A Deep River Year
December 31,  2014

There is nothing special about this day, really.  In the life of the planet, it is just another turn, one which completes a single orbit around our small star.  The life here goes on as it did yesterday.   The sparrows chattering in the forsythia bush along the edge of the yard know nothing about a new year.  They will not be making resolutions or wondering what news will shatter their peace.   They will scuttle around under the feeders for stray seed and huddle together in the cold night and wait for dawn, as they did yesterday.

But we are different.   We mark time on calendars, remember the numbered years of our lives.  We come to this night hoping to a find a doorway to something new, different.  No matter that the earth is getting warmer, or that human creatures still seem to try to solve their problems with violence, or that the shadows of death hang over everything we love.   We hold our breath, and in the pause, believe in goodness. 

Today I arise before dawn and take two dogs out for their morning walk.     Our feet crunch through the fallen leaves as we climb a hill behind the cemetery; and then in a grassy meadow I stop while the dogs go sniffing in the bushes.   I am suddenly aware of the silence all around me.   There is not the breath of a wind, and the world seems to stand stock-still.   But I listen closely and hear a barely discernible distant sound.   It is a hum--perhaps the drone of cars speeding past on a highway, I think.  Or is it inside me, the throb and pulse of blood pushing through my arteries, the thing giving me life?   Or the primal thrum of the universe, the music of the spheres?    A dog barks down the street, and overhead somewhere a hawk cries, hungry for morning, and the quiet returns.   It is a sweet silence, this.   The world, my world, holding its breath, as something new waits just over the hill.

The End of the Year
 
Sparrows chatter
to greet this cold morning,
and I fling a handful of seed
across the barren ground.
Months from now
I will kneel here,
lay seeds in fallow earth
so that something green might grow.
But now the seed is gift,
a tender offering to the feathered ones,
tossed into the doorway of the year
as hope and promise
that we will make it through
this looming winter together.
Somewhere fireworks splash across the sky,
and lovers kiss away their fears,
a road curves off into a new year
as infants sleep beneath wishful stars.
But I will walk on frozen earth
and pause to listen to my heartbeat,
which is today a song of gratitude
that I am here
in this wonder of a life
where birds still sing,
where  sunrise turns the sky
into a rose.

--Timothy Haut, December 31, 2014

A Deep River Year
December 24, 2014

Today is Christmas Eve. In anticipation of the family being together to celebrate this wonderful holiday, I was in the kitchen last night amid a flurry of flour and sugar and lots and lots of butter. The cookies are done, and the next round of baking will be in the wee hours tomorrow morning when I make the Swedish tea ring in honor of my grandfather and fry up the Ferden (sugared German doughnuts) in memory of my father, whose cast iron aebleskiver pan is hauled out once a year for this purpose.

But tonight we will go to the old white church where a host of costumed children will put on the annual Christmas Pageant. One of the tinsel-haloed cherubs sitting by the manger will fall asleep, and another will make faces in the spotlight. One of the Wise Men will forget the words to his verse of "We Three Kings," and a shepherd will be caught with his finger up his nose. The Baby Jesus will cry his lungs out in spite of his parents' efforts to render him groggy with milk an hour before the play. All of this is as it should be. Around midnight we will gather in the church again to light candles and sing "Silent Night." As we sing I will be thinking of the father whom I held in my arms a few days ago. He had just lost his son in a terrible car accident and was inconsolable. There will be no silent night for him, no "calm and bright," no heavenly peace.

The mystery of Christmas, though, is that we perform these ancient rites in spite of heartbreak and loss, in the midst of a world that is fractured by violence and hatred, because we need to believe that something bigger--perhaps Love itself--holds us. Sometimes it feels like a dream. Last Sunday during the carol sing in our church we all joined in a chorus of "White Christmas." The snow was falling gently outside the tall, clear glass windows in the old building, and it just seemed right, even though it is certainly not a religious song. But it stirs something deep in us--this dream of a world bright and shining and full of love. It is one of the most spiritual yearnings of all, the thing that can make us good. In the end, it is really not something bigger that holds us, but something very small. It is the crying baby in the straw, the sleeping angel, the dream I wish for every weeping father--that even the smallest love is stronger than all the darkness, all the hurt.

Somewhere a Star

Somewhere a star
 gleams in the darkest night,
 pure as the promise
 that once glittered
 in a Bethlehem sky.
 It is for us who journey
 on a lonely road,
 or who have forgotten
 where we are going.
 It shines where no other beauty
 can be seen,
 a mystery and a wonder,
 a cosmic explosion that to us
 is just a point of light
 in our tiny, shadowed world,
 a little thing to follow
 when our sun has set.
 Sometimes that star
 is all we have,
 the thing on a dark and holy night
 that kindles a spark of hope in us--
 unlikely as it may seem--
 reminds us that love invades the world,
 shines a light that leads us home.

 --Timothy Haut, December 24, 2014

A Deep River Year
December 17, 2014

The Christmas season is full of old traditions and folklore. Their origins may be lost or forgotten, but we continue to savor them as a rich connection with those who once shared their Christmases with us. At Christmas, my family would go to the home of my Aunt Anna and Uncle Daniel, who was Swedish by background. Aunt Anna would always make rice pudding, a Swedish tradition, and she would stir an almond in it. She assured us that the person fortunate enough to get the almond in their bowl of pudding would be the next one in the family to get married. This was not necessarily a pleasing prospect for a young boy, and fortunately, I never got the almond. I'm not sure, but my wonderful Aunt Anna may have also been the one to tell us how the animals in the forest would kneel down at midnight on Christmas Eve, and assure us that the bees who had gone into hibernation would awaken, no matter the weather, and hum the 100th Psalm. It seemed far-fetched even then, but I dreamed of sneaking out into the woods to see if any part of this tale could be true. Our world should be filled with such dreams.

And where I love to dream best is by the fire. We have a fireplace in our living room. The house was built in 1834, and at that time the living room was the kitchen, and the hearth was the place where meals were prepared. The chimney crane bearing an iron pot still extends over the fire, unused for many years, and a beehive oven next to the hearth could be filled with hot coals to heat up the bricks inside for baking. Over the years, my three little boys all hid in there, and I smile still when I walk past. But although there is no more cooking in the fireplace, I still light fires on autumn and winter nights and feel comforted by its warmth and hypnotized by its firelight. Perhaps it is a primal thing that has united human beings from the dawn of time--the attraction of a fire. It is the place of human gatherings, of feasts and family, the place we go to find respite from the terrors of the night. It is the thing, strangely, that both symbolizes our passions and brings us peace.

For years it has been my tradition to start each year's Christmas fire with the cut up trunk of last year's Christmas tree. By the hearth on Christmas morning, I feel connected to all that has gone before in my life--the rice pudding and the almond, the hands held around the table, the carols sung in the snow by the front door, the stockings hung from the mantel. I see faces smiling at me from the flickering flames, would rather not move from the place where I may read and dream and fall asleep.

Hearth Fire

Old Hestia, the ancient god of hearth,
 missed all the festal gatherings
 of the great divinities,
 shunned lofty Olympus
 just to stay at home
 for duty's sake, tending to the fire.
 She was perhaps the wisest,
 humblest of the gods,
 this keeper of the hearth
 where weary sojourners could come
 to warm themselves
 with food and flame.
 And still to fire and hearth we come
 to be where we may see
 some spirit dancing in the flames
 calling us from fear to faith,
 or yet more simply,
 to teach us constancy,
 to give us some small peace
 where we may join the cat curled up,
 the dog stretched out,
 here where love's best gift
 is just to stir the embers.

 --Timothy Haut, December 17, 2014

A Deep River Year
December 10, 2014
December for us is a season of rituals involving food, decorations, and the keeping of time.   In this dark season around the winter Solstice, these rituals serve as a reminder that life not only endures the dark and cold seasons, but gives us joy.   This weekend we headed out to get our Christmas tree, something we have come to do on the first weekend in December since our children were young.   There is nothing universal about this particular timing, of course.   As a child, my family acquired a Christmas tree from a lot in the city, chosen from an assortment of trees that were probably cut down in September.  And we always put our tree up on my sister's birthday, Dec. 18.   My wife's family religiously did their tree on Christmas Eve, to the accompaniment of a turkey dinner and Christmas carols on the stereo. 

But we have come to like having the tree up a little longer, enjoying its magic even as the needles begin to grow brittle and fall to the floor.   We have not yet succumbed to the temptation of purchasing an artificial tree, whose needles will never fall.  I  cherish the fresh, pungent scent of a balsam.  And we go out to find one every year, even when it requires tromping through the meadow in search of the perfectly-shaped tree in the middle of a monsoon.   Such was the case on Saturday.   But we had already planned the outing, and the grandchildren were eager to get their tree.   This annual attraction is sweeter because at Joe's Christmas Tree Farm, they always have a bonfire going so that kids can cook a hot dog or roast a marshmallow before tying the tree to the top of the car and heading home.  Saturday the hot dog buns were soggy, and the marshmallows were covered with ashes  because in the rain, there wasn't much of a blaze for cooking.   But a good time was had by all, and finally we located just the prettiest tree we've ever had.  And  I, with my saw, knelt on the saturated earth and cut it down.   Shortly afterward, my wife spotted an even prettier tree, but that one will have to wait until next year.

Our Puritan ancestors had no use for Christmas trees.   They denounced them as pagan, a stain on the holiness of their religious holiday.   They banned them in New England for a while.  I prefer Martin Luther's take on things.  It is said that he was walking in the woods at night and saw stars shining through the branches of a fir.   Such beauty, he thought, should be in every home.   And it still is, in ours.

Christmas Tree

Hands sticky with sap,
fresh from the cutting wound,
I  set the tall fir inside the window,
where its lights will be seen
by those standing outside in the cold.
And here, inside, near a glowing hearth,
where we sit in the darkness
of a December night,
some magic will shine on us, too.
We hang the ornaments of our history
on these fragrant branches,
the glow of memory reflected
in glitter and glass.
But perhaps it would be enough
to do as my father did,
in the last of his Christmases,
forgoing the balls and garlands,
and hanging just a few lights
to illuminate his quiet celebration.
There in the darkness of that year
he fell asleep to something like stars
shining in these tender boughs,
a promise in winter
of something evergreen.

--Timothy Haut, December 10, 2014

A Deep River Year
December 3, 2014

Last week the town crew was out all day, attaching evergreens and great red bows to the hundreds of lampposts lining Main Street.    It was an expensive project, to be sure, considering the cost of all the materials as well as the paid hours necessary to do the job.   But it looks beautiful to have the town decked out for the season, and most of us deem it worth the cost.  This Saturday night is the annual holiday stroll, with all the shops open, a horse drawn wagon for the kids, a tree-lighting ceremony and a gingerbread house contest.

But I am struck by all those red bows fluttering in the December breeze.  In these dim, gray days, they proclaim a joy that captures us, lifts us out of the year’s doldrums.     December, this colorless month, is edged with red as a gift, calling us to celebrate even in the dark times.  We see it out the kitchen window as a pair of cardinals wing their way to our bird feeder, a glory in feathers.   By the front door, the winterberry bushes are covered with red berries the size of marbles, and over across the yard the holly seems to be singing the old medieval carol:  “The holly bears a berry as red as any blood!”  

Maybe that is why red makes the heart leap.    It is the color of our blood, the essential substance that pulses in and out of our hearts, giving us life.   Often when we see blood’s red it is a sign of danger.   There has been an accident, an injury, a wound that must be tended.  Our blood best does its work unseen.  But the red around us in the world reminds us of that hidden source of life, the primal red that is within all human beings.    It is a call to embrace life, to wonder at this secret that hides within us.     It is the force that turns winter away, that reminds us that we are all family.  It makes us want to sing.   

Red

In the wakening light
of earliest morning
a flash of red outside the window
promises something beautiful
in these grim days.
It is just a  bird seeking food,
but also something to stir the heart.
It is rose and berry and blood,
a wild and feathered miracle
that flies like joy.
We shall hang scarlet bows
on wreath and mantel,
deck our tables with holly,
its red berries winking a secret
to us in our passing.
This red is in us,
the life of life,
the thing that will help us to endure
the darkest winters,
the brightness that binds us
to friend and stranger,
the color of miracles in a gray time
that make us fly like joy.

--Timothy Haut, December 3, 2014

A Deep River Year
 November 26, 2014

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I am glad for it. We will gather family members—and maybe some others—around the table and reflect on this gift, which is life. Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday—perhaps more than any other—because it is just about being together. It is also a time to feel the tender spirits around us of those who have shared their lives with us. As we pause to say grace, they linger at the edges of the room, their voices whispering through our silence, saying things like “Did you put sausage in the stuffing?” and “Look how big your granddaughter is already!” and “I love you.”

When I was a little boy I would awaken on Thanksgiving morning to the aroma of roasting turkey wafting through the house, because my mother and father had risen before dawn to stuff the bird and lace it up for the oven. This was a ritual of love. So we will rise on Thursday—though not quite so early—and repeat that ritual for another year, and my mother and father will be there, and not. Yesterday we planted daffodil and tulip bulbs in the cold earth, perhaps the last mild day before a winter storm arrives today. This, too, is a ritual bound to our Thanksgiving feast--of planting and harvest, of making a pact with those who have been and those who are yet to come. We live in memory and hope. For that, we are grateful.

A Song to Slip from the Heart

Go there
 in the sullen days,
 when the heart is dark as November
 and there is no respite from the cold.
 Go there,
 and find some little thing
 to hold in your shaking hand,
 one last red leaf,
 or a blue feather from a morning bird,
 or an acorn with some life in it.
 Lift it up to the sky,
 which may be silent and heavy with clouds,
 but it is high, and worth seeing,
 for you must look up if you would be a priest
 who bears this offering.
 And then you will wait for the song
 to slip from your heart,
 where you have locked it up,
 a song that remembers
 what it is to be a child running in grass,
 a song of seasons and snow and rain,
 a song of laughter and tender voices.
 Suddenly it will be there,
 and if you have ever known love,
 known some sweet kiss or felt arms around,
 or felt the stronger, stranger love
 like a flame tearing at the darkness,
 or a wounded forgiveness,
 then this song will be a worthy anthem,
 and true as leaf or feather or seed.
 And then light will settle around you,
 and in you a joy will take its root,
 and you will be saved by this one,
 truest, deepest prayer,
 lifted up, like a wild and holy incantation:
 Thank you. Thank you.

--Timothy Haut, November 26, 2014

A Deep River Year
 November 19, 2014

It is a cold and quiet morning. In the southern sky a sliver of a moon hangs motionless as a line of geese make their hemline on the horizon. But this quiet morning belies the great speed of things. We are already in the fading days of November and the trees are mostly bare now. Wasn’t it just summer? There is still an air conditioner in the window, needing to be stored in the attic. And yesterday Phyllis had to take a hair dryer to remove the hose frozen to the outdoor faucet on the north side of the house. Where has the time gone?

But the speed of our lives is nothing compared to the actual speed of our world. I've read that earth is rotating at about 1,000 miles per hour. For earth to circle the sun in a year, our planet must travel about 66,000 miles an hour. And the sun and our solar system itself is moving through our galaxy at a breakneck speed as well. One estimate is that the sun is dragging us all through the Milky Way galaxy at 483,000 miles per hour. And our galaxy itself is speeding outward from that initial bang at 1.3 million miles per hour, moving toward some mysterious concentration of matter in the faraway depths of the universe--something called "The Great Attractor."

At these enormous speeds, we should be flinging ourselves onto the earth and holding on for dear life. But gravity helps us out, and instead we walk peacefully through our quiet morning, forgetting altogether that we are infinitesimal specks in the vastness of a wildly expanding cosmos. But our specks, to us, our precious. This week my wife, Phyllis, has a major birthday, a celebration of her appearance on this planet. It feels like we have travelled too quickly to this milestone, but today I stop to marvel at a sliver of moon and a thread of singing geese and the wonder of this one, good life. What a ride!

Birthday

We ride through time and space
 breathless from birth
 at the speed of it all,
 at the lives around us
 which flicker for a moment
 and fade away,
 the echoes of billions of heartbeats
 lost in the wake of our little years.
 But we are here,
 the glow of candles on a cake
 reflecting in our eyes
 to remind us that the this one life
 has been, for us, a shining light.
 Though the world may sail into the darkness,
 though stars may burn and die,
 though this speck of cosmic dust may seem
 as nothing in the great vastness,
 She has lived with flowers in her heart,
 rocked a baby in her arms
 and nestled a squirrel in her hair,
 flung herself into the sea
 and dipped her fingers into earth
 as if she could find there some timeless joy,
 and laughed so wondrously
 that for a moment the universe stood still
 grateful that such a thing as Phyllis
 could ever be.

--Timothy Haut, November 19, 2014

A Deep River Year
 November 12, 2014

The year is coming round full circle. These past days have been mild and soft, but the forecast promises that much colder air is on the way. I have been out by the woodpile, splitting some big logs into smaller pieces that will make our hearth fires on the coming cold nights. I do this with some care, as my wife discourages me from using any tools that have the potential of causing injury. This is because I have a reputation for being a somewhat clumsy handyman.

However, I actually have some experience with an axe. As a teenager, there was a huge elm tree in our back yard that fell victim to the plague of Dutch Elm Disease. My father thought it would be a good thing for a young man to get some exercise by chopping it up, providing us firewood at the same time. I learned then that elm is almost impossible to chop; its grain is twisted and stringy and when it grabs the blade of the ax, it won’t let go. And it’s not a great firewood anyway; it burns with a peculiar smell. But we had plenty of it, and it took me the better part of a summer before I gave up and let my father have it hauled away. Now I enjoy chopping wood, especially the satisfaction of feeling the axe head hit home so that the log falls cleanly apart. These are the pieces—oak and maple-- that will burn red in our hearth in the winter days ahead.

We have a fire in us, too—the thing that burns in us with warmth and light in those cold, dark days. Hidden in us is a life that has grown through the green seasons--all those memories hidden inside, sometimes even unrecognized until something splits them open, reveals them to the light. They are both sweet and terrible, joys and sorrows, fueling in us some deep happiness or abiding anger. This week I unexpectedly remembered a football game in a neighbor’s yard many, many years ago, where I, at the bottom of a pile, fell on a fumbled ball and felt my wrist crack under the weight of all those people on top of me. I rode home alone on a bicycle, tried to wish the pain away, was taken to the emergency room, fearing death. I remember little else, except waking up in my bed, arm bound in a cast, with my father sitting on a chair beside me, hand on my shoulder. It is in me, this wood for my fire.

Wood, Split

A flurry of leaves
 and a west wind sings a winter song
 as the ax is raised,
 then arcs through the shining air
 and thunks into the wood’s heart.
 The log cries out, falls apart,
 split open, white, in the November sun.
 Here is the secret center,
 hidden for years while giving life
 to a once-tall oak,
 now revealed, seen, kept.
 So we grow, too,
 our memories stored
 in the dark center of us,
 every wound and wonder,
 each sweet joy and buried sorrow,
 the hallowed mornings and the night dreams,
 the unspent wishes and the silent regrets,
 the first kiss and the tendered hand,
 the shared meal and the lonely walk in rain,
 all there, all there,
 deep at the wood’s heart,
 ready to be flame.

 --Timothy Haut, November 12, 2014

A Deep River Year
November 5, 2014

The small creatures of the world know that a great change is happening as we swing into a New England November.   There is less daylight to do the work of foraging and stockpiling for winter.   The chipmunks scurry back and forth from the feeders, their cheeks swollen from the load of sunflower seeds they are carrying back to their underground caches.    And the songbirds flit from bare branch to the residue of the summer garden in search of whatever may be left for them to eat.   Around the edges of the yard, there is still plenty.   The rose bushes are loaded with bright orange rosehips, and the winterberry bushes in front of the house are heavy with rows of red fruit.  And everywhere, the woods are decorated with bittersweet vines.

Most of the bittersweet in our region is an invasive plant which arrived in this country in the mid 1800s.   It spirals around fence posts and climbs the highest trees in the forest to gather sunlight, and through the summer its green  berries swell until they turn golden in autumn’s cooler days.   Then, one morning after a frost, those golden berries will explode and reveal, inside their yellow husks, deep crimson  berries.     This is nature’s autumn décor, the color reserved for the gray days after the last leaves have fallen to the earth.   We cut the vines and weave them into wreaths for the doors.  And in our dining room, they circle our ceiling chandelier and surround the table centerpiece, a colorful celebration of the dwindling year.

Those door wreaths are enjoyed by the birds, too, who eat the berries and scatter the seeds in places where we don’t want the plants to grow.   Underground their stringy orange roots begin to spread.   Beware of digging them up or pulling them out, because even just a piece of root left in the ground can generate a new plant.   And don’t eat the berries by mistake.  They are toxic to humans, even  fatal.   However, Native Americans used the plant for a variety of ailments, including reducing fever and pain in childbirth, causing vomiting, and as a skin ointment.  They knew how to do it, and I don’t.    So this bitter-tasting plant I leave to the birds and chipmunks to eat, and for us to bring just a little color into these darkening days.

 
Bittersweet

Like golden pearls,
these little fruits bejewel
their woody vines
climbing, twisting upward,
along  fence and forest trees,
growing strong in summer’s light.
And now, in these  sullen days,
through the fallowing of our land,
they claim an even brighter presence.
We admire their persistence,
curse it too,
for taking root where we would plant
some other thing more tame, less wild.
But it is noble to persevere,
to stay the course in wintry days
that we may flower again another spring.
So we gather these branches, and remember
to find sweetness in the bitter times,
to be beautiful in our dying down,
to spread our roots in deeper soil.
We remember  to be glad that
In the  time of dark and cold,
the reddest berries show.

--Timothy Haut, November 5, 2014

A Deep River Year
October 29, 2014

October is a delicious, joyous month, celebrated under a canopy of golds and maroons and the year's bluest sky. Sunday afternoon we picked apples at the local orchard. The wind was swirling and there was a nip in the air, but we came home with a bag full of Golden Delicious apples and the sweetness of autumn in our blood. We carved pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, which will stand guard on our front steps this Friday night as a parade of children come to our door looking for "trick-or-treat candy." And we have rigged up our Ghoulie Girl at the end of our kitchen sidewalk.

This has become an annual tradition. Usually sometime early in October our granddaughters start asking about “Ghoulie Girl,” and so the supplies come down from the attic and the inflatable black cat and pumpkin emerge from the basement. An old nightgown and rubber gloves serve for the body and a broomstick for the arms. The face is an ugly mask attached to the post light, topped with an old wig and pointed hat. She looks enough like a witch to be scary, but we laugh merrily at her appearance.

Some communities are giving up the celebration of Halloween. Certain religious groups have an aversion to a holiday with roots in pagan worship and evil spirits. Others have a more pragmatic aversion to children running through the streets in the dark so that they can load up on candy. One area school system is encouraging a more generic "fall festival" instead. But the child in me remembers frosty nights and the shuffle of leaves, a bulging pillowcase and the smell of my breath behind a scary mask. And I still sometimes feel the shiver that comes from a moon peering through twisted branches, the wail of the wind, the possibility of something unknown lurking beyond the edges of my safe and familiar world. I want a candle inside a grinning pumpkin face to light up the night, at least for a moment. Though I am a child no more, I am glad for a Ghoulie Girl to remind me that joy can still turn away the darkness.

Ghoulie Girl

She stands guard,
 a nightgowned sentinel
 with crooked face and billowing dress,
 watching the shadows for us.
 We fashion this wild-haired spectre
 out of cloth and sticks,
 but also out of the old fears
 that lurk in the helpless places
 within us.
 We know the night,
 recognize the grim voices
 that cry out from a cruel, embattled world,
 hold our breath and cross our fingers
 that the blind angel of fate
 will fly on by.
 And we are haunted by
 our own shadow,
 the one that rises in our sleepless nights,
 the one we have not learned to love.
 So in the season of failing light,
 we set a little light to shine,
 some twisted smile to grin a hope
 into the night,
 then call it joy that bends our fears away
 when we are child again.

--Timothy Haut, October 29, 2014

A Deep River Year
 October 22, 2014

The long, balmy days were sure to end eventually. This has been a gentle summer of soft days and cool nights, and this golden autumn has continued to be kind to us. There are still a few little tomatoes ripening in the garden, and green beans remain to be picked. For weeks there have been plenty of waving cosmos and bright zinnias, and the overgrown roses seem to like these cool October days, at least enough to surprise us with a sweet blossom here and there before winter comes. Best of all, the morning glories have bloomed at last. For months the vines have been sprawling over the garden fence and climbing the archway above the gate, and we have waited patiently for the cooler days of September to welcome their bloom. We have waited and waited. September came and went, and not one promising blue blossom.

Then, at last, October arrived. Helen Hunt Jackson's wonderful poem says that the suns and skies of June cannot compare to "October's bright blue weather." But for us, it was not the blue skies which we celebrated, but the glorious heavenly blue morning glories that decorated the edge of our garden. They are called "Heavenly Blue" for a reason. There is hardly another blue in nature to compare with these simple flowers, huge azure trumpets with a golden throat serenading the sunrise. For a week or two they have been gracing us. And the bees, too, have been thankful for them, making their last rounds before the flowers are gone at last. One afternoon a host of bumblebees flew in and out of heaven's blue, and in one great blossom I found a pair of them entwined--content, perhaps, to stay there forever.

That was not meant to be. Overnight a cold front swept through our valley, and when I stepped outside at dawn, the thermometer had just touched the freezing mark. The world seemed to shiver a bit with this brush of frost. It was not a hard frost. The marigolds and pineapple sage are still green and tall, and the tomatoes haven't given up, either. But, alas, the tender morning glories are drooping and shriveled. Now we will have to wait for next year to see such loveliness again. And the bees will have to look for heaven somewhere else.

Morning Glory

My love,
 we cut across the grain of the year
 in this season of angled light,
 seeking one more moment of summer.
 It is not ours to make, or will,
 but sometimes it comes
 as grace note
 to the dwindling days.
 One mellow day,
 the sun smiles warm
 upon this world of orange and gold,
 and the soft air hums
 with the gladness of bees
 who have found
 a tapestry of morning glories
 trimming our backyard fence with blue,
 a color richer than sky and sea.
 I will hold this vision,
 keep coming to it,
 that there is heaven in the world
 to find,
 some goodness lovely as a morning glory
 whose center is a star,
 a golden promise
 I would share with you.

--Timothy Haut, October 22, 2014

A Deep River Year

October 15, 2014      

 

The huge pile of leaves in our front yard is a product of the great old maple that stands guard over the south side of the house.   The bright leaves have been swirling down for a few weeks now, a process accelerated by the weekend's wind and rain.   Actually, the pile is so big because my granddaughter and her friend spent a few hours raking it high enough so that they could do satisfactory dives and flips into it.    Wild giggling followed, then more raking, then more jumping.   Then I took a leap, too.

 

The great fall of leaves marks the loveliest of seasons in New England.   The first glimpse of autumn comes in August, when a flash of red appears in the roadside sumac or the woodbine climbing a stone wall.   Up north the change of colors begins in earnest in September, and where we are, near the mouth of the Connecticut River, the peak of foliage color may not come until the end of October.  We savor this, even though it is a change that leads to winter.   The scientific explanation is that as the days shorten and the light dwindles, the green chlorophyll in the leaves can't continue to feed the tree and eventually the tree stops producing it.   As chlorophyll disappears, we begin to see other pigments which hide during the green of the year. Orange and yellow and red make their show at last.

 

Sometimes we see this in people, too:   when darkness gathers and the hard seasons come, our colors may turn the brightest.   Often in those difficult times the human spirit shines with its greatest beauty.   Many years ago I spent an October afternoon with an old professor at his summer cabin high up on the bank of the Housatonic River.   He was a famous historian, a great author, at the twilight of his life.    It had turned cold, and the little man stood bundled up in a heavy coat, his small round glasses glinting in the failing sunlight.   The autumn wind tousled his mane of snow-white hair as leaves flew around us.  "Some people get  melancholy when autumn comes and everything dies down," he said looking at the multi-hued hills across the river.   Then he grinned as I'll always remember him:  "But what a way to go!"

 

Autumn Crown

 

I have come now to the autumn,

and I see that my hair

has turned gray with time.

Around me the October world

is making its way toward winter,

and on a thousand hills

there is one more surge of life

before the cold days arrive.

A jubilation of trees,

their roots deep in ancient soil,

seem to smile,

knowing that it is fine to stand

in the fading light

wearing an autumn crown.

I have earned my gray, these years,

but sometimes I think

that it would be a lovely thing

to walk through crisp afternoons

with hair of red and gold,

a crown of joy to shine

in the fading light.

 

--Timothy Haut, October 15, 2014

A Deep River Year
October 8, 2014   

 October in New England is defined by its colors--the bright oranges, reds, and yellows that paint the hills and valleys. For me it has always been smells, too. Years ago it was the smell of burning leaves that perfumed every October afternoon. Still, autumn is redolent with earth smells, the sweetness of decay and the ripeness of apples fallen in the long grass. In the autumn wind sometimes you can catch a whiff of the sea, or perhaps the merest hint of winter in the night air. But the sounds of autumn are there, too. I smile at the familiar rustling of leaves on the streets. And I paused this morning to watch an arrow of geese passed over the treetops, honking some kind of message and massaging the air with the beating of wings.

Here in Deep River we hear another sound: the whistle of an old steam locomotive as it makes its way up and down the river valley. For generations the sound of a train whistle has been a haunting sound. It has been a harbinger of change and loss, a yearning for something beyond our sight, or a longing for those who have left us. Autumn, too, has about it this sense of lament. Even in its sweetness, it sings a song of departure, of endings. It is a season of memories about those who have taken some train far away from us, or of opportunities we have missed and of days that will come no more.

But I walk the railroad tracks remembering the boy that I once was, waiting on the platform of the station, waiting for the rumble in the distance, the plume of smoke, the bright light of the approaching engine. It would roar into view, sleek and gleaming, then churn to a stop. These trains had magical names, like the Rocky Mountain Rocket and the Denver Zephyr. I never got to travel on one of them, but I always dreamed that they were bound for glory. And they made me think that in this world where everything was possible, I might be bound for glory, too.

Train Tracks

We would kneel in the gravel
and carefully place our pennies
on the shining steel rails,
then wait in the trees
for a great engine to come thundering by,
flattening our coins into good luck charms.
We would pocket those copper discs
and they would carry us away
to the golden lands of our dreams.
We always wished, then,
to go somewhere else,
imagining that life would carry us away
to a place past prairies and mountains,
a place where we could find something—
perhaps fame, or romance, or glory--
beyond the long bend in the tracks.
Today it is quiet as I walk the twin rails
that curve past water and woods.
Amid a flurry of yellow leaves
I am a boy again,
hearing in the wind a far-away whistle.
Though I am content in this good place,
I reach in my pocket for a penny
and place it on the track.
I leave it there behind me,
offering it to someone
who may walk these rails tomorrow
and need to pick up a dream.

--Timothy Haut, October 8, 2014

A Deep River Year 
October 1, 2014

It still felt like summer this weekend, but a sure sign of autumn was the Woolly Bear caterpillar (Pyrrharctia isabella) that we found inching its way through the grass. We stopped to take note of this bristly, bi-colored creature, so far removed from us in the network of living things. Yet we hoped it could tell us something about our future. The old lore has it that if the brown band in the middle of the caterpillar is wide, the coming winter will be mild. So we took some comfort, on this sunny September day, to believe that this little moth-to-be was offering good news for the cold months ahead.

The future is always a great unknown, and perhaps that is why even intelligent creatures like humans still consult groundhogs and caterpillars to give us a glimpse at what may lie ahead. Some of these old tales may have some truth in fact, at least when it comes to weather. I have always been told that a halo around a winter moon means that snow is coming. Yesterday's rosy sunrise cautioned "Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." And today it is raining. But some other prognosticating practices may just be wishful thinking. My Great Aunt Anna hid an almond in the Christmas rice pudding, promising that whomever found it in their bowl would have wealth or love in the new year. And my grandmother had the mysterious power to read the future in coffee grounds left in the bottom of a drained cup. In her visions, the future always held something good.

Of course the future is not always benevolent. Some would say that the universe is remarkably indifferent to our personal well-being. An article in Sunday's New York Times tried to put one person's life in the context of the universe. The writer surmised that after his own death, his remains would begin to be re-absorbed into the earth’s mold. Within 67 years of his death, the last person with a living memory of him would also die. Within 10,000 years ecological disaster and disease would wipe out most of the human population of earth, and in seven million years or so an asteroid would collide with our planet and send it spinning on a slow journey into the sun. Just over three billion years from now a tiny speck of what used to be a human person would become a falling star in another galaxy. Perhaps this inevitable doom is too dreary a prospect for a bright September day. Maybe that's why it cheers us up to imagine that a caterpillar can help us dream a soft winter and an early spring.

Woolly Bear

You travel a journey in the world
 by inches,
 crawling toward winter
 with a promise you can not know.
 We will die, both of us, soon enough,
 and autumns will come and go
 as sure as the geese will fly.
 But for this little moment
 of sun and splendor,
 I would believe your sweet forecast
 that winter will be kind and soft,
 and that spring will come soon,
 and that like you, little Isabella,
 I will one day take wing and fly,
 or live some hidden dream
 beyond my present sight.
 We creep together through this green season
 bearing an assurance--
 or at least a wish--
 that though cold days may come,
 we shall all be well.

 --Timothy Haut, October 1, 2014

A Deep River Year
September 24, 2014   

Now it is dark here, at 6 a.m.   Though it still feels like night, an internal alarm clock goes off inside me.   I stir, then pull myself to my feet, get dressed and head downstairs to begin this new day.  I am a keeper of routines.   For me, the daily rounds are as comforting as the ancient holy offices of the monastics.     I do not call my morning practices elegant names like matins and lauds, but they sustain me in much the same way.   I am comforted by the predictable framework that has stitched my life together through years of change.   I open the front door, step out to pick up the daily newspaper  and wish the world well.   Inside again, I turn on the coffee pot, which is a signal to the cats that food is coming.   They weave in and out of my path as I jingle the leashes in an attempt to call the dogs for their walk.   They come, but reluctantly, in these darker mornings. 

Our morning walk may take many different routes.  Sometimes the two dogs and I set out across the ball field and the path through the sand pits.   It is overgrown now, and my pants get wet going that way.   We may follow the railroad tracks along the cove, or go for a run in the old cemetery on top of the hill where a beautiful herald angel atop a tall pillar faces east to watch the sun rise.  Often in the dark mornings we stay on the sidewalks in the center of town, where streetlights show the way.   That’s what we did this morning.

Along this circuit a bus stops in front of the pharmacy in the darkness, and waits a minute as if somebody might show up for a ride.   A white pickup turns into the driveway of the doughnut shop.   Down the street the lights from inside the corner restaurant reveal a bald man in a leather jacket alone at the counter, bent over a steaming mug of coffee.   We turn down a side street, and the noise of the Main St. traffic suddenly falls away.   We walk together into the soft whir of crickets and the whisper of a breeze.   This morning’s quiet is the prize, the gift, of such early rising.  It is the silent smile of a day’s possibility, the wordless invocation of gratitude, my matins.

Morning Walk

They take me down familiar streets,
suddenly straining at the other end of leashes
for an elusive scent in long grass
or the provocative bark of a distant dog.
I breathe deep, too,
as if there might be something hidden
waiting to be noticed
in these hills and roads of home.
In a comforting window a light goes on,
and I look away as if to avoid intruding
on some intimate awakening.
This quiet time is lovely, healing.
I would not barge into a day without this time,
this tender place--a hollow of expectancy
where something may yet be born,
or an idea rise and circle for a while, like a bird,
or a remembered song of joy stir to life.
So we head into dawn,
looking for something to surprise us:
a tennis ball hiding in the grass,
a heron skimming the treetops,
a runner circling the streets in neon pink shoes,
a crimson leaf flickering by the pond,
like a flame.

--Timothy Haut, September 24, 2014

A Deep River Year
 September 17, 2014   

It is early morning, just before sunrise, and we are walking by the place where the old river road passes over the marsh.   The cove is filled with the long, grassy heads of wild rice.  No wonder that hundreds of red-winged blackbirds gather here.   Along the railroad tracks the chatter of birds is constant, as if a great meeting is in progress.    In the open water, swans, geese and ducks awaken, ready to find breakfast in the muck below the surface.   They flap their wings excitedly, then turn upside-down to feast, ignorant of the human presence.

Walking along the tracks, the air is rich with the aroma of wild concord grapes.   The remnants of acorns decorate the ground under tall oak trees.   And here and there long spires of goldenrod reach for the light.  Summer days slip past this way.   Up on the hill the apple trees are heavy with fruit, and down here, by the river, the leaves are already changing color.   It is cold here in the morning, and we walk quickly toward a new season.

The blackbirds know.   Their song is not the joyous trill of April.   It is really not a song at all, but the incessant noise of conversation.  They chatter, then rise and circle only to descend again into the lush grasses.   The prattle of birds goes on.    We cannot understand the subject of their communication.   Perhaps it is a sound made in assurance that in the failing light and the dying down of things, they are not alone.  We seek this too, in some ways.   We yearn to find company in the coming of darkness.   Some of us hold on to a companion simply out of that fear--that terror of growing old alone.   We are creatures who need others, need to hear voices.   We take wing, feel the tug and pull of seasons and stars.   Sooner or later the time will come when we must go.   But we will not do it alone.

Blackbird Promise

They gather here
in the tall marsh grass
singing a raucous song.
to the morning.
In blood and bone
they feel autumn's warning,
know the taste of darkness, cold and death.
It will not be long,
this goodness, this grace
of flower and seed.
The grapes are falling,
and the wild asters tell the tale
of a world that forever changes.
Now it is time to gather,
to be a living cloud,
or a congregation uncontained,
murmuring their practiced prayers
and exulting in the gold and green
of September's joyous day.
It seems they hear some secret signal,
then suddenly rise together into the blue
for a precious little while,
as if something should be seen,
or a promise could be made here.
They trust this:
The sun will rise.
The river will run.
They will wing their way together
into some new day.

--Timothy Haut, September 17, 2014

A Deep River Year
 September 10, 2014

Boxes of unsharpened pencils and stacks of notebooks fill the store shelves, and kids lugging oversized backpacks line up at the corners waiting for the buses to haul them off to school. These big yellow buses mean September is here, and a new season. And they carry the most precious of cargo. They make us stop and remember. Driving down a long straightaway of rural highway a couple of days ago, I got caught behind the afternoon high school bus unloading kids every hundred yards or so. That two or three mile stretch of road took an exorbitantly long time to traverse, and I am certain some of the other drivers in the lineup of cars behind me were not quite as patient about the length of their trip.

 My granddaughter reported that she, too, is riding the bus this year. Her new school is a little too far away for her to walk, as she did last year when she attended the elementary school just a few blocks from her house. She developed an aversion to riding the bus several years ago. As a little girl at school for the first time, she got on the bus at the end of the day and was one of the last to get off at the end of a fairly long, circuitous route. The busy day at school had taken its toll: she fell asleep, slumped down on the seat. The driver could not see her. And it wasn’t until the bus pulled into the lot for the night that the driver discovered one tired, scared little girl still on board.

 Hopefully, her bus trips will be more pleasant now. I still remember those rides to school in my own youth: Pete the bus driver and his funny welcome, the vague smell of sour milk and old thermoses, the thump of metal lunch boxes and the squeak of wet rubber boots tromping down the aisle in search of a seat. And I hold on to an old shame. One little girl on our bus route lived in a poor house in the woods, and she got on the bus each day with the same clothes and a worn jacket. Her hair was usually tangled, and she always stared at the floor as she made her way toward a seat at the back of the bus. She was usually greeted with smirks, muffled giggles, and rude gestures, such as kids holding their nose as if something smelled bad. Something did, but it wasn’t her. It was that nobody, not even I, ever offered her a seat.

Girl on the Bus

 Where is she now,
 the little one
 who did not belong
 among all the bright, beloved children?
 She was an outcast, once,
 poor, disheveled, lonely,
 who made the long, painful walk every day
 to the very back of the bus
 waiting for someone to offer her
 a place to sit.
 If I could find her now,
 I hope she would be tall
 and fair of face,
 one whose clear eyes
 has forgiven the folly of the world.
 I pray that her wounded heart,
 scarred by childhood cruelty,
 has been healed by a later love,
 and welcomed into a kinder world.
 If I could find her now,
 I would stand as she came by,
 invite her to sit by me for a while,
 perhaps in a seat by the window
 so that she could smile
 at the loveliness of the world
 and know that on this big bus we share,
 there is a place for her,
 for everyone.

 --Timothy Haut, September 10, 2014

A Deep River Year
 September 3, 2014  

The trip is short, not more than a half an hour or so, down this beautiful river to the place of wonders.   We were invited again this year to travel by boat with friends to witness the great murmuration of swallows.  Each year, beginning at the end of August, a majestic flock of tree swallows makes its way south on its annual migration.   And here, in the long reeds of an estuary island near the mouth of the Connecticut River, they come to make a nightly roost.   As we ride the tidal current, we wait for the hour of sunset, when perhaps half a million birds gather from miles around.   We watch them, circling overhead in dancing waves of life, moving as if they were one great winged creature, guided by some invisible force.  Then they drop silently, suddenly, and it is over.   The sun applauds, painting the water vermillion and rose, as we turn for home.

Out on the river, there is a kind of silence in spite of the boat’s motor.     The wind is loud, and conversation is difficult.    And the deep water beating at the sides of the boat collapses into a mighty rush of foam in our wake.    But the silence is of the world away from us, the quiet of gulls overhead, and muted laughter from a passing schooner.   It is as if the world holds its breath again as the color drains away into an exuberance of stars.

And here we are caught again in the great cycles of time and life.    This is the season of the annual migration of swallows, whose ancestors made this trip over the ages, answering a call as powerful to them as it is mysterious to us.   But we live amid a host of such mighty forces, too:   that little ache in the heart as summer moves into autumn once again;  the ebb and flow of the ocean’s tide against a waxing moon;  the great motion of constellations as Orion rises in the September sky;  the migration of children back to school; and the unremitting procession of death and birth, change and decay that mark all joy, all sadness.   This is our river, and tonight we feel the ancient call to return again to a place where, for a while, we can roost.

Carry Me Home, Old River

Carry me home, old River,

to the place I have never been,
that place to which I always return.
Sing to me a ballad I can remember,
a song of stars and wind and tide,
a serenade as true as moonlight
when the moon is nowehere to be seen.
Often I have sung my own song,
taken my own singular path
against the traffic of the world.
But in the evening
I feel the pull of blood and tide,
wish to join the tender migration
that binds the starfish and the stars.
So I come to you, boatless,
wishing to bend to your water,
to dip my hands, shoulders, body into your life,
to ride your silver stream
and feel its whisper and thrum,
tuning my own heartbeat to its rhythm.
I seek the place beyond seeing,
the island where the swallows rest,
the place both salt and fresh
at the meeting of all waters,
the ancient home where life begins and ends
in peace.
Carry me there, old River.

--Timothy Haut, September 3, 2014