Mumps eyes plead 'no mountain' - from Covid Journals, Crow Flight Over Meadow

Spruce Hill Farm. Keene, NY.  Easter 2013. 

S'been a'swelter up here in higher mounts upstate NY. 90's. Humid. Like walking around with a large hot sponge over your entire head. Cue Darth Vader breathing soundtrack. But, ah, Keene in winter...glorious. Quiet. Still. Until the howl begins, the blow, the fury snow and cloud chaos obliterate all orientation but for sound. Then eventually return to stillness morning blue hues of sun and ice repainting the known world. The old barn stands a little taller proud of its long black shadow over the mascaraed field whom I affectionately call Mabel for memory of the late '70's Waffle House waitress who worked what I called the 'midnight waffles' shift from midnight to 8 am. Heavy on the make up, eyelids turquoised, eyebrows plucked out then painted in with blackest mascara, and all the rest, powder pink blush, cheek and forehead powdered sugar white, a high stack of blue hair, a Pall Mall cig stub stuck to her bottom purple lipsticked lip. Return to frozen field and qualities of color in sheer sunbright snow white clarity primaries with edged shadow subtleties. Unlike cities. Mabel and me. Now she's pretty with purple and shades of green, wild flowers sprinkled, butterflies so many that I tolerate the biting black flies to gestalt the field and flight/alight vision expanded to pixilations framed only by the extent of my unpainted eyelids. Hedge hog moves through the now tall grass. I track its movement across the wide field to the old once was a well, concrete crumbling, a good place to dig in for the season safer from the raven, the coyote and fox. Heard a yip after dusk last night. Might be the wary coyote hovering always just below the near steep lledge or at yard meets woods edge, Mumps I call him some sag or other at his left maw, a limp on forward left paw leg twisted suspect a car hit him survives now forever on edges nothing bold like a regular road crossing or crow flight over meadow or even straight up Marcie's ice scars' mountain dares still trying to pass but imperceptible cuz aeons - Mumps eyes plead 'no mountain' when we make rare eye contact I try to send some friendly thoughts trying what friend Valdosta does a wounded animal herself so, being wounded, is a healer she softly chants

come come come come
come come come come

showing both hands flat palms up for frightened animal to see

come come come come

I've seen her charm racoon-chewed dogs mauled-cats sick-horse motherless-runted-out-kittens into won-trust and life-enough

Mumps ain't having any come come come come

slow eats what's left whats offered in the meadow past dark and Mabel where ravens get to work moon or not peck for the better portions they like bones just like the furred do - Mumps near's watching content enough to eat what might be left of leftovers or excavated fare from back of fridge long forgotten all mold blue or green some slimed things even the barn cats turn their discerning noses to

Already mourning having to return to the City in mid-August.

But my Kobayashi Issa book gathers dust on the side table where I foolishly left it forgotten in my haste to escape the city return to Keene. One thing to look forward to though - Issa. And gathered things such are markers of a life, bookstacks of course, sculptures, paintings, totems, random rocks, crystals, rusted once functioning parts of machinery now in decline/dis/un-use objets d'art photos de de de epochs (brief though ever lingering) friends places meals buses' trains' windows passings through, milky filmy insides again dimmed though solid though artifact - a spider web a century(?) constancy inside containment's bottle excavated beneath 100 year old house 1980 or so who knows where the time tracking goes - dwelt in (alluded century) foot of Mount Mitchell Blue Ridge highest, more bottles 18th century an old tin of snuff snuff still in't and th' dipper one old spoon a bent fork a child's trinket gum machine ring (who wore that?), a silver metal comb needing dental work after ages hairs silvered time transluscent intwined....friends tell me it's time to sort, let go, release these things. I respond with these lines from poet and zen teacher John Tarrant:

There is a blessed fidelity in things.
Useless things grow lovely with good uses.

And these lines (to end it here) by maestro Nathaniel Mackey to sing once more for [I am] useless things -

ghost[s] of an alternative
life... They were we before
we were, ancestral, we who'd
never not be ill at ease.
A vocation for lack he'd have
said, she'd have said longing,
a world, were they to speak, be-
tween...

What wasn't, they'd
have said, went away,
would come back,
first fanatic church,
what would be...

All photos by Warren Falcon (all rights reserved to him)