To the leaves

On the roadside, twenty miles out. A cold wind from the north. Forty two degrees in the shade, warmer in the sun. I am bundled in gloves and hat and wool sweater. Sitting there, quietly on the banks of some road whose name and number I do not know, watching the water of another nameless thing run. There are birds overhead. Hawks. Seven of them. I imagine myself being lifted up by them, all at once, their claws sinking into the wool, and soaring up into the air with me. They fly me around and they are gentle. They know that they cannot eat me, and so they just fly me. Up over Old Baldy Peak, and down through the trees in the valley, my bike a speck on the ground. I see the carless road and the patches of snow. The bundles of hay. And this is time travel. This soaring with the birds, the red atop their skulls, jutting forth.

"A stagger in the air as if a language failed, a sleight of wing.
a snipe's bleat is fleeing its nesting ground into dialect, into variants,
transliterations whirr on the nature reserves~
little goat of the air, of the evening, little goat of the frost.
it is his tail feathers drumming elegies in the slipstream"
~Seamus Heaney {from The Backward Look}

Still gathering thoughts about this place here. Some wonderful insights you've all presented. I especially liked the quote about Spalding Grey. This morning though, i will rake the leaves, pulling their fragile skeletons from the earth benetah the snow. They will lay in piles like weightless bones. Angels, not corpses. That will be my art this morning. Neither the words nor the guitar. The leaves.

In other news, I happen to be selling one of my guitars. I plan to sell it on Ebay, but figured I'd offer it here fist if anyone's interested. You may read about, and look at it HERE. Send an email to info@abovetheorangetrees if interested.

To the leaves~

Posted by jeff pitcher at April 15, 2005 10:10 AM

....................................