Like a diamond in the sky

I increasingly feel at home in the universe. I accept the stories that modern astronomy tells us about the stars – so very much matter and energy – and the distances and time as well - our universe. And yet what I can see with my own eyes is familiar. Again and again I look up and I see the stars. For countless generations, human beings have created a kind of meaning and understanding out of what appears to be an otherwise random sky.

And so I stepped outside and looked up at the night sky earlier this summer - and I saw Cygnus the Swan. Even with our light polluted skies and with my rudimentary astronomical knowledge, I could readily make out five stars that are part of the constellation Cygnus from my own backyard.

You could visualize part of the constellation Cygnus as a diamond kite that is tipped onto its side. The paper and the sticks are unseen, of course, but you can see the points of the kite as points of light - one star in the middle where the two sticks would cross and four more at the ends of the sticks. As I looked east over the roof of my house, the star at the point where you would tie the kite tail was southernmost, nearly over my chimney.

There is a very evident order to our universe. We know that the stars form galaxies and super clusters that are expanding away from each other at unfathomable speeds. And yet from our human perspective, the stars over our heads are always precisely where they should be as the earth turns under our feet. The pole star hangs due north in the sky and at an angle of 39 degrees above the horizon from where I usually stand on the earth. Each year as summer begins, Cygnus will always be rising in the east near midnight, wheeling around the pole star. And so on the thirtieth of May, 2017, I saw Cygnus the Swan flying just over my roof. I think that it is something to always be able to rely on the stars being out there. I have to be looking to see them.

Now it is easier for me to visualize geese than swans. I have often actually seen geese flying close at hand. From the surface of the Kaw River they flap their wings hard, scrambling to lift their bodies clear of the surface of water. They beat their large wings again and again as they climb into the sky gaining elevation. And then they are overhead, their wings outstretched, body and neck and head extending forward. The geese fly forward. And one night, I, just one single human being, standing in my backyard around midnight at the beginning of another summer, I saw a clear, fleeting image of one of those geese, playing out in a pattern of stars against a not quite black sky.

I don’t generally see the images associated with the constellations. Mostly the stars just form some patterns that I have come to recognize. The patterns have been named by people from the beginning of time. The big and little dipper look like dippers. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor – the big and little bear - in the eyes of some ancients. Cassiopeia is an elongated W. The throne of a queen. In a few more months, I will spot Orion the Hunter rising in the winter in the southern part of the sky. I look for the three stars of Orion’s belt. I forget which star in the whole figure of Orion is Rigel and which is Betelgeuse. I could look it up. Or I could just look up. I have my own names for some of the patterns I recognize.

But on this night I saw a giant goose flying forward across the night sky. Just over my roof. Flying in such nearly infinite slow-motion, with such power and grace that all of time might have just as well have stopped. It was a giant goose up there just over my roof – flying forward. And then it was just stars in the night sky again.

For imagination to work you have to have looked carefully over some time. At the geese flying from the river, for example. At the stars in the night time. You put all of these patterns into your memory over time and then one night they might just overlap somewhere in your mind. And you will be amazed, as I have been, at what you see.

I suggest that you not make either too much or too little of the imagining and realities that I am talking about here. And you surely don’t have to take my words for any of this if you don’t want to. But I am here to tell you that you can see all sorts of amazing things for yourself. And something of what I saw.

Just step outside on a clear summer night.

Look up.

Cygnus flies true.

Moonflower coupes

I dreamt that I saw two of those long forgotten half-moon coupes

flowing passed me as I stood in my garden

in the silent deep of the night.

Those crescent bodies of the deuce coupes were fashioned

entirely out of dreams and white-petaled moonflowers,  

soft as a little girl’s skin.

As I watched, those two coupes

glided onward down the ash-colored street,

shimmering, wakes of incandescence cooling

and then faintly splashing against the low curbing

to either side of the street.

There was no other sound.

I heard not a whisper of wind

in the silent deep of the moonlit night.

And then the satiny hushed coupes both turned together

onto the yard in front of the dark-windowed house

where the two little tow-haired neighbor girls I know both live.

And I will tell you now,

the ground-hugging edges of those moonflower coupes

fluttered just a little like little girls’ ruffled skirts

as they floated effortlessly

up and over the curbed edge and onto the dewy grass

in the silent deep of a moonflowered night.

The two little girls must have been fast asleep at that hour,

of course, and you should know, if you don’t already know,

that moonflowers bloom for only one night.

Natural history

When I build a cairn, gravity and balance are all that really matter. Of course, my mind and body are also somewhat involved in the process, as well.

The levee along the Kaw River is faced with large limestone boulders. There was once a vast sea in these parts many ages ago. The settling of the skeletal remains of marine organisms made sedimentary limestone beds over time.

Hard rock.

Then, the earth continued to change over time. Rising mountains to the west eventually eroded away with tiny bits of rock, weathering, and then working their way ever downward, deeply burying the beds of limestone.

Prairie.

Soil and grasses. Other plants and animals. A sea of grasses waving in the wind where once had  waved the waters of an inland sea.

And on the prairie, a river begins to form as rain falls down on slightly uneven ground in the heartland of a continent. Gravity pulls each molecule of water down and down towards the Gulf. Freshets become creeks. Creeks become a river. And a prairie river will, over time, carve a winding path across the relatively horizontal landscape, the flowing current continually braiding and rebraiding itself from one mud bed and sand bar to another.

Water.

The river water flows on and on down to the ocean. The earth. Rainfall. A watershed. A river.

Humans.

After the flood of 1951 along the Kaw River, the levee was built to try to contain the river along the path where I now so often walk. Limestone was at hand. And so, things are the same and not the same.

Time.

But over time, even in this time, some things remain fundamental – like the sun and a river and rocks.

Gravity and balance.

I suppose that the question might be asked why anyone should bother to build a cairn along a river at all – a small stack of Kansas limestone rocks taken from the bed of an ancient sea to be carefully balanced one on top of the other, upwards towards the sky, upwards against the inexorable pull of gravity.

Well, let’s just say for now that it is merely instinct. Human instinct. After all, humans have been building cairns in places where they have found themselves for a long, long time. Perhaps not as long as there have been rivers. Perhaps not with limestone. But it can be said that for a long, long time, human beings have built cairns.

You could ask the question about any particular cairn that you might see: why is that here? You could ask me the same question. Why you? Why here? Why now? One answer - one that is almost no answer at all is the that one I will offer: I was here - with some small measure of gratitude.

Balance. Gravity. A moment in time.

And it’s not just me. Others are building cairns along this river. You can see them sometimes. And then they’re gone. Humans build and humans knock down. Or maybe the earth shifts just enough that the rocks just fall down as rocks will fall. Or it’s the wind. Or the rain. The forces that with gravity that have shaped the world all around us. It’s still about time.

But sometimes you will see a simple human striving for balance within gravity’s inexorable pulling.

Cairn.

Paige's cairn

Photo by Paige V. Reilly

I saw a friend's photo on FB and wondered if I could find her cairn. There are clues in the photo and I asked her for some clarification. This photographic moment had to have been taken west of the Kaw River Bridge off of the levee trail down near the water around sundown. A stack of rocks in a jumble of rocks.

This photo sequence with comments is my story of my little quest to find Paige's cairn -  a walk near sunrise in June.

Link to 3 minute YouTube - Paige's cairn

Pennywise OR Old hearts pounding pavements

She passed me on the run,

her soles were pink,

her socks were purple

and her shorts were black and white.

Her legs were tanned and bare

and her shoulders, also two – bare too –

and above it all, her light red hair

tied up in a bobbing pony tail,

keeping quick time like a coppery pendulum,

swinging and swaying –

tick tock –

tick tock.

But, alas, the time that the young woman kept

was time she kept not for me.

There were some wires curling out

of both her ears,

but there was no smoke nor fire

that I could see.

Still she hastened away from me

and as I reached down deep into my pocket

for my electronic device, I could find

no settings to tune her back in

to my much older wavelength.

And then when I looked back up, peering,

her pink soles had run keen out of sight.

Quickly I walked, at least for me,

I looked both ways at the corner.

I looked to the left

and I looked to the right.

No flashing pink soles

did I see bouncing up and down

nor down and back up.

No purple socks,

nor pendulum pony tail -

no nothing but cracked and empty concrete sidewalks.

So with my eyes still searching high and low,

and once or twice more low and high,

I stepped off of the curb.

Alack! I abruptly came to a halt

in front of a honking speeding, silver sedan.

The hurtling car missed me by ten or twenty feet,

but still my heart dropped, still pounding,

and when I bent to the pavement to pick it up I saw

that it was only a copper penny

lost carelessly in the street.

The penny had been darkened with age

and honest Abe was as simply speechless as I was.

But in these times, a penny is insufficient payment,

my heart too old for skipping beats,

my life flickering - not flashing - before my squinting eyes,

and not least –

no sight of her vanishing pony tail marking my time.

Her shoulders were bare,

her two legs were running out of my sight,

but her pony tail still beating steadily in my mind -

I wondered how could she have passed me by so easily?

I tried to put the penny in the meter

but they only wanted nickels and dimes

and at a quarter to two, or shortly thereafter,

it appeared that my time was finally running out.

No other choice did I see,

I had looked too many times in vain,

so I just put the penny in my pocket.

Tomorrow, after all, might be a rainy day.

Though if the sun comes around shining

there will likely be another woman running,

they come along like clockwork

but not quite as often as buses anymore.

Still it’s probably too soon or too late

to not step in front of one or the other.

Not the buses and cars do I mean,

though I certainly won’t miss their rumble and belching

when they’re gone.

But after all is said, something must be done,

and you’re finally ready to stop, look, and listen,

here’s my simple untimely advice:

Look to the right and look to the left,

and pay dearest heed to what is right in front of you.

Her soles will be pink,

her socks will be purple,

her shorts will be black and white,

and bare shoulders or not,

her legs will be running,

her pony tail will be marking the time.

Coming and going on the midnight train

All of my posts are personal in the sense that they are my voice and they say something about me. This one is personal in a different way. I am posting a video/slideshow of a day with Dawn and my very good friends. No great intimacy has been harmed in the making of this film. Well, if you know the people, there might be some interesting details to tell. But not without their permission - you could ask them - or me - for yourself.

I suggest that you click on the link to Alison Krauss's YouTube in a separate window and then the link to GaFrDaBe. You can listen to her and watch my little film at the same time. You'll have to work around the ads and the videos won't time out perfectly. But we did go down to the river. And there are other correlations. Or you could just listen to Alison Krause and watch her sing. You know - you might do both - apart - together - more - or less. It's up to you.

The four of us chose to become friends more than thirty years ago. We didn't have to remain connected - they have been living in Germany and Switzerland. I'm not entirely sure how our friendship happened - and continues. We did make some choices - but not all of them.

The randomness of the universe creates interesting possibilities. We saw them off on the midnight train. They had a sleeper car and the conductor shushed us as we waved and hollered goodbye through the open door window as the Amtrak Super Chief began to pull out of the Lawrence station heading west. Apparently the people in car 330 were trying to sleep.

Memories and mystery remain.

As always, I am open to a conversation. If you leave questions in the comments section I will try to answer myself - there or in a private message.

As I go down to the river to the river ...

GaFrDaBe

Now let us have a little talk with ...

The morning had broken a clear blue and I stepped outside to put on my gardening shoes. There were sunflowers and moonflowers to thin in the front bed and weeds to pull. The sun was warm and rising higher into the sky. In time I began to shed my extra flannel shirts. I mostly kneeled in the soft soil, pulling up plants and tossing them into a five gallon bucket. I was in no hurry and I didn’t feel alone. Gardening can be an easy time to think about people that I care about.

And then I recalled a young woman from the other day and a conversation unfinished. There’s rarely time for more than a word or two while she’s working at the coffee shop. We were talking about loneliness – about someone that she knew who was learning to live alone. She told me that you can always talk with Jesus.

Now I haven’t spoken much in my native religious tongue in a long, long time. There is too much dissonance in my mind between the words and the tunes. I would just rather talk with a barista close enough to touch – but actually just glancing into each other’s eyes from time to time. Her very audible voice almost sounds in my ears before it reaches my mind and then lodges in my soul. I think that I still have a soul – whatever you want to call it. And then, that morning in my garden, there she was, close in my mind. You should know that I have a mind full of memories. And some of the old songs still resonate.

And then - then there was this. I only remembered just the one line from somewhere within me. A deep bass voice singing up from the depths: “Now let us have a little talk with Jesus, and da da da da dah.” And then I supposed that what happened after was only a bit of randomness. It wasn’t as if it was the very next instant or anything like that. But a yellow swallowtail landed among the moonflowers almost close enough to touch. I could have spoken my heart’s desire in that moment. It might have been a prayer. The wings of that yellow swallowtail beat almost in time with my heart. I didn’t feel alone.

Then the butterfly and whatever possible spirit fluttered off and I eventually finished my tasks for the morning. After lunch and a nap, I would walk to the river. And on my way home, I would stop at a coffee shop and have a little talk with a barista. I’ll give her some of my extra moonflowers if she wants them.

So sing it again for me, Willie. And thank you for listening. Sometimes the people who listen to what I have to say are the next best thing to a Great Spirit or a Creator of the Universe. These are merely the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, after all. And perhaps I’m imagining things - but not that yellow swallowtail butterfly. If I lift up mine eyes, I see patterns of beauty and life enduring – if not forever.

I don’t feel alone.

YouTube - Willie Nelson sings ...