March 5, 2022 With every wedding we attend We are there again Facing our loved one Our hands clasped Faces aglow And with every deathbed we attend The river smooth or storm tossed We are there again Holding a hand Seeing the light fade held in this cradle Of memory and love Kristin Moyer
March 3, 2022 I unzip the case, remove the dulcimer Sleek and shining, walnut and redwood Lay it on my lap, take up the pick Strum the simple melodies from memory The lone wild bird Shenandoah The ash grove Amazing grace And my dying friend in the bed Closes her eyes and smiles “The lone wild bird in lofty flight” I sing softly “Is still with thee and in thy sight” I never sang for you, dear mother, on your hospital bed Or for you, dear father, dying alone in the nursing home But I sing for my friend “Great spirit come and rest in me.”
February 1, 2022
We have entered the third year of the pandemic. Last winter the covid vaccines started rolling out for adults, and we thought we could see the light breaking out. But then Delta hit in the summer, and that variant made people much sicker than the original virus. Boosters were recommended, and in the fall people lined up and bared their arms again.
But not all people. A minority of Americans but still a sizable number were anti-vaccine for various reasons, and some of that number also were anti-masking. Wearing masks was mandated in some states, and in other states such as Florida governors banned mask mandates.
However, covid rates were dropping. By November 2021, the outlook was brighter. I attended a play at the Kennedy Center where everyone had to show proof of vaccination and wear masks while inside. There was a feeling of relief and excitement in the air at being inside a theater again, and at the end of the first musical number everyone in that packed house stood and applauded. The play was the musical Hadestown, based on the classic Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which Orpheus fails to lead Eurydice out of the Underworld. Perhaps a foreshadowing of what was to come….
Because about that same time a new variant Omicron arose in South Africa and soon swept around the world like the tsunami of all viruses. It was not as deadly as Delta but it was highly contagious, and even those who were vaccinated and had received boosters contracted covid. And although most cases could be treated at home, the sheer numbers packed hospitals. In some places hospitals had to ration care. People went back to meetings and church services via Zoom.
Now covid numbers are dropping again, but unevenly by state. In the United States over 886,000 Americans have died since the pandemic began. The global number of deaths is over five million.
When we finally emerge, like Orpheus from the Underworld, we must not forget these years and all that has been lost.
December 3, 2021
During my early grade school years we lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my memories of winters there were of snow and cold, mittens and mufflers, snow boots with buckles, and outerwear steaming on radiators.
We had skis and skates and visits to the local parks where we skied down short little hills and skated on the bumpy ice of frozen small ponds. We made snow balls and snow forts. When we came inside there was cocoa and music and books.
And there was Christmas and all its magic, which my mother worked so hard to create and which I think we all took for granted. Now I hang some of those fragile glass ornaments on my own fresh green tree and think of her.
Some winter I would like to fly away after Christmas, back to Minnesota, to the little cabin built by my parents on a ledge half way down the hill, overlooking the lake. From that perch I would be able to look out over the frozen ice to the pine trees on the other side. At night the moon would glitter on the snow and the ice, and the wind sigh through the trees. But that is a fantasy, because there is no running water in winter, the only heat comes from electric baseboards, and the steps down the hill are a toboggan run for local friends. But nevertheless I imagine sitting there with my mother’s ghost looking over the hill and lake she loved so much, listening to the winter wind.
October 15, 2021 The grip of cold around the ankles around the calves around the thighs and then the plunge into the water which accepts you without condition without question and cradles you as you turn onto your back to see overhead blue sky breaking
October 13, 2021 October Moon The slim October moon Is shining Reflected in the pool below A sliver of a glimmer Above my head The bats fly Swooping for late insects The year is waning And the globe turns Heedless Of moon Or pool Or bats or insects Or of me.
Wind soughing through birch boughs
Sun lighting Norway trunks
Blue sky breaking overhead
On the far shore windows glint with setting sun
A loon calls
And those ghosts mounting the shore path to the cabin?
I know
And love
Sixtieth Gray, white, dyed, thinning…no hair Most of us on our own two feet Walker, cane, oxygen Married, widowed, divorced, single Those who traveled and Those who stayed home No one spared from sorrow Some hard to remember Others known by those blue eyes Or that smile Vietnam, heart attacks, cancer Ocean waves But yet we are here Together Kristin Crocker Moyer
June, 2004: the 17-year cicadas Brood X emerge from the ground in Virginia and fourteen other states and the District, as far south as Georgia and as far north as Michigan.
I was sitting on the garden bench under the maple tree early one morning last month, when I saw my first cicada. It was walking slowly but firmly along the ground toward the maple tree. It hit a piece of large bark mulch, turned upside down, briefly bicycled its legs in the air, then righted itself, and continued its march toward the tree. “March” was the word; it seemed to have a definite idea of its goal. It reached the trunk of the tree and marched up the trunk.
Since that morning, more and more cicadas have emerged in our yard. We seem to be in a high density area of the emergence of this brood: high density is defined as over a million cicadas per acre. We have over two and a half acres—perhaps over two million cicadas. In the back yard around the maple tree, every leaf of every shrub is covered with the shells of the cicadas, and shells litter the ground like brown confetti.
For the past month the air has been filled with cicadas flying from tree to tree, sometimes bumbling into us. The air is filled, too, with the high-pitched unearthly music of the male cicadas, pleading to the females. During the heat of the day, the sound of the cicadas rises, and I have to retreat to the house to get any peace.
Now, at the peak of the cycle, the cicadas are busy mating; the females lay their eggs in the outer twigs of the branches, which then break off and fall to the ground. The exhausted bodies of the adult cicadas litter the paths, the patios, and the ground, like tiny revelers after Mardi Gras. The eggs will hatch, and the larvae crawl back into the ground, where they will live for the next 17 years, quietly sucking fluids from the tree roots. At least, that is how I understand their life cycle.
Bill and I are 61 and here to witness this emergence of the cicadas. Our son and our daughter are married, and our daughter has a little girl, age two.
May 31st 2021
Brood X has emerged once more, and Bill is not here to listen to their music. He died of cancer in July of 2010. My granddaughter now is 19, and my son has two children ages 10 and 7. There have been other deaths in my extended family, and other births. The rhythm of our human lives is different from these cicadas; we move to different music, but the beat is the same.
I read in the paper that the cicadas sing up to the very moment of their death, and that the last note of their music sounds like a heart monitor fading. Now, listening to the music of the cicadas, I sing my own melody, moving forward on the great spool of time.
The hawk flies high In the clear blue sky Reflected in the pool below, A messenger I know. The hawk knows me, My husband said Adding seeds to the feeder, I am the feeder of birds. Now at the poolside, The wind lifting its wings The hawk knows me, I am the writer of words. April 20, 2021 Kristin Moyer