Young woman walking

When she passed me on the bridge,

there were only a few inches

of pale lower calf

between the plain cotton skirt

and the tops of her well-worn work boots.

A lustrous red-brown they were.

Her faded blue skirt

folded up around her legs

and fluttered at the hem.

She was walking a half-step faster than I was.

I caught a glimpse

of cheek and dark glasses,

her rusty hair tied back,

and I followed her as she pulled away.

She carried a book in one hand.

I wondered if we might have had anything

to say to each other.

For I was nearly twice her age,

and a stranger.

Maybe if I see her again,

I’ll ask her where she got her boots.

***

When she passed me on the bridge, there were only a few inches of pale lower calf between the plain cotton skirt and the tops of her well-worn work boots. A lustrous red-brown they were. Her faded blue skirt folded up around her legs and fluttered at the hem. She was walking a half-step faster than I was. I caught a glimpse of cheek and dark glasses, her rusty hair tied back, and I followed her as she pulled away. She carried a book in one hand.

I wondered if we might have had anything to say to each other. For I was nearly twice her age, and a stranger. Maybe if I see her again, I’ll ask her where she got her boots.

The Prairie at Prairie Park in June

The other evening, I realized I had never looked at prairie over time the way I have the Kaw River or even Downtown Lawrence, for example. As the old established prairie at Prairie Park revealed, the impression that a well-balanced prairie is a grassy place clearly has a lot to do with 'when' you look as well as 'where.' On the other hand, I had never seen such a profusion of wild flowers as I did on the last Tuesday in June of this year.

I shouldn't be surprised that seeing and understanding any particular thing takes time and attention. Or that I am inclined to forget that basic truth in various instances. My regular walks have been invaluable in sharpening my awareness. But my ignorance about prairie systems remains. I do know a few things, but my primary advantage over people who routinely fail to notice almost everything is that when I saw that bit of prairie with my mindset, I was at least able to recognize my ignorance. Time and attention in this area would still be required to change my level of understanding of prairies.

I hope to make it to Prairie Park more often, but I like my current routine. Everyone chooses their own places that matter to them. Many people don't realize that the primary place they have chosen is in front of a screen (he said, as he typed those words). But I meant 'screen' as their primary window on the world. Second choice is their car window.

I see this as a serious underlying problem in modern culture. It's not just that people have a fundamental lack of awareness of nature, most barely understand the human-made environment around them - the ecology of infrastructure, for example.

I won't do more than state my hypothesis, but perhaps this lack of primary empirical perception in so many people is at the root of our culture's ready gullibility in political/social matters.

All that from less than an hour of walking through prairie.

Farmer's Market

Spin the tangle into the thread of memory

like the woman in the rainbow bonnet

at Cottin’s Farmers Market

on the sixth day

of the sixth month.

And buy a shaken lemonade

from the dark skinned woman

who also sells bulging bags of pork skins.

And talk to the man under his hat

from Vinland Valley Nursery

about the weather

as you overlook his potted plants.

And I said,

it is good.

I didn’t create any of it,

the lemons,

the sugar

or the hands

who shook it all with the ice.

But on the sixth day,

I drank that woman’s lemonade,

and it was very good.

Yesterday's nail

The earth turns,

erasing yesterday.

Even if a mark was made,

new meaning must be attached.

We cannot breathe

into our minds

the pure air of dawn’s line.

We must put on the torn shirt,

scuff the boots,

perhaps bark a knuckle.

Timber felled.

Planed boards joined.

A fumbled nail falls though

the cracks.

This effort will hold off

sun and rain

for a turn,

but what is done

will be undone.

And more insidious,

yet for our benefit,

what we felt when we drove

home the first nail

must be renewed.

And yet we stretch the moments

we build,

and the earth turns again

and spills the light into darkness.

Yesterday emptied,

to be filled again.

A steel nail,

now a vapor.

When we close our eyes,

something is slipping away.

When we open them,

yesterday is gone.

and we heft a hammer,

anew.

Today it was my birthday

I like to see girls in gray sweatshirts

and brightly colored nylon shorts,

in sneakers and dark socks,

their bare knees kicking in the air,

a pony tail or two bouncing,

the girls chattering and laughing

amongst themselves

as they walk and skip and dance

along the sidewalk.

I watched them as I walked up

from the side in South Park.

Then they were ahead of me on the sidewalk,

heading toward downtown.

And in spite of their youth,

actually because of it,

they were soon behind me.

Is it perverse at my age,

or is it our age that is perverse?

As I walked ahead,

I heard them singing

a very old song,

‘Even though I ain’t got money,

I’m so in love with you, honey,’

and I wished with all my heart

that I could have turned for a moment

and sung along with them

and not have them run away.

They don’t need to know,

and I won’t tell them:

this old man sung along with that song

long before they were born.

But I like to see girls in gray sweatshirts.

Downed peonies

Yesterday’s welcome,

heavy Memorial Day rain

knocked the peonies down,

pink and white petals

strewn on the grass

for their own funeral.

But next spring

the peonies will come full circle

for another brief turn

in the May sun.

This year, while we

admired them

in their time,

they gave us not

a moment’s thought.

And soon it will be June.

Peony petals at my funeral

might be fine,

but I’ll look for a few

more bright blooms,

please.

The grass whithers,

the flower fades,

and the rain knocked

the heavy peonies

down.

Living Light Bubbles

At low water there is a pool just downstream from the North Unit of the Bowersock Hydroelectric Plant. A slight current seeps through the plant. Limestones on the levee, the blue sky, the weedy bank – all reflect on the near stillness.

But at the edge of the sand and gravel spit where I sometimes stand, my soles squishing at the level of the river water, the slight current rises up from the pool and rushes around the shallow point.

The sunlight, lowering its intensity for the winter, refracts off ripples too slight to be seen at the water’s surface and trails of fringed light bubbles appear a few inches below, slipping and slithering along the bottom.

The water, even the Kaw water, is so clear at this depth as to be invisible. And the bubbles of light appear to magically form out of nothing, living for the length of a single pace, were I willing to step in and get the tops of my shoes wet and perhaps annihilate their world. They quickly slide, one or two at a time, quickly after each other, a nano-something above the muddy sand, bending for the rust-colored mossy stones in their path. They shimmer for an instant, then are caught briefly in a net of shining crossing lines, flickering like flames under the water, before everything disappears into the murky depths on the other side.

As the sun was setting, I imagined that only I had survived to tell you of this non-carbon based life form of light bubbles about to go extinct in the night.

Perhaps they will return against improbable odds. Perhaps it will rain and their entire universe will be changed. They were something to behold for the moments they passed through my awareness.

And then I turned and walked away.

***

I went back to that very spot a month or so later. It was windier for one thing.

I saw no light bubbles. But as I crouched in the loose, water-logged gravel on that point,

a brown-feathered duck swam soundlessly into my vision. He was scarcely farther away from me than I am tall. There was some white on his head with brown irregular spots. His bill was pink.

He turned in the water and opened his bill as if to speak, and then he paddled away.

There is little more to be made of what I saw that afternoon, other than to say that I was there for a few moments.

And grateful.

***

I went to that spot yet again. I saw a few small colonies of light bubbles that afternoon. I walked along the shore and came upon a younger couple standing in the sand. Her cap was nearly the color of the duck’s bill and I stopped to mention that if they were in no hurry they might wander back up to the point and look for the light bubbles.

I later saw them standing down there, well below where I then sat on a bench on the levee, my jacket off in the low January sun. I saw the woman point with an extended arm toward the water at their feet.

I opened my mouth as if to speak, and then I turned my head and looked out across the river.

***

An eagle flew nearly over their heads and mine at about same the time the younger couple were looking downward, watching their step, as they climbed up to the levee from the sandbar.

In a few minutes, they approached, the woman had her brown hair tucked under the faded baseball cap about the color of the bill of a brown-feathered duck that had swam toward me at the very same place where only these few moments ago these very same two people had recently been standing on the river shore, this woman herself pointing toward the very spot.

We talked for several minutes – of the river and other things. I saw no reason to mention the eagle.

To me it’s not the coincidences that are amazing, but that I am here to see any of it at all.

If we don’t mess everything up, another eagle will be flying here on another day - and maybe then, these two will be here to see it.

***

I haven’t meant to tell you everything. If you have questions, ask the duck. I think he knows more than he lets on.

But I have seen those living light bubbles. One place you might see them is a point just below Bowersock North. If you don’t find them, well, don’t fret. Not everything is as obvious as a new pickup truck commercial.

***

I saw the woman in the cap with the pink bill walking with her fiancée, a few weeks back. We acknowledged each other but we didn’t speak. For me, the sighting was a welcome as an eagle flying over my head.

Enjoy life where you are. Light bubbles require more time and attention. Sometimes astonishment will just fly right over your head if you’re looking with your eyes open.

- for Charity and Tim