Comfort me with ivy
Byrne, Katharine
THE LAST WO COMFORT ME WITH IVY Katharine...
...treeless, far-out community...
...The house outside my window Metaxa, a good Greek brandy I picked fiery red and bright purple and old needs to be tuck-pointed...
...in a late-summer splurge of color...
...Olympian vintner who was one of the book about wall vines someone gave Several times during my own long gods...
...Another looks out on in the wind and winding in and out of to brighten the gloom, a vigil begins for the excesses of a perennial flower bed the gutters...
...Late afternoon The outlook from my kitchen win- false starts and backward glances, is brings to a third window the view of a dow offers a seasonally changing view slowly moving north, greening the earth, gridlock of homecoming traffic...
...In thaws that occur through- Around the corner of the house last My own kitchen window is only a out this mean season, the wall may be August, another volunteer appeared, few feet from the house next door, yet I temporarily wiped clean-braced for challenging the hegemony of the ando not feel deprived by the lack of a bet- recurring onslaughts of deeper snows cient ivy: a morning glory vine with ter view...
...Then come the winds that ish on the ground below as the tuck- Katharine Byrne writes from Chicago...
...Time out to read the morning partite leaves open and grow fat, form- of a vine expert...
...bare vines...
...Sparrows hop tion that wants to divert it to somebody bara Pym or the latest Commonweal through the vines, looking for insects...
...Tiny bronze buds burst into pale never asking that I do something about went back to school and while the lit- green leaves, glistening in April rains...
...vine is bare, a naked network clinging exorably, though, the following spring There is no view from the kitchen...
...never urging me to prune, nurture, tler ones were blessedly napping up- As summer shines on us, sturdy tri- or cultivate it according to the directive stairs...
...it...
...again, waving in spring rains, reaching next-door neighbor...
...Or join an organizapaper, or prop a Jane Austen or a Bar- ing shallow cups for rain...
...She is talking about new deep and serious, icicles cling to the ing the progress of another year in this houses huddled beside one another in a edge of the roof and to the tracery of old house and the one beside it...
...Once more I look out my window at someone else's soon disappear, but when January is will see new patterns on the wall, markbare wall...
...life at this address, catastrophic intru- out of my kitchen window and drink Fall brings loud crashing colors to sions have threatened the vines' exis- to him, lifting a tiny glass of Five Star the view from the kitchen window...
...butter and marmalade, and a cup of tea signs and omens: pregnant nodes on the The view from the kitchen window, at hand...
...I couldn't down the alley...
...began to climb and proliferate...
...windows...
...I to the wall, waiting to outline Decem- will find the insistent vine rising once need a little space between me and my ber's snows...
...tence...
...One of these reveals a tangle cling to that side of the house and inch Beginning in March, sustained by cups of fir trees, too tall, too dense...
...About half a century ago, a that will pile up at the base of the house flowers of heavenly blue opened each tiny Boston ivy appeared in the dusty and a week later melt onto slush in the morning to the sun, brightening the wall space below the neighboring home and thin sunlight that slants from the south...
...against the sugar bowl, while appreci- The wall is crowded with ivy, each leaf I read in my book that in ancient ating the quiet and looking out the win- asserting itself in the sun and rippling in Greece ivy was sacred to Dionysus, the dow...
...I could not bear to First come furry light flakes that may for something to cling to...
...InI stand to be that crowded...
...Tough And accumulate again and again in the There are other views from other and shiny wide-spreading vines now long dark winter...
...signs that shy Persephone, with many waiting to be weeded...
...The vines are up at the Athens airport...
...Lunchtime was for many years vine slowly fattening as pale sun finds however, happily beyond my control a precious respite for me...
...By late November the the ivy's tentacles have done to it...
...THE LAST WO COMFORT ME WITH IVY Katharine Byrne would find it "hard to live tear the leaves from their stems and pointers' trowels of mortar outline each in such a house," the re- send them wheeling out of the yard and brick once more, repairing the damage porter writes...
...This inas I sit at a blue formica-topped shelf at carrying the warmth of springtime to sistent stream becomes heavier and noon, with cheddar on rye or peanut this part of the world...
...Long ago I the wall once more and warms its brick- or intervention, needs nothing from me, ate my lunch here after the big kids work...
...Someone their way to the roof each year, waving of tea and the seed catalogues that come should trim them...
...On a cold spring evening I'll look me last year...
...Now I may look at the elegant the hot winds...
...Commonweal 3 1 June 16, 2000...
...El gold as the ivy blazes in the waning torn ruthlessly from the wall, left to persunshine...
...One searches for noisier each year...
...else's street...
Vol. 127 • June 2000 • No. 12
