June 11: Ripening Fruit

My co-worker Joe returned from the Beech Hill Preserve today with what he called "something scary": a sprig from a blueberry bush containing a few berries already turning blue. Coastal Mountains Land Trust manages about 20 acres of fields on Beech Hill as a MOFGA-certified, organic blueberry farm. We sell 10-pound boxes of berries by pre-order, and the profits are used to help manage the preserve. Normally our blueberry harvest takes place in early to mid-August. The fact that Joe is finding berries already ripening indicates that the harvest will be several weeks ahead of schedule this summer. (That's the "scary" part, because it also means he may have to pull together a crew of blueberry rakers and packers a lot sooner than he thought.)

This morning a family of Canada geese was grazing along the edge of the Land Trust parking lot: the two parents and three half-grown goslings. They were big enough that I had to look twice to pick out the adults.  These too seem ahead of schedule. I guess early berries and big fat baby geese are the benefits of the beautiful warm weather we had for much of this spring. It gave a few things a head start. Other flora and fauna--many songbirds, for instance, and sea birds--seem to be on schedule, so there hasn't been a complete shift of the natural order. But enough for nature observation to be particularly interesting right now.

Ripening to blue--
handful of crazy berries,
this early June sky.

June 10: Cardinal Love

The last lines of a favorite bird poem, "The Cardinal," by Henry Carlile:

In the bar's dark I think of him.
There are no cardinals here.

Only a woman in a red dress.

And now when I see cardinals I think of that poem, with its wonderful, racy final image. I thought of it today, in fact, when a pair of cardinals was at my office window feeder. I looked up from my desk to catch the male cardinal passing a seed to the female. A simple, romantic gesture, almost like flirting. Then he flew off, leaving her to eat alone, her rouge-red bill bright against her drab khaki plumage and the black sunflower seeds.

Red feathers, rouged beak--
there's just something sensual
about cardinals.

June 9: Cuckoo

My co-worker Joe, who spends most of his time these days working at the Land Trust's Beech Hill Preserve, reported that he heard two cuckoos calling while he was on the hill today. The cuckoo is traditionally found on season-lists of words (kigo in Japanese) used in haiku that are associated with summer. Hototogisu, the Lesser Cuckoo, was used so often throughout many centuries of Japanese poetry that it became a cliche, standard poetic shorthand to indicate summer.

Here's an 8th century cuckoo poem by Otomo no Yakamochi, from "A Haiku Menagerie" by Stephen Addiss, in which the use of the cuckoo resonates beyond that of poetic device:

In the summer mountains

on the leafy treetops

the cuckoo sings--

and echoing back from afar

comes his distant voice.

And a lovely haiku by Ryota, written a thousand years later (causing me to pause in awe as I consider the tremendous history and tradition of poetry in Japan):

The cuckoo

with a single call

has established summer.

On Beech Hill cuckoos aren't heard often enough to become a cliche. Perhaps the ones Joe heard today were trying to tell him something: time's passing and summer's almost here. The passing of time and the ephemerality of life are often the Zen-like essence of haiku. And one thing we understand here in Maine is the brevity of summer.

Draw one more poem

about cuckoos and summer

from that deep old well.  

June 8: Waxwings

Even over the sounds of my washing machine, the neighbor's lawnmower, the Red Sox game on t.v., and the crunching in my mouth of a handful of Annie's Organic Snack Mix Bunnies (my new favorite junk food!), I can hear the high-pitched lisping calls of a small flock of waxwings somewhere in the vicinity of my front yard. This time of year cedar waxwings are primarily flycatchers, switching from an off-season diet heavy in berries and fruits to insects. Birds need protein too. And here along the river, we've got plenty of flies. So thankfully, we're graced by the presence of these beautiful birds. It (almost) makes up for all these damn flies.

Yesterday evening I could hear waxwings while I was gardening, but try as I might, I couldn't see them as they moved in the shadows of the leaves. I was reminded of the resonant final lines of Elizabeth Bishop's poem "Brazil, January 1, 1502," in which she describes Portuguese soldiers chasing through the jungle "those maddening little women who kept calling, / calling to each other (or had the birds waked up?) / and retreating, always retreating, behind it." I like to think of the waxwings flitting and whispering behind the green tapestry of leaves as feathered natives teasing me from the jungle of my yard. Unlike the conquistadors, I don't want to catch them. I just enjoy knowing they're there, hearing their gentle calls as they glean their dinner.

Soft voices in trees--
flitting, gregarious birds.
It's a lawn party!

June 7: Bowl of Peonies

Before the recent rains began, my peonies were little round balls of buds. Apparently the deluge inspired them to burst into full bloom. The top-heavy plants were then pounded by rain. This morning the stems and blossoms were splayed on the lawn.

After work I was finally able to mow the back yard and pay my garden a little attention. The first thing I did was string up the peony plants. So now they're upright once more, releasing the day lilies that were crushed beneath those thick stems and giant white flowers. To help keep them up, I trimmed some of the damp, frowsy blooms to display in a glass bowl as a table centerpiece. Their heady scent released by the rain and their pink-fringed frilly petals make them a most romantic addition to my kitchen decor.

Interestingly, the peony is a very common masculine tattoo image in Japan, associated with gamblers and warriors. The Chinese regarded the peony as an important symbol of wealth and prosperity, and it was the national flower of China at the turn of the last century. In Catholic European tradition, the peony is one of the many symbols of the Virgin Mary. After watching several episodes last night of "The Tudors," however, I'm thinking of them more as blushing young ladies-in-waiting, skirts and petticoats akimbo. Yet my haiku is more affected, I think, by the unexpected passing this morning of a friend of my parents.

My bowl o' peonies. Additional blossoms visible out the window in the background.

Dancing girls and kings,

peony petals--these too

must all pass away.

June 6: Soaked

I did actually bring my raincoat on my shopping excursion to Freeport late this morning, but, as it was only sprinkling when I got out of my car, figured a sweater and a hat were good enough for walking around town. Wrong!

LL Bean must have a metal roof, because from the second floor, the downpour--which contained hailstones--sounded like a big freight train of a storm roaring through. A more sensible person would have hung out inside waiting for the deluge to subside. Or bought an umbrella, at least. But I was tired of shopping and wanted to get home. It looked like it was brightening in the western sky. How bad could it really be out there?

Pretty bad. Well, at least it wasn't cold. But ankle deep water running in wide streams down the streets, heavy rain increasing in intensity, and thunder and lightning so loud and close that a few timid tourists actually screamed (don't they have thunder in New Jersey?) added up to me getting utterly soaked to the skin. I find a warm rain invigorating, so at first it was kind of fun. But I had a long ride ahead of me with no spare, dry clothing to change into. So the goosebumps and clinging jeans got old fast. At least there was a great blue heron winging overhead and several ospreys to distract me--every river crossed by Route One seems to host an osprey or two keeping an eye out for late-arriving alewives, and the nest on the median in Bath was definitely occupied.

Despite blasting the heat all the way home, I was still soaked and chilled 1-1/2 hours later when I pulled into the driveway. My husband seemed confused and intrigued as I began stripping off my clothes inside the doorway. He was less intrigued when I then immediately donned about four layers of fleece and flannel.

And it's still raining. The river's running high and brown. If anything, these few wet days have made the green outside more vibrant and intense than ever. The joy I feel at the beauty before me out the window now is finally starting to warm me up.

Undaunted by rain
ospreys hang over river's
brown, fish-filled torrents.

The river after the rain stopped this evening

June 5: Thunder

A real storm rolled through early this morning, the loud peals of thunder waking me and the cat several times (my husband sleeps through almost anything). At one point the lightning was flickering so frequently that I got up to make sure that a streetlight hadn't been struck. It was like a strobe light on the wet, pre-dawn streets of the neighborhood.

Thunder doesn't frighten me as it did when I was a child. I remember my father telling me when I was very young that even though the thunder sounds like it's booming right over the house, it's really far away. He explained how sounds travels more slowly than light, how if he rang a bell at the end of our street, I'd see the bell move before I heard it ring. For some reason it reassured me to know that there was some science behind the rumbling roars that startled me in the middle of the night. Maybe thinking about the bell just gave me something else to focus on.

Now when I'm awakened by a thunderstorm, I think of other things: how my husband was struck by lightning once and for years was terrified whenever a storm crashed overhead. Or how the sky gods were always the rulers in ancient pantheons, wielding their lightning bolts and thunder claps to keep humans and fellow deities in line. Or how we've really needed this rain after weeks of perfect, sunny weather, to renew the earth and maintain this lush green with its abundance of early blossoms that we've all been enjoying so much. We relish it because it's so strange to us here in Maine--the true spring that we always deserve after winter but never really get.

And now our first big thunderstorm ushers in summer, just two weeks away, with a bang.

Thunder beckoned forth
riverside iris, yellow
as summer sunlight.

June 4: River

After an excellent early dinner at the new restaurant Shepherd's Pie in Rockport village, I arrived home with a sated belly and an urge to take a brisk walk. (Listening to the Rolling Stones on the drive home also helped get me jazzed up for some activity.)

As the days lengthen, it feels like such a luxury to have sun and blue sky after dinner. I tied on my sneakers and hit the pavement. The birds were still singing: house finch, black-and-white warbler, robins, cardinal. Flowers are bustin' out all over the neighborhood, including a lawn full of purple lupines up the street at my office. On Washington Street I followed a young man as he carried a six-pack two houses down, obviously ready to jump start his weekend. It feels like mid-summer already. It smells like summer--fresh-mown lawns and someone grilling on the next block.

As I crossed over the Megunticook River, I breathed deeply. This time of year the water smells clean, like fresh-caught fish and swimming. Now back at home, that same river rushes past the house, beautifully audible through the open windows.

River carries light
on its back, silvery fish,
birdsong's liquid notes.

June 3: Strawberries

After several months of eating those pale, oversized strawberries "from away," I was in raptures this morning over my first taste of the first summer strawberries from Beth's Farmstand in Warren. Nothing beats a sun-ripened, locally grown berry eaten right from the box--a true mouthful of ambrosia. I was immediately carried back to my childhood, when it was considered a privilege to be allowed to pick the strawberries in my grandmother's carefully tended patch. And of course my sister and I ate our fill while doing so. If I close my eyes, I can feel the heat on the pine needles spread on the berry beds, hear the sharp chipping of the chipmunk waiting for its share, and taste that sweet, perfectly ripe berry on the tip of my tongue. (My sister turns 40 today, so the memory broadens to include the long summer days we spent playing on our grandparents' saltwater farm so long ago...)

Some native Americans referred to the full moon in June as the Strawberry Moon. I can only imagine how amazing those tiny wild strawberries must have tasted to them after months without fresh fruit. They're only the size of a fingernail, but those berries pack a lot of flavor.

Once on a birding field trip in the boreal forest of Downeast Maine, we were walking along a dirt road looking for black-backed woodpeckers among the spruce trees, and I paused to pick a few wild strawberries. Who can resist? The trip leader snapped at me, "Leave those for the birds!" I could only laugh, feeling pretty certain that if the birds were that hungry, they'd have beaten me to those two or three little berries before I was even awake that morning.

A friend told me today that his berries are starting to ripen, early for his garden. He said his first berry was ripe on May 31, the earliest he'd ever eaten a home-grown strawberry. He's already daydreaming about the first strawberry shortcake of summer.

Still warm from the sun,
ripe strawberry disappears
into the child's mouth.

June 2: Home

I was away for three days on Monhegan, spent a night at home, then drove to Massachusetts the next day for an overnight in Marblehead (and an evening at Fenway) with my sister and her family. So when I pulled into the driveway this afternoon, stepped out of my car, and heard the familiar warbling song of the neighborhood red-eyed vireo, I felt a reassuring sense of home-coming. There he is, where he's supposed to be, singing the song I'll probably hear all summer long. And I too am thus welcomed back to where I'm supposed to be.

He sings of mown lawns,
irises blooming, foggy
mornings: vireo.

June 1: Night at Fenway

Midnight, and we just got back to my sister and brother-in-law's house from watching the Red Sox win a come-from-behind victory versus the Oakland A's. Despite thunderstorm warnings, we enjoyed a beautiful night--in a t-shirt on June 1!--with amazing field box seats looking right at home plate. It seemed like it was going to be an Oakland blow out, but then the Sox rallied in the sixth with Beltre's home run into the Monster seats and ended up winning 9-4. Also cool was the pedicab ride to and from Fenway. Our first cyclist was coincidentally the son of people my sister and I know in Maine; the second was a stand-up comedian in his free time (and apparently also on his bike).

Hot night at Fenway:
Beltre's belting made up for
Lackey lacking strikes.