Two days ago two ducks swam the thin rapids beneath the foot bridge along the Kill, the bridge I think of as the place where my son and I made our pact against anger when we stopped here this past summer.
At my footfall on the bridge they splashed ahead into the small pool, gliding and widening it in doing so: mallards. Later the storm lays down a large tree along the drive in front of the house, the crack and wheezing sigh followed by the easing thud in the persistent rain and constant wind.
Yesterday morning by the gravel path around the shore of Sunset Lake (which darkens and seems deeper now than its jade-scummed late August shallows) three crows sat in profile just beyond the bridge where we made our pact. Returning last night three drummers beat talking rhythms on the opposite shore as they sat on a bench beside a lone fisherman. Whether their drumming was prompted by the new age lunacy of Iron John fervor or whether it was actual, africana or indian, it sounded rich and melancholy in the pinkish twilight of the still lake as I made my way past the red barn where once we sheltered from the rain, across the stone wall, and home.
The Heron gone for days now.
“It’s just the ice I don’t like,” said the woman cashier, explaining about winter.
After eating good curry, a moment of euphoria, followed by the feeling of loss, missing my boys this day of bridges and men drumming. This morning wake late to cold, clear sunlight the day after steam begins to fill radiators in this old house making it hard to breathe or sleep.
On the way back from my walk, the heron not gone but doubled, a mirror bird in the mirror pond beyond.
On the walk, pumpkin furred caterpillar crosses my path where yesterday the striped wooly caterpillar also crossed.
Hornets ceasing on the path, their wings heavy and dull with cold.
A lone dove flies off into the wood.
As the girl who keeps the ecological station drives off in her brown Toyota wagon, bundled in a dark sweatsuit.
The African woman who lives at the ramshackle student house across the lane keeps a blanket spread out in the sun on her lawn, day and night; a blue on blue print of stars and beasts (whales or antelopes I cannot tell from the lane as I walk past). It may be a beach blanket, I don’t know, but she sits there days, her village as much as this my desk, my screen, mine.