Tuesday Afternoon

Photography by Jay Beets
"The trees are drawing me near
I've got to find out why . . . "
A song for the Vernal Equinox ~ when it falls on a Tuesday:

Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)
Tuesday afternoon
I'm just beginning to see
Now I'm on my way
It doesn't matter to me
Chasing the clouds away

Something calls to me
The trees are drawing me near
I've got to find out why*
Those gentle voices I hear
Explain it all with a sigh

I'm looking at myself reflections of my mind
It's just the kind of day to leave myself behind
So gently swaying through the fairyland of love
If you'll just come with me you'll see the beauty of
Tuesday afternoon

Tuesday afternoon
Tuesday afternoon
I'm just beginning to see
Now I'm on my way
It doesn't matter to me
Chasing the clouds away

Something calls to me
The trees are drawing me near
I've got to find out why
Those gentle voices I hear
Explain it all with a sigh

~ by Justin Hayward (b. 1946)
British musician, lead singer and guitarist for The Moody Blues

[*Could this be why: "If trees could build houses
they would build them out of our bones." ~ Michael Lipsey]

Whenever I hear anything from Days of Future Passed (1967), I always remember writing a letter to my friend and pen pal Jill in 1976. We had been in grade school together but gone to different highs schools and colleges. During the spring semester of our freshman year, no sooner had I written to tell her that I had just bought a copy of this album, than she wrote to me with the same news. It was such an odd coincidence, because it wasn't even a new album at the time, and we hadn't discussed it or anything. Just one of those funny synchronicities.

*******************
Although it took place on a Sunday not a Tuesday,
I also have to point out that
today is the wedding anniversary
of my maternal grandparents
Paul & Rovilla,
married 91 years ago today.

They were married 39 years.
Rovilla died in 1966; Paul in 1983.

Here they are in 1965

All the Frosty Ages

Thanks to Jay Beets for this spectacular photograph!

And to Brigit Farley for her kind remarks:
"You always have the best pictures, poems
and commentary . . . long live Kitti Carriker!"

And to Leonard Orr for his faith in my superpowers:

"Some believe that Kitti visited simultaneously no fewer than one thousand friends scattered across forty countries and thirteen time zones; this feat is repeated each year just after the winter solstice to brighten the days. She is said to be drawn to artworks and stacks of fresh books."

Posted previously, but worthy
of a repeat on this mystical day:

The Shortest Day
So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen,
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing, behind us – listen!
All the long echoes sing the same delight
This shortest day
As promise wakens in the sleeping land.
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

by Susan Cooper (b. 1935)
Award - winning British author of fiction and fantasy

Favorite Christmas card from Natasha
Oak Angel
by Contemporary Artist Sarah Young

And this one ~ Catmint

Like a Bubble

"Only the dream that we knew it was . . . "
by Missouri Photographer Jay Beets

What would it take to make us think
differently of the world surrounding us?
What change of perspective
would lead to a fuller appreciation of its splendor?
What if the Sun were as tiny and transparent as a bubble?
What if we held our thumbs up to the moon? It's no bigger!
What if there were but one sunrise in every century?
What if the Earth were only a few feet in diameter?

If The Earth Were Only a Few Feet in Diameter
[click to hear a recitation]

More Beautiful Bubble Pictures by Jay Beets
I couldn't pick a favorite! I love them all!

John Denver ~ in love with the world.
[Click for song and slideshow!]

Red Flash, Green Flash

Missouri photographer Jay Beets says,
"The crazy color of Fall!
. . . I saw a tree face this morning."
Could it be Abraham Lincoln? Or the Man in the Moon?"

I posted this painting early last autumn . . .

First sign of fall: the rogue / rouge tree!

In the Bois du Boulogne, 1933
by Camille Bombois, 1883 - 1970

and just knew that I was going to have to repost
when I saw these photographs that my friend Jay took
at the end of last season ~ 2 November 2013:

Life Imitates Art!
Jay's photos are also a perfect match for this poem by Derek Walcott:

The Green Flash

le rayon vert

And the sea’s skin heaves, saurian,
and the spikes of the agave bristle
like a tusked beast bowing to charge
tonight the full moon will soar floating
without any moral or simile
the wind will bend the longbows of the arching casuarinas
the lizard will still scuttle
and the sun will sink silently with a stake in its eye
bleeding behind the shrouding sail
of a skeletal schooner.
You can feel the earth cooling,
you can feel its myth cooling
and watch your own heart go out like the red throbbing dot
of a hospital machine, with a green flash
next to Pigeon Island.

by Derek Walcott, b. 1930
Saint Lucian poet and playwright; professor at the University of Essex
1992 Nobel Prize Recipient
author, most recently, of White Egrets
[see also "Love After Love"]

Thanks again to Jay
for these amazing flashes of red and green!

Still So Green

First sign of fall: the rogue / rouge tree!

In the Bois du Boulogne, 1933
by Camille Bombois, 1883 - 1970
The funny thing about this time of year -- over a week beyond the Autumnal Equinox -- is that everything is still so green! Except for the occasional changing treetop or a stray red leaf here and there on the sidewalk, all the trees still look like summer! Even though October has arrived and my latest Fortnightly post features the bright orange leaves of autumn, when I look out my window, that's not what I see.

The ginkgos at Purdue will be green for another month yet.

My neighbor's driveway.

My Secret Garden Path

The Trees at Sugar Creek, Missouri
photographed by Jay Beets, 28 September 2013

P.S.
Detail
24 October 2013

Same View
31 October 2013

Earth-maker Pain-bearer Life-giver

Pre - Solstice Sunrise
by Missouri Photographer Jay Beets
Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and testing, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and for ever. Amen.

from the New Zealand Prayer Book

[to read more]

One Last Caress

Late Summer Photography here & below by Jay Beets
A song for the Eve of the Autumnal Equinox

The Summer Knows
performed by Barbra Streisand

The summer smiles
The summer knows
And unashamed
She sheds her clothes
The summer smoothes
The restless sky
And lovingly
She warms the sand
On which you lie
The summer knows
The summer’s wise
She sees the doubts
Within your eyes
And so she takes
Her summertime
Tells the moon to wait
And the sun to linger
Twist the world
Round her summer finger
Lets you see
The wonder of it all
And if you’ve learned
Your lesson well
There’s little more
For her to tell
One last caress
It’s time to dress
For fall
And if you’ve learned
Your lesson well
There’s little more
For her to tell
One last caress
It’s time to dress
For fall

lyrics by Alan Bergman & Marilyn Bergman
music by Michel LeGrand
Oscar Winner for Original Dramatic Score
from the movie Summer of '42, 1971

Thousand Hills State Park, Kirksville, Missouri

My Country's Heart

Anthem
from the musical Chess
music by Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus (formerly of ABBA)
lyrics by Tim Rice

performed by David Carrol
on the Original Broadway Cast Recording

No man, no madness
Though their sad power may prevail
Can possess, conquer, my country's heart
They rise to fail
She is eternal
Long before nations' lines were drawn
When no flags flew and no armies stood
My land was born

And you ask me why I love her
Through wars, death and despair
She is the constant, we who don't care
And you wonder will I leave her - but how?
I cross over borders but I'm still there now

How can I leave her?
Where would I start?
Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart
My land's only borders lie around my heart
(emphasis added)

Photographs above and below by Jay Beets

Last year on September 11th, Jay wrote:
"My twin towers...you see them in my pictures...my westward view...
concrete things made to store wheat and grain and corn...
ten years ago...towers of ideas were brought down...
by men who fear ideas...
I like these towers...don't mind if they get in my pictures...
from time to time...
9.11.11

Wheat

Corn

Amber Waves of Grain

Celtic Blessing

Photographs
by Jay Beets

Celtic Prayer and Blessing
from my friend The Rev. Nancy C. Tiederman
Nancy writes: "The origin and location of this prayer have escaped my memory. Perhaps I found it at the shrine for Saint David and St. David’s Cathedral. Or maybe I found it at the little church named for Saint Iltud in Wales. I do remember it came from a place on the Welsh Coast on the Irish Sea."

From the flowing of the tide to its ebbing
From the waxing of life to its waning
Of your peace provide us
Of your life lead us
Of your goodness give us
Of your grace grant us
Of your power protect us
Of your love lift us
And in your arms accept us
From the ebbing of the tide to its flowing
From the waning of life to its waxing

And this ~ kind of related ~
from "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk"
by Franz Kafka:
"Our life is very uneasy, every day brings surprises, apprehensions, hopes, and terrors, so that it would be impossible for a single individual to bear it all did we not always have by day and night the support of our fellows; but even so it often becomes very difficult; frequently as many as a thousand shoulders are trembling under a burden that was really meant only for one pair."

Rows of windows -- a good way to signify
the many burdens and the many shoulders . . . The Travelers Hotel ~ Kirksville, Missouri
Where My Grandmother Used to Work
~ Thanks for the photos Jay! ~

Vintage Postcard ~ The Travelers Hotel ~ Kirksville, Missouri

Bonfire Night

While the Brits may not go crazy for Halloween the way we do here in the States, they have something that we don't -- Bonfire Night every year on the 5th of November, otherwise known as Guy Fawkes Night. (See my post last year on Guy Fawkes Day.)

The tradition originated back in 1605, during the reign of James I of England (VI of Scotland) when the traitor (or hero) Guy Fawkes participated in an unsuccessful rebellion against Church and State. The occasion no longer carries a revolutionary connotation -- though fans of the renegade movie V for Vendetta will recognize it as a subtext in the film.

Over the years the historical commemoration has been modified into a night of fireworks and bonfires, though in England as in America, the tradition of an autumn bonfire right in your own backyard, or even a larger communal bonfire, is becoming more and more prohibited in the name of safety and environmental friendliness.

Bonfire illustrations by J. H. Wingfield
from the Ladybird Book
Helping At Home by M. E. Gagg












My brother Dave writes from Kansas: "I am fortunate to live in Kansas and in the County because we are still so 'backward' as to allow burning of leaves. Soon, I will be heaping up my own funeral pyre to autumn and invoking the solemn vespers of the season."

Autumn Vespers
You can't burn just - fallen leaves anymore,
something about the frail environment.
Oh yes, you can rake them into neat piles
(Just so many to each pile),
shake them down into plastic, shroud-black bags
(Just so many to each bag),
and line the bags in front of your house
(Just so many bags to each leaf - gatherer)
for execution in the morning.

But you can't lean on an old, wooden rake
at dusk, as companion to the evening star,
to watch flames, like small orange flowers,
burn through long lines of dead, rebellious leaves
and reverently contemplate blue smoke
spreading like incense from a swung censer
and rising, like prayer, to an autumnal god
who had contrived the red apple, purple plum
bursting joy of tree, bush, vine, and kitchen bowl,
and you can't, like a ministering priest,
bend to the faint pulse of the failing day
convinced that you alone are confidant
to the last sigh of the dying earth.

poem by Frank Ryan
found in the Fall 2007 edition of my
favorite poetry magazine, Plainsongs,
published out of Hastings College, Nebraska

A Recent Bonfire in Missouri
photographed by Jay Beets

As Midnight Approaches

"Shadows of a thousand years
rise again unseen.
Voices whisper in the trees,
'Tonight is Halloween!' "

(verse from greeting card;
photograph from Jay Beets)

Leaves Turning

Amazing Autumnal Photography by Jay Beets
Leaves

1

Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded
by leaves turning; it's not just the symbolism,
to confront in the death of the year your death,
one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony
isn't lost on you that nature is most seductive
when it's about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its
incipient exit, an ending that at least so far
the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain)
have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe
is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception
because of course nature is always renewing itself —
the trees don't die, they just pretend,
go out in style, and return in style: a new style.

2

Is it deliberate how far they make you go
especially if you live in the city to get far
enough away from home to see not just trees
but only trees? The boring highways, roadsigns, high
speeds, 10-axle trucks passing you as if they were
in an even greater hurry than you to look at leaves:
so you drive in terror for literal hours and it looks
like rain, or snow, but it's probably just clouds
(too cloudy to see any color?) and you wonder,
given the poverty of your memory, which road had the
most color last year, but it doesn't matter since
you're probably too late anyway, or too early —
whichever road you take will be the wrong one
and you've probably come all this way for nothing.

3

You'll be driving along depressed when suddenly
a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through
and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably
won't last. But for a moment the whole world
comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives —
red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,
gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations
of burning. You're on fire. Your eyes are on fire.
It won't last, you don't want it to last. You
can't stand any more. But you don't want it to stop.
It's what you've come for. It's what you'll
come back for. It won't stay with you, but you'll
remember that it felt like nothing else you've felt
or something you've felt that also didn't last.

by Lloyd Schwartz

Copyright © 1992 by Lloyd Schwartz
From Goodnight, Gracie
(The University of Chicago Press, 1992)

Jay Beets: Sunrise Color

Moonrise, Sunset

Harvest Moon

A good poem to read just before the autumn leaves start to fall:

God's World
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart, -- Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, -- let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950
American Lyrical Poet

Late Summer Sunset
Photography here and above by Jay Beets

Huckleberry

Another June lake image from friend and photographer Jay Beets:I could swear that's Huckleberry Finn down there on the dock,
with his fishing pole, waiting for his raft to arrive!
What a wise child, Huckleberry Finn -- Mark Twain's quintessential boy of summer! Of Huckleberry's many memorable observations on his journey down the Mississippi, my favorite has to be the last line of Chapter 24 when his innocence and sense of honor is further tarnished by the chicanery of his elders: "It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race."

And from No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger: "Ernest Wasserman, 17, apprentice; braggert, malicious, hateful, coward, liar, cruel, underhanded, treacherous. He and Moses had a sort of half fondness for each other, which was natural, they having one or more traits in common, down among the lower grades of traits. . . . when she heard my tale she was full of pity for me and maledictions for Ernest, and promised him a piece of her mind, with foot-notes and illustrations."

Speaking of Huckleberry Finn, the following musical was recently recommended to me by my friend Burnetta Hinterthuer, a botanist and woman of letters:
Big River by Roger MillerBurnetta is a discerning scholar who seeks merit in all and never loses her sense of humor along the way. Everything she suggests is excellent; so I ordered a copy of Big River from amazon and was listening to it in the car a couple of weeks ago while driving around town running errands. Just as the song "Free At Last" began to play, I experienced my coincidence of the day, when the traffic slowed for the passing of a funeral cortege. As I idled alongside the road waiting for the stream of cars to pass, Roger Miller's perfectly timed lyrics filled my head:

Free At Last

I wish by golly I could spread my wings and fly
And let my grounded soul be free for just a little while
To be like eagles when they ride upon the wind
And taste the sweetest taste of freedom for my soul

Then I'd be free at least, free at last
Great God Almighty, I'd be free at last

To let my feelings lie where harm cannot come by
And hurt this always hurtin' heart
That needs to rest awhile
I wish by golly I could spread my wings and fly
And taste the sweetest taste of freedom for my soul

Then I'd be free at least, free at last
Great God Almighty, I'd be free at last

I'd be free at least, I'd be free at last
Great God Almighty, I'd be free at last

words & lyrics by American Singer and Songwriter
Roger Miller, 1936 - 1992

As the CD advanced to the final track "Muddy Water," the flow of traffic resumed, and the still small voice of John Donne whispered in my heart:
"never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee."