small_bird_dreams ovenbird I try to catch my dreams by the tail but they are twitchy and evasive. I catch only this: I'm standing on the path leading from the road to my grandmother's house and then ... I'm standing on the deck of a research vessel looking out over the violence of the Antarctic ocean. I'm grasping at the details but coming up with nothing and I'm frustrated. So I'm left with only the two images bouncing around in my head. I am an explorer navigating a deadly subconscious sea. I am hoping for penguins but getting only the rise and fall of waves large enough to swallow me in one bite. I am a wayfarer and I am the incarnation of my matrilineal heritage. My grandmother looks out from her front porch as I look over the ocean. That's all there is: the souls of my ancestors and water and ice and my hands gripping the railing. 250409 ... ovenbird I dream that I am making a woodblock print depicting the growth rings of trees. I am carving into the surface of the block with knives sharp as scalpels, turning the wood into what it already is; its history etched into its surface one year at a time, one concentric circle after another. When I wake I am pared down to heartwood. 250413 ... ovenbird I'm standing in the center of Willistead Park facing a firing squad. All I can think about is what a nice day it is. The trees are blooming, the sky is bluer than blue. I can see the intersection of two paths where four of us used to sit to play euchre. It doesn't seem fair to die on such a perfect day. But I guess from the vantage point of imminent imposed death, almost any day could contain at least the glimmer of perfection. 250414 ... raze a black-capped chickadee with whom i share no history flies to me and eats from the cradle of my surest hand. i spend the rest of the dream trying and failing to find her again. it isn't until i wake_up that i come to understand she's a symbol for life itself, carrying all of its darkness and light in the feathers that grant her the grace and gift of flight. 250415 ... ovenbird I am woken from a dream in which I'm trying to escape a vampire by the distinct call of a black-capped chickadee. Symbolic and concrete worlds collide. The chickadee's voice IS life calling--it calls me out of nightmares into a dew soaked dawn. 250415 ... ovenbird My mother was a powerful witch and while I have her long wavy red hair and her freckles, I did not inherit her magic. I can do minor spells, but my mother could control the very oceans. I am nothing compared to her. She is dead now but she has scattered magical objects everywhere for me to find so I can use them when I’m in trouble. I stumble upon things that are easily overlooked but are, in truth, containers for her spells–old milking pails, double ply flax ropes, silver jewelry, wooden stools. I don’t have enough magic to make myself fly, but my mother has left things for me that will do the job. There is a typical witch’s broom with a twisted branch for a handle but there are also less obvious items–a dust buster, a dust pan, a brush for cleaning the hearth. When I need to fly I take the dust buster in one hand and the dust pan in the other and suddenly my arms function as wings. I fly like a moth, erratic and jerky. I struggle to gain height. I’m no bird, but I can scrape together the means to bend the sky to my will. 250512 what's it to you? who go blather from