Yesterday, the telltale signs of the gentle season were 
everywhere, a fishing pole left on a dock, a pair of kayaks,
three little ones chasing a kite their Dad was flying. 
A pile of bikes were left on a pier while their owners
ran off to climb all over the rocks. 

Windows were rolled down and pulled up
as the fresh air lazily wended its way in.

It takes a certain kind of courage or audacity or just a true sense of self to don a top hat and a flowing skirt, to create something that is utterly your own style and walk out onto a stage and sing a song.  To boldly say, "Here I am; here is my song.”  To have thousands lean in close to listen and to keep that keeping on for more than 30 years. I marvel at it.  

I was thinking about Stevie Nicks after reading a piece a while back in The Huffington Post. She was talking about Fleetwood Mac’s upcoming tour and new artists she finds interesting, but what struck me was the story she told about how she got started. 

When she was 15, she signed up for a month of classical guitar lessons. Shortly after, her teacher decided to move and he sold his guitar to her parents who gave it to Stevie for her 16th birthday. 

The article went on,  “And I wrote a song a week later, and I went and said to my mom and dad, "You have to come into my bedroom and sit on my bed, and I'm going to sit and I'm going to play you this song." 

By the end of the song she was crying.  “And my mom and dad have little tears in their eyes and they said, `Well,  you know what, that's a good song.’ “And I said, `Well, I'm glad you like it, because I'm going to be a songwriter and that's it. That's what I'm doing.’" 

I loved the steadfastness of that, the no-matter-what of her quest. She was going to be an artist and that was that. She says all these years later  it  remains true. 

So I dust off the old albums. (Well, only metaphorically because actually we have nothing to play them on anymore and they are warped and scratched from that younger self listening. Instead, I download some songs from ITunes.)  

I settle in for a new listen, startled again at the alchemy of songwriting,  how someone sitting in a home in L.A. or a  little place in Brooklyn can write down lyrics, and pluck out chords. Someone like Stevie Nicks can turn this into a song that eventually wends itself our way, across miles and years and circumstances to us. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03/stevie-nicks-fleetwood-mac-reunion-rihanna-kanye_n_2220029.html

Today feels like spring; the sun is out; 
the temperature is gently moving up toward 50. 
People have left their coats at home or in the car. 

The day seems to be inviting us someplace new, 
saying "Where to next?"

We all leave traces.

And so it goes again, my picks in the NCAA men's basketball 
bracket: out of it in that very first stretch. 

I'm in it for the hubbub,
the hoopla,  
that's what I like about March Madness,
that, and the fact that there will always be a Florida Gulf Coast 
taking us for a ride, reminding us we never do know. 
There's a bit of glory in 
each of us.

"...Whoever you are, no matter how lonely
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, hard and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."
          ~ from "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2002/06/21


~ Poetry on the occasional Wednesday

Spring, 
again.

Horse Barn Hill

We'd wandered up to UConn on a blustery, bright Saturday afternoon and the first stop, as usual, was Horse Barn Hill. 

I've always been taken by the name and the feel of the place. It was and still is a little like home 

Even now, walking up the hill and around the barns, I can remember a lonely Sunday morning or two when I was homesick or wondering what my life would one day be, back when I was 20. 

I'd walk along that hill, stop to see the cows and sheep and pigs and the horses, wander past the stone wall and the familiar trees and soon 
enough those feelings would un-jangle.  

Always, there was something lovely there, like this horse the other day, our official greeter. She followed us along the fence and reached out to say hello. 

And so the buds begin to open.

 

 I  like finding chalk messages on the sidewalks of Manhattan. I've walked by quotes,  a few lines from an Emily Dickinson poem and a message printed in a pale lavender chalk that said,  "Left on Astor" and a few patches of sidewalk later, "Did you remember the wine?"

This one was a little edgier than most but I smiled anyway. 

For the longest time this fluffball of a cat has meowed the heartiest of 
morning hellos as I walked on my way to the beach. She'd amble along 
with me for a stretch, looking for a nice scratch behind the ears, lolling 
about on the pavement. I'd find her lounging on the top of a car one morning, 
asleep on a couple of different front porches on other days.  If we were a picnic crowd heading for a swim or a gathering of folks knocking on doors at Halloween, there she would be. For long spells, I wouldn't see her. Where was she? Whose was she, I wondered, this lovingly tended, chatty cat? 

Finally, one day, I saw her in a yard and the man there said, indeed, she was or at least had been his cat.  She couldn't be confined to one house, one yard, one porch or one family, he said and chuckled. She decided she was the neighborhood's cat. 

And there she was again this morning, meowing a happy hello. 

There are those places, aren't there, that remind us that life is bigger and better than we knew, so much lovelier than the day's headlines lead us to believe. I am reminded of that in the sweeping corn and sunflower fields just outside of town in New Paltz, New York in very late summer and on the thicket of streets off Broadway in the village in New York and whenever I visit the Yale Art Gallery. On our way here and there, I stopped in today and the gallery, newly renovated and teeming with art, was packed.

Everywhere I turned there was something: mosaic fragments from a Roman floor from the early third century, Edward Hopper's painting of that door that opens to a blue sea, the scratchy lines of Cy Twombly, the evening glow of Van Gogh's "Night Cafe," the colors of Kandinsky and Gauguin. There was the sweeping view of Mount Katahdin in Maine by Frederic Edwin Church and in the corner of the piece, a boy sitting under a tree, looking out at an endless vista.

Sculptures, sketches, works in jade and wood, watercolor, pastel and bits of glass, collected and curated and there waiting for us. People leaned in close to some paintings, staring in silence. A sculpture just inside the entrance to the gallery had a sign that said `touch carefully' and a little boy did. 

All over the streets of New Haven, the vibe was the same:  look at this! As if we hadn't seen this life before. The coffeeshops and bookstores were full to brimming with people studying and meeting up. They were stopping in for carrot cake at Claire's or holding hands as they walked down Chapel Street; they pushed strollers, walking along in the cool March air. 

A guy in a Yale Glee sweatshirt and a bunch of his friends sang together as they made their way along York Street, harmonizing all the way down the block.



http://artgallery.yale.edu/pages/whatisart/whatisart.php