A Saturday in March

by Patrick J. Walsh

It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in early March, in the first tentative warmth of one of the first days of less frigid air, near the end of a long and trying winter. There are memories here, as I indulge in the routines that characterized my childhood, now decades past.

There is homemade soup on the stove, its aroma dreamily evocative, transporting me backward to those days of my youth when my Mom spent hours preparing and cooking so we could all share in the hearty warmth of the meal.

And in the memory of the motes that dance in the sunny beams, there are those times in the past when the softness of the winter or the earliness of the spring allowed my Dad and I to begin our work in the yard in the early part of the warmer season.

I remember the keenness of the anticipation we felt, as we looked eagerly forward to the warmer days of greenness and growth that would, later, transform the square patch of land around our home into the idyllic suburban dreamscapes of the summertimes of my youth.

As the light shines and I ponder the outline of all of these things, the TV is lit with the antics of the animated characters of my childhood, who remain as sweet and innocent as they were when I first encountered them, many Saturday mornings ago.

Most definitively present in the cheer of the afternoon beams slanting across the couch and the carpet, there are the moments I shared with my family, particularly those who have since passed out of this life.

Those times when we laughed together, or ate together, or worked on some project — or shared a visit with friends and relatives, or ventured out on some errand — these are all present in the sunlight.

I feel the warmth of the sun today. And I am blessed.

© Patrick J. Walsh
 
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The Cicada Song

By Patrick J. Walsh

Walking in the park near twilight in these early days of Spring, when the shadows stretch deeply onto the far bank of the pond, it is difficult to miss the odd humming sound in the air.

The unmistakable murmur of cicadas in the midst of their mating ritual, the droning buzz rushes out across the surface of the water like a swarm of bees passing through a hollow log.

 

It is an evocative music, the cicada song. For the wanderer in the park, it recalls magical nights of summers long past, and the hidden joy of sudden encounters with the living presence of nature in the midst of a warm summer's evening.

In the case of the insects themselves, however, the humming represents the soundtrack of a brief, remarkable cycle of life that bespeaks both the wisdom and the wonder of nature's strange logic.

While "annual" varieties of cicadas appear every year, the particular insects now in the park are most probably of the Magicicada genus — the so-called "periodical" cicadas.

These cicadas live underground for a period of 13 or 17 years, and then emerge in massive numbers for a brief mating period before they die, leaving their progeny to begin again the long cycle of nurture underground.

The sound of the cicada's song is produced by the rapid vibration of membranes on the insect's abdomen. The vibration of the membranes, which are properly known as tymbals, produces a chirping that is then amplified by chambers within the creature's respiratory system. Male cicadas "sing" the song in large choruses to attract females.

In accordance with the science of the identification system devised by entomologist C. L. Marlatt in 1907, the insects in the park are most likely Brood II cicadas, of the 17-year variety.

It is the poetry of their appearance, however, that leaves a lasting impression. After 17 years underground — a period in which the human world routinely sees the utter transformation of leading personalities and technologies and societies — these tiny creatures struggle upward through a foot or more of soil to emerge, all at once, in the still-chilly air of the early hintings of summer.

They spend their brief time on the surface in the pursuit of a mate, in the interest of ensuring the propagation of their species. Then, after a period of several weeks to several months, their course is run, and their song withers to the last few chirrups of those who remain at the end, like the sound of a valiant heart drumming its last in the moments before death.

As all falls silent, the purpose of the cicadas' brief time on the surface is accomplished in the production and hatching of their eggs, ensuring the promise of a new generation.

The newborn nymphs fall like raindrops from the twigs where the eggs were laid, and upon landing on grass or soil, they burrow downward, to begin another long cycle of life underground.

Meanwhile, their song sung, the adult cicadas die off. The tone and timbre of their particular sound vanishes once more from the landscape, hidden away in the dust of the Earth and the promise of their descendants, not to be heard again until the first chilly days of Spring, 17 years on...

© Patrick J. Walsh

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The Song of Summer

By Patrick J. Walsh

Tentative, faint; echoing in the sweetness of the memories they invoke and aching in the evanescent traces of the comfort they promise, the sounds of summer are in the park these days.

This is the first of Spring, in its early bloom, when the weather routinely betrays the best impulses of the seasons.

Surfaced from memory, whispers of bright, gentle mornings and soft afternoons tug at my tired soul, and I pull my jacket close against the coolness of the day.

As I set out, the weak, scattered sunlight shares only a hollow warmth. Farther along, I wander beneath clouds heavy with rain, and crosswinds jostle at my arms and legs, indifferent to my progress.

In the open area near the lake, the sputtering folds of wind recall the "hup-hup-hup" of a little boy approximating a primitive flute by blowing across the neck of an open soda bottle.

On the far side of the water, in the chill darkness beneath the cover of the canopy of trees, the cicadas are fooled into an early burst of song.

Their staccato melody echoes across the windy surface of the lake like an invocation, bringing golden remembrance of the hushed tones of quiet exchanges in the twilight of warm days past.

There is not yet the flutter of leaves on branches touched by the tiny limbs of birds; nor is there the bright splash of a fish struggling down the stream toward the lake; nor the hum of insects flashing along the trail at the edge of the paved road.

But there are the sounds of ancient campfires: the pop and hiss of burning twigs, their tiny flames nurtured by the coaxing breath of some long ago mother or father, while the squeals of delighted children echo nearby.

And with my eyes gently closed, paused in my forward progress by some intimation of welcome, I hear the murmur of the woods calling out through the sultry stillness of a summer night, and the wordless yearning of a wish made in silence at the sight of a star falling from the summer sky.

In the park, on a chilly day in Spring, the cicadas hum, and in the breath of the wind, I hear the sounds of summer.

© Patrick J. Walsh

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The First Warm Day of Spring

By Patrick J. Walsh

Walking the usual route in the park, along the road that leads up the hill to the upper parking lot, I felt the warmth of the first truly warm day of the Spring.

About a quarter mile distant, out on the broadest part of the lake, a goose was making that odd sound that always reminds me of beer drinkers’ laughter — the weird guttural staccato that makes obvious why some long ago linguist decided that a group of geese are best described as a “gaggle.”

A few more feet toward that part of the road that stretches over the culvert that connects the stream on the left to the wide part of the lake on the right, and my mind drifted back to the days when I used to play along the edge of the stream while my brother fished nearby...

The goose quieted down just as I reached the railing at the left edge of the road, just above the water. An odd gurgling followed; a demented sort of splash, somewhere below and slightly upstream. It was a fish — a reasonably large fish, given the shallowness of the stream — his tail fin slapping the surface as he struggled toward the opening to the tunnel beneath the road.

...my mind drifted back to the days when I
used to play along the edge of the stream...

My first thought: I need to get a picture of this! Fumbling through the pockets of my sweatshirt for the camera, I wondered at the strangeness of the circumstance: the fish desperately trying to make his way forward, his very survival dependent on closing the distance from the scant flow of water where he was, onward to the opening of the wide tunnel beneath the road, and then through to the freedom of the lake beyond... and my initial reaction only the simple-minded desire to document the epic scene with a quick snapshot.

Then another idea took hold: wouldn’t it be relatively easy to simply make my way down the hill to the water’s edge and just reach over and pluck the poor creature out of his gasping, grasping misery? I could just carry him the twenty or so yards he needed, then drop him back into the water at a spot where he’d have enough depth to finish the rest of the trek on his own.

A better thought, this — not that it actually led me down the bank, but better because it immediately raised the question of whether or not it would be appropriate for me to mess around in things about which I knew so little. Catching a fish on the end of a line, I understood; interfering with the course of a fish engaged in a life and death struggle with the very forces that enabled him to live and grow in the first place, well... that seemed a little large for the lightness of the afternoon.

Then, in the sheer instant it took for my thoughts to travel the distance between my initial intent to photograph the poor beast’s struggle and my ultimate quandary about the desire to help and the perhaps questionable propriety of doing so, I lost sight of both fish and stream for several seconds.

In that brief interlude, the dark, thin form flitted closer to the gaping opening beneath the road, and I heard but could not see as he made one last slosh and a plunking sound, as he made one final leap across the surface and then vanished into the murky liquid dusk below.

He was free, released into a wide safe swathe of the lake, to be tested no further by the narrowness of the stream; I was free, to continue my walk in the warm, dry air of the afternoon, pondering the current of my thoughts when tested by the inescapable austerities of nature.

© 2012 Patrick J. Walsh

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