Journaling June
Flipping back through my June journal scrawls, I’m deliberating what to make of one of my favorite months of the year. Why–with all the blooming, hatching, leafing, fledging, and the newborn twin mule deer fawns–have I often felt like a dandelion seedhead scattered on a breeze? I’d rather be right in the free flow of kingfishers frisking on the nearby Deschutes River.
One calming discipline is my morning journal practice of penning the day, date, year, and place followed by a free write, an aphorism (some kind of ponder), and a poem attempt. I started this specific way upon taking a class from the wondrous poet Kim Stafford during the 2020 Covid summer. After teaching the practice to the six fine students in my”Bird Word” class at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology earlier this month, I decided to share some typed-up scribbles –jazzed with photos, like this one below from our front yard today.
Saturday, June 1st, 2024, Home
LILAC AND HOUSE WREN
Lilacs incandesce
a tight liftoff
blossoms airborne
Every petal
a shooting star
in conversation
with House Wren
song bubbling
purple sweetness
Sunday, June 2nd, 2024, Home
Aphorism: Cherish the singsong of Robin at dawn as common today as the Passenger Pigeon was 200 years ago.
Monday, June 3rd, 2024, Home
CONE
Like a sea star mated with a sea urchin
a male pine cone bursts from ponderosa
needles as if tide pools whirled in trees, as if
full moon pulled Pacific Ocean across Cascades.
So many arms covered in scalloped overlapping scales,
Hues of raspberry sherbert edged in sunrise coral.
Pollen at the center ready to dust the air in golden clouds
seeking female cones. I hold up my two arms—waiting.
Thursday, June 6th, 2023- Eugene
After–hiking Hardesty Mountain:
Aphorism: To be Roadless is to be Refugia
HIKING HARDESTY
Mist in hemlocks sings away colors. Simplifies
Forest in silhouetted black trunks spearing sky
with feathery needle tips.
The trees seem to be lifting off. Untethered
from roots even as Pacific Wren trickling water song
beckons –“stay here!”
Even as a banana slug and millipede meet
on the trail of trillium, fawn lily, and wood fern,
Slow glide, many feet.
Curtaining mist lifts higher on the ridge. Hermit Warbler
blooms sun shimmer song. The great forest settles,
breathes green.
Friday, June 7, 2024- East Devil’s Lake
Swallows never struggle
darting over East Devil’sLake.
Arrowheads without the arrow.
Steered by joy.
Saturday, June 8, 2024, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology
Feather this day in the plumage of all birds
suffusing dawn’s lulling light upon Sitka Spruce.
Every laddered branch a way skyward
as one Swainson’s Thrush warms up with a whistled note
before the soloist operatic aria chording, rising,
steaming, kettling right up into this tree house
where the windows are wide open to my heart
remembering my father who loved thrush song
And then it happens—across the spirit world
He is with me as I rise to teach in the presence
of my Bird Teachers—Swainson’s Thrush, Steller’s Jay,
Hermit Warbler, Pacific Wren, and Pileated Woodpecker
To name a very few… every dip, sway, and crescendo
fluting to the highest branches drooping in cones.
Monday, June 10, 2024 – Sitka Center for Art and Ecology
Aphorism: To awaken every sense, fling open the window.
HILLSIDE
Sitka dawn scintillating in Pacific Wren song a
pointillism painting, glistening staccatos
sparking mist, dissolving
dreams of sliding
downhill
in bare
feet
Tuesday, June 11, 2024, Home
LIVING COLOR
When olivaceous moss
sidles up to chartreuse
lichen knitting a shawl,
Mint tattles on the two
engaged in a tête-à-tête
Turning her hedge nettle prickly
self to oxalis, the emerald shamrock
kissing the forest floor until
brushed by fern tickle
as Oregon grape polishes
philosophy pronouncing
Spruce is spruce, fern is fern
Mint begins to sing in spicy
amethyst flowers spinning
yarns and shanties enchanting
bumblebees seeing ultraviolet
invitations floating their way
beyond our color spectrum.
Friday, June 14, 2024, Home
A TASTE OF DAWN
Nibble aspen heart leaf
Crunch raven triple croaks
Dose cool air swirled on tongue
My coffee with milk a creamy roasted
awakening to this day asking what
will I feed this hungry wildlife haven?
Filling bird feeders, changing water baths,
Tending promise.
Saturday, June 15, 2024, Home
Aphorism—Dreams form cut glass pieces, shards of my life jumbled and rearranged into a design I’ve never seen before.
Saturday, June 22, 2024, Home
Aphorism: To follow where suites of birds fly in forests, take the winding way—never the shortcut.
Sunday, June 23, 2024, Home
ASPEN
Leaf spins on stem then quiets.
Aspen outside our bedroom window
chiming this day in breezed bliss
Notice the way some leaves are still.
Others shake. The way of tremble.
Wind tree. Weather reader.
Set sail by the aspen meter.
Leaves paddling the air.
Dancers on a dangling stem.
Which leaf on the tree am I?
Wind picking up All leaves shake, flap
Sound of one hand clapping.
Maybe I’ll choose the outside leaf
Twirling, risking a fall.
Or is it safer to be tucked deep within
A lock of brushing leaf wings?
Monday, June 24, 2024, Home
Aphorism-
Time to stop calendaring days in deadlines—change them to lifelines!
William Stafford quote from his poem, “Ask Me”–“What the river says, that is what I say.”
Wednesday, June 26, 2024, Home
NIGHTHAWKS
Sunset a fling of penstemon purple over lava fields where two Nighthawks scythe the sky. Beaks open, hunting aerial insects. I watch their flutter and glide. Listen to the peeeent notes like pattering night on her way. Then, one swerves toward the other and dives in a great whooshing rush of air over wings defying all definitions of feathers as soft and rustling. This percussive thrumming of day’s end will linger in my dreams.
Gratitude to my readers. Happy journaling July….
