The Middlewesterner

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL APRIL 3, 2002

Snow and silence

and the surface of the pond so still the world sees itself, looking in. The world does not blink, nothing moves. This morning, this instant, this image.

In full daylight the scene out the window this morning is a winter picture postcard - blue sky, the village laid with a purity of white, sun on everything. A stillness and perfection.

Off to the northwest, a bank of clouds moving in. It will not stay picture-perfect forever: it never does. The world goes to hell faster than you can put it back together, even when you are a writer recording what you see, or what you think you see, or - sometimes - what you hope you are seeing.

Snow on everything, even to the highest peak of the rooftops, to the very top of the trees.

This is April. This is Wisconsin. It's not 20 below zero. What's the problem?

No flag at the cemetery as yet.

As I drive to work, it's obvious the sky is closing over. A glum winter morning now. The sun comes and goes, bright one moment, gone the next. A shivering light. Winter again.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL APRIL 2, 2002

Ho, what an April Fool's!

We got four inches of snow by nightfall yesterday - wide, fat flakes that fell like clumps. It didn't snow during the night but at first light a fine grit of snow returned. There is a blanket of white heaviness on everything but the streets, and a sifted fineness on top of that. Ho, what a fine joke on us.

The pond is somber, dark. The surface of the water is moved by the wind, yet the essence of water remains unmoved. Water has a kind of certainty that we lack. When we are gone, the water shall still be here, water. We cannot begin to imagine water's eternity. What does water care of sorrow? Why do we, so much? Birds are birds when they fly. When are we humankind?

The call of mourning dove. A caw of crow. Somewhere a Tower of Babel in the snow.

At the edge of the village, as I look north into the country, it is clear that snow is still falling, wide flakes of it now, it's not coming off the trees, it's peeling off the grey dome overhead. The geese in the sky encounter more resistance than they imagined.

By the time I get to work, the sky is making serious snow which falls heavily.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL APRIL 1, 2002

High in the silver maple

to the west side of the house, up in a hole in a knob of trunk, a pair of wood ducks make their nest again this year. I've seen them in years past, coming and going. This morning I see them there again.

The ice went out of the pond on Saturday about 4:15 p.m. All day the water had pushed at the darkness, pushed the darkness to this edge of the pond, pushed the darkness to infinite retreat. The entire surface of the pond is ruffled by wind now. The temperature is about 30 degrees.

Yesterday's surprise was a coat of snow on things - wide, lazy, fat flakes that were much too slow for the sun. They were gone by 9:00 a.m. yesterday. The day warmed to nearly 50 degrees, a fine day for all of us but the snow.

A crispness at the edge of morning. I sit in the car in the driveway, looking north. A redness in those far trees again this year, a swollen wanting - wanting spring.

I stop to buy gasoline downtown. I hear from a neighbor we may have 2-5" of snow by nightfall. We are on the edge of it - rain or snow. This is Wisconsin, I said. He laughed.

North out of Fairwater, a smear of Canadian geese in the northeastern sky. They spread wide and dark, moving.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 29, 2002

Greyness above, again.

There is snow only in heaps or where it is hidden. The temperature is about freezing; water pushes at the ice on the pond; the ice takes on its last darkness.

Tonight - a sweat lodge ceremony for the new season, the new year. Perhaps I shall see the faces of God in the glowing stones.

Perhaps you don't know what you're made of until you come undone.

A mildness of birds. A bit of dew on the top of the car, nothing on the windshield.

Robins are looking for love. Houses in town define themselves sharply; each edge is a hard line in this subdued light.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 28, 2002

O greyness of grey.

Goneness of sun. It's a cloudy day, dreary. We'll survive it. We have to.

The water of the river keeps pushing at the ice of the pond. At the east end of the pond, open water, ruffled by wind. The constant battle - dark and light, ice and water.

The temperature is about 30 degrees, though the air feels warmer than that. No frost on the windshield.

Still no flag at the Fairwater cemetery. Only fifteen or twenty yards to the north, geese squat in a field, heads down. They appear comfortable with the dead so near.

Afghanistan. Job's dilemma. These people who have nothing but nothing and war. Now an earthquake to wreck even that. How can there be a God? Write that with an exclamation mark!

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 27, 2002

O skyness of sky.

Blueness. Creamed sun on everyone's morning. The temperature is about twenty degrees. It's not spring, but we can see it from here. We can hear it in the bird chatter, the very birdness of their business.

As I walk to the car, the geese honk in the distance. I cannot see them. Then as I'm scraping the windshield, a pair fly over, followed soon by an angling line of seven. A mourning dove calls wooo-whoo, wooo-whoo. The sky is blue and the morning is fine, yet I must go to work.

Downtown, the Grand River runs and gurgles; eventually it slides beneath the ice of the pond.

North of Fairwater the fields are open, except where the geese have set down to feed. Some of them stretch their necks to strict attention, some of them eat.

The black asphalt is white with salt stain. This observation is about as interesting as I am this morning. Sorry.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 26, 2002

It's a Civil War

this morning, blue and grey overhead, sky and clouds. The rebs seem to be winning. There was moon in the west quite early this morning, it would be hidden by cloud right now. Last night the sun set exactly in the fork of the old silver maple west of the house.

A thick layer of frost on the windshield of the car. The temperature is cold - not winter, but certainly not the best of what spring has to offer either.

A blow of snow on the iced surface of the pond.

A small vee of geese passes over the house. One of the birds calls out "good morning" as they cross above me.

Robins are pairing up, claiming space, talking sweetly to each other.

Just north of Fairwater, a pair of cranes considers crossing the highway west to east above me. They reconsider, turn back.

By the time I reach Five Corners the clouds have won the sky. The day holds onto its wintery cast. "If you don't like it, go," says the cold wind.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 25, 2002

There's a rip of snow

out there, the temperature is in the low teens. Get real, I say to this weather. Spring is coming; give it up.

A squirrel runs nose-first down the old silver maple. In a 1913 photograph of the house, those trees are just young whips. They must be 90 years old.

The plastic on the roof of the neighbor's garage flaps noisily. They had torn shingles off on a warm weekend. Then it got cold, then it snowed. The plastic still flaps.

There is ice on the pond still. Enough snow to block my view out the rear window.

Out in the country north of Fairwater, snow like mist hanging in the distance. Snow is cupped in the stubbled fields, in the ditch, along the roofline of the Sina barn.

At the edge of Ripon, a large crow is perched on a thin branch high in a tree. It cocks its tail this way and that, trying to hold its position. Just holding on requires constant attention. That much attention, just to stay where you are.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 22, 2002

We've had a good bite

of cold, arctic weather coming down from the northwest, I believe. It's only about ten degrees now, in the broad light of morning. It's a struggle, push and shove, winter, spring, winter. There are clouds yet you find patches of blue sky, too.

Sure, it's ten degrees now, but you know there's another end to the string - fifty degrees, or sixty, not far off.

Icicles hang off the roof of Stellmachers' elevator; they hide in the shadows. North of Fairwater a sculpted snow bank cups some golden sun, a richness like real butter.

The sun is serious enough that it won't go away soon.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 21, 2002

We got snow last night,

a couple inches. Everything is white this morning except the sky. The sky is blue. The temperature is in the teens. I don't know what's promised for later in the day. I don't care, really. It's the equinox: the world changes. Spring will come steaming into port here pretty soon.

The wind is coming hard from the northwest. There is no flag at the cemetery in Fairwater yet. At the edge of the village, snow is drifting across the road, as if to mark the limit of something. Out in the country there is not enough snow and blow to create a polar landscape, however. Corn stubble shows through the snow. Despite a snow plow hauling ass towards me, there is snow all across the highway, all the way to Ripon. I trust it won't last forever.

It is a perfect morning for a snowy owl, for a red tail hawk turning its breast to the sun. What I have is winter, is wonder.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 20, 2002

A spit of snow last night,

a roughness on the land like the scuffed shine of new shoes. A greyness overhead. Yesterday was mild; today the temperature is 30 degrees already. Perhaps the mildness will continue. Outside birds discuss the fine points of their territoriality. Eventually the talk about territory turns on eros, of the bird variety at least. Perhaps for the human variety too. Hmm. Ownership turns on eros. How far could a fellow follow that thought? And what could one learn?

I step outside. A splash of water dripping off trees. It's warm enough for melting. Wetness on the streets. Geese fly away to the north. What do they know?

A mourning dove along Washington Street stays on the street as I pass, moves to the side, does not fly off. A few steps, it thinks, is enough.

A red-wing blackbird, perched on a fence north of Fairwater - its mouth open, calling, calling. What is it crying out for? The same thing we all want?

In the country the lay of snow appears thicker than in town. At least an inch along the roadside, in the ditches, on the fields.

At the edge of Ripon, all the trees bear the whiteness of snow like a hoarfrost.

Why do we think that what's here - what we have - why do we think that can't be beautiful? Why must we go far away to find something that meets approval. Is it because we aren't really able to find a language appropriate for the beauty we find here; or do those far off consciously refuse to understand. Perhaps it is some of each - our failure, those others' resistance. What can a fellow do about it? Is that the question Prairy Erth tried to answer? Is that the question Curlew: Home wrestles with, that Vagabond will struggle with too?

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 19, 2002

To show it could,

spring has melted all that snow winter blew in Sunday evening. Roads and lawns and fields are bare. Yesterday's warmth was spring's promise, a girl with a husky voice saying "Soon, soon."

You let go of it, but do you let go? That which we desire has claws in us and isn't torn away gently. Everything I was I am and I will be, at least that I was. The past shouldn't be a box you crawl into; nonetheless at least it's a sack you have to carry.

"That's not a crow," I said to my wife on Sunday as we walked at the farm. We'd heard a bird cry out twice in the line of trees at the edge of the property. "That's a hawk." And then the hawk rose, as if to confirm the truth of what I'd said. I'd recognized the hawk's cry. I didn't know I knew that much about hawks.

The hawk's tree. Still I look at the emptiness. Still I imagine the tree, the hawk in it, another spring. The tree has not yet let go. The hawk has its claws in me.

You don't have to do anything you don't want to.

Grey geese fly away into the grey distance. Where alfalfa had been, the soil wants to be green, a faint hue of it, a pale flush.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 18, 2002

To show it could,

winter did. A snow storm rolled through towards evening yesterday, left us three inches of snow. Branches of all the trees hold some of it off the ground, the snow. The ground has plenty. The roads, I think, will be messy in places.

There is snow on the roof of the elevator downtown - grey walls and blue walls and white roof and grey sky. North of the village, a line of geese overhead, geese upon a snowy field.

The closer I get to Ripon, the more that gets lost in a white haze - like fog, like a snow storm, but neither, more like a loss of innocence.

The trees along Watson Street in Ripon cast a white net above. Net cast up, catching the day.

You don't have to do anything you don't want to. You have a choice. If you are willing to suffer the consequences, you always have a choice.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 15, 2002

We got some freezing rain

last night, and none of the snow we were promised. There was a slipperiness last night and the temperature is about 30 degrees now, so we may have continued nastiness. The sky is grey.

I step outside to a greater mildness than I expected. The windshield of the car has dew or rain on it, not frost or ice. The street looks slick, not wet.

In this light, every building in the village looks shabby. A wetness of wood that ages the light reflected.

The fields are wet and the soil looks sticky. In the distance, the greyness hangs down, a curtain of mist in woods and farmyard.

Crows huddle on both sides of the road this morning. They are as serious as the day is grey. I think they are talking a lot of approximate. The two on my side of the road hop away just enough to let me pass. Then again they attend to their conversation. There's no business like crow business.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 14, 2002

Enough warmth yesterday

to send some of the snow on its way. It's a grey morning, temperature in the high 20s. We've been promised mixed rain and snow for today, and these clouds could bring it on.

Cloud could.

The wind sounds vaguely like a train. The sky is full of sound: it has to sound like something. It tastes like chicken, perhaps.

North of Fairwater, geese in the field again this morning. Across the road from the geese, the memory of alfalfa. The soil was worked last fall; the alfalfa was torn up, another crop is coming. There is always something and it's always something else.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 13, 2002

Another blue sky day.

It's lovely. Temperature is nearly 30 degrees. Could we pack up a picnic and go out and play? It's the kind of morning you'd want to.

Let me add that there is dew on the windshield of the car, not frost. A mourning dove calls forlornly. Geese gabble and chat. Some puffs of cloud above.

There is still no flag at the Fairwater Cemetery. As I leave the village I see a bank of clouds to the north and northwest. North of Fairwater shadows on the road, and moisture imitating shadows. A field full of Canadian geese. Farther on, pairs and three-somes of geese in the air, uncertain about tomorrow, even about later today. What about breakfast, they say.

I left my winter coat at home. I forgot my pocket watch. I've got sun in my eyes.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 12, 2002

Blue sky. The temperature

is 20 degrees. The light is like a spill. Everything has depth today: we see through surface. We see through surface to the underlayment of reality, the very pith. It's March; it could be warmer. Spring is coming like an old coal train, maybe slow but it's got up a head of steam.

You can turn away all you want. Where do you think that will put you? We don't have to dress fancy: we know who we are.

The surface of the pond is frozen solid. The hardness of winter, the shell this weather makes. Beneath the ice, there is life; we just don't see it from here.

Just to remind us it's still winter - frost tight to the windshield. Sun, yes, but frost as well. Blue sky and a cold sear, both.

Saturday's high winds tore down a large branch of tree from north of the cemetery.

Where the hawk tree was, a hawk in the air, not a red-tail - greyer, like the day, a marsh hawk perhaps. Several hundred yards farther on, a ground hog runs across the road in front of me, its shagginess an undulation as it runs, as if winter has left it wobbling.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 11, 2002

Wind on the weekend,

mighty winds on Saturday and Saturday night. The house was moaning and cra-a-a-king like a strangled duck. The image I had: we could put sails on it and sail across these prairies. Driving to Madison on Saturday afternoon we saw a dozen cars, at least, that had slid off the road, or had been blown off. An 18-wheeler gone belly up. Fire trucks, ambulances, wreckers, cops everywhere, holding on tight in the high winds; and a handful of sleet, just enough sleet to make things slippery.

Very cold temperatures came in behind the winds. It was zero when we rose on Sunday. It has warmed to 20 degrees above this morning.

A haziness above, but not so thick I can't see the con trails of this morning's jetliners, the darker mark.

Six months ago, the great howling sorrow.

What is art on a day like this? Art is a dab of color right when it's needed.

No flag at the cemetery yet. The wind, I think, blows south to north, blows me all the way to work.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 8, 2002

Thunder and lightning

and fog early this morning. The shine on the street looks like frozen rain. I am not looking forward to slip-sliding my way to work. It'll be grim, serious business.

Well, as I step into the day, the shine on the street seems to be water only, not ice. The air is almost like a spring breeze.

North of Fairwater, the rain has melted snow in the fields. Black soil and white snow like a checkerboard. North of the Sina pig farm, the fog thickens. It's close to the ground, heavy as unhappiness, a surreal sorrow.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 7, 2002

A near perfect setting

this morning: the village diffused with light and love, the snow a kind of softness we wish for, a loveliness. Solitude is too big a word for standing here alone, now.

If we stay silent, so much is lost. It will never be this way again.

The flag is still missing at the Fairwater cemetery.

Snow blew across the road during the night, east to west; it is blowing east to west still.

The more you split hairs the more hairs you have to split.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 6, 2002

A slightness of snow

last night. The streets are white with it. The sky is grey. The thermometer reads 20 degrees; we are promised more than that for today.

The road north out of the village is snow-covered, despite the best effort of the snow plow in front of me. The truck throws out a cloud of snow; when the cloud settles, it's mostly back on the road. In places the truck is its own snow storm. The white landscape rolls away forever, perhaps forever, a blue-white illusion in morning light.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 5, 2002

Hoarfrost on everything.

Disturbed, it falls like snow in thin, wide flakes. Everything wears the white veil. Snow last night, only enough to leave the streets snow-covered and slippery. We are promised temperatures above freezing, yet does it matter much what happens today? The season is on its grand march out: spring is waiting at the back of the church to come gliding in. Everything we need, we've got. We can endure anything if we embrace it. The way out of sorrow is in the sorrow itself.

The higher up in the trees, the heavier the hoarfrost is. The topmost parts are full as with new leaves, white ones. The trees are brighter than the grey sky. Groves of trees are like snowy mountain ranges.

Desire, says the fellow on the radio, is the key to surrealism. Pardon me - isn't desire the key to most everything?

You can get good at writing grants or you can get good at writing what you write. I should keep my focus on my projects and not worry about the grant-makers feeding me or not feeding me.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 4, 2002

O holy snow-storm.

On Friday we enjoyed a fine spring day. Friday night and Saturday we got socked good, as much as eight inches of snow. There are plowbanks along the streets in the village - some nearly hip-deep. I cleared the driveway twice, and it's still a mess - useable, but not pretty. It's winter! for some few passing days at least.

The flag at the cemetery has been taken in or it has flown away like a bird with a long beak - only the lower half of the flag pole remains.

The roads have patches of ice. The air is very cold, the sun bright in the east, the snow white as a snowy owl.

Once again the ditches are filled with snow. The fields are a polar landscape. Green Lake puts up its steam.

As I drive east in Ripon towards work, a sear of sunlight on the wet street. Salt and sun play their cold day trick, making liquid what very definitely ought to be solid this morning.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MARCH 1, 2002

Chunk of moon

falling to the west. Sun assigned to the eastern sky. Blueness overhead. It's morning. It's glorious morning in glorious March - Easter ahead, the equinox ahead, spring will be coming. By March 1st we know we've survived another winter and - in the face of any amount of snow and blow - we can whistle and go on our merry way. Mary says snow tonight and tomorrow, as much as six inches. Ha! the snow will go, will go soon enough.

I'm scraping some bit of frost off the windshield. An old feed truck comes past on Washington Street. It's not hitting on all cylinders; it rumbles and roars deeply, an elemental vibration; and it leaves a thick trail of acrid blue smoke, a haze of it, enough to slow the wind.

River runs. Flag blows. I drive north out of Fairwater. Black asphalt and blue sky straight ahead as far as I can see.

You can go home again. You can go home to visit, but you can't stay.

Just north of Five Corners, a pair of mourning doves on a power line, fluffed against the cold and the promised storm.

If you make yourself say something, you may say something interesting and important. You'd better be listening when it comes along. If you miss it you might as well have kept silent.

That's the way it is: if you don't pay attention, you lose - you lose something, a word, an image, a trill of emotion. So often we put our head down and push on without recognizing what's in this moment. This might be the moment. I want to learn to live in it.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 28, 2002

Image: a line of geese

like a single large bird disappears behind the evergreen across the street. The flash of it, an image of such a great bird, and your breath catches. Then you realize what you've seen - nothing new, but something presented differently.

We'll have blue sky today - there's haze like a day's growth of whiskers, yet I expect it will disappear. Or perhaps not; I have been wrong before. The temperature is about 15 degrees.

I have made coffee for my wife. We have everything we need.

Oh, yes, I step outside and now I think the sky will be grey all day. The haze has thickened. The sun stays almost hidden - a luminous disk in the east, nothing more. The village is grey with a winter day's greyness. Nothing busts wide open with color.

The wind in the flag at the cemetery blows from south to north, a little southwest to a little northwest perhaps.

Out in the country, a drabness touched by snow. The roads are clear. Asphalt is stained with salt.

For a moment, a blinding sun breaks through. It shines on ice and crusted snow. Sheen of brightness like a knife.

"Sun on Sunday" says the weather-woman on the radio. I don't think she realizes what she has said. In this modern life, we forget Sun-day, Moon-day.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 27, 2002

A flash of snow by evening

turned everything white yesterday, and made the roads slippery. This morning - blue sky and cold. The temperature here is about ten degrees. "Hitch up your britches and git going," I can hear my dad say. The day doesn't get better for the waiting.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, I step on snow on the way to the car. It's a biting morning, the car in shadow of the neighbor's house.

The white surface of things is a loveliness with sunlight bright on it. Wind at the cemetery, the flag blows west to east.

The rest of my drive to work - an emptiness. The day has gone translucent, I'm seeing nothing that registers, that sticks to mind. So quiet a white morning near the end of February. Nothing else to do, nowhere else to go but to go to work.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 26, 2002

A grey gauze -

I can see blue sky behind it in patches. Cold and snow has been promised. The temperature is 20 degrees. We haven't seen the snow yet.

Each place has its own peculiar lay of light. Each place tugs at its natives in a special way, at its natives and its adopted sons and daughters. Sometimes we give our hearts away to another place than our native home: I have to make allowance for that.

The flag at the Fairwater cemetery blows north to south. There is some chill on the air even as the sun punches through the overcast to the east.

Wind. The geese are keeping their heads down - not a single vee of them cuts the air this morning.

To the south of Ripon, a blast of snow flakes flung down. I think of Thomas Merton's funeral, of Sister Therese's poem of one handful of blasted sleet hitting the coffin being lowered into the grave. A shock of remembrance.

By the time I'm sitting in the parking lot at work, it's a real flutter of snow across the wall of vista before me.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 25, 2002

We have enjoyed

a bout of mildness over the weekend. The greyness overhead today seems soft and patient. We know there is harshness at the other end of the sky. That happens. Storms hold. Storms hold and run and tear.

A few large flakes of snow have fallen; they amount to almost nothing but they remind us where we are - this is February and it snows in March too, remember.

Geese and greyness; and trees moving in the wind. It could be a still life but for the life of wind. Life is an insistent motion.

The flag in the parking lot at work blows to the south. Everything blows one way or another, eventually. We make our choices. We want to get to where we want to go. Yet we have to go to work.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 22, 2002

Snow and blow and cold

Wednesday afternoon and evening. Much ado about very little - only a few inches of snow came out of it, enough to make yesterday a little slippery and sloppy. The roads cleared in the afternoon. It is a blue sky morning, the storm and sidewise snow would be barely a memory yet it clings to the sides of everything, like paint.

A white blanket on everything, ditch and fields. Where is the snowy owl when you need him? Gone to feed farther on.

Fog and clouds smear away from Green Lake to the northwest of me. The lake has been open all winter: it is putting its warmth to the air, water wishing to be snow again.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 20, 2002

They've promised snow.

We've got fog, heavy fog. Maybe snow is coming.

This is February; this is not February. We lose sight of everything on a morning like this. You can't find the melody for anything.

The fog is so thick it's coming down as rain, a regular patt, patt, patt.

In the country, visibility is only a quarter of a mile. Maybe less. Wet, unhappy starlings on the powerline again this morning. Ghostly orbs of light come out of the fog towards me. An extrusion of light in these conditions. If I had to live out in this weather, where would I hide from it?

Sometimes I just want to tell the world to "Shut up." Noise of the radio, noise of tires on the wet asphalt, the distant whine of all the unhappy people.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 19, 2002

We've had some

warm melting days. "Watery light," as Mary's mother said yesterday from her hospital room. She is recovering. Spring comes on.

It is a grey morning. The temperature is already above freezing, I believe. The day uncoils. The ice of the pond is getting sloppy wet; water stands atop it.

The flag at the cemetery blows from south to north. Tires sizz on the wet asphalt. Some little mist spats the windshield. A line of starlings along a powerline north of town, birds wet and unhappy. A vee of geese flies east above me.

Out in the country, fog hangs down in all directions. Where would you go if you could go somewhere, and how would you be different than you are where you are?

The tires sizz.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 18, 2002

A streak in the rosy dawn,

split left and right, creased north and south. A jet plane heading west. A new day dawning.

You see what you see. Don't beat yourself up too badly about it. Tomorrow the sky will be something different, a blue sheerness of petticoat, a shiny muslin, a white gauze.

Metaphor takes you away; it doesn't bring you back. You come back on your own if you get here at all.

It's a brisk morning, yet the birds sing. There is a smell of spring not far off, not farther than hope. There is sun on things, that brightness.

The sun is a shaggy-maned lion. The flag at the cemetery blows almost due north. To the west now I see a darkness of clouds, and elsewhere some smears of cloud. The fields are mostly bare of snow. Geese and crows. Far off, perhaps a hawk on the nakedness of its tree.

Where I work, a play of crows above the parking lot, a crackle and snap of them.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 15, 2002

Complain

about the grey haziness above? Complain about a bit of wind in the trees? The dampness and chill in everything? No, I don't think so. I think I'll sing my heart out about being alive. Being alive another day!

Yesterday was warm and melting. Today, we're told, won't be quite so fine. Indeed, there are snow flurries already, not serious yet but they grow more serious by the minute. Even so, I've got to sing rejoicement!

Now already in the blink of an eye the streets are white with snow. Serious snow indeed.

They are wide, wet flakes by the time I step out to the car, like chunks falling of the roof of a house, some of them. Heavier than a coat of paint. Wetter than a kiss.

Oh, the snow. Where is the snowy owl when you need him? He's not at his station along Watson Road this morning. I haven't seen him for several days. Has he gone to fatter mice in fields farther north?

Oh, oh, oh, hosannah, snow!

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 14, 2002

A rose is

a rose is a rose, unless it's the rosiness all around the morning horizon today. A soft edge laid on everything. Despite the crusted snow, despite the cold temperature outside, a softness is evident, as if the world is swelling for spring. The temperature is about twenty degrees. I'd like to stuff a wad of money in my pocket and chase the horizon, but I'll go to work. Duty.

Even the wind in the branches seems more gentle somehow.

Everyone wants what no one gets, is that it? A crumbling brick with the sun on it. In summer, the insistence of ants. There is no stampede for these. I'll take them like flowers.

Wind in the flag, from south to north. It blows me all the way to work. It blows me into empty-headed oblivion. I see everything, I notice nothing.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 13, 2002

We've got all the blue sky

we'll ever need today; it stretches from horizon to horizon like a crown of happiness. The temperature is only about ten degrees but who can complain. The world is bright with every possibility. Abandon hope if ye cannot rejoice. You dress the world, undress it; you have no one to blame.

In the cold, still air, there is a certainty, a sureness - as if the dictionary is complete, as if everything has been defined for all times. There is that kind of hard edge to everything.

No wind. By nature and definition, all despair is infinite. If it does not roll everywhere forever, then you've given up despair and it's not despair, it is hope again.

I have been way too occupied to be watching for the snowy owl when I need to. It could be there, it could be not there - today I don't know.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 12, 2002

Wind last night,

severe wind lifting the snow from stretches of prairie, depositing the snow on our roads. A reconfiguration not to my liking. Enough snow on the roads that you have to be careful driving. You didn't know what surprise was just out of reach of your headlights.

It's still a loud blow, the sound of the wind in the trees. The wind grabs the trees, tries to drag them. The trees cry for relief. They don't want to lose control, such control as sturdy roots can give.

The wind has blown away the clouds above us - they are heaped in a pile to the south and east. The snow is crusted by the melting and freezing; where a piece of soil was cast up by the snowblower onto our lawn, a pit or scar on the white surface. Heat and cool. Love and leave. A pang of loneliness. All upon a pile of snowbank, questions.

Far to the west, a bank of dark clouds. There are places in the countryside where the fields are bare, whipped to black soil by these winds. An exposure like a scab pulled off a wound, I'd say.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 11, 2002

It was fire in the east

as the sun came up. It is blue sky overhead now, a certain rosiness all along the horizon, a new day. We had a snow storm on Saturday night and Sunday morning and now it's behind us like a bad dream we no longer remember.

Sun in the afternoon yesterday - Sunday - cleared the snow off the roads. Our way is clear. It may not be the path we've chosen, but we can go. Sometimes we think merely moving is enough. It's not. You've got to ask where the hell am I going or you're going to hell.

Wood smoke comes up the neighbor's chimney. Frost holds tight to the windshield. My fingers grow number, scraping. Sun lays on everything; the sun shall take all.

Yesterday the flag at the cemetery blew north to south. This morning it flaps south to north. Nothing lasts forever, except perhaps the wind. Yet even the wind must change direction.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 8, 2002

If you don't bet,

you don't win. If you don't bet, you don't keep losing. Which of them are we? The fellow who throws good money after bad? The fellow who chases his dream?

Blue sky. A temperature of 20 degrees. Everything a morning in February should be - you name it, we've got it. We've got it today, that loveliness.

I shall write it again and again

The day is lovely.
The day is lovely.
The day is lovely.

like a bad boy sent to the blackboard during recess. It's not punishment, or if it is, then "hurt me, hurt me," as they say.

The day is lovely.
The day is lovely.

Everything you call for you already have. Accept that you have it. Accept that it's enough.

Excess is not necessity, though sometimes excess is not too much.

The universe is a bus going down the mountain road out of control. Accept that you're not in charge. Control is an illusion.

Accept that your wish is to be elemental again.

A rich man sings of everything. A poor man sings of nothing.

The love of dirt is everything. Your stance toward soil defines your whole morality.

The snowy owl is not at his post this morning. He was there last night. He has gone off where who-o-o knows where, dropping down, covering a small dying thing.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 7, 2002

Another true-blue morning,

frost, temperature of 20 degrees. Another song across the sky. "Hello, Beautiful Morning." Someone should write it down, but we all think we're too busy. We are busy like ants; we have much to do about nothing. What is true and permanent and important? I'm not sure we ask ourselves. The small bits of it we handle are all we want to handle. Aren't we all afraid to break off something bigger than we are, something rangy and untamed? Don't we choose to play it safe?

The snowy owl is off to my left this morning as I drive north, on a power pole along Carter road, exactly where I saw it last night too.

We are promised temperatures in the 40s today. What loveliness.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 6, 2002

Sky like velvet,

a grey haze with blue behind. Along the horizon, a whiteness, like hoarfrost in all the trees. A rosy-faced girl off to the east, smiling at us.

Get up in the morning and say Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah. Shadows have gone to Shadowland. We're back in the world of things with substance. Now again we can taste what we eat; we feel the texture of life; brightness is warmth. Everything's as beautiful as light can make it. No one gets everything.

Wrap your arms around the morning like she's a girl. Kiss her like you mean it.

Poetry is neither fact nor fiction, it's the plain truth. Some of us are not ready for plain truth. No one said the truth was simple. Sometimes you've got to put on your apron: you're a butcher cutting meat.

It's a sincere frost on the windshield.

I saw the snowy owl again last night, near the same power pole as earlier. The sun was setting. The owl was a great whiteness against the darkness coming on. There is a bit of hoarfrost in the trees along Highway E. There is a white haze in all directions. Overhead, all the blue sky we could ever want.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 5, 2002

We've got sun and sky and

a temperature about 12 degrees. I've got a trip to Ripon and back under my belt already, taking M. to the hospital for tests. A rosy giant was starting to waken to the east as I came back, that great wink of sun starting to rise. I'll leave work to bring M. back home about 11 a.m.

It's a chill but lovely day. It's a blue dome of sky. It's heaven covering us. I say a prayer that everything in the world would be so fine, everything.

At the cemetery, the flap flaps lazily to the east.

A turkey vulture above a white field. A great flock of small birds surrounds it like a mist. It's a quick image of life and death and life, winter on the land, the promise of spring, another round of birth and growth, fecundity and decay. Everything goes back to the essential things, finally. We do not wish otherwise.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 4, 2002

We have slid into February

like stealing second base. Blue morning sky, the sun to the east. Temperature about five degrees. Would there be a crowd in the stands, cheering? Not at this temperature, I suppose. We might be halfway home but at five above zero that's not enough for some people.

As I step out to the car, there's a woodpecker at work already, drilling into a cold fiber of tree, looking for a cold morsel. If he's satisfied at the prospect, I am.

It's a tight frost this morning. Everything wants to hold onto everything, except my fingers want to be iceplugs.

I love this lay of light, the bream of it, the honey-ness. The sun is a hog's snout rooting out the cold. The wind is from the west.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 1, 2002

Freezing rain last night,

snow on top of it. We have been out to clear the driveway. Moon in the darkness above, visible through falling snow. A great halo. Colors in the night overhead as we worked at the snow. The shine of color like a blessing.

It was slippery driving last night. I suppose that it shall be slippery this morning. Take extra time, take extra care. We can land a man on the moon but it won't mean nothing if I die in a traffic accident sliding through some stop sign.

As I leave for work, there is a sundog almost due east off the end of Washington Street. The sun breaks everything open. Snow on the highway. Wind blows from the west. Snow is a great, white scab; beneath, the land heals. Another season will come.

Snowbanks have formed in the ditches, along fence lines. All of a sudden it looks like winter again.

Crows against the wind, a few of them. For now the crows seem to be winning. You don't know how long they'll keep what they've gathered. Success is only a temporary refuge.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL JANUARY 31, 2002

Snow. A snow plow

grumbles on the street. Temperature at 20 degrees. Everything is painted loverly.

We take the bit of snow; we have no choice. Spring will come: we'll land on our feet.

The streets are slippery, snow on Highway E heading north. I'll take my time. The flag at the cemetery blows the wrong way again, east to west. Is the storm circling us like wolves? We've got nowhere to hide. Now six Canadian geese above the road; they've got nowhere to hide. We'll get what we want when we want what we get. You make your own self unhappy, or not.

If I write the same thing again and again and again, what have I lost? Writing it over and over, I might make a permutation in it and end with something new.

The lay of the snow. The landscape is Wisconsin; it could not be moreso.

Today is essential.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL JANUARY 30, 2002

There was a spit

of freezing rain and snow here yesterday, nothing that stayed. The real ugliness is farther to the south. It's about twenty degrees today, a dull light, a winter-grey sky. A winter-lonesome cast over things. An ache throbbing in the bare land, like heart-ache. The tremors of love are the slow hills we live with, easy rolling endless prairie.

The merest dusting of snow on the roof of the car. A bite to the morning.

A wind from the north is lazing in the cemetery. Who is going to complain?

A mile and a half south of Five Corners, there's a snowy owl on a power pole, bright against the grey sky. A white loveliness against the dullness of this winter landscape. The suddenness of beauty wandering amongst the ordinary days.

IVAN BURGESS'S ECHO ECHO

"I don't like to

tell other people how to spend their time and money," Ivan said, "but if you want to have a fun evening, just go up and watch our boys basketball team. I really don't know how good they are, but they are the best I've seen in a long time. I mean, they have the big uns, they have the ones who are quick, they've got the shooters, and they play defense. This is high school basketball at its very best."

"Ya ever notice I don't say much about wrestling," Ivan said. "I suppose ya have. It's not that I have anything against wrestling. It's just that I don't know squat about wrestling. I've looked for a book called Wrestling for Dummies, but so far haven't found one. So what I would like to see happen is for the wrestling coach and the wrestlers to put on a wrestling clinic on Channel 17 sometime. Explain the rules, the different holds, and the scoring. You know, enough for us to understand and enjoy what was going on. They could go into a wrestling practice and show us what was good, what was bad, and what wasn't allowed. Think on 'er."

"When they get to talking politics at Paul's Cafe," Ivan said, "they make fun of the Democrats UNTIL Arden Devlin shows up. When Devlin gets to laying the facts on the Republican majority in Paul's, they hush up. When Devlin parades fact after fact about the shortcomings of the current administration, it makes the only other Democrat think, 'I wish I'd said that.'"

"Have you ever heard about the family that every Christmas played a game called 'Have You See Jesus?'" Ivan asked. "Every year they put out a plastic Nativity Scene, and every year the wind would come up and blow it away. So on Christmas morning, they would go around the neighborhood asking, 'Have you seen Jesus?'"

"Francis Runyon had calf cramps a couple days last week," Ivan reported. "The advice he received from the As the Bladder Fills table was to 'eat more bananas.' But, one thing, you don't want to put banana peels in the disposal."

"Me trying to run a computer," Ivan suggested, "is like Charlie Brown trying to fly a kite."

"Mike Hughes bought a new recliner," Ivan reported. "He gave it a shakedown cruise last Tuesday. He sat down to watch some television. The next thing he knew, it was three o'clock in the morning."

"We used to call it wrasslin' when I was a kid," Ivan said. "Now it is called wrestling and it more scientific and probably a lot more fun if you know for sure what is going on."

"Bobbi Miles was taking notes at the As the Bladder Fills Club last Friday morning," Ivan said. "She had gotten some inquiry from some Ivy Lerague school wanting to know about the middlewest. This, in my opinion, is not the middlewest. This is the Great Plains. As far as I'm concerned, the middlewest stops at the Jewell County line. Everything west of Jewell County, to me, is Plains country."

"Has there been enough snow to guarantee a bumper wheat crop?" Ivan asked. "I don't know how much it takes, but I've had enough already."

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL JANUARY 29, 2002

I go to work early today,

to meet a customer. The days get longer, but not so that it's light out yet as I write this. There's dark gloom to the sky, temperatures have dropped, winter returns. The street lamps cut a cold figure in the darkness. I don't make any promises.

No frost on the windshield. As the sky begins to lighten, there is a variety of greys in the clouds - pale to dark. Everything moves as its own pace. Nothing much happens in the village at this hour. Some few folks drive to work. Lights are on in some of the houses; others houses are dark.

Again the wind comes from the east. Everything goes the other way: nothing goes home.

Isn't light is a kind of bath as we rise and dress each day?

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL JANUARY 28, 2002

It was serious warmth

on the weekend. Much of our snow cover is gone; the drive is entirely clear of snow. We were in Iowa visiting my parents and I gave a reading in Ames. The snow cover all across Minnesota and Iowa is mostly gone, too.

This is winter, but not a very mean one. We enjoy good fortune for a few days. Nastiness is supposed to be coming. Today is a grey morning. Temperature is about 30 degrees above zero. No complaints yet.

The wind is hard from east to west, or perhaps nearly northeast to southwest. There's a sparrow hawk on the power line north of the village. Only some patches of snow remain in the fields. A greyness of geese above the field off to the west of where the hawk tree used to stand.

Nothing much to remark on this morning, yet it is everything that is.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL JANUARY 25, 2002

Is it, the morning,

a great unhinging, or is it a nailing onto? We let go the night, we grab the day, the sun, the motion forward. When will the drag of the past, that weight, bring us to a standstill? Is that what death is?

When the letting go? When the holding onto?

The merest hint of frost this morning. Blue sky with clouds to the north. Sun from the east, a blanket on our warm house.

Yes, a dark bank of clouds to the north. Wind from south to north. We are promised real warmth - in the 50s, maybe into the 60s.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL JANUARY 24, 2002

Morning, morning, hallelujah.

The temperature is well into the twenties, some greyness above, the eternity that's mine ahead of me.

There is a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. How many times has matter expanded and contracted, how many Big Bangs? How distant is the God that lets the machine run and re-set and run again?

Your soul will never escape the black hole at the center of everything, expect as the light next time. Shine, shine, shine.

No frost on the windshield. A fog of breath in air.

The poet can choose the beauty he knows; he can choose a new beauty he doesn't know; he can mend and meld. I know now I am more welded to the past than I used to think. I like to sing what I know. I am like my fellows.

Context is that which gives meaning to nothingness. Without context, nothingness is nothing.