Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • All the Things

      This is the bright home
      in which I live,
      this is where
      I ask
      my friends
      to come,
      this is where I want
      to love all the things
      it has taken me so long
      to learn to love.
      — David Whyte, The House of Belonging

      The house is full more frequently now. Filled with pets and friends and memories. The nest is empty and yet it’s not, all at once. This is how we do things, you and I. The walls echo with memories of a house full of people who filled our hearts and danced with their moment in our lives. We built this house hoping for all that has transpired in the days that followed, and the days to come.

      Soon the leaves will fall again, blanketing the landscape indifferent to my pleas for relief. They’ve always reminded me in such times that they were here first, and most likely will be here when I’ve moved on again. The trees drew us to this plot of land, and root us to it, even as I grumble at them I know this to be true: they will carry on without me one day.

      The perennials come back every year, rising in the spring to look around at the world. Each year I’ve been here to greet them, as I do the hummingbirds and bees that know a reliable garden when they see it. Seasons come and go, and still we remain, doing our part to make this plot of land sing. Some things remain resilient, other things return to earth sooner than we’d want them to, and we remain to do with it all what we can. At least for now.

      Lately we’ve danced with the idea of beginning again in a smaller place, leaving this place for others to build their own lives. We both like round numbers and feel we might pull off three decades in this home, just as we said we would when we built it for the baby we knew and the one on the way who would only know this house as her home. She reminds us of this still, far from home but still everywhere within it. They’ve both left their mark here, as their parents have. As the circle of family and friends and pets have. We’ve met the years with love and purpose.

      We’ve seen what decline looks like, in loved ones old and young alike. None of us were born without an expiration date. These are days to remember, and to hold on to for as long as there’s another season. Our lives, like this house, are only as full as we make them. All the things that make up our days dance in our memories. Each has made us who we are, together.

    • Dog Days & Lily Ponds

      August of another summer, and once again
      I am drinking the sun
      and the lilies again are spread across the water.
      I know now what they want is to touch each other.
      — Mary Oliver, The Pond

      As we head into the dog days of summer, I find myself with a good dog to share walks with. Puppy walks are wonderful too, but the longer walks are mine alone. Walking for distance solves many problems for me: general fitness and quality time with the occasional long-form podcast, but mostly it offers the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the world.

      One of my favorite things about this time of year is the abundance of flowers dotting the lilies in the ponds I walk past. Each is a marvel, and each is just far enough away that I can’t possibly get a good picture with my phone’s camera. But that’s just the way it is. After all, this is a written blog, not a first-rate photography blog.

      About that drinking the sun business Mary Oliver speaks of in her dance with words: We haven’t had all that much of it this summer in the northeast. Not at the frequency that we wait for all winter, anyway. So on a stunningly beautiful weekend what are we to do but get out in it? To be with others outside invites conversation and smiles, and like the lilies, we are drawn to each other on warm summer days. We want these days to last forever, but know they’ll be gone too soon. Savoring summer days with all our might is the very best way to pass this time. So forgive me if I step outside once again.

    • Adding a Piece Back In

      “My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
      so much has been destroyed
      I have to cast my lot with those
      who age after age, perversely,
      with no extraordinary power,
      reconstitute the world.”
      ~ Adrienne Rich
      from “Natural Resources”

      Day two of life with a rescue puppy is a reminder that life will be different. This is a sweet puppy, but a puppy nonetheless, one who loves to put her nose into house plants and see how tippy the gates really are. She’s learning her new home, but also learning what her limits will be. This is to be expected, and in some strange way, welcomed. Strange because I didn’t know what was missing until the gap was filled in again. You reach a point in life where it sometimes feels like the essence of your identity is being removed, one piece at a time. I talk to seniors and feel the void I’m helping to fill just by being present. It feels good to be adding something back in again.

      We rise up to meet what the universe asks of us, or we don’t. Life goes on either way. And in this give and take with the universe, we learn what our own destiny is. Most of us will never be famous or change the course of human history, but we will each make a ripple, or as Whitman put it, we will each have a verse. And this matters a great deal too. Simply rise up to meet the moment, to follow through on what is being asked of us. We find that the piece that was missing was us all along.

    • A Walk Around the Timeless Kenoza Lake

      Kenoza! O’er no sweeter lake
      Shall morning break, or moon-cloud sail,
      No lighter wave than thine shall take
      The sunset’s golden veil.
      — John Greenleaf Whittier, Kenoza

      Whittier wrote this poem for the dedication for a beautiful lake in Haverhill, Massachusetts that was to be named Kenoza Lake. Kenoza means “lake of the pickerel” in the native Algonquian language, and in 1859 the locals formalized the name. There is irony in Native American place names living on when the people who’s language was being used for those names were swept away, but that’s everywhere in the world. The names always betray the past if you dig deeply enough.

      Whittier was an abolitionist, and likely saw the plight of the Native Americans who once lived here with a sympathetic eye. He once lived just a couple of miles away from Kenoza Lake in a quiet farmhouse. His farm looks very much the same today as it did then. Importantly, Kenoza itself also remains pristine, today a protected reservoir that supplies drinking water to the City of Haverhill. That lends a timelessness to the lake and surrounding land that’s impossible not to feel as you walk the grounds.

      The land has transformed over time. It was once deep forest, became farmland (like so much of America in colonial times) and eventually returned to forest again. That the land wasn’t developed required some luck. Dr. James R. Nichols, a wealthy scientist who made his fortune developing chemical fertilizers, acquired the farmland and set about building a castle for himself on top of a hill with views of three states. He called the place “Winnekenni”, which means “very beautiful” in Algonquian. Walking the property, today maintained by the City of Haverhill as parkland and a natural buffer for the reservoir, feels like you’ve been transported back to another time.

      There is a network of trails throughout the the park, and you can manage a great step count by doing the entire loop around the lake. They range from gravel roads to single track paths squeezed on both sides by abundant undergrowth(including, alas, poison ivy). The trails are well-marked and it’s very difficult to get lost, as you always have the lake to show you your progress. We encountered plenty of walkers, horseback riders and mountain bikers on the trek around the lake, but never felt it was overcrowded. Indeed, on the single track we saw only one other person, a trail runner who quickly distanced himself from us.

      Reservoirs, like graveyards, are time machines back to the days they were established. The lay of the land remains largely as it was then, and offers an opportunity to hear the whispers of history. It’s relatively easy to imagine how this place looked for Dr. Nichols or John Greenleaf Whittier because it’s largely that same place today: timeless, and beautiful.

      Kenoza Lake
      Winnekenni Castle
      The lake is almost always in view
      Local resident
      Very large Bondarzewiaceae fungi enjoying the wet summer
      Single track trail
      One of several memorials in the park

    • We Do What We Can

      “A second chance—that’s the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” ― Henry James, The Middle Years

      Our life’s work is an accumulation of the things we did today. This we know, as we know we don’t do our best work sometimes and squander some days altogether. We are imperfect beings, wishing it weren’t so but not always trying especially hard to remedy the fact. Still, we persist.

      We wonder at those who create brilliant work until the very end. Poets and songwriters, artists and the occasional world leader, pushing to complete their vision while there’s still time. Will that be us? Will you and I still be creative beings to the end, or will we shift to less majestic dreams, like art class in the senior center? Shouldn’t our latter years, should we arrive there, be more than simply being fully present when the grandchildren arrive? Shouldn’t we offer a spark of wonder and mystery, even to the end?

      But I get ahead of myself. We’re in the productive years now. These are the days of wine and roses, after all. We know deep down which season we’re in, and we have much work to do still.

      They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
      Out of a misty dream
      Our path emerges for awhile, then closes
      Within a dream.
      — Ernest Dowson

      The cadence of our days is set by our systems and routines. Each day we get to create our best work, to do what we can with what we have in us that day. We try to measure up to our previous best, and dare to exceed it. This is a quest for mastery, not of the work, but of ourselves. The work is nothing but breadcrumbs that others might follow.

    • Mingling with Do You Ever

      There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
      There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
      There is society, where none intrudes,
      By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
      I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
      From these our interviews, in which I steal
      From all I may be, or have been before,
      To mingle with the Universe, and feel
      What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.
      — Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

      Do you ever look at the surface of a pond or pool and wonder at the gumption of those who would breach the surface and enter another world? Dolphins and whales leap from the deep and experience our world for a brief moment. Humans dive into water and recall deep within the connection. There’s a calling in water that draws us there. Those who live there apparently seek time in our world as well. This is as it should be, for we are all of the water.

      Do you ever feel the presence of the trees when you walk deep in the woods? The ancients, not the brash young things fighting for a place in this world. Old growth trees know things we’ll never know in our brief lifetime. Rooted deeply into the past, reaching into the future, grounded by a sense of place, trees are the life force of the forest. When we cut down forests we rob ourselves and generations to follow of all of these things.

      Do you ever spend time above treeline, looking at clouds mingling with the lower peaks below you. Are we meant to be in such places where even the wild things steer clear? Walking in such places brings us closer to the universe, and to the heights we may aspire to in our quiet moments of bold reflection.

      We all want a sense of timelessness and a place with the infinite. We forget sometimes that we’re already a part of it. We can’t see the forest for the trees. We must break the surface of self-absorption and see what we’ve been missing deep within ourselves. Doing more of the “do you ever” things is a step in the right direction.

    • The Way of Rain

      You have been forced to enter empty time.
      The desire that drove you has relinquished.
      There is nothing else to do now but rest
      And patiently learn to receive the self
      You have forsaken for the race of days.

      At first your thinking will darken
      And sadness take over like listless weather.
      The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

      You have traveled too fast over false ground;
      Now your soul has come to take you back.

      Take refuge in your senses, open up
      To all the small miracles you rushed through.

      Become inclined to watch the way of rain
      When it falls slow and free.
      — John O’Donohue, For One Who is Exhausted, A Blessing

      I might go weeks without reading poetry. I may feel victorious in my efficiency and productive use of time. I can sometimes grind through my days in hopeful work, forgetting to walk outside to greet the day. These are days of emptying the bucket while filling the ledger with checked tasks. Empty buckets make a hollow sound. They demand to be filled.

      It’s not lost on me that I’m posting about taking time to rest at the beginning of another work week. When we go, go go! for weeks at a time, sometimes things like weekends disappear in a flash. We forget to see the small miracles we rush through in our mad pursuit of getting things done.

      Slow down. Step away. Find that which is calling you from outside yourself. The work will always be there, awaiting your return. Or maybe it was never your work at all. How can you know if you never take the time to listen?

      The days and the seasons roll on by, like waves to the beach. We only have so many days. Only so many seasons. We must learn to slow down and celebrate the one we’re in.

    • The Magic of Applied Attention

      “We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” — Charles Bukowski

      There is a Persian lime tree growing in a large pot on the sunny deck behind my house. This spring there were more than a hundred blossoms on this tree, each developing into tiny fruit that promised a bumper crop of limes. But after a particularly angry thunder storm and torrential downpour dozens of those tiny fruits scattered the deck, their tart potential over before they really began. While mourning the loss of so may limes, I took solace in the dozens of fruit still developing on the tree. It seems the tree had culled itself that it might focus on the ripe potential of the fruit that remained.

      We each bear so much in our lifetime, holding on to things we ought to shed to focus on the essential few. It’s okay to let go of the trivial, that we might nurture the truly important things in our lives. Letting go is painful, but not as painful as diminishing our best work by carrying more than we should.

      Little by little,
      as you left their voice behind,
      the stars began to burn
      through the sheets of clouds,
      and there was a new voice
      which you slowly
      recognized as your own,
      that kept you company
      as you strode deeper and deeper
      into the world,
      determined to do
      the only thing you could do —
      determined to save
      the only life that you could save.
      — Mary Oliver, The Journey

      The night after the thunderstorm, I spent an evening with friends, throwing axes at a target drawn on a wooden wall and building fragile wooden castles in the air (Jenga). There is a unique strategy for each, naturally, being so very different from each other in practice. But there are also similarities. Besides each pursuit using wood, it was the act of applied attention that is common to both. To be good at either you must simply get out of your own head and focus on successfully completing the task at hand. One might utilize this in every pursuit, from writing to navigating any of the essential tasks that fill one’s day.

      We ought to cherish our time together, forgetting the trivial affronts that life throws at us. We ought to find our own voice in a world full of people waiting for us to shut up that they may say something clever. We ought to direct our attention inward, to the ripe potential of our own ideas, calling us to truth and clarity. We know, deep down, that we won’t survive this, but if we give ourselves the time to focus, we may just yet produce something substantial anyway.

    • Stillness Instead

      Have I lived enough?
      Have I loved enough?
      Have I considered Right Action enough, have I come to any conclusion?
      Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?
      Have I endured loneliness with grace?

      I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it.
      Actually, I probably think too much.

      Then I step out into the garden,
      where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man,
      is tending his children, the roses.
      — Mary Oliver, The Gardener

      Just this morning, I opted for the garden instead of a hike. I’ve done that a lot recently, choosing just about anything instead of a hike. Last week it was finishing a book I’d wanted to dive into, and I celebrated my time not doing something else I love. For it isn’t that I don’t love hiking, I surely do, it’s more a case of wanting something else instead. When you have free will you get to choose, within reason, such things as where to be and what to do.

      When it comes to such things as checklists of books read and summits climbed, we sometimes opt for none of the above. Life is a series of days where anything is possible if we just persist, or nothing gets done if we resist. What leads to resistance in a world that rewards action? Are we the lesser for having opted out? Or do we find something else in stillness?

      Lately I’ve wanted nothing more than time in the garden. It’s June, after all, and even a raw and wet June is still a month of growth and possibility. Slowing down enough to find the beauty in my own backyard seems the best use of this time.

      “It is the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.” ― Henry David Thoreau

      That old expression, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”, applies equally well with the geraniums as with the mountains. When this student is ready I’ll attend to that checklist of summits once again, or perhaps I won’t. For today there are other lessons to learn.

      Geranium

    • Begin Every Day

      If I flinched at every grief, I would be an intelligent idiot.
      If I were not the sun, I would ebb and flow with sadness.

      If you were not my guide, I would wander lost in Sinai.
      If there were no light,
      I would keep opening and closing the door.

      If there were no rose garden,

      where would the morning breezes go?
      If love did not want music and laughter and poetry,
      what would I say?

      If you were not medicine, I would look sick and skinny.
      If there were no leafy limbs in the air,
      there would be no wet roots.

      If no gifts were given, I would grow arrogant and cruel.
      If there were no way into God,
      I would not have lain in the grave of this body so long.

      If there were no way from right to left,
      I could not be swaying with the grasses.

      If there were no grace and no kindness,
      conversation would be useless, and nothing we do would matter.

      Listen to the new stories that begin every day.
      If light were not beginning again in the east,
      I would not now wake and walk out inside this dawn.
      — Rumi, Wake and Walk Out

      Perhaps the rain has kept me from waking earlier than normal today. Perhaps the grogginess that accumulates inside over a long and productive week is best expressed with sleeping in. Or perhaps it was staying up late, not wanting the day to end, conceding it at last as the calendar turned to a new day. Perhaps… or surely it was all of those things.

      No matter if later than before, we must rise once more. There’s work to be done each morning, to set up the day for success, whatever that means to each of us. Life is about meeting our purpose and being productive with our time to fully realize our potential. Nothing matters but this dance with life.

      And what is life? It’s the stories we write in these moments of clarity and awareness, days stacked one upon the other, until we cease beginning. Is every story a page-turner? Of course not, but doesn’t it help set up the next chapter?

      Each morning I’m struck by the wonder of being, but isn’t that wonder grounded in the awareness of ending? Our story will end. That may be someday, or it may be today, but it isn’t just yet. Knowing this, don’t we owe it to ourselves to properly rise to meet this day?

      In this quest to be more productive and purposeful, sometimes we don’t see the things that sparkle in our days. Things like poetry and a walk through the garden and the tickle of the breeze. What is a breeze but the change of the air? So it is with us, feeling the tickle of change within us. We must always be aware of the sparkle, and lend it our light, that it may offer reflection.