Weekly musings on the arts and current events.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Mountain Mornings


My third day in the San Bernadino mountains and I'm getting wise to the pattern. The skies have clouded up in the afternoons, permitting sunlight on one grove but not on its neighbor. Momentarily, rain falls--hardly enough to spot my car. But again today the dawn is clear, and the morning sky, crystalline and blue. The water's surface faithfully reflects the trees; the lake is still asleep. And the air...well it is what I came here for.

I thought of William Carlos Williams' gorgeous poem: Dawn.

ECSTATIC bird songs pound
the hollow vastness of the sky
with metallic clinkings--
beating color up into it
at a far edge,--beating it, beating it
with rising, triumphant ardor,--
stirring it into warmth,
quickening in it a spreading change,--
bursting wildly against it as
dividing the horizon, a heavy sun
lifts himself--is lifted--
bit by bit above the edge
of things,--runs free at last
out into the open--!lumbering
glorified in full release upward--
songs cease.

Changing Colors, gouache by Shirley Cleary. Click on the picture for a closer look.

5 comments:

Paula Slade said...

Lovely post!

DUTA said...

When she's not furious (sending drought, floods, earthquaques) mother Nature offers us the best air to breathe, spectacular sights of mountains, lakes, and trees, free natural concerts of bird songs, and enough space to do lots of nice things.

The poem "Dawn" sounds fresh and clean like the air in the mountain area; it's easy to read and enjoyable due to the beautiful, realistic imagery regarding the bird songs and the 'heavy' sun.

The excellence of your writing Talltchr, the lovely poem, and the colourful gouache painting, make this post a real GEM.

dragonfly said...

Love the poem and the painting. The water and reflection of light is rendered beautifully. It sounds like you are in an equally lovely place- enjoy!

dragonfly said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dragonfly said...

Woops, double posted! Spazfingers, that's me.