Hi Subscriber,
Next week I'll get back to the quiet places series.
Today is about recognizing the difference between loneliness and taking time for a little quietude.
As you drive along the rural tracks of land in Michigan, you will occasionally see old weathered barns like this one; once filled with horses and grain, but long since left to age gracefully.
They're so beautifully rustic.
It's nothing at all like our neighbor's metal roofed pole barn that I used to go to when I wanted a quiet place to sketch and think. It's more of a symbol than anything, which is why I snapped the image and am planning to use it in a painting.
People who love solitude like this are often seen as strange for spending so much time alone. I was called 'weird' a lot as a child (and a few times as an adult). It stung, but I eventually learned to let that roll off my back. I thought it was a kid-thing.
But then when I returned to college in my late 40s, I found that a surprising number of people carry this kind of misperception into adulthood.
A creative writing professor read an assignment I had written; a poem about the pleasure of climbing out the attic window and onto the roof of our house to sketch and watch birds.
She immediately assumed it was about loneliness.
I was dumbfounded! I thought I had written delight, wonder, and peacefulness into every line.
If you have the time and if care to, give it a look and see if it sounds more like loneliness, or joyful solitude to you.
I'm thinking of including it in my book, Memoirs Of A Lastling.
Enjoy and take time for birdsong.
Jan
On The Roof
Jan Dale
©2003 all rights reserved
I climb aloft in summer's breeze
and perch the roof on folded knees.
My ritual I gladly follow,
instruments in pocket's hollow;
pen and voice and paper.
Careful not to mar a shingle,
bare and scrapen feet atingle.
Small price it is for me to pay
to hear what treefolk have to say.
As is my want I wait until
my stirring settles into still.
Til feather folk who, poised to flee,
decide to take no heed of me,
yet hold their distance just the same.
Then as lofty talk resumes,
I listen to their throaty tunes.
Each call with tone and color sweet,
transcends irksome human-speak.
Closer now they flit and whistle.
Lightly as the down of thistle
come the chickadee and sparrow
weaving through a rusty harrow.
To use a pencil begs erase.
Far better truthful blemish face
without a worry who will see
such infantile endeavor.
So pen without full knowing sees
patterns tracing velvet breeze.
Circling, swooping, current surfing,
curious hovering, feathers flurfing,
darting in and out the trees.
Darting in the velvet breeze.
This my evening's finest pleasure,
to capture every silken feather.
Not in snare or net or cage,
but memorized upon a page.
On this precarious rooftop perch,
I find the calm for which I search.
And quietude for thoughts to birth,
thoughts that carry lasting worth.
As the molten orb dips lower
hurried travel turns to slower.
The moment comes, and aching sweet,
when feather folk commune with me.
I try a 'chirrrrrupp-thk', a 'wheeet,'
and listen for returning treat.
Oh feast, my soul, upon the chat
awhile before I take my nap.
They flitter, twittering, aloft and unwittering
who it is that speaks their tongue,
so poorly speaks their tongue.
I call to them each one by turn
and tuck them in til dawn's return.
Or is it they who tuck me in,
who softly bless me with their sound?
Reluctantly I climb inside,
but leave the window open wide.
I'll catch the very last lone call
until in slumber's arms I fall.
Midst the velvet breeze I fall
