Copy Paper

   A cardboard box, empty of paper, has been sitting next to the railroad tracks for a couple of days. Earth Day was yesterday. Many were celebrations held over the weekend. Our schedule permitted attendance at the Reading event Saturday April 21 at Riverfront Park.  

   A band was playing as the shadows lengthened on the grass. The Main Stage lineup board indicated Umami was on. Umami has a cool sound, including an oboe and some of their songs sounded like Dr. John or else they were playing Dr. John.

   In addition to the sounds, there were sights:

Hippies with hula hoops and Long flowing skirts.

 Girls painting on each other’s skin.

A man with a well-behaved brindle Great Dane. The pair was magnetic and attracted comments like “he’s as big as a horse.” The dog wore black leather accessories with studs as if coming from a Harley Davidson fashion runway.

   Most of the vendors had cleared their tables under the information tent. A small separate canopy housed bicycles. The sandwich board listed six cycles and a trailer to the other side carried the slogan It’s a Solar Thing – You Can Understand.

  Most of the food vendors were shutting down and the choices has dwindled. Several people scooped colorful Italian ice which has almost no aroma. A  woman clad in short shorts performed with a hula hoop accented with about five flaming wicks distributed around the circle and many videographers truned their attention her way.

   A green cloth was hung on a line tied on two trees. The cloth was printed with words and a couple of globe shapes that gave the impression of batik. The words were Hope. Happiness. Save. Throw away your cash. Before and After, Eliminate Drugs, Help save our earth. Two young women were about to break camp and noticed I was writing in my notebook. One of them described the origin and the process of the fabric work – it was made by children in an outreach program and they used  glue and acrylic paints to create the piece. Ever since then it keeps occurring to me how fortunate it is the young women and the children got together. It would be nice to make something like it.

    Feeling tuned up, I returned home by way of the River Place trail along the Schuylkill river near Reading Area Community College (RACC). Piles of stone, baled with wide plastic strapping, have been placed under the Penn street bridge. The Penn street bridge, when you look up, is crumbly but maybe not as badly as the Buttonwood street bridge. Where the stone belongs is unclear.

    “This has been here for twenty years!” a man cried out as we passed the stone pallets. “ Twenty years they’ve been sitting here and the city is crying for money.”

  I copy. Do you read?

That’s What She Said and a Flower Walk

Bumper sticker pathling: That’s What She Said. Cute cat figure on train – part of graffiti. Low Tulpehocken creek level again, and zero herons. The area hosted a symphony of spring peepers frogs making music and boasted two toads on the trail and a pair of wood ducks hanging around a triangular rock in the middle of the creek. Garlic mustard plants are taking over the wildflower spots. Other flowers blooming are the striped violet, creamy white with faint black stripe, the bluebells and spring beauty, dainty peppermint striped flower.

Sunday afternoon walked with a group led by Dr. Susan Munch, who with a plant tome in hand and a large dose of enthusiasm. introduced us to leatherwood and jet bead shrubs and pointed out shy trilliums, tiny puffy dwarf ginseng and delicate rue anemone, among many others at Angelica Park. One person in the group was able to report on the scant rainfall this year and another revealed she has a recipe for garlic mustard  pesto without revealing the actual recipe. A few defectors from the pack of antendees said they had places to go or found the pace too slow for them, but I found Dr. Munch to be knowledgable – how fast can you go and stop and spot the wildflowers? – and learned to identify a few new plants, including black cohosh. The loop up and down the mountainside is unlike any other in the county. Near the end. we were warned of the imminent arrival of mountain bikers about to finish a course. A strange woman stood by the path as we admired a luna moth resting near the base of an antique spruce tree. She advised us to move out of the way – fifteen bikers were coming down, that’s what she said.

Water Truck

  Three people or groups of interest seen on the street yesterday, in addition to a water truck:

1.  A car driven by the Travelling Piano teacher with the logo of  three frogs hop dot com.
2. A tall slim man walking the wrong way up (east as it happens) a one-way street, carrying a  large styrofoam container of food, with the lid flipped open. He forks food into his mouth while striding not on the sidewalk but in one of the traffic lanes.
3. Two young brunettes, with broad smiles and gleeful grins, dressed in tees and shorts, working in front of Hooters, twirling lime green hula hoops around their waist and hips.

  This morning became a follower of a car with a SLEEP vanity tag.

    Items of overnight stowing interest:

1. a book on vanishing New York storefronts
2. a book of poems called ADDRESS – the cover very interesting
3. Masada peppermint sea salts for soaking.

  today: Painterly clouds, nice breezes, gentle temperatures and sunny sun sun. Lying on the couch, letting thoughts drift. All that is is the cat’s hip (Simon). The smell of cherry bath soak for my aching foot surrounds coffee table. The sound of a mournful dog at the nearby veterinarian’s can be heard. The soft white pines fan open and closed in sun and air.

   A black SUV moves in reverse as the driver pulls away from a slot in the office parking lot. after a turn to the right, the vehicle goes forward.

  “It must be about five o’clock,” I think. The clock tower bells ring and the chimes add one by one to four plus one. I have spent most of the day sleeping. No herons to report.

8337

Norfolk Southern, black horse, white horse where are Yin and Yang? walk this morning to the first cardinal past the nine marker and then discovered the first heron, standing in the creek at a spot along the near shore where the water reached halfway up its legs. It was active in a rococo position, ess curves and voluptuousness as it preened and picked its feathers in between remaining alert for fish.

   The path was full of cardinals at one bend near the mill bridge, first one brilliant male, two females of lesser light and a trillion more to liven up the monochromatic grey-brown branches and trunks of the winter forest.

   A heron in pennant position also fishes from below the old sheep farm. It stands in the water at a place near the base of the old and moldy steps set into the steep incline.

   A lost glove was hung in a prickly shrub.

   The words of the day are bill pay.

Duralift 41 and a Twizzler: Change will come

   Damp and moist is the day, with two wading birds along the Tulpehocken creek. The first bird can be seen from the road, about to make a stab at the water or something in the water, its bill like a fork or a spear. Sir Lancelot stands in the water bracken, a spot where the medium bones of trees and shrubs rack up along the shore.

   The path contains a few pathlings: a box top from a small Sun-Maid California raisin pack, a tear strip from Dex-4 and a 2 by three inch bit of plastic mesh. The woven mesh has compromised edges that have become fringes so it looks like a little rug except rugs are usually fringed on two opposing sides only, if they are fringed at all.

   On the fifth day of December, report finding a nice slab of sycamore bark which contains an irresistible keyhole or a shape like an advent calendar -  a door or window to open but it is already open and has no flap.

   The second heron wades near red bridge in pennant pose – its head and bill form a triangle like school or organizational banner.

    A couple of couples and several singles walk or jog the trail. Water stands in parts of the canal that allow for fullness. Mallards swim and dunk for food, alternating heads and tails up like pennies of prophecy. Two drakes and a male wood duck stir the surface.

    A wood pecker, one plump bluejay and a massive cardinal dress the denuded woods. Nests come to the foreground here and there – clumps and jumbles of leaves that form squirrel nests stagger the imagination and neat arrangements of twigs, assembled by birds, draw forth my admiration. 

   Before I set out to walk, the car was parked near the site of an overturned Twizzler licorice package, from which a single stick of red ribbed candy had been drawn, dropped, left behind and crushed. Five miles later, Township of Spring truck 41 sits idle on the trail near Gring’s Mill, with its Duralift power bucket in the resting position near a grouping of holiday lights.

   I felt that three foil wrappers were worth picking up along the way out.

    While at the library to post, receive a call from Met Ed to please pay the overdue electric bill at the studio, which has been done. 

   Change will come, it’s a lifetime guarantee reads the box top. I go  on my way.

Tel

  First two letters missng i.e., burnt out bulbs, leaving the tel in motel.  ESPN on QB substitution: we think you’re good enough. Just be yourself. Cambridge book on creativity. Operating from the cockpit. Muscle milk left stnding on piece of the architecture at the top of the library steps. Rain is making drops while the sun shines somewhere. Working nine days a week. Stellar. Telephone. Don;t tell on me.

EMHU

   Every day is different and this one begins the same way: I go for coffee and I go for a walk. First comes trainspotting. At the train tracks the first letters I see are EMHU freight lettering, followed by the phrase top lift only and all purpose spine car.

   On the road: School bus 56.

   Today the temperature is warm and the lighting mellow under a mackerel sky.

    As for walking: There are two heron in the middle mile. The first looks into the creek with great intensity, as if it were examining a slide through a microscope, displaying the feverish focus of a scientist in a lab after a big discovery. It also looks storklike and I have to look twice to distinguish its stringy breast feathers, white in the light, from the ghostlike shreds of plastic bags that get caught in the branches along the water and sometimes hang there.

   The second heron is in full view, standing on top of a good sized rock in the middle of the creek. Sunlight exaggerates the appearance of its bill and throat so that it resembles a pelican. It too, stares fixedly at the dark brown and brackish water, finding its occupation in a search for fish flesh.

   My thoughts are occupied with What Must Be Done Today and a book called The Remembered Visit by Edward Gorey.

   The path includes broken leaves, a squirrel that hesitates and then dashes in front of a jogger and a blue jay making hawk noises.

On the radio, Colin Cowherd in reviewing questionable decision-making in one Sunday football contest, exclaims: “Why are you talking about previous games? What about this one? Every game has its own feel.”

PKGZ

Packages and more packages and a heart shaped smiley face on the mirror at the park. Today is for relationships and wisdom, enlightenment and secret plotting. A compass, with strokes and Evergreen, 99 and Geib on the roadway.  Two hawks flew in the vicinity of trees that have grown bare with the beginning of November. They have limbs to perch to peer and prey. One was especially large and plump as a pumpkin, a meaty sort. No heron to report other than an internet icon. beautiful morning with sunshine and sundance. We hours of morning featured moonlight shadows that seemed patterned with Venetian blind lines. I have covered two miles and processed these things.

Rain After Midnight

Rain After Midnight

    At 9:20 this morning a petite heron fishes at the mill race. Its shoulder and upper back looks like it has taken back a Victorian lady’s hat that was made from feathers taken from another heron long ago and put them back on where they belong, clean and fresh.

   Second heron fishing stalking pennant pose on two clumps of leaves in the creek that look like its shadow: a small clump below the head and a larger clump under its body & three more heron in points strung out along the upper stretch & across from the red sandstone structure that holds an outlet pipe area & across from a dirt foot path that shoots off the main trail & leads to the creek for fishing or drinking water, on l& that forms a flat lip below the trail.

   The forecast was for Rain After midnight & this held true. It is a day for water & blue. I have found a blue streamer, half a blue note & an L & M package. Hardly anyone is out & about. One portion of the trail is littered with sycamore leaves. Whereas most leaves have a tendency to fall flat & present as two-dimensional forms. these leaves have fallen as folded pieces of paper & stand with some parts upright, like small tombstones or cootie catchers or some kind of natural slalom flags to warrant attention.

   While I was driving to the park this morning a tractor trailer marked S & F,   with a bright red logo trucking flashed by along Route 422 heading north toward Allentown. All I caught was Sylvester. This makes it a good day for ampersands, helpful people & travel,& other things.

Excellence in Motion

   Note if you will the first phrase –  lifted from an eight-wheeler: Excellence in Motion -  if you will allow me to please present the pathling of the day, which was moving east on Penn Avenue under the skilled direction of the truck driver, who remains anonymous.

   This is what I have come up with from walking this morning: an absence of herons, presence of fishing people, a red hawk feather, a puffy sticker with the Disney fairy in front of flora, a green sneaker temporary tattoo and three squares of paper with the temporary tattoos missing. One car parked in the lot had a South Carolina Palmetto and Crescent plate on the front.

   Written in the screenings, scrawled on the path were some letters that made no sense to me as I walked out and then became immediately clear upon my return:   

s c r e w   m  e   n

which was interesting, because with the Tinkerbell sticker it made for a bittersweet picture now that the bittersweet is on the trees and the frost is almost on the pumpkins which are scarce and expensive this year because of the overabundance of rain, but I digress.

   To the phrase Screw  Men is the reply

“fuck women”

and the third response:

understand people

underscore people

underwrite people. People.

On the way home RP-224 vanity plate. It is a beautiful day to be purring around the house. My neighbors who object to the perceived number of cats at my place, see but one cat with nine lives and several apparitions, engage in and perpetrate offensive behavior by noticing my things and looking in my windows.

   Writing at the Exeter Library which has no scanner to upload the drawing for today but has a nice assortment of smooth and assertive signs and reminders: such as “Exeter Library would highly appreciate keeping your food and beverages outside of the library area. ” A card with the library hours and closing time policy is placed on the right corner of the Think Centre. “Thank You.” wish you were here!

Links: http://atlantictrucking.com/pages/whychooseatc.aspx