This morning I was up before the dawn. In the stillness and darkness, I set my teapot to boil. There alone in my kitchen I took in the delicate noises of the canyon: the chirping of songbirds heightening into greater crescendos as the light of the rising of the sun increased...intensifying in tandem. Off to my studio to get some more work done, it seemed only appropriate to put Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon to play in my my iTunes library. And there in the dim morning, Joni and the birds were my muse. I imagine myself as one of these ladies of the canyon, Trina, Annie and Estrella, that Joni melodically describes:
Trina wears her wampum beads
She fills her drawing book with line
Sewing lace on widows weeds
And filigree on leaf and vine
Vine and leaf are filigree
And her coats a secondhand one
Trimmed with antique luxury
She is a lady of the canyon
Annie sits you down to eat
She always makes you welcome in
Cats and babies round her feet
And all are fat and none are thin
None are thin and all are fat
She may bake some brownies today
Saying, you are welcome back
She is another canyon lady
Estrella circus girl
Comes wrapped in songs and gypsy shawls
Songs like tiny hammers hurled
At beveled mirrors in empty halls
Empty halls and beveled mirrors
Sailing seas and climbing banyans
Come out for a visit here
To be a lady of the canyon
Trina takes her paints and her threads
And she weaves a pattern all her own
Annie bakes her cakes and her breads
And she gathers flowers for her home
For her home she gathers flowers
And Estrella, dear companion
Colors up the sunshine hours
Pouring music down the canyon-
Coloring the sunshine hours
They are the ladies of the canyon
The music transports me and the work flies by.
And I realize how so very grateful I am for this small slice of coastal canyon in this OC suburbia.
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