Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • What Will That Be?

      “I write to find out what I didn’t know I knew.”— Robert Frost

      Lately I’ve been playing with writing style just to see where it takes me. I’m not sure I want to dive too deeply into writing poetry, but I aspire to write as elegantly concise as a great poet does. As you can see from my first two sentences compared to the quote from Robert Frost, I still have work to do. And perhaps that should be the blog post today: Aspires for great, sentenced to better. No?

      Then again, this isn’t meant to be a diary or journal. It’s a ship’s log without the ship. Here is where the journey has taken me. Have a look around and note the state of things. What one line will mark this day uniquely on this passage? How does the first day of a new month feel compared to the last day of last month? Are we one day closer to knowing? Knowing what? Every day is learning and discovery and marking the changes.

      I stray onto social media less frequently now. We all feel it’s changed. We were collectively violated by bots and billionaires enough to be deeply suspicious of each platform. These blog posts are shared on three platforms that felt less icky when I linked to them. Is less icky enough of a reason to share content with people I don’t know? Is it all AI scanning now? I don’t do the like-for-a-like thing very well at all (sorry). Does that make me anti-social or simply selective with my precious time? Are we slowly shrinking from open to closed while we debate such things?

      We’re on the road to find out. My road happens to involve an hour or sometimes two of quiet contemplation and moving words around to make things flow better. I’m under no illusions that this blog will change the world—only its writer’s world. For that hour or two compounded over thousands of days adds up to something better than we started with. The world may be more icky, more divided, more collectively stupid than it could have been with better choices, but all we control is what we contribute to the conversation. And just what will that be?

    • Something

      “I have finally concluded, maybe that’s what life is about: there’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It’s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. Yes, that’s it, an always within never.” ― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

      How so we seize what flees?
      Beyond an awareness
      of time passing by
      ritual captures
      something
      of each day.

      To do the same few things
      offers an impression
      on our dizzying days.
      To manage
      something,
      as each flies.

      No, these days are not ours,
      only each ritual—
      odd moments of beauty.
      We seize
      something,
      always within never.

    • Opened at Last

      That day I saw beneath dark clouds
      the passing light over the water
      and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
      I knew then, as I had before
      life is no passing memory of what has been
      nor the remaining pages in a great book
      waiting to be read.

      It is the opening of eyes long closed.
      It is the vision of far off things
      seen for the silence they hold.
      It is the heart after years
      of secret conversing
      speaking out loud in the clear air.

      It is Moses in the desert
      fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
      It is the man throwing away his shoes
      as if to enter heaven
      and finding himself astonished,
      opened at last,
      fallen in love with solid ground.
      — David Whyte, The Opening of Eyes

      Lately I’ve been missing the owls. I walk at night with the dog, assessing the latest accumulation of snow and ice, and I wonder where the owls have gone. They haven’t gone anywhere, I know, for they’re non-migratory. And yet I don’t see them. I don’t hear them. They’re here, but invisible. A whisper in the dark, like so many hopes and dreams. No doubt they’re watching the pup and me, quietly assessing the seekers. We aren’t food or an existential threat, so why bother with us? The fascination is entirely one-sided. The thing is, one doesn’t walk around the neighborhood with a pair of binoculars and remain on good terms with the neighbors. They already think me a curiosity for all the walking the pup and I do. And so it goes that the owls remain hidden in plain sight.

      We move through life meaning well, but easily distracted by the immediate concerns of the day. We all have our owls that whisper to us, waiting to be found. But how hard are we really looking for them? What seismic shift needs to happen? What triggers action towards our grandest plans? After years of conversing, when do we finally hear those whispers loud and clear?

      The answer is sometimes a jolt to the routine. Glancing up at just the right place to catch an owl staring back at us, or stumbling into the right job. But usually it’s being present with the blank page writing, deleting and writing again until just the right words come to us. Whatever that version of writing is to each of us, the ritual of staying with it until we find it is the same. Serendipity aside, we don’t find what we’re looking for if we aren’t out in the proverbial woods with our nose up and our eyes open. Discovery is nothing but being out there in it, today and every day, aware that we may just find possibility yet.

    • Fortune Favors

      “Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.” — Nicolas de Chamfort

      There may be time
      for contemplation
      one day soon
      enough.

      Stop thinking so much
      and go
      live your life,
      cajoled.

      This day is for doing,
      as fortune
      favors, they say.
      Boldly.

    • Into the Morning

      I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
      flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
      as it was taught, and if not how shall
      I correct it?
      Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
      can I do better?
      Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
      can do it and I am, well,
      hopeless.
      Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
      am I going to get rheumatism,
      lockjaw, dementia?
      Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
      And gave it up. And took my old body
      and went out into the morning,
      and sang.
      — Mary Oliver, I Worried

      I let the pup out this morning as I do every morning. She was inclined to stay out longer, and longer still. I glanced out the window and saw she was prancing in the deep snow. There were no rabbits or mice or moles scurrying away from her, just a dog doing her dance with life. And I wondered at my choosing productivity instead.

      The world will go on. We learn this in time. And we learn to focus on getting things done. Our particular things. Productivity and efficiency become tools of our trade. We trust in our routines, rely on our habits. Growth becomes incremental. Sometimes surprisingly exponential.

      When we are focused and engaged in a life we love, we forget to worry so much. Worry is for the less busy. It’s a sign that we aren’t using our time in the way that we’d like to. We think too much instead. Do something with the time and the worry recedes. Worry tomorrow, for we have things to we’d like to do today.

      And so I’ll publish this blog. I’ll roll into my routine of being all that I can be. After all, the world is expecting me to be me today. But that dance in the snow sure looks fun. Far more fun than worrying or resolutely getting things done.

    • The Call to Experience

      I am a part of all that I have met;
      Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
      Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
      — Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses

      There is a call to experience that draws us out into the world. Each experience in turn informs—there is still more awaiting us. The proper answer to the call is to keep going, to keep doing interesting things that expand our horizon. This is the life of discovery and wonder. It is ours for simply taking the bold next step into the unknown. We are a part of all that we have met, yet all that remains extends far beyond our capacity to reach it.

      There is a price for all things. To explore the untraveled world means less time in the garden, less time being present in the lives of our close circle, less time in our familiar routine. But less time is the curse of all humans. Every day we wake to a new day we have less time. When we come to accept this we learn to focus on making the most of the shrinking time we have.

      Is the siren the call to experience or the call to home? Does it prompt us or haunt us? Are we to be dashed on the rocks chasing the wrong passion, or doomed to wander forever, never reaching home? We cannot live in fear of possibilities, but simply strive to close the gap between where we are and what we dream to do and be and see in the time we have left.

    • Every Passing Moment

      As wave is driven by wave
      And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
      So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,
      Always, for ever and new. What was before
      Is left behind; what never was is now;
      And every passing moment is renewed.
      — Ovid, Metamorphoses      , Book XV

      We are forever transformed by what was. If we take this to be true, then it follows that what will be will be realized because of what we do now. Our lives are thus reinvented one day to the next, right to the end of our days. We may choose to do something with each precious moment to ensure tomorrow renews with promise, or concede our agency to fate and the whim of others.

      Each week passes by more quickly than the last. Seven days feel like three, four weeks feel like two. So what do the years feel like? Shockingly brief time capsules marking each stage of life before the next wave is upon us. Tempus fugit. Our awareness of this rapid flip through days naturally leaves us feeling like we’re forever behind, trying to grasp the moments as they fly past. To seize what flees, as Seneca put it.

      The answer isn’t to try to cram more into our moments, but to savor what we’re doing as it’s happening. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested approaching everything, even something as mundane as washing dishes, with mindfulness, that we may process our time more fully. This is it, such that it is. So what does it feel like? What are we making of it? Where will it take us from here?

      It’s easy to meditate in the garden or even while washing the dishes. It’s harder to sit in traffic and accept the minutes turning to hours. Each situation presents an opportunity to be fully aware, fully awake, fully alive. We are all works in progress, wave after wave, surfing through time. What is this moment teaching us about our place in it? What does it offer for the moments to come?

      Whenever I tell myself to stop writing this blog and use the time for other things, I’m struck by two thoughts. First, I’m a streak-based creature of habit, and I’m not inclined to break this streak just yet. But more to the point, writing is my particular way of processing each wave, for ever and new. I gently place this post in my timeline and face the next wave as it rises before me. The days and weeks and years fly by, marked thusly, for anyone inclined to follow along (I really wanted to use the word thusly in today’s blog, and there it is).

      This post will be longer than the norm. Maybe I just don’t want to say farewell to our moment together. But the next wave is rising, and we each must bring our attention to each passing moment as it renews before us. And here it is! So thank you for this time. We both know just how precious it is.

    • Touched

      “The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches.”
      — E.E. Cummings

      Have a look around this winter day. How do you feel about snow? Remember, in answering, what we mean to the snow.

      One’s relationship with snow often comes down to what one is prioritizing that particular day. When we focus only on the bleak reality of our day, snow tends to be nothing but a barrier. We want to get from here to there, but for the snow. We want to park there, but for the snow. Et cetera.

      Alternatively, we may find all the truth in the universe buried like treasure in snow. When we seek council with it, we hear whispers in its silence. When we get out in the world with it gliding or tromping or rolling in it, we find delight revealed in ordinary. When we grab a handful and sculpt it into something alive in our imagination, we are transformed together into artist and form. Temporary and beautiful in this dance with infinity, before one day being transformed again into something else.

      Do you see? Like life itself, snow is neutral and indifferent. It’s people who transform it with meaning. So again I ask, how do you feel about snow?

    • Life and Love and Wings

      i thank You God for most this amazing
      day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
      and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
      which is natural which is infinite which is yes

      (i who have died am alive again today,
      and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
      day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
      great happening illimitably earth)

      how should tasting touching hearing seeing
      breathing any—lifted from the no
      of all nothing—human merely being
      doubt unimaginable You?

      (now the ears of my ears awake and
      now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

      — E. E. Cummings, i thank You God for this amazing

      We dwell so often on our limitations; Limited time, limited capacity for learning new things or for being patient with the things in our life that overstay their welcome. We are bound by commitments, with reasons, with a lack of imagination for breaking free from all of that and living an expansive life. We are locked into routine and measure our days incrementally. How are we to grow when we are forever held captive by a lack of audace créatrice (creative audacity)?

      To be unbounded and unlimited is of course a fantasy. We all will die one day (memento mori). Infinite growth is not for mere mortals. And yet we may live a far more expansive life than we mortals usually attempt. We are no more and no less than what we do with our time.

      Why worry about all that today when we can simply do what must be done and defer hopes and dreams indefinitely? Because now is all we have. Growing into our possibility begins now. It always has and always will be so. But thinking in terms like “always” is its own trap. Because it lets us off the hook of immediacy. We must steer clear of such traps and simply think of now. For this is the birth day of life and of love and wings. So do begin.

    • Twice Beautiful

      Beauty is twice
      beautiful
      and goodness is doubly
      good
      when
      it concerns two wools
      socks
      in winter.
      — Pablo Neruda, Ode To A Pair Of Socks

      There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who complain about the weather and those who dress for the weather we’ve been blessed to experience this day. The former tend to shelter in place. The latter tend to step out into it. I don’t judge either camp, but I’m clearly in the latter.

      While snowshoeing Saturday morning, I came to a split in the trail. I went to the left that morning, breaking trail and returning with the thrill of having been out in it, doing the work of being fully-alive on a bright clear morning. But all that evening I thought about the path not taken. It remained unbroken and unexplored, and with that, I felt incomplete. Those paths not taken have a way of haunting us, don’t they?

      The only thing to do was to go out again Sunday morning to see what was left for me. I silently hoped it would be unbroken still, that I might finish what I started. I saw footprints in the snowshoe tracks I’d laid and thought to myself that the opportunity was lost. But the footprints crossed the bridge and then turned back, indicating someone inclined towards common sense. Why continue on trails without the proper gear?

      The thing is, I had the proper gear. And so I kept on walking to that fork in the path and turned right onto a gloriously unbroken trail, blazing a path for any who might follow. There is sheer delight to be found in the cold stillness of a pristine snowy forest, so long as you’re prepared to be out in it and have the tools to make your way back out again no matter what.

      Having completed that walk, I doubled down with another, bringing the pup to the beach for a second winter walk. That proved far colder with wind chill cutting through our gear. Cold is one thing, cold wind is something else entirely. Even proper winter gear will let you know when it just isn’t enough. We simply have to listen to what nature is telling us.

      The pup loves the beach and could have stayed all day but for the wind. Even clad in a winter coat of her own, she knew when we were having too much of a good thing. Sometimes the best thing to do is to step out into it. And sometimes it’s best to simply turn back with stories to tell. Two stories in fact. Twice beautiful, simply for having ventured out to meet them.

      Two paths diverged. Hampstead Conservation Land.
      Snow on dunes. Hampton Beach State Park.