Grand Lake O' the Cherokees

So, I haven’t given up blogging so soon after I began.

No, no, no.  I’m still here, throwing up random thoughts and sightings on this self-publishing site. 

My little fam went up to the Biddick lake house in Northeast Oklahoma for the week.  We left post-morning nap on Tuesday, just after the Memorial Day kick off of summer/overly crowded, boat-filled cove and returned early afternoon on Sunday.

I wasn’t really looking forward to the trip.* But as we drove up, I thought, “Wow.  I forgot how tall the trees are.”

I kept thinking it the whole time we were there: while I looked over the still waters from the stone front porch, as we took the baby for long walks under the canopy of trees, and even as I glanced out the window as we watched the Thunder lose ( 😢). 

I forgot how tall the trees are.

Something expands in my soul when I remember, something that’s inarticuable (yes, not a word, but is there a word for there not being words?).

And that’s just the trees!  What good do the bright reds of robins, blues of blue birds, and quick-flapping wings of humming birds do?  What does it mean to visit with a fox everyday, to watch a baby squirrel while carrying my own baby, to see a wild-growing berry patch? 

It’s times like these that I wish I was a poet, that I could capture the rustle of the trees and distant chirping birds—or, at least, respond to it in such a way that I participate in the beauty that’s there.

Instead, here’s some more Richard Wilbur (who is, after all, my favorite poet; except maybe Wendell Berry is?).

The Beautiful Changes

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides

The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies

On water, it glides

So from the walker, it turns

Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you

Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed

By a chameloen’s tuning his skin to it;

As a mantis, arranged

On a green leaf, grows

Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves

Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows

Your hands hold roses in a way that says

They are not only yours; the beautiful changes

In such kind ways,

Wishing ever to sunder

Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose

For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

*I wasn’t dreading it, either.  I just kept thinking: we have to move to the front of our duplex when we get back!  I have to pack up all these books, and the insane amount of kitchen stuff we own… and all the other stuff, too.

(Confession: I typed this up while still at the lake on the ol’ Microsoft word as humming birds buzzed and the world was so still I could hear someone across the cove mowing the lawn.)