Red dawns have been happening without me. This experience requires an exit procedure: Slipping out of a warm bed into cold stiff jeans, finding a pair of socks, keys, camera and mittens in an unlit house with an unlit mind. Sometimes this is beyond me.
Shhhh —somewhere earth is meeting water, water is lapping against light.
But elsewhere I am following rules: getting to work on time, obeying the dotted lines, not talking to strangers, writing a grocery list. Staying on task, staying within the lines.
After x number of days staying on task, I find myself tying silver maple leaves to knobs on kitchen cupboards,
carving pumpkins — not for the resulting lanterns — but for the scraps that happen as we cut.
And somewhere will sit a pumkin on a doorstep — a pumkin without lips.
i completely feel what you say about that red dawn happening without you -- having to slip out of a warm bed into cold stiff jeans....you capture that ambivalence exquisitely - you want to get up but you don't.....arghhh that's the way it feels -
ReplyDeleteyou keep tying those maple leaves to those knobs
That 'red dawn' photo is stunning!
ReplyDeleteI remember this feeling when I was working.It was like work was killing my soul. Not forever, but the last few years.
ReplyDeleteWhen I retired I sat, with my coffee and my dogs, on my front porch every morning for weeks until it got too cold. I watched every sunrise. I took deep breaths and I collected beautiful fall colored leaves and scattered them on the tops of tables and bookshelves.... in protest to all the perfection that made me color inside the lines for the first 60 years of my life.
So many roads paved with good intentions...I keep meaning to get up ahead of the sun but it's been POURING here on and on so I can use that as my excuse. Is there a pumpkin parts dealer in your neck of the woods? I think a Halloween poem is in the works...curse of the lipless pumpkin.
ReplyDeleteThat is a very condemning pumpkin.
ReplyDeletewhat a wonderful sunrise photo, stunning colours
ReplyDeleteThere is a part of me, I know, that reaches back to the Druids, it is cellular. Though a suburban dweller, the conjuring power of golden leaves tied to cabinets knobs, the shapes of pumpkin carvings, feel like affirming nods to the magic with which we once surrounded ourselves. A dawn understands that you have to make choices.
ReplyDeleteamanda,
ReplyDeletefor a bit of time, my bike was freed from the cramped "space" in my garage so i could pedal out to the dawn, so to speak. then something happened to that cramped space and i couldn't get to my bike. that's today's excuse for staying in bed when i actually don't want to....
karyn,
it is such a great shot. it belongs to my father. untouched montana sky.
farmlady,
just what i needed to read. a few years ago i accidentally let a pomegrante dry up in my kitchen. it's dying red was so gorgeous i ended up letting a few more accidentally die without eating them. they last longer than dried leaves. (but we have no humidity here).
kerry,
ha! a pumpkin parts dealer! let's write WANT ADs. "wanted, two buck teeth, orange, and two eyebrows that won't curl after being carved."
rox,
he was such a little guy!
crafty green, good to hear from you. often times that the entire morning sky is that color. i used to live along a river and the far shore was actually a steep cliff. the sun rose behind us, but the cliffs would reflect that deep red/pink. i miss that.
marylinn,
we both reach back, then. you often explain me to myself and i am sure you don't realize it. i love this: "a dawn understands you have to make choices". yes.