Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • Roses Rise

      and out of the silent dirt
      the blood-red roses rise.
      – Mary Oliver, Both Worlds

      The tea roses bloom in abundance in June, and reward you with blooms in bursts of fragrant joy the rest of the season. This is the time when rose petals pile up like seaweed at the edge of the surf, for the dance is so very brief for each individual flower before it rains down to the dirt to make way for the next budding star.

      I’m considered a tall man, and the tea roses reach up to my height, wanting very much to overtake the neighboring crab apple tree and maybe even the oaks should they be so bold. Tea roses love to dance with the sky, to catch the breeze and perfume the air with their subtle scent. Year-after-year they return, despite the relative neglect they receive compared with the pampered annuals.

      I’ve held this line from Mary Oliver in my mind since winter. I thought then of the blooming tea roses (pink, not red in the garden I’m subservient to). Winter is a time of dormancy and darkness, not at all the explosion of delight that June offers in New Hampshire. Each year the blooms are a miracle, and I gratefully celebrate their return.

      For all my talk of travel and exploring the world, I bask in this short time together with the roses each year around this time. A time when the roses rise to meet me at eye level. As if to ask me, why would you ever want to leave us?

      Tea Rose Time

    • Smaller Bites

      George Bailey : [George hears a train whistle] There she blows. You know what the three most exciting sounds in the world are?
      Uncle Billy : Uh huh. Breakfast is served; lunch is served; dinner…
      George Bailey : No no no no. Anchor chains, plane motors and train whistles.
      – Scene from It’s a Wonderful Life

      I’m eager to get back out in the world again. That’s no secret to readers of this blog. And really, I could go at any time now. But this is a time of graduations and funerals postponed while the pandemic was raging. Of catching up with people you haven’t seen face-to-face for a long time. And celebrating the freedom that comes with being fully vaccinated even as we remember what we lost along the way.

      “Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” – Og Mandino

      I’m not the sort to walk away from people. I see a lot of myself in George Bailey. I don’t subscribe to the concept of “ghosting” someone. I check in on the neighbors, friends and relatives and generally hold things together, remaining available for those who want or need to reach out. And this works out to be a richer life for having done so. The trade-off in time to explore the unknown remains in my mind even as I embrace the moments with connections.

      Connections… You’ve gotten better at them over the years, but that cold stoic exterior is tough to penetrate. You learn to drop it and get busy living as life progresses. As you recognize that moments are fleeting and people come and go from your circle.

      We’ve only just begun to know each other, really, when they announce that it’s last call. Do you want that last conversation you might ever have with a person to be a checkbox of bland “how’s it going?” questions or a deeper dive into the soul of the person you’re engaged with? There are two ways to ask that question: the surface level way and the grab you by the hands, look squarely in your eyes and mean it way.

      This world wants to divide us. It wants to cancel people, categorize people, shun those with differing opinions. We all tell ourselves stories, and we all wonder what the hell that other person is thinking when they expose their beliefs. Who’s right?

      Who cares? We aren’t going to get anywhere in this world if we don’t start living empathically and seeking to understand the underlying story that frames someone’s worldview. For the world to progress, we must learn to see past the party affiliations, nationality, skin color, orientation and generational biases and learn to connect human-to-human. For we might never have this opportunity to engage with each other again.

      Worldview… How do you gain a bigger worldview if you don’t get out and see the world? Well, maybe by taking smaller bites. Human-to-human interaction instead of continent-to-continent leaping. At least for now. He said. Convincingly. And wrote a poem to boil all these words down into 23. For George. But also for me:

      So, my friend
      I know I keep asking,
      “when are we going?”

      but, you know
      what I really meant was,
      “how’s it going?”

    • Living in the Layers

      I have walked through many lives,
      some of them my own,
      and I am not who I was,
      though some principle of being
      abides, from which I struggle
      not to stray.

      We’re all collectors of sorts. Accumulating experience, relationships and perspective as we march through our time on this spinning blue ball in the dark vacuum of infinity. We acquire it all and, if we’re generous, bundle it up into shared wisdom before we become part of infinity ourselves. This sharing of experience differs from shared experience; that which you and I might experience together. Sharing is passing something of ourselves along to others, as I’m passing along this Stanley Kunitz poem.

      When I look behind,
      as I am compelled to look
      before I can gather strength
      to proceed on my journey,
      I see the milestones dwindling
      toward the horizon
      and the slow fires trailing
      from the abandoned camp-sites,
      over which scavenger angels
      wheel on heavy wings.
      Oh, I have made myself a tribe
      out of my true affections,
      and my tribe is scattered!

      The last few weeks are a whirlwind of my tribe coming home and leaving home. One returns, one leaves, friends stay for the weekend, other friends drift apart. We all scatter about to wherever the song in our hearts lead us. That we remain together at all is a blessing of shared moments.

      How shall the heart be reconciled
      to its feast of losses?
      In a rising wind
      the manic dust of my friends,
      those who fell along the way,
      bitterly stings my face.
      Yet I turn, I turn,
      exulting somewhat,
      with my will intact to go
      wherever I need to go,
      and every stone on the road
      precious to me.

      I try to explain how this will go to my children as they graduate and move into new phases of their lives. Most relationships are based on convenience and proximity. Teammates, classmates, coworkers, soccer parents… in each case you share something in common at the same time and place, and meaningful moments collect here. But the bond is only as strong as the links that hold it together. Most relationships eventually drift apart, though you might pick up exactly where you left off when you see each other again and piece together what you’ve each been up to in the interim. Some relationships seem to stand the test of time and trial and absence.

      In my darkest night,
      when the moon was covered
      and I roamed through wreckage,
      a nimbus-clouded voice
      directed me:
      “Live in the layers,
      not on the litter.”
      Though I lack the art
      to decipher it,
      no doubt the next chapter
      in my book of transformations
      is already written.
      I am not done with my changes.
      – Stanley Kunitz, The Layers

      Life is littered with old bonds broken by circumstance. But experience informs. We’re all changing, and our transformation continues even as the tribe changes too. Each layer of our life makes us deeper. Each chapter adds context and richness. We are the sum of our accumulated experience, relationships and perspectives to this point. All these layers add up to one hell of a stepping stone.

      Which makes you eagerly wonder… just where might this next step lead to?

    • The Ones That Got Away

      Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
      Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
      transparent scarlet paper,
      sizzle like moth wings,
      marry the air.

      We’re into the long days now in New England. Days of early light and lingering twilight well into the evening. I wake to the sound of fishermen racing to seize their moment, wondering at the urgency of a favorite fishing spot when the entire bay is full of fish. They fish with purpose. Purpose brings intensity and competition. I know these things, even if I don’t share their commitment to fishing before the sun rises. I use that time for other things.

      So much of any year is flammable,
      lists of vegetables, partial poems.
      Orange swirling flame of days,
      so little is a stone.

      I don’t understand the lure of fishing but I understand the pull of the open water. I know the call of the early morning air. I imagine the Striper are running just below the surface as I watch the water. The lilacs are out and so they must be too. Lilacs come and go so quickly, don’t they? So, it seems, do the Striper.

      Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
      an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
      I begin again with the smallest numbers.

      Every year we go through this, these fishermen and women out on the water and me watching from shore. The boats change and so do the characters in them, but still the fish run with the tides. This year feels more optimistic than last year. We’ve all come through something together, even if we aren’t quite there yet. But the Striper don’t care a lick what we’ve been through.

      Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
      only the things I didn’t do
      crackle after the blazing dies.
      -Naomi Shihab Nye, Burning the Old Year

      So many of these moments disappear like sparks into the night sky. We burn through days like firewood, and make the most of so few of them. So much of our time burns away, and we’re left holding on to scraps of memorable. While contemplating the ones that got away.

    • Each Leap

      It’s funny how things cluster together. Bursts of activity that lump together depending on the place that you’re in emotionally, physically, developmentally. Like jumping rock-to-rock to cross a stream, these places are where we land at a given moment in our lives.

      Some are easy to identify: “student” to “early career” to “committed relationship” to “parent” are all leaps we’re familiar with. But there are other, smaller leaps that come to mind. Over the last year I’ve had clusters of activity – hiking, chasing waterfalls, devouring poetry, home improvement projects, etc. that consumed me for a time and then I was on to the next thing for a while. Those waterfalls are still calling, just as mountain peaks are, it’s just not their time right now.

      Each leap lands you in another place in your life. Each leap changes you forever. I’ll never be who I was before I had children, nor will I ever be the same person as I was before I read The Summer Day or saw a snowshoe hare sprinting through the snow on the summit of Mount Moosilauke or a hundred other leaps large and small that have brought me to this particular landing spot.

      Each leap brings us further across the stream, further from who we once were while closer to what we might be. Knowing we’ve changed, and fully aware of the risks, we must choose which leap to take next. Sometimes we get wet, sometimes we reach a dead end, and sometimes we reach a landing spot we never dreamed of getting to. There are lessons in each.

      At the moment I’ve landed on a series of home improvement projects that demand the usual investment of time and money. But I’m already plotting my next leap, and have an eye on the one after that too. All while the characters in my life are making their own leaps, some drawing closer, others moving further away. And this is as it should be. The stream keeps flowing, even as we leap from stone to stone.

      Nothing ever has been or ever will be the same. You can’t just sit on a rock in the middle of the stream forever. You’ve got to leap again. So make it a good one.

    • Poems and Cat Puke

      The clouds have left the sky,
      The wind hath left the sea,
      The half-moon up on high
      Shrinketh her face of dree

      She lightens on the comb
      Of leaden waves, that roar
      And thrust their hurried foam
      Up on the dusky shore.

      Behind the western bars
      The shrouded day retreats,
      And unperceived the stars
      Steal to their sovran seats.

      And whiter grows the foam,
      The small moon lightens more;
      And as I turn me home,
      My shadow walks before.
      – Robert Bridges, Dusky Shore

      There’s a moment when expectations meet reality. Certainly we all expected more out of 2020 than we got, and I can say the same about this morning’s blog. It started with a poem – Dusky Shore, as you see. It became cleanup in aisle 5.

      I’ve toyed with Bridges’ famous poem for some time, undecided about whether to dance with the classic romantic lines, or leave well enough alone. It has all the ingredients sprinkled together just so – the moon and the sea, post sunset dusky bliss and a turn towards home… but it still misses the mark for me. And I’m not sure why.

      I believe it’s in the way the words are stacked just so. It feels like he’s playing to the audience a bit to me, instead of mining his soul. But still the words are lovely in the way that a Thomas Kinkade painting is. Pretty, I suppose, but not really my style.

      As I walked down the stairs contemplating this poem and whether to go there, I came across the apocalyptic mounds of yellowish cat puke on the area rug that announced my quaint dalliance with Dusky Shore was going to take a back seat for the moment. As the designated early bird in a house full of night owls, I’m faced with such moments more than I care to remember. You either pretend not to see it or grab the paper towels and deal with it. I’ve learned it’s best to tackle the demons head-on and get on with your life. There’s nothing more demonic than cat puke on an area rug.

      I wonder about Robert Bridges, turning from the white foamy sea towards home, shadow walking before. As he opened the door to his humble home, what greeted him? For all the beauty of the prose, every now and then a little cat puke intrudes upon your Rosebud Cottage. It may be unwelcome, but it teaches you a bit about who you are when the moment of bliss is interrupted.

    • Catching the Wind

      Waking up early I dress straight away and head outside for the Spring performance. Birdsong in spring is like no other time of year, and you must be out there early to catch the peak. Soon the tall pines caught the wind and danced together with it in a song of their own. And the harmonies of birds and breeze and trees sang to me their morning song. April mornings in New Hampshire; playing for a limited time only.

      I thought I might read a favorite Mary Oliver poem, and read ten times the one. Some days every word grabs you and shakes you to the core. Other days the words aren’t for you. I apologized to Ms. Oliver for not having my mind on the lesson and gently put poetry aside for another time.

      And turn to music. Wild Theme, Symphony No. 5, and finally Suite bergamasque: Clare de lune. Like poetry you know when it’s the right moment for a song. And so this morning Debussey and I walked about the quiet house while the world slept. But soon the restlessness returned.

      “The child is in me still… and sometimes not so still.” – Fred Rogers

      Mondays hand us the friction of the weekend meeting the work week. The question of what must be done taps on the shoulder demanding answers. Each passing minute you linger with birds and poets and symphonies amplifies the urgency of the questions. What must be done?

      Listen to the world around you. Accept the day as it comes, but plot your course with clarity of purpose. Find stillness, if you can. If only for just a moment. If you listen, you’ll hear what it’s been telling you all along. Minimize that friction and dance with the world on your own terms. Catch the wind, and fly.

      Of course! the path to heaven
      doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
      It’s in the imagination
      with which you perceive
      this world,
      and the gestures
      with which you honor it.
      – Mary Oliver, The Swan

    • Making the Sun Run

      But at my back I always hear
      Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
      And yonder all before us lie
      Deserts of vast eternity…

      Let us roll all our strength and all
      Our sweetness up into one ball,
      And tear our pleasures with rough strife
      Through the iron gates of life:
      Thus, though we cannot make our sun
      Stand still, yet we will make him run.
      – Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

      Spending time ought to come with a warning label. I’m revisiting this poem from Marvell. I’d first written about it before the pandemic, when the world seemed quite normal, if maddeningly out of sorts. Since then, well, we all know how things have gone.

      So what do we do with this hard-won knowledge? We have our own time’s winged chariot hurrying near. Maybe we have a few years more or less than the average, but what’s it worth to you anyway? Another trip around the sun and vast eternity ahead for every last one of us. Make the most of life now, while there’s still some of that time for you.

      Today is the day before the promise of another year more. I’m getting a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine with a hopeful eye towards the future. A future where we might run with the sun, chasing every day to its extraordinary end. Sporting while we may. The sun doesn’t stand still. And neither should we.

    • Picking Up the Pieces

      Sometimes it takes darkness and the
      sweet
      confinement of your aloneness
      to learn
      anything and anyone
      that does not bring you alive

      is too small for you.
      – David Whyte, Sweet Darkness

      I woke up in the middle of the night thinking of Todd Rundgren’s Hello It’s Me and hearing it anew in my head. It’s always been a breakup song, that part is easy. But what I didn’t hear, not really hear, is the background singers rising chorus of “think of me” as Rundgren stops singing and the band reaches a crescendo accompanying the singing. At the end all that’s left is the band abruptly stopping, and all that’s left is a quiet, uncertain “think of me“.

      And then I understood grief and loss a bit better than I had before.

      It’s always been there, lingering behind the brave front and the moving on and the figuring things out. The feeling of abandonment in breaking up with someone, or losing someone who had a gravitational pull that compelled you to orbit them for what seemed a blissful forever. That person literally brought you alive and changed you forever. Until the spell was broken in loss. Until your identity was shattered in a moment.

      I heard it in my mother’s voice and in my own anger when a repaired grandfather clock broke apart again, betraying us and our memories in its fragility. I saw it in my wife’s welling eyes when a song that reminds her of her sister comes up on the playlist. I’ve heard it in countless voices over the last year. I’ve seen it in eyes locked in on my own above masks that hide everything but the reality of what is missing. Now and forever.

      Son sometimes it may seem dark
      But the absence of the light is a necessary part
      Just know, that you’re never alone
      You can always come back home
      – Jason Mraz, 93 Million Miles

      I grieve for the grief of others while holding my own close to the vest, where it leaks out in unguarded moments. Forever moving on, without really getting away from the missing part. Now and then it catches you in a broken grandfather clock and you know you can’t pick up all the pieces. All you can do is try to put it together again as best you can.

      And know that you’re never alone.

    • Whispers from a Dead Poet

      There is no dusk to be,
      There is no dawn that was,
      Only there’s now, and now,
      And the wind in the grass.

      Days I remember of
      Now in my heart, are now;
      Days that I dream will bloom
      White the peach bough.

      Dying shall never be
      Now in the windy grass;
      Now under shooken leaves
      Death never was.
      – Archibald MacLeish, An Eternity

      I confess to not really knowing much about Archibald MacLeish, who died in Boston exactly 39 years ago yesterday, the day I started thinking about Archibald MacLeish at all. It started the night before, watching Ken Burns’ Hemingway and latching on to his name as someone Hemingway hung out with in Spain, as someone I ought to look into. Much of his poetry is available online, and I waded through a strong dose of it. And then I read his biography:

      “His mother was a Hillard, a family that, as Dialogues of Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren reveals, MacLeish was fond of tracing back through its New England generations to Elder Brewster, the minister aboard the Mayflower.” – Poetry Foundation Biography of Archibald MacLeish

      It seems I’m a distant relative of Mr. MacLeish, both of us pointing to Elder Brewster as a connection to the Mayflower. I don’t dwell on the Mayflower connection – who cares if you were the first European to settle here or the millionth? What matters is how you behaved when you got here. I think on the whole Brewster settled his accounts well. And MacLeish lived a life of consequence himself. So how does one keep up with the relatives?

      What do you make of meeting a long dead relative through his work on the very day he passed 39 years before? Serendipity? Whispers? Or just history and happenstance capturing my imagination and carrying it away once again, as it’s done so many times before?

      It doesn’t matter so much, does it? We have the advantage of now, and now. Until we lose it. Until we are whispers ourselves, hardly heard in the swirling wind in the grass. Days we remember and dreams of the future matter little compared to the urgent matter of now. And what we might do with it.