Onward Into the October Country
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
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The best month!
“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond . . . nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”
I had a friend who believed you needed moonshine just like you need sunshine.
Moonshine is fine, but I prefer bourbon.
Yankee talk. Here in the deepest south November’s best. Hell, we’re forecast for 90° highs and that delightful southern humidity as far into October as the eye can see. I will admit the days get shorter and the nights get longer just like everywhere else in the mid-latitudes.
That’s because you haven’t had the right kind yet Bob.
Yes, fall is starting. As in, the leaves are FALLing.
Not robustly yet, that will be a few more weeks, but still.
My Stihl blower is tuned, gassed and ready and has had a few minor workouts so far.
It’s the sycamores that cause the most grief cause their leaves are so big.
Big enough to trip over. Or, if rained on, surfboarded across the deck.
They are jaggy on the edges, much like their relative the maples, so they get hung up in the cracks between the deckboards, too big to fit under the bottom rung of the railing without a direct full speed assault. Stack 3 or 4 sycamore leaves together and you have a problem that requires effort, like maybe a boot in it’s ass.
By mid Nov I’ll have all the leaves on 1-1/2 acres of our property that is lawned stacked up in 2 or 3 huge piles. I’m talking 5′ high by 20′ in diameter piles. Because of the overhanging branches and not wanting to burn the lawn I can’t burn. So I turn the blower end for end, yank the little pipe and install the big one, and start mulching them leaves. That takes 2 days. I do not install the bagger and just blow the mulch all over the lawn. When that’s done I break out my Harley with blades – my Craftsman lawn tractor with dual blades powered by a 22 hp V2 Honda engine. Yeah, it sounds like a Harley too. Barump-a-rump…. Then I go back n forth over and over reducing that mulch to molecular size. Yeah, over the winter when not covered by snow the lawn has a dark brown hue rather than the light brown most people have but that mulch is breaking down and come spring next year it will start feeding those wakening grass blades and by May I’ll have to break out that Harley with blades again. This is our 13th winter here and we love every minute of it, as long as there is propane in the tank, stacked hardwood in the yard, and the larder is packed to the rafters.
One of the cool things about snow is while sitting around the firepit on Christmas eve on vertical log “stools” you can just sit your brew right down in it and it stays frosty – the minus 30 degree air helps too – but after you’re 13th one it don’t really matter cause that’s when the good stuff comes out of the crawl. Yeah, moon in a glass gallon bottle slammed with marachino cherries 2 months prior. DaWgEeZ!!!!
I love October and November. The earth finally receives a break from the stifling heat and the deer seasons begin to open, the best time in all of creation to enjoy a chilly morning sunrise and watch the earth come alive. Even with a bit of cold it’s a comforting time.
After November, I want it to be early May again when the pompano begin their runs.
Last night I dropped a friend off at the airport in Fairbanks, she’s returning to Japan. Driving back home during the first hour of the first day of October I noticed the aurora dancing overhead and my Jeep’s thermometer moving 2 or 3 degrees above or below freezing as the road’s elevation changed with the terrain.
Back home I increased the draft on my banked wood fire in the stove upstairs, went out and snapped a few shots of the Northern Lights dancing overhead, came back in, opened the doors on my Vermont Casting’s Defiant stove, and poured myself a shot of Jameson’s as a nightcap, sat in the dark watching the flames dance.
One October’s my birthday and I tipped my glass to the four score years behind me, life’s been good and Octobers are grand up here on top of the world.
HB, JA!