Here

            the victory of a revolution is immanent and consists in             the new bonds it installs between people. What Is Philosophy?   Early in the month, a great serpent-dragon of cloud with a feathered crest coils around the island, noses in across the coastal peninsulas from the southeast and up along the river valley from the sea. It rains for days, heavy sheets of water that twist in the wind and slap against the east facing doors; towards the end, lightning circles northeast, north, northwest, west, southwest, so close that we hear the crackle as bolts cleave the air before the shockwave goes out. Each bolt is followed by a deluge as the cloud that carried the charge collapses, released from the static tension that holds each raindrop or snowflake apart from all the others. Snow falls on the peaks; tanks and dams fill. Water birds feed, delighted, but other birds and all the furred creatures hunch and wait it out in whatever shelter they can find. I’ve seen this weather

                    you will greet yourself arriving                     at your own door …                                                        Derek Walcott Blackbirds chase on the roof above my head (I know the sound of their feet). Three males, beautiful in their glossy black, their daffodil-yellow beaks, are fighting for territory already. They face off, but don’t yet sing. One picks something up and drops it, picks it up and drops it – a snail? A stick? A small stone? Birds are everywhere, their calls clear in the cool air that pools overnight now above the river, topped by a warm layer that bounces back all the sounds generated beneath it – vehicles on the road across the valley, conversations, dogs barking, geese sounding an alarm somewhere. The same cool air presses the river flat till it holds a reflection of every leaf of every tree along its edge; kayakers drift on its lambent surface, doubled, inverted. In the space of a couple of weeks, both T and I find eagle feathers,