“Autumn Dusk”….and Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

It’s Hard To Tell what this photo above is, but the morning brought this weak storm front…and a dark cloud that stretched from the bottom of the horizon.  It transformed Atlanta to the east into a mountain range.  It reminded me of New Hampshire or Pennsylvania.  Quite a sight for the morning, and more spectacular outside my window than in the photo.  But!  A startling and welcome gift for the day before Thanksgiving.  I called around (at before 7am) to neighbors to look to the east outside their doors, and went down to one neighbor, Don to come out with me and gawk at the ‘mountain range’.  Don is a good sport and was as awed as I was.

Thanksgiving is a good time for enjoying the mysteries of Nature….and putting on Copeland’s  “Appalachian Spring”…the music that evokes an earlier, peaceful time when Thanksgiving wasn’t followed by Black Friday.

Peace to my nation in a time of outrageous turmoil, chaos, and Happy Thanksgiving for those of us who still give thanks.

Lady Nyo

And just for the fun of it, pix of my kitchen, and the sacrificial pumpkin from Halloween now to be a pumpkin pie.

By the way, it’s a ‘pink’ pumpkin, though it shows up darker in this photo.

.

.

 This Autumn, a fleeting, transitory season, has brought heavy snows and bone numbing cold across our country.  Too early for this, but here in the South, it was just record breaking temps and rain.

Yesterday we had heavy winds, rain across Georgia and some areas had tornados. When the rain finally stopped, I looked outside and a huge rainbow spanned the sky.  What a visual gift to lift the spirits!  Then the clouds broke apart, their bellies turned pink and a soft blue mingled with the clouds.  Only a scant few minutes before dark fell, but what a Gainsborough moment. 

All week I have listened to the migration of Sandhill cranes, not seeing them, too high up, but hearing their cries. It signals the Winter to come, the smell of wood smoke and a landscape that is swept of fertility, just waiting the Earth to pirouette again.

Lady Nyo

AUTUMN DUSK

.

Stuttering winds blow across

Clouds tinted by the failing sun.

Brittle air softens,

Now a faded blue–

Shade of an old man’s watery eyes.

.

A late flock of Sandhill cranes lift off,

Pale bodies blending in the

Twilight with legs

Flowing dark streamers,

Their celestial cries fall to

Earth–

A harsh, chiding rain.

.

The trees in the valley

Are massed in darkness

As waning light leaches

Color from nature,

Creeps from field to hillock

And all below prepares for the

Rising of the Corn Moon.

.

Even frogs in the pond

Listen between croaks

For the intention of the night.

.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2014,

“Autumn Dusk” originally published in “White Cranes of Heaven”, Lulu.com, 2011

“Autumn Dusk”……

(Oil Painting, Jane Kohut-Bartels, “Dusk” 2008

–

Autumn is a time of incredible beauty and mystery.  After a long, slow, sullen summer, the air is refreshened by winds and currents from the North and everything seems to change over night.  The windchimes herald this season and their clanging outside brings our attention to changes that startle and excite us. Too short a season by far.

Lady Nyo 

–

AUTUMN DUSK

–

Stuttering winds blow across

Clouds tinted by the failing sun.

Brittle air softens,

Now a faded blue–

Shade of an old man’s watery eyes.

 

A late flock of Sandhill cranes lift off,

Pale bodies blending in the

Twilight with legs

Flowing dark streamers,

Their celestial cries fall to

Earth–

 A harsh, chiding rain.

 

The trees in the valley

Are massed in darkness

As waning light leaches

Color from nature,

Creeps from field to hillock

And all below prepares for the

Rising of the Corn Moon.

 

Even frogs in the pond

Listen between croaks

For the intention of the night.

 

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010

From: White Cranes of Heaven, Lulu.com 2011

 

“A Reason for the Season”

Christmas Eve, early. The magnolia leaves and glossy red nandina berries  are spread….finally… over these old mantels.

Southern traditions are different.  I come from  the North and realize  now how decorating differs in both regions.  People used what they had.  Magnolia leaves are broad and glossy, and look lovely spread over overmantels, tucked behind paintings, and on mantels with these nandina berries I have only seen in the South.  The glossy leaves and berries come into their best in this early winter.  Nandina bushes are rather frothy, with orange, grape-clustered berries that turn to a bright red at Xmas.  Perfect.  Some pine cones, which down here tend to be all sizes…from tiny, perfect ‘buds’ to huge cones you can put an eye out with.

There are 4 fireplaces in this old house and all of them drafty.  This spring I am going to paint ‘firescreens’ to place over the andirons and close off the drafts.  But by the time they are finished it will probably be summer.

I am making mimosas this afternoon, and oyster stew for the evening meal, and then to bed.  It’s just Husband and House this year, as our son has left for Navy deployment Dec. 8th.  It is a tenuous and bittersweet Christmas this year; the first in 22 years sans enfant.

(We just received our first letter from our son:  a whole page and a half of closely written letter on Navy stationary saying it’s cold up there and the food is good (but not as good as mom’s) he has a cold or flu that showed up after all his shots, and  bemoans his Navy haircut.  Sounds like he’s doing fine.  Hope he has Kleenex.)

But the cats have his old room and they are very happy.  The dogs keep looking for their buddy….he has disappeared into the ether. He has a favorite cat, Hana, who is a nutcase.  She is a beautiful tortoise shell calico and  gets beaten up by another two females.  So she has ‘special needs’ emotionally as our son proclaims.  She must have because she sleeps in his sleeping bag…at the bottom.

It is gloomy outside, a cold rain  probably  perferable to the snow up North.  But I don’t know.  Each year I pray for some snow and this year we got 6″ March 1st.  Very unusual.

So hope springs eternal for some of that ‘stuff’.  This morning I noticed cardinals and bluejays squabbling outside in trees.  They divebombed each other but I think this will settle down because Winter looks like a long one this year.

This short essay was written last year.  It still works for me this year.

Merry Christmas.

Lady Nyo

A REASON FOR THE SEASON

I saw the Cooper’s hawk this morning. She landed on the chimney pot, probably looking for my miniature hen, Grayson. Four years ago she was a starving fledgling who mantled over while I fed her cold chicken. She’s back this holiday, my spirits lifting. A good Christmas present.

In the middle of the commercialization of Christmas, Nature closes the gap. I have noticed squirrels with pecans in mouths leaping the trees, hawks hunting low over now-bare woods, unknown song birds sitting on fences, heard the migration of Sandhill cranes as they honk in formation. You hear their cacophony well before they appear. Their chiding cries float down to upturned faces.

There is brightness to the holly, washed by our early winter rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of woodsmoke in the air and the crispness of mornings means the earth is going to sleep. We humans should reclaim our past and our fecal plugs and join the slumber party of our brother bears.

Jingle Bells will fade and our tension with it. Looking towards deep winter when the Earth is again silent will restore our balance and calm nerves with a blanket of peace.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2008