Chapter 18, The Rebellion
This is chapter 18 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-17 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog.
That very night, the plants flew.
The rain had quit falling; the stars were peaking through the great racks of clouds moving through the area, and the earth was soaking up the water from the storm. The wind had quit blowing; it was calm from sea to desert.
No sun, no wind, no rain.
Later it was debated, as to which plant flew first.
Some said it was a daisy, some a fennel, some a suicidal pickleweed along the edge of the marsh ponds. The matter was never settled, either in back room debate or in the many scholarly papers later written about the events that took place that night.
What we do know is that it started small, at sunset, in the northeaster quadrant, and that it spread quickly, like a wild fire in the back country, fanned by Santa Anna winds.
The mockingbirds watching, and this included Melodia, said they saw a pickleweed somersaulting through the air over a salt pond. The starlings, however, argued that it was a mustard. The dirt said it was a daisy.
Whatever the case, the first plant that flew in the Sweetwater salt marsh that evening, flew low and fast over the water, shedding leaves from its twisted stalk and trailing dirt from its tangled roots. Then to the south another plant flew, then another, streaking through the fading light like meteors. Then as if a giant carpet were being pulled up from one corner, a great sheet of green rose out of the ground. Starting at one point and spreading, it ripped out of the earth and filled the air over the uplands. A great mass of roiling roots and stalks flew like many magic carpets all at once, speeding here and there, confused and directionless.
Then another string of plants, then another, then another rose into the darkening sky. Like someone pulling loose threads from a coverlet, long, thin lines of plants ripped themselves out of the marsh and the uplands and rose into the air.
Several snowy egrets flew out of one of the tidal creek in a panic, two great blue heron too, several willets and a godwit, and they pounded through a green clouds all around them, beating the flying pickle weed and salt grass and Sea Lavenders aside with their flailing wings. One of the willets went down among the falling plants and hit the water hard.
Then the uplands to the east rose with a shout, the daisies and fennels, the buckwheats and lamb’s quarters, the radishes too. Eggs flew too, and all the little butterflies there, Professor Swallowtail and his students and Professor Cabbage’s students too, without there teacher, startled into the night air.
“Afraid,” shouted Coco.
“Follow me,” called Peter.
“Fly east,” called Sara through the din, but quickly none could see the other, nor had they any sense of which way to go.
There was a great ripping and tearing sound in the air, and it was hard to see in the fading light with all the flying, churning plants about.
The dirt and all the soldiers of the dirt rose up into the air, and sped after the plants to do battle. It was hopeless. Flying dirt smashed into flying root and stem and stalk and leaf and everywhere plants exploded over the marsh, raining bits and broken pieces of themselves on the water and the land.
Professor Cabbage himself rose into the air when the horehound he was lying in decided to fly. Up the gray, fuzzy plant came, and out of the top the professor was flung, notched wings, legs and antanea ajar. He caught himself instinctively, and he careened across the uplands toward the Tamarisk trees, wobbling through the filling air.
Almost to the trees, he saw a most terrible sight. The very skin of the earth was being pulled off. Plant after plant ripped itself from the soil. There were so many in the air now that the plants began smashing into each other. The sky itself appeared to be in motion.
Then suddenly, another terrible change took place, an strange order began to ensue. The roiling masses of plants formed into a great line, and the line began to march through the air, as if it had a captain, as if it were orchestrated by a commanding force. The professor pulled up, and best he could, and hovered in place. And as he watch the great line of plants gathered speed and mass, and then it rocketed toward a large industrial building sitting at the south edge of the marsh complex. The great green line approached the building at high-speed, and it hit the wall with a great thud. It crashed head on into the building. And plant after plant slammed into the wall, fell to the ground only to be followed by wave after wave of more crashing plants. When the end of the line hit the building, the last few stalks and leaves fell into a massive pile of debris at its base.
There was a moment of calm. The professor started again toward the Tamaisks. The air was still. There wasn’t a sound. Then suddenly it all began again.
Now it was as if someone had opened Pandora’s box. With a tremendous slurping and sucking, a great wave of cattails rose from the brackish pond at the edge of the uplands and cast themselves into the air. And as the did, the redwing blackbirds and all the starlings rose up out of them and and beat a rapid retreat toward the east.
And then as if called forth like a challenging army, all the cord grass in the mitigation marsh rose up violently, and bore themselves away from the water and coming south, approached the cattails. The cattails rose straight up in the air to meet them, rising higher and higher, and then turning, they dove down. Straight into the oncoming cord grass they came, spikes first like multiple warheads, leaves flowing back. They ripped through the wall of cord grass, scattering it here and there and knocking it from the air. They powered past it and slammed into the marsh water, some of the main stalks collapsing under the impact, others spearing the mud and sticking there, upside down, like spears cast into the earth.
Species after species now flew out of the ground, the telegraph weeds, the filaree, the baccharis, the bladder pod. And as they did, eggs scattered here and there and insects flew and fell and were covered up.
Professor Cabbage continued toward the Tamarisk trees, seeking a refuge there, while all around him, the Saint Vitus dance grew into a frenzy, the dance of the plague, attended by deranged celebrants; they danced a dance of death.
He looked back toward the bay and saw the shrike flying toward him extemely fast, a look of total terror on its face.
He turned back to the trees and flapped toward them again. It seemed as if the professor made no progress now, as if he were trapped in a dream with no door to exit from.
But he did make progress, and just as he began to enter the sanctuary of the trees, they too, with a tremendous ripping and splintering, twisted themselves from the earth and rushed toward the professor.
There was a great groan then, that seem now to come from deep in the very earth itself, and the professor fell to the ground and the earth shook and chaos reigned.
And the doves, who had been roosting in the trees shrieked, their eyes full of terror, and they beat the air helplessly.
Then total darkness fell upon the marsh.
Chapter 17, Diapause
This is chapter 17 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-16 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog.
That night a whirling pool of clouds turned down the coastline and into the city. The sky clouded over, growing darker, thicker, grayer and lower.
The sun disappeared. The pepper trees lining the streets of the western part of the city, knew the rain was coming. So did all the shore crabs in the marsh, and all the mustards, all the palms and all the doves, in the uplands.
“I don’t like it,” said Coco.
“Why?” said the Red Admiral.
“We can’t go out. There’s nothing to do” said Coco.
“It’s like diapause,” said Peter.
“What’s diapause?” asked Cleo.
“It’s waiting,” said Peter, “when it’s best to wait. Remember what the professor taught us about the fairy shrimp, how they wait, in their eggs in the dry dirt on the mesa, for the rains to come again.”
“I don’t understand,” said Coco.
“Diapause,” said Sara, sounding just like the professor, ”is a delay in development in response to adverse environmental conditions. It’s sleeping through bad times, like winter, and waking when things get better, like in spring.”
The Red Admiral jumped in. “When the days get shorter and the weather gets colder and the food gets scarcer, then we know it’s time to sleep and to wait.”
“But it’s spring!” said Coco, “It’s warm! There’s more food now than before! Why is it time to wait?”
“Because the professor is gone, and the storm is coming, and the marsh is well, something bad is going to happen in the marsh,” said Peter.
“Don’t say that, Peter,” said Sara. “We don’t know that! And I’m not waiting. I’m going out to look for Professor Cabbage.”
“Don’t Sara,” said Peter. “Flying in wind this strong is dangerous, and you might get caught in the rain.”
“I can’t stand sitting here and doing nothing,” said Sara.
“It’s not nothing,” said Peter. “Waiting is not doing nothing. Important things happen while we wait.”
“Nothing happens while we wait!” said Sara angrily.
“That’s not true,” said Peter. “The professor told us that nothing is the best preparation for something.”
“That doesn’t make any sence at all,” said Coco.
“It makes perfect sense,” said Peter. “Things happen, inside of us, while we wait.”
“Well, you can argue all you want about nothing,” said Sara, but I’m doing something.”
Then, torn between love for the professor and fear of the storm, she flew out of the mustard alone, in search of her teacher.
And as she did, the trees reached out and invited the storm in. “Come,” they called.
“Dance with us,” said the peppers along the edge of the city streets to the wind.
And so the wind caught the peppers by their hands and invited them out onto the earthen floor. The wind paused, genteel, took a moment, thought things over, choreographed some movements appropriate to the occasion, then led them the peppers through some practice steps. The trees swooshed down to the ground with grace, then up they came into the air again in expressive joy.
Warming to the dance, the wind dropped the peppers hands, reached out and took them in his arms, guided them through their turns and spun them around at the end of the hall. But the peppers hadn’t danced in sometime, so the wind slowed, gently practicing them in the classics — in ballroom, in tango, in waltz.
The wind strengthened, it energized, now it inspired the dancers. It was time to go on stage.
“Dance with us too,” cried the palms along the strand. And dance with them the wind did, and they laughed and threw their wild arms into the air.
Sara felt the change. She knew what was coming. She had little time left to look for the professor.
She blew quickly over the uplands, caught in a wild gust. She was swept along toward the city, blown toward the date palm. She crossed over the freeway like paper blown from a field and across a street.
Always before, when the butterflies had crossed the freeway with Professor Cabbage, they had flown very high, and they had barely noticed the noise and commotion below. Today was different. Sara stayed down low, seeking shelter from the wind, so that when she came to the freeway, she blew down an overpass bridge and along a fenced wall.
Suddenly the wind grabbed her up and cast her against the fence. She clenched and grabbed and came to a stop. She looked down, below and — the sound! Huge shinning creatures, carried swiftly on a howling wind, flew past below her through a tremendously deep channel in the earth. They came at her and rushed away from her. They flared away from her as they approached. They disappeared under the overpass. And there on the other side, they were rushing away from her too!
Suddenly there was a loud roar amid the turmoil below, a much larger creature lunged at her, there was a great clank, she startled, and she fled back toward the uplands. She pounded her way back, against the wind. She tossed; she fell; she followed a zig-zagging path. Finally, she fell into her mustard, terrified.
“What happened?”cried Coco.
Sara said nothing, only looked at all the butterflies and shivered. They looked at her and huddled closer, just as they did when the earthquake had happened.
It was coming. You could feel it. You could smell the water in the air.
The doves disappeared into the trees.
The sidewalks suddenly had spots of wet on them. Through the air was suddenly crowed with new, tiny silver dancers. The wind mastered them and the little drops plunged toward the earth in long, parallel, slanting lines.
The mocking birds in the date palm huddled under their frond roof, taking shelter from the storm. Musica fell asleep there, warm against her sister, and dreamed of the marsh.
In her dream, she watched tide flowed in from the sea, from the bay and into the marsh. The salty water flowed all the way to the tamarisk trees on the edge of the uplands; it crept up their trunks to their first limbs. It passed them by, and it flowed to the freeway. It filled up the deep channel there, and overspilling its banks, it flowed into the city. It entered the backyards, and where she was, it crept slowly up the trunk of the date palm.
The water rose until it almost reached the top of the palm, and only the fronds remained, floating on the water like a giant green nest. Then, astonishingly, the tree floated out of the yard and down the street, carrying the mockingbirds along.
The palm floated down a great river, moving faster and faster, over the house tops it ran along. The palm and the mockingbirds were swept along toward a great, placid, shinning sea beyond.
And while Melodia dreamed, the rain continued to fall, harder and hardened on the land. The wind mastered the rain; it fell in great, unified sheets, down onto all the trees, tossing, glistening and baptizing all the Jacarandas, the Eucalyptus, the Magnolias, the peppers and the palms. It fell on the buckwheats, the fennels, the mustards, the daisies, and all the living things danced, as one.
The water overcame the earth. The water in the aquifer, down under the ground, far below the city, sat up and taking notice said softly, “Nice.”
The trees blurred into the background now. The rain was now the entrée, the drama and the dance. It fell on the great sea, it fell on the sandy beaches, it fell on the marsh, it fell on the city — everything it fell on deepened in color and hue.
It fell on the canyons, to the east; it fell on the plateaus spreading out to the north and south. There it filled up the vernal pools reposing shyly on the mesas. Thin envelopes of water pooled in shallow depressions in the ground and in each of these life seemed to spontaneously generate. Tadpoles sped through the shallows, shouting, “Horray! Too much! Can you believe this? Horray!”
Dowingia flowers, with white and purple pedals bloomed in the vernal pools, their yellow centers opening to the rain, and calling out, “Good, so much good, too good! Can we possible in all our wild imagination have expected all this!”
“It’s just a mudpuddle,” said a fennel standing near by.
“It’s sweet water!” shouted the tadpoles.
And there, in the sweet, clean water, swimming across the mesa, like the bass swimming in the great oceans of the earth, magically appeared the fairy shrimp fanning the water gently. “We totally approve of this,” they spoke softly to the rain. “Wash and wash and wash,” they whispered to the sky.
“Shrimp! cried the rain. “We love you, you shrimp who dare to swim upon the land! We regenerate and wash you twice again clean!”
And wash the sky did, and it washed the sages, the bacharis, the lemonade berries, and all the little shoots of fresh green grass down below them.
The rain fell in the mountains to the east, flying into the sides of the great Cuyamacas and Lagunas, falling on the flowering apple trees in Julian, standing and waiting for their grooms, like happy brides, dressed in white flowers, waiting in the foyers of the foothills. The rain filled up the yellow cups of the daffodils along the streets of Julian They lifted their mouths, like chalices, each one filled with wine.
“More,” they cried out, “Give us more and more and more!”
And the storm cast itself with power over the tops of the mountains and it flowed down into the Anza Borrego desert. There it fell on the Ocotillo’s red flaming flowers, lifted toward the sky; it fell on the Indian Paint bush, the brittle bushes and the barrel cactus and the chollas. The creosote bushes soaked, then putting on their perfumes, they sasshayed through the desert, spreading their sweet fragrance everywhere.
The granite on the canyon walls of the desert darkened, like stained glass cleaned, and the desert became a cathedral, full of worshippers.
The mountains ran, the great alluvial fans looked up, the boulders gazed out, dark and lovely, and they called to the wind and rain, ”Us too! Fall on us too!”
And Professor Cabbage, reposing under a soft horehound leaf, said weakly but with great joy, “It’s good.”
Chapter 16, Lost
This is chapter 16 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-15 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog, or by going to the category, “sweetwater: a fable” where you will find all the chapters, with the first at the bottom of the page.
“Many things will happen until it happens, but when it happens then there will be no doubt as to what happened,” the innkeeper said.
“What?” shouted Peter. “That’s nonsense! Professor Cabbage taught us that kind of talk is gobbledygook! It’s language on a holiday! Think Wittgenstein! It’s ridiculous!” He was so mad he was jumping up and down on the air above the salt creek. “Spit it out, mud worm. What do you know? Now!”
“I know that the future ,” replied the innkeeper worm from his burrow under the mud. “It is an extension of the past.”
“That double talk,” said Sara.
“Do you want to know your future, Sara?” asked the innkeeper, “Simply look closely at someone older than you.”
“We’re wasting our time here,” said Sara.
“As am I, apparently” gurgled the innkeeper. Suddenly a goby darted out of the innkeepers burrow with a small worm in its mouth.
“I told Henri to stay away from the nest!” said Professor Swallowtail, his butterfly followers fluttering over his head.
“You think you’re so smart, but you’re not,” yelled Sara, overhead.”You’re stupid, both of you! The professor didn’t go to the nest yesterday! He was in the uplands, with the daisies!”
“Control yourself, cauliflower,” quipped Swallow. “And don’t believe everything you’re told. I think your teacher taught you that, didn’t he?”
Looking down into the salt creek, Professor Swallowtail spoke to the water. “Can you tell us if Professor Cabbage is still alive?”
There was silence.
“Please tell us,” said Coco
Sara bounced in the air with impatience.
There was silence.
We’re out of here!” said Sara. “Come Tails, Peter, Cleo, Blue.”
“Wait, Sara,” said Professor Swallowtail. “My students and I will come with you to help look for him.”
With that both Swallowtail’s students and Professor Cabbage’s followers set off toward the uplands.
All that day they combed the daisy fields, the groves of fennels, the mustards. They asked the filarees what they had seen; they interrogated the lamb’s quarters, they questioned the tobacco trees, the bladder pods. Peter even made a trip into the cattails to spy between the blades.
In the evening they met at the railroad tracks on Professor Swallowtail’s orders.
A red admiral butterfly flew close to Sara.
“What’s this?” said Swallowtail as they all lit in a fennel to debrief. “You picked up another loser?’
“He’s not a loser,” said Peter. “He’s an admiral.”
Swallow shook his head in disgust. “Redemption isn’t the repetition of the same mistake,” he said. “And that, my friends, is from your own teacher.”
“Did anyone see or hear anything that might help us?” asked Sara, ignoring Professor Swallowtail.
No one spoke.
“We’ll look again tomorrow,” said Sara. “Meet here after you warm up.”
“What about the dirt?” asked Peter. “The dirt might know something. The dirt was the first to know that the daisies flew.”
“Dirtbag,” shouted Professor Swallowtail, “are you present?”
“Present and accounted for, sir,” shouted Dirtbag from between the railroad sleepers..
“Report,” shouted Sara, taking up a military tone to match the dirt’s.
“No sightings of the professor today by any of my troops, ” said the dirt. “We’ll stand the watch tonight, sir or,” he added, “Sirette.”
“Are the daisies still flying,” asked Swallowtail.
“Affirmative, sir,” said the dirt. “And we’ve discovered this. The salinity in the marsh seems to be increasing in some areas, particularly where their has been an influx of rain water. Perhaps the plants that can’t adapt feel they have to leave to survive.”
“Interesting!” said Professor Swallowtail. “This may be a contributing factor, but I think that what we have here is more an ideological issue than a physical one, as I’ve said before,” and he looked accusingly at Professor Cabbage’s students.
Sara looked at him in horror. “Interesting?” she said. “Professor Cabbage is gone, and at this terrible moment, you want to blame him for the decisions of the plants, and you want to sit around and discuss salinity levels in the marsh? You really don’t care, do you?”
He looked at her amused. “Yes, I do care!” he snapped. “Immensely. If all the plants fly the ground, most likely we all die, or we massively relocate! This is bigger than your little, nondescript professor, cabbage head.”
“Don’t call her that,” said Peter. “Her name is Sara.”
“Come on Stephanies,” he said to this students and off they flew.
“What did he just call them?” asked Coco.
“He called them Stephanies,” explained Peter. “He named them all the same thing so the could remember their names.”
That evening, Sara sat in a mustard brooding. “Where might he be? What would be a logical way to proceed with the search tomorrow?”
Suddenly she startled, settled again and said to Peter, near her in the dark. “The professor has always been interested in the medicinal plants.”
“The professor, never met anything he wasn’t interested in,” said Peter. “The other day he started telling me about the various kinds of fish that live in the kelp.”
“Listen,” said Sara, “What if tomorrow we look in the medicinal plants, especially the ones low to the ground, where he might have fallen if he was hurt.”
“Sure,” said Peter. “What plants are you thinking of?”
“The field bindweed,” said Sara, “the mallow, the horehound and the filaree, for starters.”
“Okay,” said Peter, “and we’ll begin with the ones that are along the path that we always take when coming home from our trips east, because maybe he was trying to get back home.”
Chapter 15, Caught
This is chapter 15 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-14 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog, or by going to the category, “sweetwater: a fable” where you will find all the chapters, with the first at the bottom of the page.
At noon the next day, the fresh-flying baby mockingbird, Melodia caught Professor Caggage from behind.
He was enamored with a daisy. She came from her palm in the east; he was facing to the west. He saw her shadow only at the last second before she struck him.
“My sweet daisy,” the little professor was saying, “You are the very flower within the very flower of all flowers. My dear one, you are so alive and so very blossomed within the soft curtain of time. Here you are today, luxuriating within the protective walls of patience, celebrating what you are and ever ….”
The professor’ head spun. He was jerked into the air. One moment he was speaking of love to his living laboratory and in the next he was caught and carried away in the grip of death. The little mockingbird instinctively snatched him off his leaf perch and whipped him up into the blue sky.
It was the oddest and most terrifying kind of flight – the professor flew for the first time without using his wings, for they were clamped together, with fierce solidity between the mockingbirds tightly closed beak. He defied all laws of butterfly flight and went forward in the air with at a smooth, straight, wind-whistling speed, carried over his precious plants, rushed past his lovely eggs.
Melodia and Cabbage landed together in a sumac, overlooking the marsh, with a heart-pounding wing-pounding commotion.
Cabbage grapple for a perch with his legs; she clinched; his wings tore. He spun around toward her, bashing the air with his broken wings. For a mere second they were eye to eye, caught in each other’s eyes, and in the brief moment a revelation was exchanged and the knowledge of life and death passed between them — then the wave broke.
The professor flew, a v shaped notch cut into both of his wings like a gun sight. He pounded the air, he put distance between them, and then he stumble in the air, broke and tumbled out of the sky and disappeared into a fuzzy, low-lying horehound plant close to the ground.
Melodia fluttered up to the top of the sumac and looked intently toward the bay. The water was a sparkling blue. Each tiny point seemed to her to be a tiny eye, looking back at her, each one a tiny bit of life.
Suddenly she was flooded with joy.
She flew toward the marsh, crossed the dirt road, entered the uplands. Huge spaces surrounded her. She was stunned by the distances. She fluttered, white-wing bars flashing in the sun to a tree tobacco.
Suddenly, she saw a movement on a fence close at hand. It was the loggerhead shrike, the same one Cabbage and the students had seen when they visited the innkeeper worm. The shrike was only a few feet away, facing her. She felt a shiver of fascination pass over her, like the shadow of a passing cloud.
Sunlight streamed down on him revealing a black face mask that surrounded a sharply hooked beak. There were white spots on each of his black wings, like insignia, and the rest of him was ensconced in a light grey uniform.
In front of the shrike, impaled on the barbed wire fence, was a swallow without a face.
As Melodia watched, a dark horror draped itself around her heart. The shrike jerked down, hooked his victim in his hooked beak, jerked the corpse upright, and tore off a piece of body. Tiny tuffs of downy feathers floated away across the world like tuffs of cattails blown off in a cold December breeze. The shrike bent again and his prey rose up as if to dance with him in, held close in a grotesque, headless embrace.
Musica flew.
Back across the road she rushed, down the railroad tracks she flew, and she landed in the tamarisk trees just east of the cattails.
Odd, confusing and frightening thoughts passed through her. She saw eyes filled with fear. She saw bodies without heads. She looked across the marsh. Oddly, there was the head of an Egret, passing along over at the top of a mud bank. The egret strode confidently along the bank, past a plastic bag, past an empty styrofoam cup, her white feathery head jerking along with each step through the mud.
The marsh now seemed like a completely different world to Melodia than when she had first seen it the day before, when she had felt the sun and seen the water and sang for sheer joy. The uplands and the tidal creeks seemed dirty and dark to her now. The snowy egret, with no apparent body or legs, seemed unreal, like a puppet, moving along behind a brown curtain, slinking through a trashy world, programed to strike death into the waters below.
She flew again, beating the air with an irregular wing beat, bouncing up and down, traveling down the railroad to the flood control channel. She landed on a high wire just before the bridge that passed over the channel. She looked up the watery road, to the choppy grey bay, to the strand and to the faded ocean beyond. The distance seemed like rain to her, washing her thoughts within.
Then, turning around, she glanced down. Below her on the pilings jutting out of the flood control channel was a sea-gull with one blind eye. He was walking along the top of the pilings with is head tilted oddly head peering here and looking there, trying to see what he could see, more clearly.
That night as the sun fell towards the ocean, Professor Cabbage’s students grew more and more concerned.
“He’s always home by now,” said Sara.
“I’m afraid,” said Coco.
“Come sit by me,” said Blue.
They looked out of their mustard to the east. Over by the tamarisk trees they saw a huge cloud of starlings whirling and whirling through the air.
The black, speckled birds flew toward the marsh and then made a great sweeping flight back to the uplands over the cattails. Then the sun shed from their wings, like shinning, shook from foil, and they fell out of sky onto the wires with a great noisy din.
But as suddenly as they settled, the starlings launched again with a racket, and sweeping up all their stragglers, they churned and tossed across the mud toward the marsh. Almost to the tidal creeks, they made a turn and back they came, bouncing up and down, up and down and then onto the wires and poles they fell again.
Below them the cattails thrust up from the earth, tall and sharp like bayonets. A dragon-fly darted across the brackish water in front of the reeds, twisting though the air like a fighter jet.
As the sun fell lower, the marsh waters turned metallic gold.
Then up into the air washed the starlings again, with a grand confusion of tongues. Like a great crowd, all shouting differing points of view, they circled and circled the brackish water, and then they fell with tremendous silence upon the cattails as the sun disappeared into the fog in the west.
Chapter 14, A Song
This is chapter 14 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-13 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog, or by going to the category, “sweetwater: a fable” where you will find all the chapters, with the first at the bottom of the page.
From a high and windy perch the professor, insatiably curious, stepped across a line.
He went back to the nest in the date palm, and he pried into the living niche of the mockingbird’s home. He knew nothing about nests; he had read nothing on nests; he knew no one else who was interested in bird nests, and he had been warned to stay away — but he couldn’t.
He went to the nest, and he took notes in his mind, and stored them there. The place had a fascinating appeal to him.
From a distant perch, he could make out that the nest was made up out of a light stick frame, a woven basket, supported by flying buttresses. One day, flying over, upside down, it came to him that the whole thing was perfectly Gothic. It was a Gothic cathedral with a central vault, flipped upside down to let in more light!
And the mockingbirds in the nest?
Thoughts about them fell like shiny ice through his mind.
“Everyday,” he remarked to himself, “food falls out of the sky like manna on these bright-eyed baby mockingbirds. With wide yellow mouths and excited chirps they receive. Everything is given. They are fed. All around them everything is offered–laid out, set out — a banquet is set for them.”
It couldn’t be denied. Other species might be indifferent, but the plants were not ignoring these little birds.
Dates the color of the sun, hung from huge pods near the top of the palm. Juniper berries, the color of the sea, hung in an evergreen nearby. A Eugenia hedge ringed the yard below, topped with fiery red new growth, branches glowing bright red with juicy berries.
Cabbage mused to himself, “Even the bugs of the soil and the fruit of the plants of the fields are plucked from their places by the mockingbird parents, and carried to the top of the palm, wing and leg and tender body — these all give their lives for these little birds.”
For nine days Cabbaged watched as the wealth of the earth arrived in the palm and filled it up. Every day the sun rose higher in the sky and shone warmer in the northern hemisphere of the blue planet. The plants and the creatures sucked up the water out of the gentle curve of the earth and grew taller and stronger.
Every night the moon shrank smaller and smaller. Everyday the nest in the palm grew fuller and heavier until it was absolutely stuffed with warm, fluffy baby mockingbirds and the moon was almost an empty cup.
On the ninth day the professor found the nest overflowing, mockingbirds running over the sides. And the next day he found it as empty as the acorn caps covering the ground under the oaks in the Cuyamacas.
He was distraught. He had missed it. He flew down close to the nest, hovering over it. Now he could see inside. It was made of sticks and grass, string and paper and foam. There was a black lace from a shoe. There was a piece of grey plaster. There was a gold twist of carpet near the top.
Then looking up, he saw the baby birds, sitting on a date pod, teetering at the edge of the air, leaning out into space like ancient tower jumpers, eyeing the fall, unsure if this was the end or the beginning.
Cabbage fluttered to the house top to watch. He was full of excitement.
The mockers eyes followed a fairly steep grade down toward the grass. Then, with little fanfare, they lifted their wings from their bodies, tested the air, gauged it and paused.
The air gusted under them, and saved their lives. Their feet went light, their wings suddenly tipped and stiffened, sunlight flooded them and down a sudden slide they came. Their shadows disappeared from off the fronds. They fluttered down onto the soft grass in the yard, one right after the other.
The professor clapped. He bounced, remembering his first flight, the snap into the air, the playful breeze, the sudden speed, the instant turn, the wild ride!
He peered through the sunlight at the baby birds on the grass, rejoicing.
The warm spring sun kissed their heads. They beat the grass with their feathers — down and forward, up and back, down and forward, up and back and with pounding wings, up and back through the airy grade they ascended toward the palm.
It didn’t go that well, the professor noted to himself. One bird crashed into a pod, and managed to steady herself there. The other hit the center of a drooping frond. She scrambled. Toes and wing tips pounded the smooth green surface of the fronds; she slid down the green falls and off into a waiting pool of air. She sank further, then caught herself, hovered frantically, then stroked a breeze and headed unsteadily back up into her home.
The two baby mockers now sat close in the palm and looked around smugly. They flexed their wings. They new it now; they could fly! Everywhere they looked there were paths, in every direction clear roads.
Down through the air they fell, one after the other; into the arms of the air they dived, they swooned, they exulted, they thrilled. The wind caught them, as they knew it would now, every time!
The roof came up fast. Wings angled up! Tails twisted down. A stall! Toes caught the sandy ridge cap. The professor fled.
They followed him.
The sun blazed joyfully. It filled up the holes in the sidewalks. The professor did a back flip, in order to look back while still flying. They were coming.
Was it random? Were they pursuing him? Was this a romp, or was it a chase? He didn’t know, but he winged it hard for the marsh. Even before they reached the pepper trees along the street, the fledglings passed over him, and passed out over the freeway and flew into the uplands.
The trees tossed their heads to the birds, and the mockers landed in the Tamerisks at the east edge of the uplands.
The baby birds looked out at the wonder. There were the enchanted fields of daisies. There were the majestic groves of fennel. There were the sinuous creeks of the salt marsh; there was the huge sparkling bay, and beyond, “What was this?” It was the ocean, vast and bright and flat.
Cabbage blew into the marsh and lit in a wild radish. It was a species that had been honored from the days of the ancient Greeks, and they were gone, but here it was still, glowing in the sun like beaten gold! Long, green, pointy fruit pods hung off the radish, soft white petals with purple and rose veins embroidering them shot out of its top. A splotch of yellow color filled the center of each flower.
Then one of the mockingbirds sang a simple song, improvised to fit the moment, a clear, mellifluous mockingbird melody.
“Music!” said Cabbage. “It’s music crying out of the core of her unfettered identity. Listen,” he spoke to the radish, “It’s the music of the spheres!”
The wind tossed the green mustards in the lot. The aphids bounced joyfully in the canopy. The flowers waltzed.
And out of the radish, buoyantly bouncing on the air, Professor Cabbage flew, carrying a song with him, sang in a secret place inside.
He passed into the blue arch of the sky and back into the graceful arms of the green mustard he had left that morning. The dark leaves washed gently back and forth in the afternoon breeze, green ribbons flying against the blue sky, streaming east then west, back and forth again like the surf grass waving gently on the blue water along the coast.
His face glowed. The students gathered around him.
“What?” said Peter.
“He’s bright,” said Little Blue.
“You’ve been to the nest again,” said Sara.
“They flew,” said Cabbage, “and they’re here! And I’ve named one of them. Her name is Melodia.”
Chapter 13, Shadow Art
This is chapter 13 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-12 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog, or by going to the category, “sweetwater: a fable” where you will find all the chapters, with the first at the bottom of the page.
Professor Cabbage did visit the nest again the next day, and when he reached home that afternoon, he brought with him a suprise for his students, a Pigmy Blue butterfly. Cabbage found him sunbathing on a Lamb’s Quarter and invited him home. The Pigmy was a fine fellow and eager to come along. His buff brown wings were blue at the bottom and underneath he was light brown with white spots.
“Meet Little Blue,” said Cabbage to his students.
“Hey Little Blue,” they all called out.
Blue coasted in and found a perch by Cleo. Beside the swallowtail. He looked at her with admiration. Beside her the Pigmy Blue looked even smaller.
“Wow,” we really are a weird family now,” said Sara. “White, black, yellow, maroon and blue. We’ll be a runway hit this spring. No offense Little Blue,” she added. “You’ll fit right in.”
“You’re important, as important as any of us,” said Cabbage looking the Pigmy Blue in eyes.
“Speaking of that, what’s important?” demanded Sara.
“Everything,” said Cabbage.
“That’s not true,” said Sara. She had never spoken to him like this before. “We need a family meeting.”
“Fire away,” said Cabbage.
“We’re worried about you,” began Sara. “All of us are. If you get killed hanging around mockingbirds, what will become of us? And what will happen to the plants? The plants are plotting something. I know they are, but you are so caught up in your species research that you are distracted from focusing on the real issue here.”
“I’m taking precautions,” said the professor, “with the mockingbirds. And I thought we’d all go out and measure the plants again today.”
Peter jumped in, “You’ve told us to test everything,” he said. “We have been. Sara and Cleo and Coco and I have been talking, while you were gone. We think we know what’s happening in the marsh.”
“So what’s happening,” asked Cabbage.
Coco jumped in. “Sara thinks that the innkeeper worm is bad.”
“That’s not what I said,” responded Sara. “But I think he may be behind the plants flying.”
“Tell me more,” said the professor.
“Remember how the innkeeper talks about how the bay used to be all green and marshy and full of birds. He wants to go back to that. He wants things to be the way they were before. Think about it. And so I think he is urging all the non-native plants to fly. He knows that if they do, they will die, and then the native plants can take over the uplands and the marsh again, and things will be restored to the days of old. “
“Fascinating,” said Cabbage. “Sara, you might be right, but I’m not sure Every theory must be tested, and proven or disproven by the facts.”
“We have to do something,” said Peter, “We think that something bad is going to happen soon.”
“You make a good case,” said the professor. “Let’s go measuring.”
And as they went the professor gave a nod and a word and a pat here and there to all the plants, big and small. Little Blue watched intently. He had never seen anything remotely like this.
The professor hugged a soft turkey mullein, he kissed a blushing, wild radish, he complimented a lovely fennel, he shook hands with a hard-working bladder pod, even stopping for a moment their to discuss the weather with a harlequin beetle.
And so, with fits and starts and stops, out into the uplands they flew.
“Aren’t these daisies magnificent?” called Cabbage. Ahead of them were thousands of yellow and white dots on a field of light green. They tossed in the wind, and their colors flashed on and off.
“Now that is simply — beautiful,” said the professor. “I love the daisies. The daisies taught the pointillists to paint.”
And when they came to the field, they began to measure, and measure and measure.
“Good,” said Sara. “Correct. Unmoved. Precisely.”
“They seemed to be in place,” said the professor.
Suddenly Cleo paused over an empty bit of ground. “There was a daisy here two days ago when we measured this area,” she said. “It’s gone!”
The group rushed to the spot where Cleo hovered.
“Your right,” confirmed the professor. “Look there, you can see where the roots came out of the ground.
“Does anyone know what happened here,” the professor said to all the plants nearby.
Not a word came back.
“You! What do you know?” the professor said to a gorgeously blushing wild radish, nearby.
The radish said nothing. She had dressed herself, put on perfume, and she expected to be complimented, not interrogated.
Then the dirt spoke, “I already told you the daisies were flying. Now you can see for yourself that it is true. It’s happening more. At least ten, that we know of, flew this week. Why measure anymore? We need a plan, a military plan, to stop this.”
“No, we need a rational plan,” said Cabbage. “We need to wage influence, not war. There has been enough of that for all time.”
“Back to the mustard,” said Cabbage. “We need to think.”
When they arrived home, Professor Swallowtail was there waiting.
“Well, well,” Henri. “I see you have misled a Pigmy Blue into your odd little school.”
Swallow looked at Little Blue, shook his head in disapproval and said sternly, “Beware.”
“The daisies are flying,” said Cabbage. “We’ve confirmed that.”
“I know that,” said Swallowtail, “and you are responsible for it.”
“That’s not true,” shot back Sara. “We think the innkeeper worm is behind this.”
“Henri, Henri, Henri,” said Swallow. “You have unwittingly caused the very problem you are trying to solve.”
“And just how have I done that?” asked Cabbage.
“All your little speeches given in the uplands, don’t you think the daisies heard those? You’ve preached that the nameless little lives should be adored; you’ve urged the creatures to cross the natural boundaries that exist between them. You’re little diverse group transgresses nature, and your visits to the mockingbird nest shouts rebellion. You, Henri, have fostered a rebellion. You, Henri, have given the plants the idea that they can be like birds, because you, yourself, and I believe this deeply, Henri, want to be a mockingbird! No wonder the flowers want to fly.”
“No, no, it isn’t so,” shouted Coco. You’re wrong. Go away!”
“You’ve destroyed the natural order of things, Henri,” said Swallow, “and in time you will destroy the marsh. The innkeeper himself warned you. You should have left well enough alone.”
And he flew off.
Cabbage sat still for a moment, then he chuckled.
The flowers giggled.
The nitrogen guffawed.
The sun roared with laughter.
And the earth joined in too.
The air was full of laughter.
That evening, when the sun sank down, the palm trunks were hot on their west side, cool and dark to the east. It was both night and day in the palms and in the city.
The sun cast itself in long rectangles down the east-west streets. It threw itself down the driveways and between the houses in great squares of yellow light. The west sides of chimneys and fences and cars turned all bright and warm.
The doves flew to the wires to watch.
“Shadow art,” they cooed.
And now each creature and each plant as if imitating the sun, cast off a bit of themselves as a shadow.
Fences cast themselves on lawns.
Cars cast moving shadows on the freeway.
The flowers cast their shadows in the dirt.
Professor Cabbage looked behind him, and he saw his own shadow, falling on Little Blue.
“I have an influence,” he said, “and it is for good.”
Chapter 12, The Air
This is chapter 12 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-11 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog, or by going to the category, “sweetwater: a fable” where you will find all the chapters, with the first at the bottom of the page.
The next day the air filled.
Nitrogen rocketed out of the ground and whipped speedily here and there around the uplands and the marsh.
All the marsh and upland plants breathed out oxygen and it careened through the airways and over the waters, banging around the atmosphere with all the hydrogen and nitrogen atoms.
And falling down from the sky and through the holes in the air, dust from the stars descended on the earth.
‘We’ve come,” said the space dust, “at last.”
In rolled the waves to the beach and tiny salt crystals launched from their tops and rose to meet the falling stardust in midair.
“Welcome,” said the salt crystals to the stardust.
Inland, far east of the marsh, the Cuyamaca and Laguna mountains watched from their highest peaks, themselves wind blown, hair ruffled.
The air heated, and then reached down to the ground and snatched up bits of the earth, of life and death and everything.
Insect legs wafted on the breeze out over the uplands, a bit of wing floated out over the marsh, a piece of chitin and a broken antenna gusted along the ground, fungal spores, flying seeds, tiny plant hairs, seeds and dirt and tiny bits of skin, everything and everyone flew here and there.
The air was full of life and death.
Breath of lake and breath of brackish water down where the cattails grew and breath of salt marsh and breath of sea, breath of plant and breath of creatures too, all came together in the air and merged. Breath of volcano, breath of forest fire, breath of stars and breath of sun mingled and danced and moved as one over land and sea.
Then suddenly, from the top of a large palm, a new movement, a different motion, a new presence filled the air. Two baby mockingbirds were now in motion.
The star dust gasped.
And tiny bits of ancient stone and shell cried out from deep within the earth.
The flying broken bits of plant, leaf and stem, anther and filament, stigma, style and stamen, spearated by death and decay, reunited again in the air, clapped their their hands and feet together.
A song passed outward from the date palm where two new mockingbirds sat. It rippled out from their mother.
“If anything can sing, a mockingbird can sing,” thought Cabbage.
The song skipped off the roof tops. It undulated through the busy air.
And there, caught in the music, the two baby mockingbirds exulted for sheer air-filled, sun-lit, earth-fill joy.
“Horray!” they called out.
Professor Cabbage watched intently from the safety of a white fence nearby. He was alone. He had told his students that they must not come. Today’s mission was just too dangerous.
The mocking bird song went out again.
Cabbage had heard these creatures sing before. They could imitate anything.
The air, and everything in it turned its head to watch.
The nest came alive! Legs and wings went into motion simultaneously. A baby mockingbird appeared above the edge, all its parts seemingly flying in opposite directions at once. Legs flew down, wings flew up and out, two sticks tossed in the air together. And up the little mocker went and out of the nest, and down she came again, dropping through the air and in complete disarray, she landed directly on top of her sister there.
The professor could stand it no longer and flew into the air, high above the nest for a better look.
Then the little winged creatures marched off across the nest strutting and swaying, legs jerking mechanically, wings above rubbery and floppy. With a rush of energy they broke above the nest’s edge with a bounce and a spin, cartwheeling through the air. The space above the little home was suddenly awash with crosscurrents of rushing and dashing waves of air. Feathers flew, air washed in and out.
They flew, for a second, and then both crashed back into the nest.
The nitrogen laughed, and ran fast.
The oxygen shouted, churning more slowly but with equal joy.
The hydrogen exulted, rising up into the clouds.
The aragon clapped.
And they all danced around together again.
Music bubbled and trilled.
The mockers sashayed again across the springy rootlets lining the bottom of their home and spun around each other. Chest to chest they ascended into the air, small bodies tossed together above the palm, wing in wing, eye to eye, dancing on air, this time in flight, in this moment, music incarnate.
The dust of the stars swirled around them.
The dust of the mountains and the dust of the sea fell down on them.
The kisses of the volcanoes fell upon them.
Down the little birds came again, like mist falling from a fountain, two downy lives, infant baptized in air and music on a warm spring day before a million witnesses or more.
And the professor saw it too! And praised!
He looked through the air, past floating wing and leg and gazed into a living laboratory. He pulled back his wings with joy, like Charles Wilson Pearce himself, pulling back the curtain of the museum to the specimens in motion.
He gestured, he welcomed, he peered in, amazed.
The earth spun.
The mockingbirds spun through music filled yellow light.
The professor himself spun.
He turned away, dizzy, astonished and also a little terrified. He was uncertain of what he saw, not sure if he should fly and flee or stay and dance.
That night huge gray clouds winged down the coast arriving fresh from the Gulf of Alaska and dumping huge loads of winter air on the spring-filled city.
Wind ran rough fingers through the trees, tangling their tops. Huge ocean swells lifted the kelp, tore it from the bottom and tossed it in piles on the shore.
At dawn fire fell out of the sky and split the air with a long, jagged cut
Professor Cabbage and his students hid in their mustard home.
The lightening fell, the air shattered, then it clapped back together crashing into itself and tumbling back on itself with a great roar and rumble.
All the marsh and uplands hid.
A cold wind-driven rain fell on everything.
Creatures tucked in their legs and heads.
Snow fell on the mountains, on the Cuyamacas, on the higher Lagunas and up on Mount Palomar too.
In the cities the air was full of silver lines of water and on the mountain the air was full of white snow.
The spring snow floated down on the peaks like star dust falling out of a low gray sky. Along Sunrise Highway the snow covered the creamy blooms of the yuccas and they looked like centerpieces at Indian wedding ceremonies, large bowels of Yucca suds for bride and groom to wash each other’s hair.Throughout the mountains of southern California and northern Mexico snow fell on the lavenders and white lilacs and the lupines which graced the mountain slopes like great flowery bouquets.
Snow covered the oaks, the pines, and the cedars. It fell down low too, covering the dark green wild strawberries, laying a soft white blanket over the baby blue eyes, the fern-like yarrow shoots and the bright green spring grasses everywhere. And up in Julian, where the apple trees sat in quiet, rolling grassy hills and valleys, the white snow fell on the new, white blooms, white on white, dressed in white, row upon row of sleeping brides.
Throughout the day it snowed in the mountains and rained in the cities. That afternoon in the uplands and the marsh and the city hail pounded the ground.
The sky was full of ice, then the ground. It kept coming.
Ice glanced through the trees. It ricocheted off roofs. It pelted the fennels and mustards. It bounced on the streets and on the lawns. It pounded the dirt. Then it suddenly ceased.
Gusty wind blew through the evening and blew through the night, pushing huge racks of clouds past bright stars set in a deep black space. The next day was breezy, cool and sunny.
The star dust lay soaked and scrubbed on the ground. The air sparkled clean and clear of dust. The sun shown. The water in the puddles receded. In the mountains the snow melted. The creatures untucked themselves.
Professor Cabbage, his head as clear and clean as the air, flew from his lab. He flew high up into the air, checking for gashes. He found only faint scars.
“Where are the wounds?” he asked.
But there were no wounds, and it seemed as if the sun had healed the sky! It was whole, one, reunited.
This miracle ascertained, he flew straight past his fear and straight to the palm.
He went cleaned and renewed in the spirit of Fabre. His instinct for astonishment in tact, he went out again to see the small creatures of the earth.
“I’m out for more field study, to see the glorified reptiles, the feathered ancestors sitting in there stick and stuffing home,” he told his students.
He absolutely couldn’t resist.
“Don’t go,” Coco shouted. He went anyway.
“The air is telling me to,” he said.
Chapter 11, Night Sky
This is chapter 11 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
’Im writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter every week or so. You can begin with chapters 1-10 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog, or by going to the category, “Sweetwater: A Fable” where you will find all the chapters, with the first at the bottom of the page
That night professor Cabbage was frozen awake, paralyzed like Ezekiel into a state of intense astonishment. He couldn’t take his eyes off the sky, nor could his little students. They gazed together, looking to the heavens, each one a Galileo or Kepler or Brahe.
The darkness fell from above onto them with a silent, heavy chill while tiny fires ignited all around them in the sky.
The first full moon following the vernal equinox rose in the east white hot with sunlight. It was all reflection of mare and moutain and crater, simplfied into a perfect white circle on the horizon.
“I’m round,” cried the moon, preening.
It spun, it basked, it flew in a cork screw pattern, it wobbled, it pulled up its dress around its ankles; it ran up the sky after the sun.
“Wait,” the moon cried out to the sun, “I’m coming.”
“Do you have your light with you?” called the sun, “or have you too fallen asleep?’
“No, I have it,” answered the moon, “I’m ready.”
The earth spun, the moon rose, the sun danced, the moon caught his arm, the wedding procession was in full swing.
The stars exploded in the sky behind the moon.
“She’s beautiful,” the butterflies in the marsh called out, “She is absolutely the good of the exceptionally perfect superlative!”
The moon raced now to the zenith of the sky, moving in a veil of light, carrying with it all the eyes of the earth.
The professor stared, stunned. The students cheered!
“She’s so lovely,” the little butterflies cried out.
Then they cried out again, “The stars, they’re falling down now!”
Orion, draped in moonlight, belt all glittery and sword glowing with the great nebulae, fell into the west now, bow first, plunging into the dark sea.
Then brilliant white Rigel and flaming, red Betelgeuse and all their fellow strong men fell into the inky black water and drowned in an eerie, blinking, watery grave.
“They’re gone,” called the butterflies. “But here come more!”
And now a thousand galaxies and more rose up in the east with Virgo leading them, attending her like an army of glowing white angels, hot and fierce with a purging holy fire.
The realm of the galaxies passed up over the uplands, a flaming, floral canopy in deep space, sprouting through Aristotle’s crystalline spheres.
“The sprials, the ellipticals, the edge-ons,” said Cabbage, “they are our boquets. The moon, the stars, the galaxies, we butterflies, the daisies and everything below and above, nothing but layer upon layer of bright blooms.”
Just before dawn planets budded on the southeast and appeared like a glowing floral necklace draped on the dark neck of the earth.
The moon sat on the water like a huge, white rose.
The butterflies gawked.
The horizon blushed.
The galaxies shyly retreated, the stars faded and the planets ducked from sight. The white rose sank below the glossy horizon.
The sun rose over the hills in the east. The valleys filled with soft white light. It was day again.
The sun’s first rays pierced the mustard the professor now sat sleepily in. He warmed quickly. He peered out into a world fired clean by starlight.
He ruminated on the explosion of the sun, only a day before, the meeting with the innkeeper, that hadn’t gone so well, and the stars flaming in last night’s sky.
That starry night hung like a backdrop in his mind; every scene he now saw was superimposed on stars.
He started to the top of a yellow cluster above him and paused, balanced on the center of four bright yellow petals.
He looked to the bay, and saw the water sparkling, tiny light on the top of each wave and each ripple.
He launched. His antenna whiplashed back. He vaulted into the blue dome. He went forth changed, like Pascal, a parchment of fire sewn into his coat lining. His students followed behind him, slowly warming in the morning sunshine.
Cabbage ricocheted across the lot, bouncing up and down below the galaxies hidden above and the softly glowing eggs below.
He passed over a mustard; a familiar oily fragrance rose up to him. He reached out; he sucked up life through a straw; he knew only sweet, restoring sustenance.
He spun away through his fields, his landscapes, his laboratories. Through familiar doors he reeled, looking the earth over from all sides, from down, and up and also from the side..
He checked his plants. He had his students rechecked their observations. Again they measured the distance between the mustards, the daises and the rest. With the carefulness of Kepler calculating the elliptical orbit of mars, Cabbage confirmed the location of each plant. And he checked his eggs.
Here things were less certain. Some were missing.
They’ve been eaten,” said Cleo.
His heart sank. The world was missing eggs.
“Here, these are still in place,” called Peter to encourage him.
“And there! These are hatched!” cried Coco.
“Over here, new cathedrals, Professor,” shouted Sara, “Soaking in light!”
And so in this way they all came to the edge of the mustard field and broke out onto the dirt road leading down to the marsh. Cabbage pulled up, fluttered, stalled!
“What is this?” he asked.
“This is grand!” said Peter.
There in front of them was fennel, lovely sweet fennel in fine array, bending over both sides of the road! Cabbage had seen these fennels before, but with star revelations still flickering in his head, baptizing his imagination with points of light, they never looked so beautiful to him as they did now.
He paused, he gawked. He changed his angle of attack. His wings pronated; they cambered – he sped down the long green hall, between the plants, his students following. Feathery hands reached out to them and pulled then in.
Glowing in soft golden light, the fennels seemed to him as beautiful as his mustards
“All the world a temple!” he whispered with adoration in his hushed voice.
And with that, he, followed by his loyal students, fell into one of the most lush fennels alongside the road.
Cabbage settled halfway in, his wings over his head. He looked around in slack-mouthed amazement.
Thick, sturdy trunks shot up around him. Gray-green trunks, the color or the San Diego Bay rose up from the earth. They shot past the Professor, ascending like water sprouts into the sky above him.
He looked down. His student’s gaze followed. Sprouting, exuding, expanding green fennel burst from the earth, pushing aside last year’s dry, brittle dead and decaying stalks. Up it came to him and fountained into the sky where it fell away from the central column and turned into a misty and fine architecture in the air.
“What subjects! This is art!” he cried out.
“Listen my little family,” he said, “ The Greeks must have studied fennel, and then they built the Parthenon and the Acropolis. What pedestals here! What columns these! Such entablatures! Behold, the living architecture!”
They all looked up.
Up and up around them now the breathing, expanding, multiplying architecture rose, and where it left off, more went up from there. Stalks sprouted sheathing, glowing green, translucent capitols. And from these living caps rolled leafy volutes, vivified scrolls, feathery with green triumph. And up from there, more divided higher, divided again, column upon adorned column — layered, tiered, piled high and running over.
It was as if the fennel had sent down a deep tap root, had sent down a deep straw into the bowls of the earth and had drawn sandstone from below the bay, below the aquifer. This was an inspiration, not from water, but from stone. The very stone had vivified and shot out of the ground to make and remake itself in architectural grandeur in fennel.
“Why haven’t we come here before?” asked Peter. “This is awesome.
Something flared in the back of the professor’s head.
“Because of my biases,” said Cabbage. “I have been blinded by my own infatuations with my mustards, and my own struggle with Professor Swallowtail. I missed the fennels. Fennel, is the host plant for the anise swallowtail butterflies. This, right here, is the domain of Professor Swallowtail. And it is, in a word, exquisite!”
He continued, with mounting humility, “Look, there is a cornice, looking precisely like a joyful explosion! And look, there a finale,” he said pointing to the yellow flowers in the top of the plant.
They all looked up. Crowning golden umbels appeared there, like a hundred candelabras, like a thousand yellow flames, silhouetted against the bright blue sky, instarred in the great blue dome.
“Did the stars fallen to earth and become the flowers?” asked Cleo.
“Or did the fennel stalks rise up and sprout into stars?” asked the professor.
He saw again, last night’s sky, glowing in his mind. It was all he could see.
The professor had to look down to regain for his sight. He looked around, The oddest feeling surged over him, and he suddenly knew that despite all of the separations that bothered him so, he was not alone!
And he was looked up then, out into a sanctuary full of glowing faces. Celebrants were present! He was a member of a community and each held a piece of bread, and each one, a leafy chalice filled with wine. Everywhere in the fennel were anise swallowtail caterpillars.
He gazed. He peered between the great columns. He dropped back down into the central isle. There ensconced on the feathery dark green leaves were tiny fuzzy yellow eggs, but they were empty–and near each one, a face.
Cabbage and his family looked into black caterpillar faces with orange splotches on them, and they looked into the bright green faces with yellow splashes of paint and black horns around them, and they peered into fuzzy, round faces and long, soft bodies draped on the colonnades, seated on the floors and seated on the roof.
The professor looked. All the students looked. Side by side they looked up and out. Up went their eyes, bumping over the volutes. Up went their gazes, up over the entablatures. Up they went, through the floral dome. Up their eyes went out of the top of the fennel, up into the bright sky to the constellations there.
And it was, that day, for the professor and his students, a most wonderful thing — they were at home at last with their swallowtail family.
Chapter 10, The Shrike
This is chapter 10 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
’Im writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter every week or so. You can begin with chapters 1-9by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog, or by going to the category, “Sweetwater: A Fable” where you will find all the chapters, with the first at the bottom of the page
“I think that we need to go see the innkeeper again,” said Cabbage as the butterflies warmed in the early morning light glancing off the foothills to the east.
“Why?” asked Coco.
“Well, think about it,” said Cabbage as his students gathered around him. “The birds are beautiful, but as we saw yesterday, they are very dangerous. The butterflies are multiplying very nicely right now, but many of them are indifferent. The earth is our home but it is shaken; the plants are our hosts, but some of them are on the move; the sun is our power, but it blew up yesterday. I’m not sure what to do with all this, so let’s go see what the innkeeper worm thinks.”
“Is he a prophet?” asked Peter.
“I’m not sure what he is,” said Cabbage, “but he knows things I don’t know, and so I’d like to hear him.”
“Let’s stay away from the mockingbirds,” said Sara, “I’m afraid of them.”
“They’re dangerous,” said Cabbage, “but I love them, and when we go back to the nest, we must be very careful.
“We’re going back?” asked Peter, surprised.
“Of course,” said Cabbage, “Some pry into death, but we pry into life.”
“I don’t understand,” said Coco.
“You will,” said Cabbage, and with that cryptic remark, he flew out of the mustard his students trailed behind, Coco flapping awkwardly and bringing up the rear.
As the flew the professor continued, “I’ve sent out invitations for others to join us, the dirt and Professor Swallowtail, and the godwit.
“The dirt?” questioned Sara.
“Well, the leader of the dirt, at least,” said Cabbage.
“The dirt has a leader,” she exclaimed.
“Everything has a leader,” said Cabbage.
As they neared the tidal creek where the innkeeper’s burrow was, Cabbage noticed a shrike, sitting on an old bit of barbed wire fence left from the days when this particular section of ground had been a chicken farm. There were still a few old chicken houses crumbling here and there in the uplands and odd bits of fencing remained.
“The shrike,” he noted to his students, “sometimes feeds on other birds.”
Sara shuddered and flew close to Cabbage. All the students followed her lead and the butterflies flapped through the air now wing almost touching wing.
They arrived safely together at the innkeepers home, and settled in the same Sea Lavender they had used before.
“Innkeeper,” called out Cabbage.
“What do you want,” he heard a voice behind him.
But the voice wasn’t the innkeeper. It was Professor Swallow, arriving with his students.
“Well, Henri,” Swallow said, “we meet at the Oracle of Delphi. Let the games begin.”
“What the Oracle of Delphi?” asked Coco.
“It was the place where the ancient Greeks consulted a prophetess,” said Cabbage, “They believed that she would help them know the future and make wise decisions.”
Cabbage turned to address his students, and then he saw that the godwit was standing in the creek, only a short distance off.
“What we hear here today,” said Cabbage, “is not necessarily the truth. I don’t know what the innkeeper might say, or why he will say it. As I have taught you before, test everything.”
“That means,” said Professor Swallowtail, “that you should even test what Professor Cabbage says.”
“Amen,” said Cabbage and turned back to the waters of the salt creek.
“Let the testing commence,” he said and then speaking to the water he said, “What your point of view, innkeeper worm?”
Immediately, all those in attendance heard a voice from the water say, “Expect weird things ahead, but do not yourself become weird.”
Professor Swallowtail looked a little started. “What’s your definition of weird?” he responded.
“Weird is when the plants fly,” said the dirt, from the sandy soil below the Sea Lavender. The plant seemed to shift as he spoke, and the butterflies rocked a little on their perches.
“The dirt should mind its own affairs,” mumbled the innkeeper, “and not mettle in things not its business.”
“It’s my business,” said the dirt, “to save the plants.”
“And mine also,” said Cabbage.
“You are a bunch of self-appointed mettlers,” said Professor Swallowtail. “The innkeeper is telling you that you are exceeding your sphere of responsibility.”
“Everything is my responsibility,” retorted Cabbage, “and yours too.”
“That’s where you’ve gone tragically wrong, Henri,” said Swallowtail. “You aren’t the sheriff of the earth.”
“No, I am not,” said Cabbage, “I’m its keeper.”
“That is so arrogant,” aid Professor Swallowtail. “Things, places and creatures are not to be kept. Stick to teaching you own, and that will be quite enough for you my friend.”
“Have you come to argue?” said the Innkeeper interrupting. “Or have you come to consult? You’re wasting my time!”
Then there was silence.
“You’ve ruined it, Henri,” said Professor Swallowtail. “Now we’ll get nothing more from him.”
“The gift we give the disabled,” said the godwit from his distant vantage point, “is time.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” said Swallow.
“It means we must wait,” said Cabbage.
They waited. The students began to fidget.
The godwit stared at the bay.
An egret landed nearby and began to stalk the shallows of the creek.
They head the shrike cry out in the distance.
Cabbage heard the waves crashing along the beaches of the strand to the west.
“Wait,” said the sun.
“Wait for us,” said the palms.
“I don’t want to wait,” said the dirt.
“But you will,” said the innkeeper, “All the earth says that you will wait. Time will tell everything.”
“But what will it tell?” demanded Cabbage, “What will it tell us.”
“Time,” said the innkeeper, “will tell you that one will prey on another, Professor Cabbage, and that your studies of hostility and indifference will remain precisely what they are, merely descriptive. No matter how idealistic you become, you will not change what is. What is, is what will be. And you will not stop what has already been begun, and it will not be stopped.”
“That’s not true,” cried out Professor Cabbage. “This is not acceptable, and I will not accept it.”
“Then you will be defeated,” said the innkeeper.
“I told you, Henri,” said Professor Swallowtail, crowing. “Now calm down. This getting too upset isn’t good for your health.”
“I refuse to calm down,” said Professor Cabbage, jumping into the air. “I refuse to let the plants destroy themselves. I refused to remain separated from the birds!”
“And so you will be refused,” said the innkeeper.
The butterflies were all in an uproar now, turning to each other and making comments and asking questions. Coco was so upset she flew onto a swallowtail’s back and started chopping at the butterfly with her wings. She had to be pulled off by Peter and Sara.
Then the godwit flew.
The egret startled.
The dirt fled.
And the butterflies dispersed.
“Back to the uplands,” Swallowtail commanded, and all the butterflies from both groups, headed home.
But on the return trip, no one could help but notice that the shrike not sat with another feathered bird on the barbed wire fence. It was a house sparrow, and it was impaled on the wire.
And as the butterflies flew by, the shrike tore into the sparrow, its hooked beak ripping feathers and flesh from the sparrow’s body.
“Touché Henri,” yelled Professor Swallowtail across the windy airways,. “There is proof of the answer given by the oracle.”
They all flapped on, and then Swallow, looking back on the shrike still ripping the sparrow apart, spoke again.
He said, “Look at how much we love each other, friend.
Chapter 9, Sunset Revelations
This is chapter 9 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter every week or so. You can begin with chapters 1-8 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog, or by going to the category, “Sweetwater: A Fable” where you will find all the chapters, with the first at the bottom of the page
Professor Cabbage and his students ventured out on a little the next day, but in the afternoon, when they had taken refuge in their mustard again, a most remarkable change took place on the sun.
The sun began to seethe and boil with activity, brightening along its eastern limb.
Gas filaments pushed up off the surface. Huge flux tubes full of plasma formed up, giant solar arteries, carrying the sun’s life blood across tremendous plains upon the solar surface.
The sun pulsed.
It breathed fire.
It roared heat and light into space.
The sun blew up.
Blinding sheets of light, tremendous gusts of pressure, great exhalations of radiation — the sun cast itself off.
It flashed here, it spewed forth fire there, restructuring continuously into gracefully complex Jackson Pollack-like energy arcs. Glowing streams and fans, radiant arches and domes, flaming towers – it was a living cathedral, remaking itself out of light and heat and fire.
Earth watched, leaf and stem and frond drawn in sharp-edged outline on the walls and fences of the city.
A jacaranda tree became a delicate lacy design on the house behind it, every stem and every leaf drown in precise detail on stucco, like the fossil imprint of some ancient, primal fern printed on a rock.
The world doubled, by means of shadows. Copies were everywhere; the cave was full of forms. The earth was a sanctuary, full of icons. Every carefully poised leaf, every waving fin and flying wing strained forward as if on tip toe to gawk and wonder.
Earth watched.
The exploding sun fell toward the horizon.
In the top of the date palm tree, four small mockingbird eyes watched closely. The little heads rose and settled, pushing close to one another, downy chest to downy white chest, little spiky heads catching the bright golden rays, kissed to bed by fiercely departing light.
Other eyes watched too from various corners and nooks of the Sweetwater marsh and uplandsthe red-tailed hawk from a pylon, the marbled Godwit on the mud bank, the snowy egret in the water, plumes aflame, the morning doves leaning forward on the wires, chests on fire, and Professor Cabbage in his mustard, wings ablaze.
Every feather, every wing, every stalk and stem and leaf nearby, every life was a wick lit by the exploding, departing star.
In front of all the living creatures the huge molten globe, in fiery array, sank.
Down through the palm trees the sun rolled, down past the tiny eyes it fell, down it slowly cart wheeled through the fennels, down past fragile wings the fire tumbled, along earth’s airy curve it fell and into the sea it went.
And coming to its end, the exploding sun broke open, as if pierced, and spilled itself out into the sea.
The sun knelt, it sagged, it crumpled down at the edge of the water. Light trickled down its side and drizzled onto the ocean. The sun bled into the swells; it sank down to the kelp, and it bloodied the bass. It surfaced again and ran in a long, flowing golden river toward shore, riding a swell landward. Frothing to the beach, the light soaked into the sand.
Cabbage watched in a stupor. He couldn’t move. He was fixed in place. The flying professor was welded to a leaf. Light pressed him down, fastening him onto the leafy seat below him. His open, pale wings were solid gold.
The plants around him slurped and sucked at the sun. It entered their leaves. It ran down their stems. It dripped from their tips.
It ran down the ridges of the butterfly eggs.
It ran down the tips of the palm fronds.
It dipped into the nest and onto the new mockingbirds.
And all the winged creatures and the watching plants and the earth and the water, every raised head and every reclining surface, from shell fragment lying on the shore to wispy icy cloud high above, and every creature in between, all were baptized together for one awful and glorious moment in brilliant, golden fire.
The sun blazed and roared.
Earth gaped.
The fire fell!
The earth flamed but was not burned up.
Then suddenly, the copies dissolved, the gold faded, and the sun set.
