Let’s see. Too wet to bicycle or walk. No plans today for me to enjoy coffee with you, or you, or you. Too cool to sit on the back porch and read. Dog doesn’t even want to take a stroll. Need to pause from reading so I can look up and see the world I’m amidst. And when I look about, I choose, as I am wont, to either ask questions, wonder (often aloud, accompanied or not), or pull up my behemoth laptop and write a blog to post. The latter option being my most infrequently selected. But today, today you patient readers, I have so selected.
I love this rain. I am particularly happy to see it subsequent to walking, on Sunday, along the Concord River and seeing that river as almost walk-acrossable, it was so, so low.
We are in drought here. Portions of France and Spain and Canada and the US are burning. What should we do? Anything that helps to conserve. Small. Medium. Large. Not chemicalize our lawns keeping them verdant but thirsty. Not water our vegetables and flowers with town sourced hose water only, store rainwater and then water from that storage barrel. Eat less water-intensive foods (i.e., less meat especially beef, but overall, less meat!). Wash only full loads. Sweep rather than wash down sidewalks and porches. Buy less–production for our consumption takes water. Buy less, inspire less use. Consider keeping a smaller living space. Plant trees. Plant trees. If you feel you must have an air conditioner, under-use it.
You can, I’m sure, look on line to find more suggestions. But, in the moment in which I am here, I suggest reducing the use of water-sucking technology (and the production and output of all electronic technology, automotive technology, technology overall does that–sucks up water. So, I guess, stop reading this blog post and shut down your electronic device.
Plant trees.
I am on, it would seem, a singular path in my posts.
It’s about three maybe four hours since I was at this. I sought to bring another set of thoughts. Some that would not point so down.
I have not.
But I just found this poem by the late Jane Kenyon, whose poetry brought you into her circle of light:
In the Grove: The Poet at Ten
She lay on her back in the timothy
and gazed past the doddering
auburn heads of sumac.
A cloud–huge, calm
and dignified–covered the sun
but did not, could not, put it out.
The light surged back again.
Nothing could rouse her then
from that joy so violent
it was hard to distinguish from pain.
{This poem is from Let Evening Come, 1990, Graywolf Press. It’s also found in Otherwise–New and Selected Poems, Graywolf Press, 1996}
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