Desperation

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

--Stevie Smith, 1972

How long can one flail about, searching for a hand to grab onto before giving up and sinking under? That old trick where you kneel in the lake, water up to your chin, appearing about ready to drown, and then, just as you gain attention, just as you draw somebody's eye, just as a hand is reached out to you, you stand up, and your savior feels a twinge of irritation, an urge to scoff. How many times can you cry wolf before everyone in town stops listening to you? You use up the chances, thinking each time this is the last breath of air you will be able to gasp before you go under, and no one is more surprised than you that you've surfaced once again. Then, when you get into really deep water, you regret those previous larks, those little experiments in how to lose your credibility.

Maybe you stop waving. Maybe you don't want to pull anyone down with you or maybe you don't think anyone has noticed at all how far out you've drifted, how big the waves are out here, how stiff the undertow.

The struggle to keep your head above water is tiring, never-ending, cold, numbing. You tire of hearing your hands splash the water, you tire of the seaweed tangled around your ankles, you tire of spluttering to stop yourself from swallowing the water. Maybe you could float, relax, allow yourself to drift. If you could just find a calm patch to rest in, lying on your back, looking up into the sun, stop trying to make way and instead just be.

Would the waves push you gently on to shore, or pull you under to roll along the bottom in the sand? Either way would be a relief.

Traditions

Paul Revere's Ride

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,---
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863



My mother reads this poem every year on the 18th of April. She bakes a cherry pie every February 22, in honor of George Washington and the cherry tree. She still makes me an Easter basket every year (although she did stop hiding it), and she insists we attend the Fourth of July parade. I look back over my childhood years, which were filled with turmoil and disturbance, and I see the anchors my mother put in place with her traditions. Not just the typical traditions like turkey at Thanksgiving and carving pumpkins for Halloween, but countless little traditions like hiking in the woods to see the first wildflowers of Spring and marking the Ides of March. No matter how uncertain life seemed, there were things I could count on, like hearing In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue on October 12, or getting the birthday spiel ("yep, x years ago today....").

She gave me other gifts as well: a love of nature, a curiosity of the world around me, a sense of the importance of history, an appreciation of literature. These, and the traditions, are the things I turn to when I face uncertainty in my life. They act as tiny sign posts through the unknown into the familiar, back home.

Conflict

The Destruction of Sennacherib

1
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

2
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

3
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

4
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

5
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

6
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

--George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1815

Lizarddrinking has been making me think about war. Specifically war in the Middle East, and the centuries-old conflict between the Jews and the Muslims there (and not infrequently the Christians as well). It's a topic I don't really like to think too closely about, because it engenders nothing but despair in me. It seems from the perpective of a sheltered American that the peoples of the Middle East have known no other way of life than war against their enemies. It is the way of their fathers, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers reaching back through countless generations. It seems that both sides take on both a martyr mindset of a persecuted people, and this justifies all sorts of violence toward the perceived oppressors. And it seems that neither side is willing to compromise to gain peace.

I am not at all sure what makes a people stop warring and settle for peace, but it has been done. The English and the French carried on warfare for hundreds of years before becoming allies. The bitter feud in Northern Ireland seems to finally have been laid to rest. Maybe all it takes is two leaders willing to put aside their mistrust and grievances and call for a halt, a breather in the battle. And in the absence of guns and rockets, differences can be smoothed over, bonds can be forged, trespasses forgiven. All it takes, maybe, is someone who's willing to forgive first.

Respite

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

--Robert Frost, 1915

Every now and again we hit a spot in life where we are overcome with responsibilities and problems, where we feel lost in a pathless wood. My response to those times is usually a longing to go back to childhood. Not that my childhood was idyllic--it wasn't. But it did have a certain freedom to it. I would go out for hours and play in the woods in the nearby park, sitting in a tree or wading in the creek. The problems I faced at home did not follow me there.

And now, when I feel things are out of sorts with my world, I do the same thing, escape to the woods. I don't climb the trees now, but I walk among them. I set my troubles down and leave them be while I walk. Sometimes I find they have sorted themselves out when I pick them up again. And even if they haven't, they are often lighter to carry because I have set them aside for a time.

Assignable Portions

465

I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air--
Between the Heaves of Storm--

The Eyes around--had wrung them dry--
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset--when the King
Be witnessed--in the Room--

I willed my Keepsakes--Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable--and then it was
There interposed a Fly--

With Blue--uncertain stumbling Buzz--
Between the light--and me--
And then the Windows failed--and then
I could not see to see--

Emily Dickinson, 1862


Every now and again I like to pause and take stock of my life and I like to play a morbid little game while doing it: I make a mental will. It's not so much about my possessions--I have little of value and I like it that way. It's more about my friends and loved ones, and what it is that they cherish about me. The Nephews will get Clyde and Beans, the stuffed horse and dog they play with whenever they come to my house, my best friend the box of old high school hall notes I have saved for twenty years, my knitting friend will suddenly have a much larger stash.

I picture an improbable scene where all my friends and family gather to go through my stuff and pick out the one thing they want to have to remember me by. It won't happen, but it's a comforting thought nonetheless.

A few years back, my single, childless uncle died suddenly, and I went to Oklahoma with my aunt and uncle to go through his things and bring what we could back to the family. My uncle had accumulated a lot of stuff over the years, and there was a lot to go through in a short time. There were a few things that were obvious things to save: a bundle of family letters dating back to the Civil War, an old autoharp in the family for generations, photos. But there was also a lot of stuff that had significance only to my uncle, and that got piled up in a heap to be hauled off. As we surveyed the piles of built up detritus from my uncle's life, we marvelled at what he kept. And my uncle pulled out a small scrap of paper and showed it to me, fondly chuckling at the idea of a 60 year old man still holding on to this:

(click on it to see more detail)

It was a Treasure Map my uncle had drawn. The inscription in green pencil on the bottom, possibly added later, gives a phone number in Milwaukee that dates the drawing to his high school days or earlier.

When I saw the map, chills ran down my spine. I knew this map. I knew the island, with its hidden valley accessible only through the labyrinth of tunnels or the dangerous cave entrance. I knew it because the book it appeared in was one of my favorite childhood books: The Island Stallion by Walter Farley, author of The Black Stallion series. The premise of the book--one of a series about the island and its horses--is that a teen-aged boy gets shipwrecked on the island, discovers the tunnels leading to the secret inner valley, and finding treasure left behind by Spanish conquistadors as well as a herd descended from the horses they left behind. I had read all those books over and over, and imagined myself trying to find my way through the tunnels, and when I finally did, the glorious discovery of a green valley populated with horses. The imaginary island lingered in my memory as a hope of secrets revealed, treasure found, paradise gained. And it must have lingered in my uncle's mind, too, for him to have kept this carefully copied map through the years and through countless moves. I carefully tucked it away, and brought it back home. I knew I had found my inheritance from my uncle.

When I showed my mother the map, she was drawn into a series of reminiscences which revealed a side of my uncle that I had not known much about. He was always into treasure hunting and maps, she said, and went on to share some childhood memories. I took the stories in and added them to my own memories of him. He was a somewhat hard man to know. When I was a child, he was not always at the family gatherings and when he was, he tended to drink too much. He didn't have a lot of interest in children, and didn't have much to say to me. But as I grew older, our relationship deepened. He was good-humored, intelligent and well-informed on many topics. He loved nature and animals and wouldn't kill an insect in the house, but instead would capture it and release it outdoors. He had a sly sense of humor and enjoyed getting away with bullshitting me if he could. He seemed to enjoy it when I called him on it. When he died, he left a hole in the family.

I think about how odd it is, both of us remembering that book and never knowing it was important to each other's childhoods. I think about the moment of serendipity when my other uncle plucked that one piece of paper that would mean so much to me off that huge pile of other papers. I wonder what scraps of my life will mean something to my loved ones when I am gone.

Passion

One Hour To Madness And Joy

One hour to madness and joy!
O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)

O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings!
(I bequeath them to you, my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you, whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me, in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me—to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin’d man!

O the puzzle—the thrice-tied knot—the deep and dark pool! O all untied and illumin’d!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
O to be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions—I from mine, and you from yours!
O to find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of nature!
O to have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!
O to have the feeling, to-day or any day, I am sufficient as I am!

O something unprov’d! something in a trance!
O madness amorous! O trembling!
O to escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts—with invitations!
To ascend—to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate Soul!
To be lost, if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.

Walt Whitman, 1860

I am not so sure one can feed the remainder of life with just one brief hour of madness and joy. I think it much more likely that, having climbed those heights once, one's instinct is to want to climb them again and again. And if those heights are forbidden besides, well, so much more the pull to them. I imagine it would be easy to fall into a trap that way, always looking for that same thrill and never finding it. And in the constant search, I also imagine it would be easy to overlook a different kind of joy. Maybe less madness to it, but that doesn't mean it can't be just as fulfilling. There is much to be said for the slowly accumulating joy of tiny little moments of everyday kindnesses and shared laughter and comforts of familiarity.

The truth is that, as we move through life and find each other, we gather more and more ties and lose more and more freedom. Sometimes it happens slowly, almost imperceptibly, other times we choose the ties deliberately and publicly. And while there is intoxication in the thought of breaking free from all those ties at times, I imagine regret would follow such an action. And surely that regret would, in time, overshadow the joy of the moment.

All that aside, reading this poem, don't you just want to jump off that cliff anyway?

Habit

Árbol que crece torcido jamás su tronco endereza.

--Mexican Proverb

A tree which grows bent will never get straight again.

I wonder how twined I have become around my past. If one were to remove the central supports of my life, would I remain twisted around, contorted to accommodate rigidity that is no longer there? Or am I still supple enough to straighten out, to reach directly upward to the sky? Am I too crooked now to stand alone? Are the habits and philosophies of my mind set forever in the paths they took when I was still young and green and flexible? Those paths wove in and around, careful not to disturb, but still longing to maintain contact, forming myself around others, bending to their convenience and liking. If I remain rooted, will not the center grow, straight and thick, until it has me locked into place, eventually consuming me, melding with me and taking from me my individuality?

Grudge

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunnéd it in smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

William Blake, 1794

I am a grudge-holder. It is not an attractive quality, this I know. In my defense, I am extremely slow to anger, and cheerfully can bear numerous slights, insults and outright injustices while turning the other cheek and walking a mile in the other person's shoes. But I have my line, and when it it crossed, it is like crossing the Rubicon; there's no going back. The particularly unattractive part of it is that my foe may not know the Rubicon has been crossed. Because my reaction of a real, unmendable breach of friendship is simply silence. Transitory arguments that can be resolved are met with either outbursts of anger or carefully worded confrontations. The anger flares up and burns out or is carefully extinguished. But the unforgivable, the permanent breach is looked upon wordlessly and then walked away from, never to return, never to forget, never to forgive. Knowing this, I am careful, extremely careful, to be sure the offense is indeed unforgivable. Because it is a terrible thing to knowingly and deliberately poison a friendship to death.

Articulation

952

A Man may make a Remark--
In itself -- a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature -- lain --

Let us deport -- with skill --
Let us discourse -- with care --
Powder exists in Charcoal --
Before it exists in Fire.

Emily Dickinson, 1864



1212

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

Emily Dickinson, 1872

Most of my life I have been a fairly impetuous speaker. I could blame it on the stars: Sagittarians are said to be tactless and prone to blurting out their thoughts without thinking. Or you might blame it on self-absorption: I frequently am so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I hardly stop to listen to what I am saying. Or you might say I think best when I'm talking. I tend to hold many vague ideas and beliefs in my head, swimming around lazily, coming in and out of focus, and am often unaware of them myself until a conversation leads to me voicing them. Once I am called upon to give an opinion, I realize that I have slowly been formulating the ideas all along, and they pop into sharp focus, and tumble off my lips. And the same holds true for writing. Often when I sit down to write, I have only a shadow of an idea what I want to say, but once I write a sentence or two, my fingers take over from my brain with minimal instruction and write the words I have been hiding from myself. And I often write without editing, because it often seems to me my words have taken on their own life, separate from me, and it's no good telling them what to be once they have earned their freedom from my mind.

But lately, I have more and more frequently found myself at a loss for words. When called upon to explain what I mean by an uttered statement, or asked what I am thinking or feeling, I have come up blank. Partly to blame for this silence, I think, is a new unwillingness to engage in conflict of any kind. I come from a long line of arguers, and have always held my own among them. Debate, dissent, discord: all have been part of my family's mode of communication and I have never before shirked in making my voice and my opinion heard. Almost imperceptibly, however, I have wearied of this type of exchange of ideas. A reasoned discourse is all very well, but it almost always tends to escalate and I no longer care to climb those heights.

More than a new dislike of my own discomfort at conflict is a new dislike of causing that discomfort in others. Previously I have been so eager to prove my own point that I did not much care whether the other party in the debate could be made uncomfortable. Not to say that I went around picking fights all the time, I didn't. But I never turned away from an offered argument, no matter who was offering. Now I am much more likely to allow points to go uncontested, and am more comfortable in silently holding my own opinion and allowing my adversary to believe I have been out-argued.

One final factor in my reticence, however, gives me the most pause. More and more frequently, when called upon to give voice to my thoughts, I find I cannot find the words. The stream of language I have effortlessly tapped to convey my thoughts all my life is suddenly unruly and truculent. It is as though that stream has been dammed upstream and only a trickle of the most mundane and colorless words can get through. The big question, in my mind, is the nature of that dam. The suspicion has been growing upon me, slowly but steadily, that I have something I need to express, but have not. Day by day this suspicion becomes more clear and distinct, and although I scoffed the idea when it first occurred to me, now I find myself turning it over and over in my mind. Several times I have nearly blurted it out, like the old me would have, but I have edited myself each time. What is stopping me from expressing this thought, this truth that is blocking my formerly glib words?

I am afraid. Once it is said, it cannot be unsaid.

Alive

beware  :   do not read this poem

tonite ,   thriller was
abt an ol woman , so vain she
surrounded herself w /
  many mirrors

it got so bad that finally she
locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the
  mirrors

one day the villagers broke
into her house  ,   but she was too
swift for them  .   she disappeared
  into a mirror

each tenant who bought the house
after that  ,   lost a loved one to
  the ol woman in the mirror :
  first a little girl
  then a young woman
  then the young woman/s husband

the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr feet
back off from this poemit has drawn in yr legs

back off from this poem
it is a greedy mirror
you are into this poem  .   from
  the waist down
nobody can hear you can they  ?
this poem has had you up to here
  belch
this poem aint got no manners
you cant call out frm this poem
relax now & go w / this poem
move & roll on to this poem
do not resist this poem
this poem has yr eyes
this poem has his head
this poem has his arms
this poem has his fingers
this poem has his fingertips

this poem is the reader & the
reader this poem

statistic  :   the us bureau of missing persons reports
      that in 1968 over 100,000 people disappeared
      leaving no solid clues
        nor trace   only
    a space     in the lives of their friends

Ishmael Reed, 1970

Sometimes the problem with poetry is that it can suck me in, capture me, slowly but steadily take me over--not just for the moments I am reading the poem, but after I have put the poem away. This, of course, is not a problem if the poem is uplifting or cheerful or otherwise positive. Other poems, however--the melancholy, the bitter, the hopeless--those poems can bounce around and around in my mind. Sometimes I begin to react to the poem in my head instead of the people and events around me.

It can be hard, too, for me not to take poetry personally, as though it had been written and published just for me to see or hear. As though it were meant for me and each line, each syllable holds a secret message that only I can unlock if I try hard enough. Some will argue that of course poetry is written for the reader and the reader is me. I'm not sure that's always true. Sometimes, I think poems, as well as other kinds of writing, take on their own life, and break away from the author's original intent. Sometimes, I think, poems are written just because they needed to be heard.

Advice

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

Robert Herrick, 1648


Screw you, Robert Herrick. Like I don't have enough to worry about already.

Faith, Part Three

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman, 1865


I had convinced myself, through science and logic, that faith was nothing but a game humans played on themselves and that the enlightened ones had no need of it. And I viewed all religions with a faint scorn, all right for those who needed such a crutch, but I was not such a person. I had the figures and charts, and I could see that it was a sham.

But still, in all my certitude of the non-existence of the divine, I had flashes of it. I remember clearly, one half hour late at night, when I was at work, alone, in winter and the first snowfall of the season came down. And I had a longing to believe again, a yearning for Jesus as the Son, and I let it in. For a full half hour, I was a believer again, just as sure as when I was a child, and comforted in the faith. And just as suddenly, it left me, without warning and without me pushing it away. One moment I believed, and the next moment I was atheist again, utterly incapable of that belief.

And I was sometimes envious of the faithful. A woman I know lost two teenage sons a year apart, a terrible tragedy that would have sunk many. But a simple and unwavering faith saved her, leant her strength, and I wished to have such a source of support. But wishing did not make it so. I experimented, told myself that all I needed to do was allow myself to believe. But that scientific, coldly logical side prevented me every time, told me that I could not believe what I did not believe.

It was at this point of my life that I began seriously to observe nature. While I had camped and hiked all my life as a family activity, now I began to go out into the woods and fields alone. And what started as simple walks began instead to be meditations. My scientific side was satisfied with learning the birds and the flowers and the trees and the constellations, but my spiritual side was busy soaking in the beauty and the majesty and the perfection of nature.

The Beauty of nature, the Truth of the universe all around me began to be proof enough of something Divine. Whether it is a Being or a Force, I do not know, I do not believe I can know while I live, but I believe it exists. It is the mechanism through which flowers reflect light in broken prisms of color, it is the power of the water eroding the canyon, it is the push and pull of the stars which keep all in balance. It has taken me into account from my beginning, and it marks my footsteps upon the earth, for I am part of the whole; I cannot separate myself from the universe. The Divine knows all things past, present and future, for it encompasses it all, and if it does not direct all things, it at least knows the potential of all. It is the spark within me, as it is within all things, and it is what defines the essence of all things. It connects us all to each other, living, dead, inanimate, perhaps even intangible. I hope--I cannot say I believe--that when I die, I will enter the consciousness of the Divine, and know all things, be all things. It is perhaps more likely that I will simply drift into oblivion in a million pieces, to be reassembled and used again as the Divine sees fit. That would be all right, too.

Faith, Part Two

185

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see --
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.

Emily Dickinson, 1860


I suppose I am not the only one to go off to college and come out the other side without her faith. It was a combination of heavy emphasis on the science aspect, exposure to people of other, non-Christian religions which my small hometown was conspicuously lacking, and a certain sense of glamor to becoming a non-believer.

I took Physics classes that explored different theories of the beginning of the Universe. I took Biology classes that postulated theories for the beginning of life. I took Psychology classes that studied the formation of cults. I took Sociology classes that described the human need for religion.

I took all these into account, and I thought to myself that if I had been born in India, I would no doubt be a Hindu. If I had been born in Saudi Arabia, I would have been a Muslim. If I had been born in Greece four thousand years ago, I would be a worshipper of Zeus and Athena and Ares. It seemed to me that religion was almost wholy dependent upon what family in which culture you are born in. And it also seemed to me that all those people practicing all those other faiths believed in them just as strongly as the Catholics I grew up with. And what right did I have to decide that one is more true than the other?

Faced with the idea that all these religions could be the one true religion, I rejected them all as being equally false. Well, not necessarily false, but manufactured. Created by humans to fill a societal, psychological, emotional role. Religion helped people live together in harmony, provided shelter from the thought of death, gave people hope and inspiration. It was good enough for those who needed it, but for those who didn't, who could see through all the hocus-pocus, it was unnecessary.

And so I entered into my atheist stage.

to be continued

Faith, Part One

1052

I never saw a Moor --
I never saw the Sea --
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven --
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given--

Emily Dickinson, 1865


As a child, I was raised in the Catholic faith, and I was a fervent believer. I drank it in, I believed it all, I revered the Church. The mysteries of Mass, the poetry of the Bible, the grouped voices singing the hymns, the solemn look of those who received the Eucharist all enthralled me. I had no doubt that all the teachings of the Church were true, were absolute Truth.

Then, my parents' marriage fell apart, or rather, my mother decided to stop trying to hold it together. And the Church, once a refuge and a place of belonging, suddenly became a source of condemnation and rejection. I began to see it was, at its root, a collection of people, led by an old-fashioned, strict priest who did not approve of my mother's divorce, and seeing how they withheld support for her at a time when she needed it most, I began to wonder if the Church was all that I had believed.

At first, I questioned only our church, and the people who ran it. But soon I started delving more into the history of the Catholic Church. And the history is filled with injustices and corruption and despicable acts and very few apologies or attempts to amend. And then I began to question some of the basic tenets of the Church. In particular, the degrading of women stuck in my Child of the 70's throat. By the time I reached high school, I no longer considered myself a Catholic.

But that did not mean I did not believe. I rejected all the proofs and shackles of the Catholic Church, but the underpinnings, God, the Bible, the Holy Trinity, I was as assured of as ever. I just didn't want to go through priests--those wrinkled, dried-up old men of my childhood, what did they know of life?--to get to it all.

And for a while, a good while, I was content. I had my faith, and it was strong and unquestioned, and I did not need pointless rules to get in the way. Until I went down a different path.

to be continued

Predator

986

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides--
You may have met Him—did you not?
His notice sudden is--

The Grass divides as with a Comb--
A spotted shaft is seen--
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on--

He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn--
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot--
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone--

Several of Nature’s People
I know, and they know me--
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality--

But never met this Fellow,
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing,
And Zero at the Bone--

Emily Dickinson, 1865

One day last fall, as I was hiking in the woods, I heard a rustling in the underbrush, and spotted a strange sight: a chipmunk with a garter snake draped across its back. I stepped forward for a closer look, and the animals became aware of my presence. The chipmunk darted off one way, and the snake slithered off the other. I puzzled and puzzled over this scene as I finished my walk, and when I got home, I read up on chipmunks and garter snakes. According to my guidebooks, garter snakes occasionally eat small mammals and chipmunks eat what the guide book vaguely described as meat. So I am still left wondering. Did I rob the snake or the chipmunk of his lunch? If one wasn't stalking the other, how did they come to be tangled up?

I admit my instinct was that the snake was the aggressor. It is hard to look at a chipmunk and see it as a threat to other living creatures. The bright eye, the bushy tail, the smooth fur--they all seem so cuddly and cute. But the chimpunk also has sharp teeth and claws. If it wanted to, it could do damage proportionate to its size. The snake, on the other hand, has everything going against it. The cold dry scaliness of it, the alien way of moving, the heavy weight of cultural prejudice all combine to elicit that "zero at the bone".

In the end, though, I had to leave the question open. Looks can be deceiving, and just because culture tells us one of them is untrustworthy and dangerous does not mean in this case that the snake was fulfilling its iconic role. Perhaps the softer-seeming chipmunk was the danger to look out for. And that can be true in human pairings, too. We do not always fill the role culture dictates for us. One cannot always be sure who is the predator.

Electricity

you
heart pure and raw
you say
high voltage pumping desire
you say you
to your limbs, your fingers electric
you say you ache
our embrace
you say you ache for me
a closed circuit

Kirsten Larsen, 2008


What is the electricity of pure desire worth? If you know, through experience, that it will lead to disaster in the end, do you still plunge forward, for the sake of the jolt of the joining? Can you ignore the warnings your head screams at you and listen instead to the blood rushing through your veins? Can either be trusted? Does it make a difference if you fall into a pit because you didn't see it or if you jump into it with your eyes wide open?

Intimacy

303


The Soul selects her own Society --
Then -- shuts the Door --
To her divine Majority --
Present no more --

Unmoved -- she notes the Chariots -- pausing --
At her low Gate --
Unmoved -- an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat --

I've known her -- from an ample nation --
Choose One --
Then -- close the Valves of her attention --
Like Stone --

Emily Dickinson, 1862


How do we choose those we let in to the society of our soul? Of the thousands of people we interact with, what causes us to pick just a handful or so? With some, I suppose, it is a shared history, a familiarity with our past and our personalities, a long build up of storms weathered and sunny days enjoyed together. With others, perhaps, it is simply proximity. We see them day in and day out and force of habit creates a sort of convenient intimacy. But then there are others who we meet and we suddenly know. We deliberately open ourselves, show our vulnerable spots, tread lightly around theirs. Often there is a heady rush of infatuation or passion, and we do not know whether that in time will mellow out into friendship or love or simply fade away into indifference. One cannot know at the beginning what end will come, or when.

It is a risk, then, to choose one above all others and then to shut the Door. What if the one you choose does not choose you? Or what if the one you choose today is not the one you would have chosen tomorrow? And one can be tempted to minimize that risk--by choosing no one, or by never shutting the Door. The first way is cold and lonely, the second way perhaps leads to the same thing in the end. For if we are constantly looking for the next chariot to stop at the gate, how can we welcome in the one that is already there?

Mental Slideshow

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth, 1807

What Wordsworth calls the bliss of solitude, a friend of mine calls her eyelid slideshow. I keep a stock of slides, too, to pull out whenever I need a shot of beauty. An eagle flying overhead, a mist of blue forget-me-nots in a green wood, a road arched over with scarlet maples and yellow birch--they have all brought me comfort and joy in a grey moment. And I have not only an inward eye, but also an inward ear, and I remember snips of poetry or beautiful words or music. The inner world of my mind is ever-present, ever-ready to provide me beauty and joy. If I can remember to call upon it.

Anyway, spring is upon us, and I have been adding to my mental slideshow today with a walk in the maplewood. I took a few pictures to share with you, but one I can't share: a clear, liquid birdsong I did not recognize. I couldn't find him in the tangle of branches, but if I hear the song again I will remember it. It is playing over and over in my inward ear.

Bloodroot

Hepatica

Domestic Beauty

Home Thoughts From Abroad

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Robert Browning, 1845

Because I am an anglophile, I do long to be in England in the spring, to see each small beauty gently spring forth. England, like Wisconsin, is a land of domestic beauty. Not grand, sweeping landscapes, but gentle vistas. It has a home-like quality that draws me strongly.

I do not discount the dramatic beauty of mountain ranges or the immensity of the ocean, and I love to drink those glories in. But the things which resonate most in my soul are not the grand, the overwhelming, but the tiny shots of beauty: the lone wildflower blooming in the dead leaf-mould of the woodland floor, the musical song of the common house finch on the lilac bush, the liquid babble of a melt water stream. Things that can be missed if one is not paying attention, things that must be discovered, or noticed--those are the beauties that uplift me the most.

I understand the pull of the remote places, too. The thrilling thought that perhaps I am the only one to have ever stood just here, to have ever seen just this, is intoxicating indeed. But the opposite feeling, the knowledge that many others have stood where I am standing and seen what I am seeing is even better. A tree stands on a particularly favorite walk of mine: its trunk was bent by a long-dead Native American in two ninety-degree turns as a sign-post. I stop at that tree every time, and look in the direction it points, off into the maple woods, toward the small pond where the frogs sing in early spring. It so happens that the tree also points in the direction of my home, twenty or so miles beyond. I like to think perhaps it also pointed to the home of the original sign-maker.

Pathways

Determinism

There was a young man who said, "Damn!"
It appears to me now that I am
Just a being that moves
In predestinate grooves
Not a taxi or bus, but a tram.

Anonymous

When I was a child, I could see life's track laid out straight and clear in front of me: high school, college, career, marriage. I knew what would happen and I knew when. I would have three children and live on a chunk of land and have horses and dogs and generally live happily ever after. All went according to plan. Early on in high school, I decided I would study biology in college, so study biology I did. I was, and am, fascinated by how things work, but that did not translate to a career. I did not want to become a doctor or a researcher. I worked my way through college, never wavering from the pre-determined course. It was the path I had laid out for myself, so it was the path I took. And then, when I attained the degree, and began interviewing for jobs in biological research, I slowly became aware that, while I was fascinated with the mechanisms of life, I could not work the kind of job such knowledge gained one. I was, for the first time in my life, without a clear path in front of me, so I stopped. I could not see a way forward, so I did not move forward. Paralyzed by the indeterminate outcome of any decision I might make, I chose instead to make no decisions.

And the uncertainty of my life in career terms leached over into all aspects of my life. Stagnation, indecision, inertia. At first I struggled against the quagmire that had me in its grasp, tried desperately to break free, but each failed attempt chipped away more and more at my strength of will, and I gradually gave up all attempt.

Until a series of events--a death of a friend, making new friends, a remembrance of the person I was before I slowed to a stop--freed my feet from the immobilizing muck. Slowly, dimly, fitfully, the tracks ahead of me become illuminated. No longer one track moving straight forward on its pre-determined line, but a myriad of tracks, shadowy, uncertain, but thrilling nonetheless. Where before I followed the line to its end, now I see before me a spider web of inter-connected, criss-crossing paths, each one leading off in a labyrinthine track of uncertain end. And as I reach each intersection, I merely have to decide which path seems right at that point, and I need not worry about the end. If the path I choose leads me somewhere I do not wish to go, I only have to pick another at the next crossing.