yup

On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 11:58 AM Susan Tiholiz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Did you mean “enduring hours”?
>
> Susan Tiholiz
> 214-478-7395 (cell)
>
>
> > On Jan 15, 2021, at 11:38 AM, Ted Levin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > 7:19 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday), 27 degrees, wind
> SSE
> > 1 mph. Sky: Clear with a peach wash. October fog, November temperature,
> > late March feel. Permanent Streams: overnight dusting speckles ice. In
> the
> > flat woods, where water, in a level run, delivers freight to the marsh,
> > layered and growing ice-shelves extend from the shore, squeezing
> ephemeral
> > canyons . . . tighter and tighter. Wetlands: beige reeds residue in a
> bowl
> > of chowder-thick fog. Extends mid-way up evergreens along the western
> > shoreline. Crown of pines and hemlocks poke through a band of mist that
> > hovers like ringside cigarette smoke above Mohammad Ali and Zora Foley
> > prize-fight, circa 1967. Frost on sausage-shaped alder catkins. Tiny
> > crystals. Pond: feeder stream opened a bit, otherwise a duplicate of
> > yesterday and the day before . . . and the day before. Deer artist
> > elsewhere, old tracks hardly suggest deer.
> >
> > Today, no robins. Yesterday, they visited roadside bittersweet. Vines
> lace
> > pines together; freeze-dried berries kept robins alive—flecks of red
> litter
> > the snow.
> >
> >
> > Overnight influx of red-breasted nuthatches and chickadees—headed either
> > north or south—a riotous outpouring of *toots* and *dees*. One nuthatch
> > wanders down a pine, blood rushing to its head. Pokes and pecks at scaly
> > bark. Eats something too small for me to recognize. Others forage in
> tufts
> > of lichen, clusters of pine needles, cages of suet.
> >
> > Sunshine brightens and then devours fog. Jays argue. Crows scream. I
> stand
> > in the front yard, sun on my face, dogs by my side, humming a tune from
> the
> > nineteen-sixties. With the ringing of the Post Mills churchbells,
> colonial
> > sound floats over Robinson Hill. Makes me recall the wildest, the most
> > primordial sound of my childhood. Jews didn't ring bells; they blew the
> > ram's horns, like a Viking's call to arms or an Arowak addressing dawn
> on a
> > conch shell. The sound of the shofar made my spine tingle, the reward
> > for enduring fours in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Winter
> > sunshine and churchbells, instigator of tender thoughts, and familiar
> > birdsong.
>