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Cardinal

When I was small, young, and impressionable in a good way, before school told me I wasn't as smart / social / acceptable as everyone else; a wonderful teacher made the first grade exciting. Mrs. … Mrs. … McNamara? The only thing I remember, like my first lover’s face and name so inscribed in my memory as if a steel awl worked on my brain’s granite synapses, is her book of birds with the Cardinal adorning the cover – the Cardinal (eeep). It was a little book, 4”x4” in dimension but huge to me. I took it home and sat staring out the frost covered window looking for the Cardinal. Mom had filled the feeder with Sunflower seeds the day before. Brown Sparrows lit and thrashed seeds right and left looking for something more. A Red arrow strikes the tall pole and holds on to the perch as the sparrows scatter; little brown sparks to his steel flint’s strike. He holds there, tall Fire Engine feathered, impossibly colored in the grey lake-effect day. Flit, flit of the tail, scoop and up, alert! Broadly he sits and we meet eye to eye. His year old young proud wisdom displayed in deep pools of blackness met at the edge by me.Gone, shaking pole, seeds falling, the day is empty – Gone!!!

Just hold your boundaries fast, know thyself, and listen to the faint, now growing louder, sound of you … there, here it?(eeep)
Wild Turkey

So we are raking and Carol says come here! She used the "you are not going to believe this" voice that says come quick, look!

Perched on top of my neighbors fence not twenty feet away was a Wild Turkey! The first thing I thought was "I picked a bad day to give up Oxycontin!" No really, a four foot tall thirty pound turkey was gobbling on top of the fence. My real first thought was "what a beautiful bird, not the turkey everyone disparages but a sleek graceful wild thing." Carol, more attuned to these kind of things, said "he's calling someone." As if on cue came a rustling behind me, not ten feet, up on the fence behind me came the other bird. I did eventually run inside and get pictures of the pair as they walked along our fence line behind the house; they were trying to find a break there to get in to the next yard. The crazy thing is we live about ten miles outside of Boston, not exactly a nature preserve. The houses are very close together but the yards are deep on my part of the street. The back of some yards where the bushes grow large may have enough space for this ground foul to lay. A pair of Wild Turkeys in my back yard, now that is a cool thought.
A 20/20 Day

Every now and then I'll have a kind of disturbing day. Disturbing in a joyous perplexing way; I could see the fine grained detail, the perfect image of everything. No matter how far away or how close everything stood out in crisp clean detail. I wondered if my eyes somehow had reversed their slide which started when I was six and has reached -8.5 points here in my early forties.

The clarity I saw looking out the window that day approached prescience! The sun's perfect light just illuminated everything; no shadows, no distortion, perfection draped over the daily humdrum.

I was not quite sure if some approaching embolism, aneurysm or stroke was giving me a temporary gift of lucidity.

Then I had a slightly radical thought; maybe I was actually here, actually present. I immediatly thought "Oh my God, what have I been missing?" It is like being Superman without the annoying need to chase after bad guys. The day shimmered in solid completeness and I wandered like a little kid in the Magic Kingdom. Wonder, awe, and a sense of serenity enveloped me. I didn't have my complete attention stolen from me, I was not apprehended by manic bouts of observation; I simply just let it be. And it was and you know, it was kind of cool and kind of fun.

I wonder when I'll be there again?
Relapse

Seventeen degrees today,
my bike hangs unused.

Aluminum cold still titanium,
blue wheels, frosted rims.

I eye the short thermometer,
the seasons crank and spin.

Through revolutions
we come to know the
circles in our life.
So Today I'm Sitting Here

So today I'm sitting here and the sun is early spring late winter risen and
four PM means a lover's tickle of was not was warmth in my blues
infested inner. Wasn't I too hot yesterlife when my expansion filled
myself with inner expectations of outer degrees of heat?

And all I can do is sit here like a supplicant. Brilliant warm do I wait?
Bike tires are ready for sticky July heat tar and sweat clinging to my
expectation of glorious discomfort. But March is the cruelest month
and I chafe at the in between silences of wanting and doing.

The availability of exorcism is demonstrated
in the line of iron cloth clad riders passing counter current to my warm
steel ensconced self; wait brothers I'll be right there.

I turn plant expectant toward the Sun and I am reminded of
Shackelton's journey and return. Months on the floes of abandoned
ne'er despair and return ticket punched but not collected. I am
feeble in his shadow, I can't do the simplest of things in the
cold light of this day - I will wait, will they survive my delay?

Spring come to me, my pipe runs low, and I don't know if I'll be
able to get up and open the door if you should knock. Plant seeds
of hope in my eyes that I may grow oaks of strength where I
now wilt in late winter decay.

Spring come to me!
System Alteration Event

A new skin is placed over the old or rather grows up from under us.

I am playing with my skin.

The look and feel of it will take time.

If I can imagine it I can make it.

Sysop-out.

Mill Gears At Dianna's Baths
And I wandered towards the stream on that super sun shiney day and something caught my eye, something off to the side of the path just over the bank and sticking up. I crawled through the snow and ice and came upon a gear, a transfer kind of gear looking like it changed one direction of motion from one to another. It was sitting in a crumbling cement box fed by a threee foot pipe on one side and emptying out below. The pipe had ceased being attached to anything years ago and just stuck out toward the pools of water at the base of the falls. It was then I saw the geometry of it. Old, yes very old, and missing most of itself; a mill stood here once about one hundred years ago. So little left; some footings with long bolts long rusting with nuts securly fastening nothing where wood beams used to be. I wandered over the lower section around the powerhouse gear and I looked up at the falls and saw the boxed cement walls that would trap the rushing stream and pool it. The bottom and side of the wall had crumbled and I could imagine the pipe, when it had been alive and solid, would carry that load rushing down to whatever mechanism waited to realease it; the price being a bit of force to turn the screw before being freed to continue down stream
WIDTH="300" ALIGN="left" BORDER="0">	Steel headed stately magestic screw. Ton turner load shouldered The emptyness rots you Waiting for spring runnoff that will never come Rain drops will dance but you will never spin a turn with those small quickwater Your race is done and choaked with stillness and peace
WIDTH="300" ALIGN="left" BORDER="0">	I can be usefull again! Whisper the mill wraith We can work We will work Don't let our rust fool you. Resting is for our dead hands who hauled board feet of sister tree through teeth of single steeled purpose. Come closer, listen to us We can work We will work Don't let our rust fooled you!
	The pipe was patched and rusted straight and lit by that sun seeming to infect every thing working its way into the crevasses of old time; a nosey dog with gentle curiosity an active tongue licks everything with new ancient warmth only a bath could take away.
SRC="http://i.xanga.com/RickFike/t/DiannasBathFromBelowWinter.jpg" WIDTH="300" BORDER="0">	Frozen foamy bath waits for Diana to return. Goddess of the hunt will wash Orions blood off here. It is as if when we turn our back in sad defiance the steam stops, and waits for our small attemps to free it. All ancient wisdom is locked up in here; prophesy the key. Sol is our gatekeeper and he shuffles slow in this month of almost new; when will Diana return? when will the rivers flow? When will Persephone return?

The Light Of Dianna's Bath

Dianna's Bath, a series of small falls that winds its way down from the Moats in Bartlet, NH is a wonderful spot.

On a brialliant late winter day we went there and found the light playing in the trees,
illuminating old rocks and left over mill machinery.

I love the softw warm glow the
sun offers at this time of year.

It is not the warmth
but the promise
of spring to come
sometime in the future;
just enough to feel like
the world
could come alive again.
Cathedral Ledge

Today we climbed up the access road to the top of Cathedral Ledge.

The hike / walk / slide was the typical kind during the end of winter and before spring has turned
the ground into a sucking set of muddy lips. The snow during this time melts and freezes in a
cycle that turns it into slick ice at its thinnest spots and hard crust over in its thicker.

In the end the walk simply was magnificent!

<<Echo Lake>>

The White Mountains of New Hampshire are marvelous during ... well anytime!

This is looking East toward Humphry ledge.

Behind the ledge rises "The Moats" with the tallest peak being Little Attitash.

God, I am a lucky man ...
I Do Not Sleep

I give you this one thought to keep -
I am with you still - I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not think of me as gone -
I am with you still - in each new dawn

(Sent to me by Carol, via Judi - Author unknown)