would sit on the steps waiting for the cafeteria to open. Not being much of a social creature, I tended to focus more on the world around me than on my fellow students. Looking down one day, I noticed that crack just below the brick facade where the foundation met the newer concrete. I also noticed that a darkness seemed to cling to it, making it appear deeper than just a gap between mismatched planes. When pale concrete reflects the bright Florida sun, there are tricks of light and shadow that can make you doubt what you think you really see.

A moment later, I noticed movement, the tentative exploration of a pair of antennae, just one at first. Any loose pebble sent skittering their way brought increased activity and more emerged. Not too far, not far enough to see the heads those antennae were attached to. But far enough that they could feel along the first fraction of an inch of concrete to see if any scrap of sustenance had dropped within reach. If a shadow fell across the opening, they went into full retreat. Should any gobbet or crumb drop near their entrance, a lone scavenger would dart out to retrieve it, while increased numbers crowded around in case more manna descended from the sky. That assemblage would grow to tens, then dozens, perhaps even hundreds. A forest sprouted up and down that tiny opening, masking the bodies one atop another, each beside or beneath a third, a sea of cilia like you might see under a microscope flagellating that half an inch of open ground before the entrance to their delve.

I can only imagine the immense number of creatures that eked out their existence beneath that foundation. An entire settlement of hundreds if not thousands occupying a warren they had expanded from what they saw as a natural cave, living on the detritus our microcosmic community had left behind. I can still imagine the night when they felt safe and comfortable enough to emerge and descend upon our leavings.

I don't really hold much against that colony. They were industrious creatures doing what needed to be done in order to survive, gathering food, excavating living space, feeding and raising their young.

Insects outnumber us by at least a trillion to one on this planet. Their populations grow as they live off our society's castoffs. Were we to disappear, they would inherit our planet in greater numbers than we can comprehend, even after our absence took its toll on the species most dependent on our sumptuously wasteful way of life. Recent studies at the University of Florida have found that cockroaches exhibit what is known as emergent behavior, that they show tendencies to make complex, group-based decisions. In other words, the beginnings of a hive mind.

In the opening scene of Blue Velvet, a 1986 movie directed by David Lynch, the camera zooms into an object on a well-trimmed lawn that turns out to be a human ear bereft of its owner. The camera then focuses through that ear and into the ground itself where it finds a number of insects moving through the earth and fighting one other. That scene is a metaphor for an unseen world, one we rarely witness, representing life in the margins just beyond our sight.

Our world is alive with such unseen colonies that few of us take the time to notice. Sometimes, those colonies wear human faces, and we willfully blind ourselves to their existence, much to our disgrace.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Beltane 2008

A spot of light in one corner of the window oozes across the bone white curtains, staining them the color of liquid honey. Amber slowly pales to sunshine yellow then to white before it fades into dappled gray as it hides behind the bright green veil of spring.

Sunset bracketed by folded wings with filigrees of light, traceries of cloud, like Icarus descending in fire behind a copse of trees, burning against their matchstick shadows, observed only because it's partially obscured.

Herons and egrets lazily chase sunrise then sunset in silhouette. Do they notice the beauty beyond their destination on these daily migrations? Or do they, like us, transit the sky blindly, thinking only of work and home, past and future, never truly living in the present?

Beltane, the pastoral transition from spring leas to summer grazing. Tonight, we light the purifying bonfires in a ritual celebrating our survival through the spring. The flames flicker across still pools of night, encouraging the rebirth of our dead. As numerous as fireflies on a summer's eve, their souls are like tiny echoes of the distant fires reflected in the water, waiting only for us to light the candles that eventually will guide them home.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Vernal Equinox 2008

A green haze envelops otherwise bare branches like sea fog clinging to the high-rises across the causeway, obscuring all but their outlines against a leaden sky. Clouds of pollen explode with each gust of wind, staining all it touches a stone-ground mustard. Older oaks shed piles brown and ropey flowers in favor of the bright green garments of their rebirth. Red maples bank their scarlet flames in favor of a cooler, coppery patina as the next generation of leaves unfold. Pine needles emerge in deep green clusters arranged like the fine brushstrokes of fur across a cat's face.

Puffs of dandelion ride the wind to fertile lodgings far from their ancestral homes. Tiny wasps dip and weave as they seek shelter from the storms of air between plentiful snacks of nectar. Crows battle headwinds to a standstill before turning their wings and returning to the destination of their departure.

As the wind quiets, cardinals share kisses in the naked myrtle after he offers her delicacies of seed. Blue swarms of jays with sunflower prizes flutter and hop among the dun bones of skeletal oaks. Squirrels climb and cling to the bare, tan trunk that supports the ceramic pool from which they drink while contorted like yoga masters setting a careful watch for the tiny panther that prowls their domain. Chattering a warning to brethren who scramble to safety, they scold their adversary as if victorious in a child's game of hide and seek. Their taunts turn to mourning the day he wins a round, a limp trophy swaying in his jaws as he retreats to the kingdom from which he came.

Below the drama, one lame dove with a club foot bobs across the yard, pecking up scraps cast down by her rivals, reminding me that spring sustains even the damaged among us as we struggle to overcome our limitations, sometimes flying where we cannot run.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Horizons

Hand in hand on the low, green point, we watch another day, another season, another year pass beyond the water to the west. As we await rebirth, we contemplate the skyline, the transition and the night. Where were we a year ago? Where will we be tomorrow? A tangled web of clouds lies clotted high in the fading light, a reflection of our unspoken thoughts.

Above the lake, a ribbon of crows swirls and flutters from horizon to horizon, mocking the darkness they fly before. A few double back into eddies, vortices of a dozen birds, before rejoining the stream meandering north and west as if defying the gravity of the flat, featureless plain below. Harbingers or prophecies, they will return at daybreak, leaving other birds to divine the night.

Mountains of fog loom against the horizon like a distant, shadowed ridgeline, gray silhouettes dividing a world of darkness from light.

Sunlight glints off a cloud edge like the thin blade of a bronze knife then sets the clouds smoldering like a wildfire sparked on the horizon. Molten gold pours through a skin of clouds cracked and fissured like crazed porcelain revealing the base, white earth beneath.

Behind the bank of broken fog a golden landscape lies half concealed. Soft, lighted hills and twinkling marshes bracket a glowing river winding toward a shining city in the distance with jeweled spires surrounding a central dome. A vision too bright to gaze upon for long, the vision of an afterlife. An instant of crystalline clarity before the vision fades in the afterglow, graying first to charcoal then to black. The afterimage is burned into our minds, returning like the nightingale whose songs will haunt our dreams.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Winter Solstice 2007

The day begins with morning sun slanting through a mist reminiscent of a fine, silver snow falling across the neighbor's lawn. The light has drifted south into a notch between the houses before filtering through the oaks which jealously clutch their leaves until spring. The evening promises to be humid, the air thick, penetrating and chill. The sun reflects off a dampened driveway that could be coated with ice, setting fire to a normally shadowed corner of the room.

Behind the house, snowbird starlings perch atop the power lines wing to wing, slowly nudging each other out from the center. First one, then another seeks a more prestigious position that chases down the line like the ripples of a rumor. At the end, the least becomes first as he circles below and sends another murmur of a conversation through his lesser peers. One line down, the final outcast takes wing which startles the flock into flight. They spring to the air as one, wheeling across the sky, their shadows by the hundreds speckling the grass like the shade of a thick-trunked maple on a windy day. After a time they resettle, content for a moment until one covets his neighbor's place and the jostling begins again.

The winter solstice is our high holiday. For us, the day is elemental, composed of fire and water, earth and air, and spirit. Candles throw back the darkness of our troubles. The lake reflects the sunset as we reflect upon the year. The stone out front stands only slightly more weathered like a sentinel and reminder. The wind echoes our transgressions and whispers its forgiveness. We fill our glasses with a measure of each, the mixture reawakening our souls after their long slumber, healing any damage like a balm.

Like the starlings, we observe rituals that onlookers may not always understand as we send forth our desire for a better year ahead. Such wishes are the gifts we sometimes share with others, wisps of parchment fitted into the cracks of a wall, stones thrown at a pillar to beat back temptation, lights floated down a river to wash away our sins, votives flickering in a nave in remembrance of our dead. Symbols and ceremonies that fill the emptiness we sometimes feel, reminding us that we're human. In community or solitude, such prayers populate this longest night. Like the constellations and wandering stars, together they are bright enough to guide us once we let our eyes adjust, like the lone lamp upon our stove burning through the night.

Whatever the light that guides you on your winter celebrations, we hope that it, like your Solstice, remains warm and bright.


© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III