Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • Seasonal Ghosts

      Autumn evening sky,
      a single crow returning
      to its distant pine.
      — Masaoka Shiki

      What is autumn to you? Read through a handful of poems and haiku and the themes of falling leaves, harvest and wood smoke come up again and again. For good reason, of course, but there are other themes we associate with autumn: football and crisp air and walks across campus. The return of darkness offers sunrises for late risers and a kalaidescope of stars for those who would otherwise turn in to wonder at.

      In New England, at present, a nor’easter that just won’t quit has brought much needed rain, but a less welcome rain of acorns and branches covering everything. People complained about the rain, forgetting the drought, because they only think of a moment’s inconvenience. Autumn will be remembered for what is memorable in its season.

      Of course, there are seasons within seasons. September is harvest time, October is foliage and Halloween, November is the beginning of stick season and Thanksgiving. Each month brings its own memories, and with it, its own ghosts of seasons past. That feeling we get when we return to a season is not unlike the feeling of stepping back into an old neighborhood we haven’t been to in years. All seasons stir their own ghosts, ’tis autumn that stirs the most.

    • Resonance and Depth

      “It goes without saying that a fine short poem can have the resonance and depth of an entire novel.” — James Wright

      Poems are like friends: find the right one and it will change your life. And like people we encounter throughout our lives, they serve as stepping stones between who we were prior to landing on one and who we become as we launch towards some other insightful plateau.

      So what is reading a great novel, if not more time with something of substance? Like a marriage that carries us on a journey of discovery? We may find a resounding truth in a few words, or one that unfolds over the course of a lifetime. A resolve towards discovery is the thing.

      I started reading The Count of Monte Cristo again. And in reading it, I came across a business card from a decade ago that I’d stuck between the pages as a placeholder marking the last time I’d passed this way. Have I mentioned that I’ve started and stopped reading this novel a few times over the years? Perhaps this time I’ll finish it. Twenty pages a day and it will be wrapped up by Thanksgiving. I can surely outpace that metric, given enough time… and the inclination.

      We are the sum of all that we layer atop the foundation we venture out into the world with. No doubt a solid foundation helps a great deal in reaching a higher potential. Isn’t that why we strive to put our children in the best neighborhoods and schools we can afford? But a solid base means nothing if we don’t grow from it. We may shore up our own foundation, and fill gaps through a regimen of lifetime education. This is our duty to ourselves, to reach for that elusive arete in our time. Or we could simply coast into a lesser version of who we might have been. The choice is ours.

    • Be Inclined

      Had I known that the first was the last
      I should have kept it longer.
      Had I known that the last was the first
      I should have drunk it stronger.
      Cup, it was your fault,
      Lip was not the liar.
      No, lip, it was yours,
      Bliss was most to blame.
      — Emily Dickinson

      Time is quickly devoured, but too seldom savored. Opportunities are sometimes seized, often missed. That’s life; figured out as it’s stumbled upon, scorned when reflected on. Don’t beat yourself up friend, for all of us are figuring it out and being our own worst critic. That’s life amongst we humans.

      Opportunity knocks, daily. We are what we repeatedly do (excellence being a habit). To be better, we ought to work on our inclinations. Be inclined to seize more moments, be inclined to say yes to bold and courageous, even in the face of pragmatism and logic and the biggest enemy of audacity, comfort.

      Fear wears many cloaks. Regrets feed on timidity and indecision. Don’t play tomorrow’s blame game: Be inclined to be bold today.

    • Do You See?

      Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”
      Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”
      Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass.
      And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.” — Kahlil Gibran, Said a Blade of Grass

      Stepping out with the pup, the acorns thudding across the yard, the crisp welcome of change in the air. A perfect day for an autumn tale, and Gibran’s classic fits the bill nicely. Why haven’t I used this before? Have I, and don’t recall? Everything is recycled eventually, given enough time.

      We have a few weeks to go before the leaves really begin to fall vigorously. It’s still harvest time for most everything. There’s still time to track the changes, to be aware, to present. Dare wait a day and look at all we’ve missed!

      I’m reminded of a rower I once coached who came from a different part of the country. Autumn in New England was all new to him, and he marveled at everything. Every day he would get to the boathouse early and look at a maple tree to register the changes from the day before. He did that for the entire fall season, from green and leafy to bare tree limbs, never taking a picture, just being present with that one tree every day. And in his shared awareness, I began to see what was right in front of me all along.

      A lot of years have passed since that time. I wonder what ever happened to that rower, and all of those rowers, really. Reflecting on the accumulated distance, I feel compelled to be more aware myself. For the changes come quickly as the days grow shorter. What’s here today will change tomorrow. The cycle continues well beyond our time here to witness it all. Do you see?

    • Climb

      “We should try to be happy, just to set an example.” — Jacques Prevert

      I make no secret of my disregard for the miserable. It’s not that I disdain them, it’s more that I choose to avoid their glass half empty view of living as much as I possibly can. Just because someone chooses to make misery soup doesn’t mean we have to slurp it up. Push it to the side and savor something delightful instead.

      There are plenty of opportunities to be miserable in a lifetime. Why consume it? Why seek it out? Life will delivery our share of setbacks, misery and horror. That’s part of being alive, after all. Live long enough and we’re sure to take two steps back. Heck, we may slide all the way to the bottom and have to start again, like Sisyphus forever pushing his rock up the hill. We can choose to wallow at the bottom or begin to climb once again.

      There’s no joy in wallowing at our lowest point—we must push ahead. Does that prevailing attitude make me an optimist, or simply anti-fragile? Call me pragmatic, but something better is always a climb above where we currently lie. The good news is, we at least know which way to go.

    • Believe It to Be So (The Lesson of Prufrock)

      Do I dare
      Disturb the universe?
      In a minute there is time
      For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

      For I have known them all already, known them all:
      Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
      I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
      I know the voices dying with a dying fall
      Beneath the music from a farther room.
      So how should I presume?
      — T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

      One ought to read this entire poem, at least once or twice, and maybe thrice. Make that a surely thrice and we’re on the right track. Prufrock changes as we ourselves change. And poetry reveals itself to the persistent reader. Or like buried treasure it hides just below the surface, stubbornly holding on to its mysterious blanket. We are not meant to know everything, but we may know some things in a lifetime. If we dare go to the trouble.

      I grow old … I grow old …
      I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

      Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
      I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
      I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

      I do not think that they will sing to me.

      I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
      Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
      When the wind blows the water white and black.
      We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
      By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
      Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

      We hear the mermaids but are chagrined knowing that they aren’t talking to us. It’s far easier to be eavesdroppers on the lives of others. ’tis far better to seek out the voices that call to us, and try to find them before our time runs out.

      The lesson of Prufrock, I believe it to be so, is for us to be bold today. It doesn’t matter about the weather or the quiet timidity of our rhythm and routine. Now is our only chance. Yes, believe it to be so and then do what must be done,

    • Like Day-Blind Stars

      When despair for the world grows in me
      and I wake in the night at the least sound
      in fear of what my life and my chidren’s lives may be,
      I go and lie down where the wood drake
      rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
      I come into the peace of wild things
      who do not tax their lives with forethought
      of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
      And I feel above me the day-blind stars
      waiting with their light. For a time
      I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
      — Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

      Labor Day weekend. Where does the time go? Relentlessly into the past. Whatever we’ve done, wherever we’ve been, it’s done with. It all recedes into memory.

      And what do we make of the state of things? This hot mess of a world defies reason. Who ever said it was meant to be reasonable anyway? Nobody said the universe would bend itself to our every whim. Nobody said life was fair. If it were the poets and saints would live forever, instead of the worst of us. Amor fati, friend: accept what is and change what we may control. Let everything else sort itself out.

      Like day-blind stars, the beautiful will emerge in time. Sometimes where we least expect it. Sometimes from deep within ourselves. And e when a poet or singer or singular voice of change passes, reminding us of what they’ve left for the world.

    • The Impeded Stream (RIP Wendell)

      It may be that when we
      no longer know what to do
      we have come to our real work,
      and that when we no longer know
      which way to go
      we have come to our real journey.
      The mind that is not baffled
      is not employed.
      The impeded stream
      is the one that sings.
      — Wendell Berry, Our Real Work

      It’s been a rough year for poets and singers. It seems the beautiful souls slip away from this chaotic place where the ugliest thrive. Or is it that we just care more when the light goes out? And when a light goes out, who will carry the torch next? Why not us, friend?

      Which leads to the question, what will we do? For all the confusion and obstacles that life throughs at us, we work our way through it all, somehow. Persistence and belief in our direction are the keys to growth. A stream carves more deeply with persistence and time. So it is that we ought to keep the work flowing, despite all that is thrown at us along the way.

      Beauty doesn’t die, it simply finds another place to grow.

    • No One Exists Alone

      All I have is a voice
      To undo the folded lie,
      The romantic lie in the brain
      Of the sensual man-in-the-street
      And the lie of Authority
      Whose buildings grope the sky:
      There is no such thing as the State
      And no one exists alone;
      Hunger allows no choice
      To the citizen or the police;
      We must love one another or die.
      — W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

      Today marks the anniversary of the start of World War II, when Germany invaded Poland and triggered a series of events that would turn the world upside down. We’re still living with the impact of that war, and all other decisions involving war and times of tenuous peace. Humanity will always be imperfect. Knowing this, we must always strive for inner strength and resiliency in our own journey through life.

      September means something different to each of us. Foliage and harvest for some of us, back to school, a shift in focus towards the elections. I have my own thoughts on September, but really, it’s just another month further along the path. What we make of it isn’t entirely up to us, but some important part surely is. Decide what to be and go be it.

      Deciding is an individual act in a world that lumps us all together into groups. Perpetuate the myths of us versus them, or embrace a more courageous uncertainty of trust and collaboration. Not naively leading the flock over the cliff, but instead finding common ground. in the end, we must love one another or die.

    • The Wild Air

      Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,
      Drink the wild air’s salubrity
      — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Merlin’s Song

      Having spent some time in a big city over the weekend, I admit to a renewed appreciation for the wild air of my quiet town. I love being in the city while I’m in it, but love leaving it all the more. Give me the relative quiet solitude of a less urban lifestyle.

      The world needs more wild, secluded places. Urban sprawl is slowly choking us into madness. Get outside, where we can breath, feel the sun on our skin, and bathe in the beauty of nature. That’s my kind of wild.