Sylvia Jorrin's June 2005 Farm Story

June 2005

I saw the tree a day or two ago, for the very first time, willow green it was. Just beginning to leaf out. Startling in its gravity against the alizarin crimson of the maple wood, the wood so familiar to me for all the spring-times I have farmed here. It is on a hill which prevents the sunrise in its total splendor from entering my valley. Only a slim golden gleam in the morning enters my windows, rich and astonishing in its intensity. And that appears in slivers of gold, lighting the bright yellow walls of the winter bedroom. It is a surprise, each day, the slightly varying shapes, bars of gold, marked by distinct shadows: the mullins of the window sash, the shade of a lamp on a table, and the geometry of the mirrors I've placed to catch the light. It is why, in part, I chose that room in which to sleep winters. I lie in bed, mornings, watching the suns performance. A few brilliant moments and it is over. The sun moves. Or is it the world that moves? I've heard it was the world. But, early mornings, it would seem to be, most certainly, the sun.

The summer bedroom has its loveliness as well. But that lies later in the day, when the sun has moved, or is it the world which has moved, around the house, and heralds late afternoon as it enters the windows. No slivers of light here, but a warm and gentle glow fills the room and broad bands of golden light fill the squares of the window panes. In its final gesture, it passes through the thick old-ivory colored linen drapes, making them gleam in light and shadow, and then, onto the old ceramic stove, its tiles in shades of salmon and peach and gold on the petals of the dogwood blossoms with which it is embossed. The stove glows in the last rays of the sun as it drops behind another hill to the west.

One window frames the pine trees, huge dark triangles summer and winter, that, themselves form another triangle, created by a cherry tree, pale green leaves and ivory colored flowers in spring, dark green leaves in summer, and shafts of gold in fall. A second window includes a wood, itself, of no particular distinction, but it is through that that I see the sky. These windows frame a view that has never tired me, even though it changes less than any of the others in this house of many windows and many ways of seeing things. The sky itself provides the variations, as one by one the evening stars appear against the deepening blue. I have watched them move across one pane of glass to the next and then disappear from sight. Until the next evening. They, too, vary their position ever so slightly each night. Modestly, but enough to notice. For there is a moment when they, one by one, do not reappear again.

I remember a mirror in my mothers house when I was a child. It had a beveled glass edge. It was gold. "Ornate," my mother would say with disdain. "Too ornate." I loved it. One September afternoon it cast a rainbow on an adjacent wall. The rainbow appeared, afternoons, about the time I came home from school. It lingered for only a few minutes. Never longer. Each day it moved its position ever so slightly. By the end of September it was gone. It returned the next year. In a slightly different place. The following September was the last time it appeared. Lacking its original clarity. But it was enchanting to me none-the-less. As is the tree I saw a day or two ago for the first time. The bright pale willow green color I love so. It has not moved, of course. It remains in its place. To be noticed from my front lawn. A surprise of color against the spring's favorite alizarin crimson of the maple trees and their faint, indistinct blooms. Spring. But today its color has changed. Deeper and less distinct. No longer asking for attention. Soon the deep red of the trees in bloom shall be replaced by green. A bright and darker green than the willow colored tree. And that tree as well shall become a similar darker color. And I won't notice it any more. Distinct and separate against the hillside. I won't see it any more.

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