In wintertime I often dream about Maine. There are parts
of Heron Island that only exist in my dream world, boats that could never really be seaworthy but somehow carry crazy loads of belongings. Even in December the tides of Maine enter my imagination and carry me far beyond the shelter of our Virginia home. When my mother was alive there was a boat we called The Veggie Boat that visited the island on Friday mornings. Many residents of the twenty-four island houses would arrive to buy the most beautiful and over-priced tomatoes, raspberries, oysters, cookies and bouquets of flowers. We all complained about how expensive it was but loved every perfect salad and pie that we ate. When my mother died the owner of the boat gave me buckets of flowers in her honor with tears flowing down his face. I can still see him, eyes full of water and appreciation for a woman who loved any bouquet of flowers with a beam of light running through it.

blessing the boats

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back     may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

— Lucille Clifton, “blessing the boats” from Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000. © 2000 by Lucille Clifton

My parents collaborated on some handmade children’s books in the 50s. This morning I pulled out Mr. Crow’s Christmas written in 1957. These books are a great balance between the two of them. There’s a lyrical drawn story line by my mother and the ingenuity and inventive mechanics of my father. She drew and wrote. He carved woodcuts, printed each page and bound it all with a red burlap cover. Even though I wasn’t born yet, in one of the last images there are three children coming down a set of stairs. There are two boys and a girl and the drawing of the girl looks like the images my mother made of me as a young child. I am glad these books exist. I love the drawings, the story and assemblage. Thanks to my mother for the story of the crow and for her love of candles.

Thanks
Thank you for drawing the crow
outside my window.
Thank you for drawing the wrinkled bittersweet berries
brightening the blighted ash.
Thank you for drawing the stump, the mound
and the dog with a broken hip.
Thank you for drawing the horizon like that.
Thank you for drawing the woman standing.
She isn’t saying anything. I like that.
Thank you for drawing the dry lightning.
Thank you for drawing the grass
crawling out from under the iron ball.
Thank you for drawing the open skies.
Thank you for adding color
in the form of a tangerine drift of birds
moving away toward the sound of a harp
that embodies a heaven I can only imagine.
I love this picture.
I look at it every day.
Thank you for not making a film instead.
— Mary Ruefle, poet laureate of Vermont

I have been revisiting plant material I have used in prior decembrances, reusing old background panels but adding new pot combinations. It’s like the archive is alive and well and part of the palette. Each December I start over with the idea to post twenty-one missives. I create images of pots with stems or fruits or nuts and ponder the decreasing light. Every year I re-learn the same lesson–by focusing I can swim through the waves of December.  I carefully look at the last leaves dangling off the branches. I bundle up against the wind. I admire the geese floating on the pond or the diving ducks or the great blue heron who unfolds its wings and flies with slow grace.

“Repetition is not failure. Ask the waves, ask the leaves, ask the wind. There is no expected pace for inner learning. What we need to learn comes when we need it, no matter how old or young, no matter how many times we have to start over, no matter how many times we have to learn the same lesson. We fall down as many times as we need to, to learn how to fall and get up.”

–Mark Neppo, October 1 entry in The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have, Conari Press

I have been paying attention to the early signs of December but this week the cold winds have blown in and with early sunsets there is no question of the season. It is such a gift to have my white orchid blooming. Bent over my notebook I may search for the words to describe the wind but there is no need as the echos of the syllables creek through the swaying trees. Tonight in the last light of a circular dog walk up a steep slope I was lost in thought admiring the line of hillside against the sky in fading pink when a honk jolted me awake and to my surprise two swans flew overhead singing like jazz trumpeters.

Utterance

Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence

— W.S. Merwin, from The Rain in the Trees, 1988

In this world of social media, especially the pottery community on Instagram, the hashtag MugShotMonday is often portrayed by a hand holding a mug with an out-of-focus background. I however find structure in the idea of revisiting mugs each week. Mugs have been a touchstone in my work, an important small object of use that holds not only a hot beverage but also expression. Mondays I photograph a cup or perhaps a week’s drawings of the cups I have used. Drawing especially during the pandemic feels like tilling the earth. The sketches and photographs are part of being an art farmer. At its best the hash tag provides a structure, a reminder to share and dig into my archives. By looking more deeply I don’t always reach for the handy cup but perhaps the stubborn, heavy one or the precarious one that forces me to pay closer attention to my hot drink.

A Lonely Cup of Coffee

Far preferable to a sociable cup
which tastes more
of talk
the lonely cup
redolent
rich
ripe
round
blesses
the quiet mouth

–Naomi Shihab Nye, in Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, Greenwillow Books, 2018

On the margins of my walk small birds excite my dog. It’s like she just now registered their existence. Her exuberance at their presence seems lodged as a half-formed instinctual memory. Today she found a dead mouse–tossed it, rolled on it, and ran from me holding it gently in her mouth. The garden had been generous in ways she had never imagined. Nearby the milkweed stood tall, a weedy sentry to our antics.

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

— Mary Oliver, from On Winter’s Margin

These December days as I walk my circles with a six month old puppy I notice the gaps–the blue sky between the grey clouds on a blustery evening, the spaces between the bare trees as much as the trees in the morning blush of sunrise. It reminds me of Morandi’s still lives. How he painted space as much as objects. He captured the void, the warp, the curve, the table, and the wall.

“ I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late – there’s that rich possibility of noticing more in the meantime . . . poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”

— Naomi Shihab Nye

I do my decembrance project each year as a way to stave off my seasonal depression. In my fear of the darkening days I focus on the light. For years as I anticipate the shifting cycle of light I have been trying to find change in how I express myself. I aim to find new things to photograph. I make new backgrounds and alter how I approach my dread of the long nights.

This year I have accepted that there are things I revisit like the Osage-orange or the cardoon, the magnolia leaf and the oak. This is my harvest. This is when I count the seeds, notice the cold and find ways to enjoy it. By writing and photographing I have learned that I no longer need to huddle on a cold November rock. I can count down the days until the shortest day of the year. It comes fast and then I can breath a little easier because I know we are building up day-by-day again. And through all this I have found that what I most love are the months when day and night are even.

Everything tends towards its own circumference, it seems — the world, This life, and no doubt the next,
dependence and dear dread,
Even the universe in its spare parts.
As for me,
I’m ringed like a tree, stealthily, year by year, moving outward.

— Charles Wright, from Buffalo Yoga in Oblivion Banjo, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2019; originally in China Trace, 1977

I rustled in slow circles this afternoon looking for just the right leaf. The huge curling litter of our Chinese magnolia is a marker of December for me. The leaves fall like yellow sails in November and then they dry, curl and blow in the wind. There was the year my father was visiting and in his failing eyesight he told me our newspapers had littered the field. Another year while stacking the wood kiln, my two helper friends took a break to gather armfuls of leaves. Their enjoyment of the amassed sculptural abundance drew me out of my funk of doubt.

Leaves beginning to rustle now
in the dark tree of the self.

–Charles Wright, from “Cicada,” in Chickamauga (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995)