435: there was a prairie fire

It's not quite the same as being right there, but, in fact, the view from below is just as striking. Like holiday lights, like a string of city buildings all lit up, like cottages with the best view and a little fire in the window. I wish I could have taken photographs that would have done the actuality justice.

Other lovely things:

- My poem "The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake (II)" will appear in April's edition of Tattoo Highway.
- I don't believe I mentioned this before, but the other bookend of my chapbook, "The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake," along with "Kitchen" and "Palming Earth," will all appear in a wonderful anthology on sustainable food, put together by the illustrious Kerstin Svendsen.
- Not too long ago, my dear friend got a State Arts Board grant, no small feat. She'll be headed back to Japan, perhaps as early as this summer and so deserves this good thing coming her way. ♥

- Sparrows bathing in melted snow puddles.
- Our maple + zestar apple trees beginning to bud.
- Good movies on Netflix: I've Loved You So Long, The Girl in the Cafe, and Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself.

253: Barn Bluff (last Sunday)

Since it's not quite time for color just yet in our part of the world (though it's beginning to peep, and there were these little purple and yellow flowers on the prairie side of the bluff, perfectly in tune with the Easter holiday), I allowed myself to become incredibly aware of texture. This is the time of year when we can go outdoors without wanting to turn about and rush back into the warmth, when we can linger on the back patio with the rubber dog toys, chucking them again and again until everything is sopping with slobber, and the warm air feels so, so good, and this is also, I have discovered, the time of year when we can see the things that love to hide otherwise: Amanda was telling me of the ridiculousness of her front yard bunny, hiding in bare branched bushes, and I remarked how how lucky I was to get a few bird shots in our crabapple tree, which I am saving to share here very soon. It's the time of year to be very still and observe because we can see those secret things right now and love the bend and shape, love the way the wind takes us outside ourselves: the fish spine of brittle leaves, the sway of dry grass in spring breeze. So, right now, I'm OK without that inundation of green, the way the lights turn on outdoors, because right now, right here, I can smell the damp rot of last autumn's leaves and see the way in which everything spindles.

252: Prairie Burn

Ryan and I took a hike up Barn Bluff this afternoon; I still have that campfire smell lingering. We were eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches at the steps, the border between prairie and wet woods when Ryan spotted smoke. "Someone's burning something," he pointed.

Indeed, and I can't imagine this being a controlled burn, what with so many hiking on an Easter Sunday. In fact, for most of the blaze, Ryan and I were separated--I had gone on up to first inspect the smoke, then take some photographs, when the wind picked up and the fire jumped across the path; I couldn't get back down in time, so Ryan remained with the dogs (fortunately, at the steps, they were all safe, though sparks and ash flew about, a strange sight in the wind). The ash, in fact, was swept into a later gust of wind, and reminded me of the birds we'd just been observing, circling in flight.

I'll return later with more photographs from our hike, less dramatic, and I'm happy to report my sneaky photos of many live cedar waxwings and robins devouring the wrinkled crabapples from last summer. I am ashamed to admit how ridiculously foolish I am in that I didn't know how those withered berries vanished from last season to make way for the new buds; I thought perhaps they just fell, but we never had a massive collection (Zephyr...?) on the ground.