WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
The Snow Tree
byVanderleunonMarch 21, 2019
After the fires that burned everything and the rains that never seemed to end there was, at last, a day when the sun shone and the air was warm and scented not with ash but with the promise of Spring. He pointed to the sunshine falling through her front window onto the worn rug in a wind-shimmered pool of light. “Do you want to take a ride out into the Spring?”
“Oh, of course, let’s see what’s going on around here. I’d love to get outside for a bit.”
So he brought out the wheelchair and, after some maneuvering, got her seated and wrapped up with scarves and blankets so that not a wisp of cold could find its way to her. Then he opened the door and out they rolled for the first time in weeks.
Outside it was a fine afternoon; a spring afternoon even though most of the trees sported bare branches just beginning to bud. The bright red camellias were everywhere though and he plucked a few of these and set them on the blanket covering her lap. Outside it was pretty much all blacktopped parking lot but she’d never had been one to look down. She looked up instead at the clouds she always liked to track in the skies vaulting Chico from the Ridge above to the farmountains of the coast range. There were enough there for her to see and identify as they rolled along.
Then they turned the corner towards the apartment’s swimming pool and picnic spot. There they stopped. In front of them was a large tree looming over all the other trees except the dawn redwoods. It was covered all across its crown in massive clumps of white, white blossoms; blossoms so white they could have been a pure snowcap on a tallmountain in January. Even though her eyes were failing her she turned her face up to those suspended drifts of a white and clear spring and said, “Oh my, oh my, isn’t that the most beautiful thing we’ve seen yet?”
They rolled on and got to the swimming pool and the small lawns and tables around it. She had him take her and place her in a way that she could feel the sun on her face and hands but so that it did not dazzle her.
They sat there for a bit. Not talking very much at all, just enjoying the warmth of the spring sun together. Then for a bit, he read her from How Green Was My Valley, the book she had been trying to read on the tablet he’d taught her to use; the tablet that made the print large enough for her eyes to follow. Then they talked a bit more as the sun fell lower in the sky. It became colder so they started to make their way back to her small apartment where she’d lived for over 40 years.
They came back to the tree of the white blossoms. A wind was coming up and the blossoms were being blown from the branches.
She had him stop under the tree for a time and she let the white blossoms from the tree drift down and rest on the ground, and on her lap, and in her hair, all twirling and glimmering in the sunlight like some gentle scented snowflakes.
“So pretty,” she said. “See how white they are.”
“We can come back tomorrow,” he said. “We could have a picnic in the sun by the pool.”
“So pretty,” she said again looking at a few blossoms that had fallen into her hands. “Okay, I’m ready to go home now.”
Gerard,
You don’t need to think of anything else to do.
You are doing all that needs to be done.
Company is the most sincere and warmest love.
Your mother is fortunate to have such a good son.
Bless you.
Ah, that caught me right in the eyes.
Blessings to you both.
captfleeMarch 21, 2019, 3:10 PM
I second Joan’s emotion, Gerard. There’s a world in those few worlds.
AnonymousMarch 21, 2019, 3:11 PM
words
Hangtown Bob and PegMarch 21, 2019, 3:26 PM
We are so glad that she is doing well, even if slowly.You are blessed to have been able to welcome in the dawn of Spring together. New life……
JimmyMarch 21, 2019, 3:46 PM
And in a that moment, time was stopped.
KurtMarch 21, 2019, 3:51 PM
“…consciousness of duty faithfully performed…” Sometimes that is the only comfort to be found in hard places. It was to me, at least, when I was in similar circumstances. I wondered at the time why doing one’s duty could be such a balm for the soul. Took me awhile but then I saw it. At its roots, all duty flows from love. Love, even in tears, still love. God bless you and yours, brother.
You are doing exactly as you should.
More than 95% of other’s children
Would even imagine doing.
It wouldn’t cross their mind
Too uncomfortable
Hiding behind their weakness
She cherishes with every sense
With a value only those who have lived
Without spite and hate
Will ever know
She sees only goodness.
NoriMarch 21, 2019, 7:27 PM
Poignant, and so beautiful.
As always, thank you for sharing.
Phillipa CrawfordMarch 22, 2019, 5:04 AM
As I read I felt the sun on my face and hands, too. What a simple and lovely moment to share. Thank you.
I am packing my belongings in the shawl
my mother used to wear when she went to the market.
And I’m going from my valley.
And this time, I shall never return.
I am leaving behind me my fifty years of memory.
Memory.
Strange that the mind will forget so much
of what only this moment has passed, and yet hold
clear and bright the memory of what happened years ago
– of men and women long since dead.
Yet who shall say what is real and what is not?
Can I believe my friends all gone
when their voices are still a glory in my ears?
No.
And I will stand to say no and no again,
for they remain a living truth within my mind.
There is no fence nor hedge round Time that is gone.
You can go back and have what you like of it,
if you can remember.
— excerpted from How Green Was My Valley,
by Richard Llewellyn
VanderleunMarch 22, 2019, 11:02 AM
Yes, Walt, yes. Exactly so.
Dan KMarch 22, 2019, 12:16 PM
Good on you Gerard! And another book on my reading list. Thanks!
pbirdMarch 22, 2019, 2:16 PM
I read that book many years ago. Better read it again.
You made me cry you stinker. Love to your Mama.
VanderleunMarch 22, 2019, 3:47 PM
“Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still – real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my Valley then.”
rabbit tobaccoMarch 22, 2019, 6:45 PM
At different times in our lives, our various ancestors come up and stare out of the windows of our eyes.
Emerson
Lovely piece, Gerard. Isn’t it true, it’s always the little things that have such staggering meaning? The resplendent little flowering tree after a forlorn, rainy winter. The short drive into the sunshine.
Same here. Clouds and rain have dominated for months. Now, every shred of sunshine slowly warms our stone cold hearts. It will take a while.
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
![Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ginsbergnirvana-150x150.jpg "Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]")
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Comments on this entry are closed.
Gerard, you have a way of touching me that brings me back here every day.
You and many others, I am pleased to know.
You’re a damned fine son, Gerard.
Thank you all. Right now I don’t know what else to do.
Yes. I feel that.
Here we are still blanketed in snow, bion.
But, your words take away the winter.
Thank you for sharing your treasure with us. God bless you both.
No words
Just God Bless, and thank you.
JWM
Prayers still coming for you and your Mom, Gerard.
Just love
Gerard: just be there.
Excellent! Glad she’s well.
Gerard,
You don’t need to think of anything else to do.
You are doing all that needs to be done.
Company is the most sincere and warmest love.
Your mother is fortunate to have such a good son.
Bless you.
“Right now I don’t know what else to do.”
You are doing exactly the right thing, sir.
“Okay, I’m ready to go home now.”
Ah, that caught me right in the eyes.
Blessings to you both.
I second Joan’s emotion, Gerard. There’s a world in those few worlds.
words
We are so glad that she is doing well, even if slowly.You are blessed to have been able to welcome in the dawn of Spring together. New life……
And in a that moment, time was stopped.
“…consciousness of duty faithfully performed…” Sometimes that is the only comfort to be found in hard places. It was to me, at least, when I was in similar circumstances. I wondered at the time why doing one’s duty could be such a balm for the soul. Took me awhile but then I saw it. At its roots, all duty flows from love. Love, even in tears, still love. God bless you and yours, brother.
Ma Vanderleun lives in many hearts, Gerard.
You are doing exactly as you should.
More than 95% of other’s children
Would even imagine doing.
It wouldn’t cross their mind
Too uncomfortable
Hiding behind their weakness
She cherishes with every sense
With a value only those who have lived
Without spite and hate
Will ever know
She sees only goodness.
Poignant, and so beautiful.
As always, thank you for sharing.
As I read I felt the sun on my face and hands, too. What a simple and lovely moment to share. Thank you.
It has been 19 years and 10 months since my mom uttered ” I think I want to go home now.” It changed my perception of life.
I can feel my own heart breaking and i’ve never even met her. God bless you GVDL.
It is truly amazing what a few rays of sunshine will do to persons outlook and soul. Especially true after a tragedy.
Good day.
A statement, a wish, a prayer, an affirmation.
Thank you.
I am packing my belongings in the shawl
my mother used to wear when she went to the market.
And I’m going from my valley.
And this time, I shall never return.
I am leaving behind me my fifty years of memory.
Memory.
Strange that the mind will forget so much
of what only this moment has passed, and yet hold
clear and bright the memory of what happened years ago
– of men and women long since dead.
Yet who shall say what is real and what is not?
Can I believe my friends all gone
when their voices are still a glory in my ears?
No.
And I will stand to say no and no again,
for they remain a living truth within my mind.
There is no fence nor hedge round Time that is gone.
You can go back and have what you like of it,
if you can remember.
— excerpted from How Green Was My Valley,
by Richard Llewellyn
Yes, Walt, yes. Exactly so.
Good on you Gerard! And another book on my reading list. Thanks!
I read that book many years ago. Better read it again.
You made me cry you stinker. Love to your Mama.
“Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still – real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my Valley then.”
At different times in our lives, our various ancestors come up and stare out of the windows of our eyes.
Emerson
Like Kurt said. With deepest respect.
Brought back memories…
How blessed you are to have her, and her you !
Lovely piece, Gerard. Isn’t it true, it’s always the little things that have such staggering meaning? The resplendent little flowering tree after a forlorn, rainy winter. The short drive into the sunshine.
Same here. Clouds and rain have dominated for months. Now, every shred of sunshine slowly warms our stone cold hearts. It will take a while.