THUNDER BAY – LIVING –  Over the John Street Landfill mare’s tail clouds were wispy. Then, came clearer with a gusty wind at twilight as we like others purge things from our basement. In the same moment thinking if one were up there riding one of those cirrus clouds the view back to earth would see prints in the soil of horseback riders.Trekking along our dirt roads off dirt roads.

But we soon turn for home driving without any urgency. Catching there are other signs of who’s coming around these days. And as it was a bald eagle, with its wings fanned out, was lurking in the sky. Its presence surely attached to the fur changing creature tucked beneath the iced-in and well-fastened lowest branches of a balsam. That had created a natural shelter for a rabbit nibbling at things in the moment. Although one knows it was surely aware of what was hovering above the highest poplars.

Springtime Renewal

Later, our truck was pulling into our drive where fresh willows were sprightly in lipstick red.   Their wispy stems really glowing rising up from snowdrifts courtesy of longer sunlight hours these days. And, nearby our tamarack and birch trees received collections of chickadees with pine siskins and nuthatches. Leaning us towards the thought that if a creator ever needed a reason to make the first sentinels celebrating a season’s renewal these would, with passim, be the tiny fliers that fit. Here they flit in, and, out with such joy in their songs.

Meanwhile another vignette comes to mind that emerged at dawn when a fractured rainbow was evident following a sleety rain. Bringing back a mid winter clear memory of a concert flute and violin session in a February airport. Where the melodic tune Looking At A Rainbow A Through A Dirty Window captured an enclave of travellers waiting their next flight.

Elsewhere walking near town at mid-day a melted city rink revealed beyond its wooden boards hosts of pucks. These appeared dead black as pellets of coal like quotation marks left by gleeful skaters only weeks before gliding easily on ice windswept and polished in an arctic setting.

Tied to this narrative as I paused the sounds of church bells underscored our passion in music.

With the notion by writer Marcel Proust who implored one should always have a touch of blue sky in a day’s walkabout. At least in one’s mind. That translation from his native French kept coming back to me.

Looking up to a vacant sky one realized, soon, our geese will migrate home to Canada. Thence farther north for another summer’s duration.

Yet within all   this there was a sense of a century old quote that went, “truth makes the face shine on that person who peaks and owns it.”

And through these thoughts and jottings an aura of holiness became spiritual where I was. For a time it was painting a kindly benediction across the tipping fingers of the tallest trees.

Seeming like hands of true believers receiving a benediction. Where the last saintly glow hesitated briefly, like a benign smudge, before it so gently — with an even keel of kindness– faded away from view with this day’s setting sun.

Ronn Hartviksen