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

Half-life

Half-life - a reading (on YouTube)

Unstable degradation. Statistical decay.

As I reflect on my life, I find time has become mutable, radioactive and mutagenic. I am a blackout victim haunted by the ghosts of my past. I run across lines in my notebook and recognize the handwriting but don't remember jotting them down. Some still send icicles crashing down my spine.

I sort through the scraps of paper trying to piece the notes of my past back together. I only decipher a list of casualties whose bodies lie forgotten at the communications outpost from when the trenches were overrun.

Too many companions have gone missing. How many were silenced by friendly fire? I don't remember. My memory is now a trauma ward full of head wounds suffering one too many concussions. So many events have become ephemeral and translucent that they almost disappear.

Desperate for direction, I seek guidance before sleep. I wake on the verge of screaming from the dream that follows. Alone in the dark, I wonder what path my life should take from its small, subconscious symbols. If they are the answer, it would have been better not to ask. Or, perhaps, the answer was not the dream but the hour of writing that followed when sleep would not return.

Life alternates between moments of stolen moonlight and chasing the sun from room to room as it migrates through the seasons. I map the maze from memory, caging still-lifes as my legend. I capture story fragments on the journey as others collect vacation snapshots, painting scenes like signposts in case I stray this way again. Such lost and wandering moments have become my life now. And in that living, I am content.

This year, I reach half the age of my oldest known relative when she died. Half this life lies beneath the reflective pool which was once a boiling cauldron. The pathways of the second half are now limited by my choices in the first.


© 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

The Gift

The Gift - a reading (on YouTube)

I believe that everyone receives a gift, a talent or a passion they enjoy far more than anything they attempt. For the luckiest, it becomes their profession. For the rest, an avocation or maybe just a dream.

For me, my words are my gift. I'm not saying they are literary or masterful; the wall of rejections behind me says the best I can hope to be is competent or adequate.

Writing is an addiction that I can't stop myself from relapsing into. Thoughts and phrases echo through my mind until I jot them down. The compositions haunt me. They possess me in ordinary moments, walking, driving, watching television, showering. They stalk me into sleep and wake me in the night.

Some messages begin with a reflection that strikes me as significant, or an encounter from my memory that I'm still trying to sort out. It's not that I think my life is unique or even particularly special; it's just the only one I have to reflect on and discuss.

Other messages ignite my imagination with a spark that burns until all its fuel is spent. I record them like a court stenographer then read them back to myself, adjusting and readjusting each word and phrase until my mind is content. Sometimes that takes hours, sometimes days.

A few I play with like a child building sandcastles out of words just to see how they might sound piled one atop of the other. In some I am trying to capture scenes of light and shadow, the beauty that pierces my eye like an ice pick on the days when colors ache and make me want to cry. They emerge in migraine-muddled complexity with strange, almost Lovecraftian references, religious and mythological, the natural symbols that form the currents of my thoughts. Capturing them is almost meditative though I'm sure few people understand their meaning. They are an expression more than a communication.

Then there are the stories, the worlds I become immersed in as I allow myself to explore them. I drown in the character's experiences like an overdose of narcotics. I know their dreams and motivations better than I know my friends. I remember their histories and can feel the events that interrupt their lives. While I'm typing, I can see the places they travel through in vivid detail. When I listen, I can hear their conversation deep inside my head.

But many days, writing is like thinking through cold molasses. A headache pounds or doubts and distractions pile up until each thought becomes an exhausting weight and all I want to do is sleep. On such days, I am lucky to stay positive, lucky to keep shambling forward in something resembling progress. On such days, I have to embrace simple pleasures like remembering to breathe. I have to remind myself that each day is its own gift, its own experience added to the stockpile we call memory with no guarantee that another one will follow.

When I was fifteen, I learned to rappel. That summer, my Boy Scout troop was camped in the mountains of North Carolina. One day, our adult leaders took us over the ridge to the top of a sheer cliff face, maybe sixty feet up.

There, instructors taught us what we needed to know step by step: how to tie our own harness, how to attach the karabiner, how to grasp the rope with one hand and loop it behind our back, how to pull it tight across one hip as a brake, how to set our feet against the rock face. All very simple and exciting to fearless adolescents. After one instructor descended to the bottom in three or four quick leaps, the other asked, "Who's next?"

Like any group of boys, we stood around and shuffled our feet. All of us wanted the opportunity, but none of us want to be the first to make a mistake or look foolish. Since I was the senior juvenile leader at the time, I figured it was my responsibility to step forward. So I did.

The instructor checked my harness and hand positions then sent me to the edge. As with any new experience, the first step was the hardest, the one where you lean backwards over empty air then push off, trusting that everything you've learned is right. After a few tentative hops away from the wall, I jumped out farther and farther, leading to longer and longer drops. All too soon I was at the bottom staring back up, wanting to scramble up the path and take another turn.

But there wouldn't be time. My example was all it took for the line to form at the top of the cliff. Now everyone wanted to try.

While I was waiting for the next of my friends to arrive, I glanced down at my harness. The extra six inches of webbing feeding into the knot had shrunk to between one half and one quarter inch. One good pull and it looked like the knot would come undone completely. In fact it did when I gave it another strong tug. My blood still freezes when I think how close I came that day to a quick, unplanned descent onto the rocky platform where I stood.

I believe that everyone receives a gift. Remember to enjoy the gift today brings, whatever it may be, however hard you have to struggle to embrace it. You never know when the knot might come untied and all your plans will change.

© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III