Hot Sun / Cold Rain

A Robert Frost poem surfaced today, unbidden, from somewhere deep in my first-grade-teacher memory.  I was thinking about how, in my ignorance (innocence?), I evicted that queen bumblebee from her nest by leaving it in the hot sun, a few posts back, and then about  Julie Zickefoose's story of how she cares for her nestlings in cold rainy weather. Y'all, she makes “omelettes” for them.  Don't take my word for it. Read it yourself. The ends to which JZ goes for her baby birds is a remarkable story. 

These things were moiling I guess, because somehow I found myself leafing through poetry books for a verse I thought was called “The Exposed Nest.”  Found it, wonder of wonders. Too bad RF didn't know about JZ's recipe for baby bird omelette.

The poem is exquisite, full of just-right turns of phrase.  I have loved it in years past. Today it made my throat catch.  And just now, typing the words made me "go all soppy," to quote the lovely New Zealand blogger, Jane Robertson. 

I like to think Frost’s mother-bird did come back and was filled with gratitude. dkm

The Exposed Nest

You were forever finding some new play.

So when I saw you down on hands and knees

In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,

Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,

I went to show you how to make it stay,

If that was your idea, against the breeze,

And, if you asked me, even help pretend

To make it root again and grow afresh.

But 'twas no make-believe with you today,

Nor was the grass itself your real concern,

Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,

Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.

'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground

The cutter-bar had just gone champing over

(Miraculously without tasting flesh)

And left defenseless to the heat and light.

You wanted to restore them to their right

Of something interposed between their sight

And too much world at once—could means be found.

The way the nest-full every time we stirred

Stood up to us as to a mother-bird

Whose coming home has been too long deferred,

Made me ask would the mother-bird return

And care for them in such a change of scene

And might our meddling make her more afraid.

That was a thing we could not wait to learn.

We saw the risk we took in doing good,

But dared not spare to do the best we could

Though harm should come of it; so built the screen

You had begun, and gave them back their shade.

All this to prove we cared. Why is there then

No more to tell? We turned to other things.

I haven't in my memory—have you?—

Of ever coming to the place again

To see if the birds lived the first night through,

And so at last to learn to use their wings.

                                                                                                       -Robert Frost

Rue Not This Day

If not birders, they are at least respecters of the natural world, the older couple that stopped in their tracks today when they saw two great egrets light a good distance ahead of them on the boardwalk. They were crossing the marsh on Fripp Island, where I am visiting for another writing retreat.  From my writing house, I happened to be watching the egrets through the binoculars when the couple came into view.  They are people I'm sure I would like.

Everything about their standing still there was a measure of love.  Their stooped posture, their slow progress halted, and the way they supported each other in the act of not disturbing the egrets, did for me what Robert Frost's dust of snow must have done for him when he wrote:

"The way a crow shook down on me,
The dust of snow from a hemlock tree,
Has given my heart a change of mood,
And saved some part of a day I had rued."

The couple did not continue on the path until a third egret flew over, and the two on the banister joined it in flight. I had rued this day for not getting any of the work I came to do done.  The couple and the egrets changed everything.  dkm

Beetle in Shock & Robert Frost

For too many days I've given my backyard over to the heat, the mosquitoes, and a bad mood about not getting to my real work of writing. But this morning the thermometer reads 72 degrees, offering hope. The air is cooler but the mosquitoes are relentless. So much for restoring my mood by sitting outside. I'll be driven in soon, with mosquito-slapping.

Still, the birds sing, the dogs bark, the crickets drone, the squirrels chase, the tiger swallow tails go on intoxicating themselves in the little white tube blossoms of the abelia bushes. A pine cone falls on me from the branch overhead. Whether dropped by a squirrel, or released by its branch, I know not, but it splattered, dry and brittle, on my head and arms. One of the broken pieces landed on the hem of my shirt and didn't fall away like the others. Turns out it's a small brown beetle clinging for its life to the stillness of my shirt, legs and antennae tucked under its hard dry shell, looking for all the world like a piece of pine cone, but not acting like one.

It must have been a terrifying free-fall for a beetle who thought he had found safe refuge in a pine cone far from the madding crowd. When I nudged him with my pencil his antennae and legs popped out as if to say, "What? Am I still alive?" After a moment he crawled away, but not before getting a reading from his wildly waving antennae about his new situation.

Magically, in the time it has taken to write this entry, the mosquitoes have gone away, slow breezes waft, and my bad mood has lifted. It brings to mind yesterday's NYT article about the negative side-effects of constant digital connection, and the energizing effects of a little time spent in nature.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/technology/25brain.html?nl=&emc=aua1

Robert Frost wrote about it too:

Dust of Snow

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of day I had rued.

.