Homeboy at Home . . . but the Clock is Ticking

June 17, 2021: Coyote Hollow, Thetford Center, VT

5:06 a.m. (sunrise time fixed, ninth day in succession). 43 (I-can-see-my-breath) degrees, wind ENE 0 mph. Sky: underbelly rinsed in pink by unseen sun, cloudless. Permanent streams: upper, an anemic flow; lower, more than half of the channel a dry bed of stones. Wetlands: see-through fog hangs above the marsh, the silence of the frogs but not of the pileated, which drums behind the malnourished curtain. Pond: rolling mist and an energetic chestnut-sided warbler, high in a cherry, singing, a quiver (or is it a shiver?) accompanies each note, the jittery melody of an intimate of the Neotropics.

Oxeye daisy and red clover blooming along the edge of a road hemmed in freshly fallen needles—courtesy of white pine, arranged by the wind. Crow flies through the woods, subtlely twisting and turning to avoid limbs. Three waxwings gorge on juneberries. Chipping sparrow sings from the pasture fence, tail like a metronome, a measured cadence that bounces with every note . . . a full-body, mechanical trill. Phoebe clutch out of the nest, out of the barn, assemble on the pasture fence, already tail-flicking.

Big eyes gather dim light—minstrels of daybreak and dusk. Veery wakes me up. Hermit thrush puts me to bed. Songs in harmonic series, simple ratios of vibrations. Known to thrushes. Known to whales. Known to nightingales. Known to wrens. Available to who else? Harmony, the hallmark of human music, biological, not cultural, follows mathematical and physical principles, Earthly sequences, appreciated and employed by other species—hermit thrush, the unquestionable virtuoso, song, lush and lovely, rouses shadows.    

Flicker, laughing up the sun, knows nothing about packing, owns nothing, just the feathers on his back, leaves when the spirit moves him.

Late yesterday morning, after hefty basswood fell across the road, taking down the power lines, forcing me to turn around and drive back, I found a painted turtle mid-road, below the bank of the pond. The turtle was black and shiny and as big as my hand, an egg-swollen mother, stiff bulges on the inside of her hind legs. I picked her up and made big wishes. For world peace; the end of starvation for elephants and red knots and man; an appreciation of the planet we live on, that sort of thing. And one little wish, unlikely to be granted . . . a painless, unemotional move. 

Her body savaged by cancer, the turtle had become Linny's symbol of slow-paced living and longevity. Our home had become a repository of turtle nicknacks: turtle nightstand; a ceramic turtle whistle so piercing that Yogi, the border collie, heard it from the edge of the marsh and came home; turtle jewelry; turtle figurines; turtle carvings; and an impractical bowl with a tiny porcelain turtle on the bottom fond of snagging cereal spoons. 

I still have the bowl, and it still snags my spoons. And my memories nearly every morning.