BLACKBERRY WINTER

The mountain people call it Blackberry Winter. Just as the first pure white blossoms appear on the vines, the temperature drops and the weather stays chilly for quite a few days. I enjoy this temporary halt in the mad growth and greening. It is a quiet pause before the earth yields to the riot of fecundity we call summer. The scent of wild roses, also in bloom, is piquant and pure in this cocktail of oxygen and cool, damp air.

Once again I take out companionable sweaters or reach for my homespun afghan in the night when the temperatures dip low enough to require extra covers on the bed. The pup, nearly grown, shivers in the mornings and regresses to her need to cuddle on a lap, burrowing into a soft blanket. These pleasures seem superior to the constant beckoning of the outdoors during spring and summer. The people of Spruce Pine are devoted gardeners, both of veggies and flowers, and the sight of their handiwork puts my hours of fiddling or journaling to shame. Dig in the earth, people tell me. Send away for catalogs. Plan your garden. It’s very therapeutic.

I want to belong to this community, but the lust for coffeehouses, cafes, films, and bookstores is still strong in me, though it’s now almost four years since we left our urban lifestyle in Chapel Hill to live here in relative isolation from The Stuff. I am weak and spend time shopping on the internet now that our limited budget and the soaring price of fuel makes the one hour trip to Asheville a luxury rather than a casual option to simple country days. I should be buying tomato plants but I’m on eBay looking for a spring handbag.

Owning acreage on the side of a mountain was not one of my life goals, but now that it has happened, I find it has ups and downs like any relationship. Some days I am overcome with love for the familiar trees, the rushing of the creek after a good rain, the mounds of quartz embedded in the soil, the shining flecks of mica everywhere. Others, the silence and beauty do not call me. Instead I long for the stimulation and buzz of culture. My heart is here; my mind wanders elsewhere.

BIRD BOP

Finch upside down on a thistle sock

A whistle stop

For bird a flutter, bird a twitter

Hoppy, pecky

Bird-zipping, low flying

Tiny beak, tail-flick:

Birds, snow, seed, feed.

Puffed out peck’ums.

Touche-touche

Dart/swoop/flutter

Fat Jack on a couple o’ tacks

Hop-sticks,

Keep a movin’

Down/up, birds up down

Peck’um.

copyright cathylarsonsky 02/2011

THE DOLL CHAIR

People seldom sat in her,

The Doll Chair

She lived by the hearth,

Facing outward,

She partnered the television

Two sibling watchers,

One on squat claw feet,

The other a grey orb

Observing the Living Room

At my grandparents’ house,

With its worn Regency grandeur

Its well-trod carpets

And fragrances delicious and kind,

Waved inside by the swinging kitchen door.

On Christmas morning

The doll I wanted,

Had longed for

All those other seasons

Appeared in the Doll Chair,

Its small arms extended,

Next to my sister’s choice,

And our two Christmas stockings

Bulging with treats.

That was the miracle of having.

But before came the miracle of waiting.

Christmas eve,

On the foldout in Pop Pop’s study

Sister and I lay bug-eyed

While headlights from our cars

And the neighbors’ cars

Lit the darkness behind white nylon curtains

Made dancing panels on the high ceiling

And whispers came and went

Muted fluttering from the other

Regions of the limitless house.

In the mysterious night

I lie sleepless, alive to every sound.

My sister’s quiet breath beside me

I can’t wait but I do

Knowing that my wish is going to come true

That magic is about to happen

I am present to the velvet darkness

In an ever-new, ever changing way.

And it seems to me now

That my child mind believed less in Santa

Than in my ability to make appear,

By my dreaming and my desiring,

The most cherished of earthly things.

The Doll Chair a portal

For the bright, the new, the shining.

She is mother love

She is the full-petaled rose of possibility

Of gifting, of renewal.

On a New Year’s morning she reminds me of what is gone

And the possibility of what yet might be

Unseen now

But roiling in my heart to appear

Tiny flashes of clarity in the sleepless night

Reassurance of what may come

What may yet come.

copyright cathylarsonsky jan 2011

FALLing

On the ancient Celtic calendar, tonight is Samhain, when the living and dead join hands and tango. It is the eve of a New Year; the tropical summer with its searing heat is behind us and the introspective, crystalline winter is ahead. It seems I have come round again on the calendar, to a place just above that spiraling DNA of inner growth where I can look down from my perch and see clear through to one year ago, when jubilation over a completed CD veered, all at once, into the territory of grief and loss. No matter how it strikes, I can never dodge the process of grief. It is a flood. It must have its way.

How many times I’ve wandered the path in the woods behind our house this past year. Once it was a retreat, a white land offering pristine beauty. Then it became green and flowered, enchanted and fragrant. Summer brought a surprise: the arrival of a little pup in our lives, a creature to shake me up, drive me crazy – to come along the path with me.


The woodland way is now broad and well-used, with choice canine toileting spots on either side. It’s a friendly place I travel three or four times daily, with Sookie coming up behind, her ears flying, the picture of joy and abandon. When I sit by the spring, my arms and lap are full of wriggling and warm new life. The leaves are gold fairy coins against a blue sky.



So, let them Fall
Like water over the precipice
The old dreams
The ghosts and demons
The scaries and the faeries
Let them Fall --
The leaves, the leftovers
The undigested, the ruined
The perfect, the imperfect
The tears, the joy
The anger, the helplessness.
All of it, all of it.
To happen again and again.

Dog Days of Summer

The stork brought a little present;

Dropped it in our yard the night of July 25 --

A squirmy, lost

Flea-infested pup.

Now, a lunar cycle later

She lives here.

Over the past 30 days

I’ve decided to surrender her to the Rescue

Four separate times.

But then couldn’t go through with it,

Cried all night -- not the dog -- me.

I can’t go many places any more

Not for more than an hour or so.

I am on carpet patrol,

House training alert

Sometimes, often, at my wit’s end.

Why why why?

Why go through all this?

My heart has been stolen

By Sookie Moon.

Alias “Puppa.”

I wonder,

On the good days,

If I'm the one

Who's Rescued.

May greetings

FAERY SONG

Come with me

Put down your spade

Stop the dizzy spinning between your ears

There will be music

You will hear

And wonders

You will see

It is so easy,

Just come with me.

If the marvels fall quietly upon your senses

Open your senses

This is done

By letting go

If you do not see the beauty

It is still here

Still, here

Water over stones

And secret lights in the dew

Many who crawl

Swim, slither, or fly

Know the way

Why not you,

Walker?

Why not you?

(copyright Cathy Larson Sky 5/29/2010)

Road Trip Wagon Train

Pat and I recently drove to Sarasota, FL for a concert, stopping on the way at Roswell, GA for an Irish session, and at St. Simon Island to visit a friend. In Sarasota we both came down with a cold/flu and headed prematurely for home, where we spent the next two weeks as runny-nosed, coughing couch potatoes. During this time we rented Ken Burns’ documentary The West on Netflix, fifteen hours of the grim history of the wresting of our country from Native Americans. I heard again the doctrine of Manifest Destiny that justified the whole mess; hadn’t thought of it since sixth grade history class. At that time, as a kid raised on TV cowboys (good) and Indians (bad, except for Tonto), I just assumed that all had been for the best, and now I was living in hunky dory Eisenhower land, thanks to the valiance of my forebears.

Now my road trip memories are etched in some kind of tableau right next to the images of wagon trains snaking across the land; travel-lusting Americans, side by side, from places all over the country, sharing a common dream of the future. Are we any different, we selfish, restless people, today? We are a strange tribe, driven by collective ambitions while demanding our right to act as individuals.

I felt the obnoxiousness of our American tribe on I 95 as I encountered folks at rest stops, in hotel hallways, waiting in line for coffee and fries at McDonald’s, or zipping by me on the road in sturdy cars with bikes strapped to the roof (it was the beginning of Easter vacation.) Aspects of communal facilities troubled me, like for instance the women who leave toilets damp (which one sometimes only discovers after sitting down.) Or the fact that some magnetic force attracts me to the only stall in a row with the latch broken (again, only discovered once I sit down, having arrived at the 11^th hour of my need) so I have to keep the door closed with one foot, while some fussy and vocal toddler impatiently rocks against it. Where is the child’s mother? She is talking on her cell phone while washing her hands at the other end of the room. Was this the etiquette observed at freshly dug latrines on the trail? I wonder, and some not-so-nice images appear.

Feverish and swollen faced, Pat and I faced traffic jam after jam as we inched along I 95. Troubling things happen among the tribe during these events. One or two or three renegades decide that the waiting does not apply to them, and run past the line of cars on the left hand margin, with an attitude like, “watch me, suckers.” Then, when the driver discovers that he really does have to merge, he depends on the kindness of his fellows to let him again into the ranks. I really wonder about this psycho-social behavior. Is this the same me-ism that caused settlers to ride roughshod over others to stake their claim on homestead acreage, on gold mining sites? Competition is the backbone of our tribe. Sometimes it feels like it is actually a pastime in itself, even when the prize is ambiguous, or meaningless.

Worst of all were the trucks. I guess truck drivers are a sort of sub-group of our tribe, with different rules. Like, you get to bully anyone smaller than you if they are slowing you down in any way. You get to drive faster than anybody else. Why is this? Because you are busy delivering the Stuff. These are the kings of consumerism, the lords of the highway. Not only do they blast you with their horn to get out of the way, they continue with the blast while and after passing – a steady stream to match the F and GD and SOBs the driver is probably muttering under his breath. I understand that these guys drink like Red Bull to keep them alert. How weird is that, Red Bull? The Lakota must be laughing up their sleeves at that choice of name.

So now I sit quietly in my mountain home, in a territory once peopled by the Cherokee but now claimed by white Christians who worship a prophet born two thousand years ago in the Middle East, who was dark skinned and wore sandals. I don’t understand this mongrel tribe to whom I belong. Or maybe I do, but don’t want to admit it. I walk in the woods and by the streams and wonder whether the spirits there can ever welcome me; I know myself as a member of the fair skinned people who bribe and promise and lie, who come on with the tractors and the asphalt, claiming a better life for all. The past is still alive.