Morning Wandering: American Goldfinches, Jane Kenyon, and a Slow Life Captured in Verse

American Goldfinch on Basil.

This morning large, grey-mottled clouds float the air and cling to the sky. I can see no blue, only apricot and yellow staining where sun melts through layers of clouds. I was standing at the sink preparing to wash what few plates were left over from last night’s tostadas when I spotted my favorite garden bird, American Goldfinch.

I first noticed the American Goldfinch in our garden last spring while cooking a weekend breakfast with E. It’s bright yellow mating plumage quickly grabbed my attention while it sat on a laurel branch. From the laurel, it climbed down a twig, and over to a basil stem, where it stayed quite a while, eating seeds leisurely and starring out at the garden, as if ruminating. I’ve become accustomed to watching the energetic, and lively antics of Anna’s Hummingbirds, House Sparrows and California Towhees in our garden; the calm behavior of the American Goldfinch made me curious. And the yellow, the beautiful olive tinged yellow, made me put all things down and wander outside for a closer look.

Watching birds is a humbling pastime. Sitting quiet and still in their world reminds me how loud and anxious and busy our human world can be at times. We seem to allow life and living to hurry us from one moment to the next, rarely stopping to be present with what is around us in quiet, stillness, and solitude. Silence is often shunned. Speed prized, and slow, deliberate living avoided. No one single tasks, everyone and everything in our lives multitasks.

When we started rebuilding after the slab flood it was easy for me to rebuild in a way that slowed down our work and time in the kitchen. I purged the kitchen of a dishwasher, garbage disposal, and upper cabinets. And chose surfaces that age naturally—like solid oak countertops, and oak floors. Our dinning room table is a small, green-enabled, mid-century table I found at a flea market that looks like it’s held many meals. I’m a notoriously slow cook; I stop to clean pots, pans, bowls, etc. throughout the cooking process. I dance my way around the kitchen sometimes, and others I quietly shuffle, while turning and turning writing and life dilemmas in my mind. Sometimes, while working in the kitchen, I write poems or paint pictures in my mind only I will ever see.

So, I wanted a slow kitchen.

I didn’t want to build a rushed, multi-tasking room. I wanted a kitchen Granma or Big Mama could come in and quickly find their way around. I didn’t want to rid the cooking process of the ruminating process. The time spent lovingly tending to food. But mostly, I didn’t want to rid my life of time to watch Goldfinches, Dragonflies, Junebugs, Monarchs, and Swallowtails. Time to move away from hurried life and trade workday stories with E while making a meal.

Living at a slower pace means building space and time around ourselves and our lives to single task, to unpack the hurried pace of living, and allow ourselves to wander and roam. Without this space we miss those opportunities to go out of ourselves, wander and wonder, and loose sight of what we know. And it’s important to loose sight of ourselves; the space between what we know and what we discover is the seat of creativity, imagination, and discovery. We know much less of what we believe; yet we’ll never begin to reach it if we continue to stand in our under-standing.

Last month I read the collected poems of Jane Kenyon. She was such a gifted poet—able to take the everyday, mundane and fuse it with rich, cinematic imagery. What I loved most about her poems, if I could select a most, is her ability to give us her life in verse. After reading her entire oeuvre I feel like I know her, I know what themes returned again and again in her life, what things in nature interested her, what her days were like. I noted in my book to seek to diary my life in verse in the same manner, and I that note quickly followed with, how?

This morning, as I put the dinner dishes down to get closer to the Goldfinch and stand under the clouds, I thought—What would Jane do?

She would poem. She would write. She would use words to create a painting, so that many years later, someone else could experience the thrill of watching an American Goldfinch eat basil leaves under a heavy sky of grey clouds.

Slowly, I’m getting there. Finding my own way of preserving this life, sharing the thrill of discovery and wonder. I do know it begins by slowing down, wandering and wondering about the world beyond me.

Wishing you a wanderlust Friday and weekend,

Ki