Blessing

Something about the dimness of a rainy sky has its fingers rooted in my spirit, so that when the rain comes cold and trembling to the thirsty ground, it comes singing like a blessing. It draws me irresistibly outside to hold me close, to hold me shivering and happy, bare-foot in the muddy grass and face tilted to the sky-born water, calling out:

Oh wash my eyes and make me see!
Wash my lips and make them clean,
run down my chin and through my teeth
until I thirst no more!

Beneath me, the earth drinks deep until its pores are full and overflowing in cool streams between my toes. I am too small to do the same: this body cannot hold enough of anything to satisfy my heaven-reaching soul.

Someone’s voice is in the rain and echoes in my brain. It is a love song. It cries:

I love you, I love you,
I will quench your thirst both today and tomorrow,
when the sun returns to wither the grass,
and the earth’s wells run dry.

These words, falling heavy on my chest, steal the breath from my throat.
With my tiny voice drowning in all this thunder, how can I sing my reply?

Almost Forgotten

Worn wooden table. Chairs scraping against the floor, children's chattering, laughter. Hot chocolate in old mugs, cupped by little hands.

We made the hot chocolate with microwaved milk, instead of using boiled water like I did at home.
It was never quite as hot, but always warmer on my insides as we sat there, cheeks pink from the snow outside and all of us thinking hard what to do next.

Tents, or houses, made from blankets. Some of them were so heavy, we had to use our schoolbooks to pin them to the couches. There was barely enough room underneath for even our smaller bodies to crawl, especially after we padded the carpet with cushions. It was okay because we were being Cats, and cats don't stand up inside anyway.

Sometimes we made hot chocolate with only half the powdered packet, and ate the other half, which I never did at home. It stuck to my teeth in little gooey lumps, and I thought that was funny.

When we got tired of talking, we lay down and tried to read in the dimness of those quilted shadows. Eventually we took the books and migrated back upstairs to where the winter sunlight poured in through the window.

Sometimes we didn't make hot chocolate at all. If we had played long enough, if the house was warm enough that we didn't care about the cold, we had cups of apple juice instead.

We asked to sleep under those blanket-houses, so we could keep playing even in our dreams, but ended up in proper beds anyway.

Still it was the roads that

caught our attention and

my recollection: there, 

reality blurred, and we found 

a doorway into our own world.

On the roads, we were

adventurers, explorers,

or warriors as we wished--

what exciting journeys

to remember! and how

simple to forget the quiet

comfort of the house that

waited, waited patiently

until the weary travelers

returned.

oh, journals

I found this in my notes today. It's something I wrote back towards the end of June, a brief descriptive journal of the summer thus far. I made myself laugh a little.

--

The wind outside is blowing enough to toss the tree branches from side to side, and it looks like they're playing with each other. The sun is brilliantly gold on every bit of green and not too hot today. All the same, I shall probably soon be called to water the flowers outside that my mother has been planting in recent weeks. There are daisies, lilies, and many others of various shapes and colors whose names I do not know. They are beautiful as long as the sun does not shrivel them and the deer and beetles do not eat them up. Both situations are in constant danger of happening, which makes my mother upset.
If it happens that all the flowers should die, we shall at least have the tomato plants still living, as long as the rabbits and groundhogs do not dig under the fence and eat them, and as long as the ants do not go around building anthills nearby and getting ideas. The ants really have quite the audacity. A few months ago we found an anthill actually inside the house, which was appropriately horrifying to everyone. Thankfully, there are also lots of spiders in the house, so the ants are mostly dead now. I like spiders as long as they are not crawling on me, biting me, or sitting in forbidden places like my clothes drawers.
That is basically the sum of my current summer existence--sunlight, flowers, and insects.
No, I am probably lying. There are other things happening as well, but they don't matter so much to me right now.

--

I particularly like the line about spiders. It's true.

I am in New Jersey

There wasn't a single cloud in the sky tonight, so I could easily see the way the different blues arched overhead: bright and vibrant straight above, then fading to near-white at the very edge of the horizon. It looked sharp, as if the circle of the sky rushed down and sliced through the sea right there.

We didn't stay long enough to watch the sun reach out and play across the water, so I can only imagine how beautiful that must have been. I rather wish we had.

Tomorrow, maybe.

~

A very young boy in stars-and-stripes shorts stood by the sea with a shovelful of sand. He looked as triumphant as a two or three-year-old boy could look.
"Look at America," said one of my brothers. "He claims this land for himself!"
America held his shovel up with both hands and awkwardly tossed its contents at the waves. They mostly plopped at his feet.
He bent down for another scoop of sand and did the whole thing again.

When we were preparing to leave, America walked past us towards the boardwalk, wailing as he clung to his father's hand. He pointed somewhere and sobbed harder. He was obviously trying to get something.
(Whiny child.)

When we were walking back to our house, we passed a family: mother, father, and young son. They were fully dressed now, without their bright swimsuits, so it took a second look for us to recognize them.
"Hey," said Jeremy. "Is that America?"
It was.

Maybe we'll see him again tomorrow.

~

Fireworks are booming from somewhere beyond the other side of the street. They're mostly red and gold, and I have no idea why they're being set off at all. Maybe a clear summer night is a good enough reason to celebrate.

One golden firework lingers in the sky after it explodes into a thousand tiny sparkles.
I imagine this might be what it looked like if it rained light instead of water.

~

The seagulls were massive in number. You couldn't look any direction without seeing one, or twenty. They were also massively obnoxious, constantly stalking as close to you as possible and swooping low over your head, not to mention swarming at the merest hint of food. It would be easy to hate them, or at least resent their presence.

Instead, I mostly envied them.
I envied the way they could spread their wings and beat them till their bodies rose.
I envied the way they could streak through the air just as fast as they wanted to.
I envied the way they could soar upon the strong, cool wind, confidently tilting here and there as they rode the shifting currents of the vivid sky.

These rugged scavengers are as loud as they are bold. They'd answer me, no doubt, but I don't know how to ask them if they'll teach me how to fly.

I'd ask tomorrow if I could.

Picture of A Summer Evening

Thunder grumbles in the distance like a giant restless river. The air and clouds hang heavy with the promise of rain, but rain doesn't come. The scorched, thirsty ground remains dry.

--

The bird's sound is not like any kind of music that I know, but rings clear in trills and rounded notes, smooth and loud and lilting. I wonder at the rippling sound bursting from the bird's throat, surely shaped so differently from my own. It is not so much a song--(if some wild melody is promised, it fades too quickly, only completed, perhaps, in the human mind)--but what else can we call it?

--

Sunset glows warm through the thinning cloud-veil;
gentle colors gather in the west, saying
farewell to the day.
No ray of light can needle through the heavy air
and brush across the leaves to set them ablaze--
the evening trees of green and gold
are only green tonight.

--

I saw a firefly. Couldn't tell if he was green or yellow, but the light was very bright. He blinked with his whole body, and fifteen others followed him at once.

--

It's dark now, so the windows become mirrors, and I can only see outside through my own reflection. My body is too narrow to watch the whole night wrap its arms around the house, but the night doesn't mind. I think the bird sleeps with the sun, both of them silent as the crickets take up the song of summer, and the moon thrusts its silver light against the other side of the inky clouds, hoping that a sliver will peek through. Perhaps, here and there, it does.

It's still dark.

Thunder grumbles again, and again the ground and I will hold our breaths for rain. It is only a promise. Perhaps it will come when I, too, lie down and sleep.

Two fireflies are left blinking above the grass. They surge up, up, higher and higher, their light twinkling in bright streaks behind them.

They are my stars against the murky sky.

6-15-12 Miscellaneous

(Because I felt like I needed to post on this blog, and I'm too lazy to come up with some cohesive idea right now. Text below has been taken from all over the place, certain bits having been jotted down in my Simplenote notes from quite a while ago.)

• I like this quote: "The people talking about the weather had no intention whatever of of really exchanging meaningful information on the subject; they were merely using language to fill the emptiness between them, to conceal the fact that they had no desire to tell each other anything at all." ~ Martin Esslin
• I enjoy drawing in a realistic style because then it feels like I'm simply copying the strokes of a greater artist. He sure knew what he was doing.
• I kind of dislike "that moment" things, but seriously, that moment when you go to type "face" and it comes out "foam"? What. Maybe that just happens to me. Fortunately, I love foam. 
• I watched Snow White and The Huntsman a week ago with Colleen and Emily. My conclusions: it was a gorgeous movie that was sadly lacking in the plot department, and the acting execution ranged from excellent (Charlize Theron) to eh, okay (Kristen Stewart, for whom heavy breathing apparently = every single emotion. I think she smiled like, twice.). I would go into more details, but that would probably end up in spoilers. I will say, though, that with the measly amount of time that was spent on the huntsman's character, the movie might as well have been titled Snow White and the Evil Queen.
• By the way, Evil Queen was awesome. And even though Ravenna is such an obvious symbolic name for a queen with raven-minions, I  like the name a lot. Ravenna Ravenna Ravenna.  
• OH OH and they got Florence and the Machine to sing for the end-credits song! That may have been my favorite part of the movie, accompanied as it was by slow-mo close-ups of a figure dressed in intricate obsidian armor. It was cool yo, totally cool. 
• Should I put up a full review on this blog or not? I might. I can't seem to stop analyzing this movie whenever my brain has a free moment >.o
• Word-magnet poem thingy from a few weeks ago:

Over a thousand lakes of wind and time

moon light whispered through diamond mist

as a boy played his dreams to sleep

beneath a still blue sky.

• I love making sentences with those magnets. It's such a creative challenge.
• Oh, I should probably comment on the fact that school is over. Yay. But sad too, because I miss the teachers and the friendses. 
• Well, school's kind of over for me. I still have two units of Mandarin to work through. Urgh.
• Hm, it thunders, but the sky is still blue? Or am I imagining the deep growls coming from behind those fluffy, sunlit clouds? o.O 
• I promised myself I would write lots of poems once the summer began...but inspiration is strangely lacking. Ideas, people? What new forms shall I tackle? What new topics? Suggestions would be much appreciated.

Okay. That's it.
I'll write some better-focused blog posts in the near future.