Out of joint

"What is the late November doing
With the disturbance of the spring
And creatures of the summer heat,
And snowdrops writhing under feet,
And hollyhocks that aim too high.
Red into grey and tumble down
Late roses filled with early snow?"

An exquisite lyric from "The Four Quartets"
T.S. Eliot

We are living in strange times in more ways than one.

This is the warmest November in the recorded history of the Northwest. Temperatures soared to 70 degrees nearly every day this week, shattering records in what is usually a dismal, cold month.  This weather is more like a pleasant September.  The weather gurus say if we don't get a handle on global warming, this is typical winter weather by 2080.  

John mowed again this week, and look how nice and tidy with the beds mulched for the winter-- when it finally comes. Those new tulips and hyacinth bulbs I planted are starting to poke through when they should be just chilling out.

It is nice being outside, of course.  Dolly and I were in T-shirts at the barn yesterday.  And instead of a cold, raw day, I put the holiday lights up on a warm sunny afternoon.   But this strange weather adds to the general feeling of weirdness and unease.  

"The Four Quartets" is a mystical poem about our relationship with time, the universe, and the divine. It is also a difficult poem,  and the poet's imagination jumps the reader from place to place. But it is a true work of art, because no matter how many times you read it, there's always something new to discover.

Eliot published "The Four Quartets" in the early 1940's while living in England. Troubled times, indeed.  In the poem, nature is out of joint because the regularities of life had become unreliable and erratic.