FIREFLY

In the wee hours of a June wedding celebration, I watched dancing lights in the thick darkness by a river: fiber-optic strands cradled in the palms of little girls who jumped and twirled to the music. Deep in the rains of early July, after fighting sleeplessness one moonless night with a meditation CD that urges me to visualize the benevolent presence of loved ones, I opened my eyes to see a green gold light on the ceiling directly above my head, flashing. It was a firefly, speaking – reassuringly, it seemed -- in its native Morse code. These two events were prequels to a coming change. 

I was in an outdoor restaurant when a gnat flew into my right eye with that familiar bap I get when it happens. Summer gnats love my eyes. “Pat,” I told my husband, “You’re going to have to operate with a Q tip when we get home.” But there was no bug this time, though I kept seeing brown things that looked like insect carcasses sailing through my vision. Then I began experiencing flashes of light in the corner of the eye, followed by the descent of a dark thing, like a wing. Later I started calling the wing thing a record needle, coming down.

The eye doctor labeled these new sensations Flashers and Floaters. If someone told me when I was 20 that at 64 my life would fill with Flashers and Floaters, what would I have expected?  Raincoat clad people exposing themselves at sports events, maybe, or inner tubes for floating in pools on lazy afternoons.

The doctor showed me how the vitreous humor, in its tidy sac, turns from gel to liquid and then begins to separate from the lining of the inner eye. The brown insect legs I saw were blood from this tearing away; the flashes were distress signals from the optic nerve. Looking at the diagram of the perky round vitreous that resembled a younger me’s breast, I wondered irrationally if I was going to need a sports bra for my morphing eyeball. Was it going to start sagging out of the eye socket, like a Spielberg special effect from Raiders of the Lost Ark?

No, said the doc. Imagine a beach ball filled with gel. The gel liquefies, but it is still the same volume. The internet told me to imagine a piece of Jell-O that is left out of the fridge and starts to pull away from the dish. Both images disturb. I was assured that separation of the humor is normal for older people. (More women than men, statistically.) A fellow writer said, “Oh yeah, I call them (the floaters) my family. Some mornings I wake up and tell my husband we have many new family members.”

Within ten days the tearing away was complete. The eye doctor was satisfied that the retina had not detached during the process, in which case I would have had to have immediate laser surgery to save my eyesight. That was good news.

One night last week a firefly, resting on the screen door, flashed me. My eye flashed back, and the wing/record player needle descended. The firefly and I repeated the communication a couple of times. I’ve always secretly believed I could learn to talk to the animals. I didn’t know it would be like this, quite. I return to a prayer that rises during meditation: Let me see things through the eyes of spirit. Will I see more clearly through a liquid than a gel? Firefly, the world is full of mystery.

THE BEE IS DRUNK

The bee is drunk;

he gorges himself on the pollen-spattered flowers. I watch his boozy progress from blossom to blossom. He feeds, rolls over, drops, and feeds again. A lush, kissing all the girls. Mmmmm, he says. Mmmmm.

I am dizzy with green sweetness and sun, the scent of  wild roses. Light touches their innocent faces. The sky peers between limbs and leaves to witness such tenderness.

                           

The twisted bittersweet vine has lost its malice, softened into rare sculpture by the flood of stirring leaves. Small flying insects: ectoplasm on the wing. Above the stream bed, a cloud of blithe gnats circles a rhododendron branch.

                                

Remember this:

Remember the thorny bow of the blackberry vine, its pink buds and moon-white blossoms.

 Remember the cool of the shaded path, the promise of arrival.


copyright cathy larson sky May 30, 2013

because love

Salt

for the Newtown children and their staff

Because love is stronger than death

I light this candle for you.

Because stars do not know fear

cast yours away as you sail,  

moonbeams, swift in the heavens.

Because this season you

too have been uprooted,

I trim this tree for you:

pink, blue, red, yellow, green –

crayon box colors.

Because tears are salt

and blood is brine, the sea

shouts dark upon dark; the sky

blooms a silent, inky wound.

Armies of silver needles

drop, soundless, to the ocean floor.

Because these bones ache for you

and your pretty gifts that will not be opened

I open this place in my heart

where the briny tide ebbs and flows

and little star fish call your names. 

(copyright cathy larson sky 2012)

Celebrating the Cat -- Again!

As the bright leaves of fall reinvent the world for a short time before winter descends, it is time to celebrate the beauty and mystery of cats. 

Familiar

  

You might assume I am just along for the ride

but without my delicate weight her broom

would lose its balance and flap,

willy-nilly, across the sky.

Nights, I sit, idly mousing the kitchen

floor while she combines, in her leaky cauldron,

powders: faery dust, newt’s eye, oil of poppies,

trying to conjure pixies, nixies, naiads.

Often I am bored and bathe myself twice

turn around clockwise and become a fur ball

musing on my literary ancestors: Geoffrey,

White-faced Simony, Pangur Ban --

or commune with my obsidian likenesses

guarding Pharoah’s fathomless tombs.

My tribe is undervalued, our lot plain:

saucer of milk, warm place to sleep

a few small fishes, a door

for going in and out:

Small payment for the way

I ride the foot of her bed

like the prow of a skiff on the Nile

and part, with my copper-backed orbs

the dark curtains of night

making safe the way

for my mistress’s dreams.

cathy larson sky  10/23/2012

WAKING

To count one’s blessings: sometimes not easy. When pressures build, and the bright boxes and screens in our lives scream discord, it becomes a radical action, a survival strategy to look about and say yes to life, not to withhold appreciation for the simple things that become invisible when dark matters press in from without and within. The summer has brought more loss, more harsh realities economic and social. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to succumb sometimes to a time out. Meltdown at least means that when things cool off, they may have taken a different shape. Earlier this week I crawled onto the sofa and slept for a full day and a half. When I did get up, the first thing I noticed was the primary colors in my Tiffany glass style candle holder, illuminated by the candle I had lit earlier in the day. The sight made me realize that I had stopped seeing in colors at all; that the world had faded into shades of gray. The mind can play weird tricks. Today I revisit some other beautiful things and get to really notice them. A cat and a dog that delight in playing together. Some late autumn blooms in a vase. The sun streaming down through the trees. Here are some more images of the sweetness in my life, only a few feet away from me every day.

REAL LIFE REPORTAGE

NC WOMAN ABUSED BY INANIMATE OBJECTS         

July 24, 2012

At 10:30 this morning, while destroying a spider/moth graveyard with the hose of a vacuum cleaner, a female Spruce Pine resident was assaulted, on the temple, by a decorative corner of a bookcase. The incident was noted almost immediately by the victim’s husband, when he was roused from his computer chair by the sharp-tongued insistence of his spouse that he complete the vacuuming of the bedroom carpet, as she was indisposed, with an ice pack on her head.  (See photo below for scene of attack.)      

After satisfying the curiosity of dog and cat with presentation, for olfactory examination, of the frozen plastic ice pack, the victim retreated to the lavatory where, having seated herself and taken up a book of poetry kept in a wicker basket along with other bathroom reading material, she was assaulted by the contents of a bathroom waste receptacle, normally kept precariously balanced on the edge of the commode tank, leaning against the wall on one side to keep it secure. (The location of the plastic container is an arrangement incurred by the propensity of Sookie, then-puppy, two summers ago, for taking tissues from the receptacle, which she would then shred with her teeth and scatter throughout the house.)

The container full of crumpled bathroom tissues and other odd items tumbled over the lap of the victim this morning, and onto the floor, in a wanton display of the fecklessness of inanimate objects. Other debris fell on the tiled floor. The assault was an obvious bid for housekeeping attentions of the type shown to the carpets earlier in the day.

The victim reported no further assaults, but she was, however, threatened in the kitchen, by a large cooking pot filled with water, which was resting in the sink, the remains of the previous weekend’s chili, floating, with sordid provocation, on the surface of the water. Again, this obvious posturing was a demand for domestic attention.

The temperature in the kitchen being 83 degrees Fahrenheit, the victim ignored this harassment and removed to the living room sofa, where she seated herself before a large rectangular fan and re-applied the ice pack to her head wound.

(Photographs of the bathroom and kitchen perpetrators below.)  

                                                                     

Missing Niamh

Things have been jumping in Spruce Pine, and indeed the whole state of North Carolina, with the impending vote over Amendment One. Opinions are running high. Town is tense. But I keep turning my thoughts away from this because somehow my humanity is better served by meditating on the beauty of my late pet, Niamh. She passed away on January 31st of this year. She was a whole world of attitude, wildness, and sweetness. Just looking at her picture makes me dissolve. Here is a poem I wrote for her in 2000:


FOR NIAMH

What shall we do, my tiger girl
When we set off for Spain
You on your tasseled cushion
And me, in my velvet train?

By torchlight on the river bank
A masquerade of mice
Playing psaltery and fiddle
Will scent the air with spice.





                

We'll call for a silver goblet of

Men's lips in jellied wine

And the skulls of little songbirds

For your cruel teeth so fine.

Your paws perfumed with sweet decay

And your jaws that reek of death

You'll recline upon my shoulder

And we'll mingle, breath to breath.

(copyright cathy larson sky)