Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • Blank Places

      To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part. – Aldo Leopold

      Blank places on maps are increasingly rare.  With technology we’ve managed to reveal extraordinary detail on the contours of the land, water sources and potential sites to camp for the night.  You can hike many trails virtually from the comfort of your home with street view images of what you might see.  Even some of the most remote places in the world have 360 degree images uploaded from some soul that visited before.  And yet there are still blank places on maps that tease and mock those who would plot the world.

      Blank places on calendars betray opportunity lost, or not fully leveraged.  Time is money, they say, and to leave blank places on calendars is to waste our most precious resource.  Make the most of your day and fill every moment with appointments, meetings, conference calls, time for tasks, workouts, dates, drive time and even time to think.  There’s merit in a full calendar, but there’s also merit in blank places on the calendar too.  Some of my best career moments came in blank places that developed into magic moments.

      Blank places in ourselves are harder to see, but we know they’re there.  Revealed in quiet moments, in challenging tasks completed, in new things tried and most especially in things avoided.  Risks not taken reveal as much as they forever hide what might have been had we just begun.

      “Oh, I kept the first for another day!
      Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
      I doubted if I should ever come back.”
      – Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

      The funny thing about maps is that they reveal where others have already been.  When you follow the map you’re just following someone else’s path.  Way leads on to way, and blank places might never be revealed.  That’s true for most everyone, isn’t it?  We tuck aside those unreasonable pursuits in favor of the tried and true path, never getting around to seeing what’s down that other path.  Don’t despair for what might have been, but be bold enough to see what might be.  See where stepping into the unknown leads you.  Should you find you need to double back the world will be just as you left it.  They might not even look up from their screens long enough to realize that you left.

    • Is It Yourself You Seek?

      It is yourself you seek
      In a long rage,
      Scanning through light and darkness
      Mirrors, the page,

      Where should reflected be
      Those eyes and that thick hair,
      That passionate look, that laughter.
      You should appear

      Within the book, or doubled,
      Freed, in the silvered glass;
      Into all other bodies
      Yourself should pass.

      The glass does not dissolve;
      Like walls the mirrors stand;
      The printed page gives back
      Words by another hand.

      And your infatuate eye
      Meets not itself below;
      Strangers lie in your arms
      As I lie now.
      – Louise Bogan, Man Alone

      I seek myself in early morning quiet, listening for the whisper.
      I seek myself on long walks in rough terrain, one step at a time with an eye on the footing and the other at the way forward.
      I seek myself in the long drives to faraway places, with nothing playing but the soundtrack of the tires on pavement.
      I seek myself in pictures, vainly attempting to capture the light and never quite reaching perfection but smiling at the moment anyway.
      I seek myself in the dusty soil, that traps under fingernails and turns into beauty with water and time we hope we have.
      I seek myself in deep plunges into water, thoughts rising with the bubbles as we break the surface, clearer than before.
      I seek myself in lyrics captured from songs in the air, hearing words for the first time and desperately grabbing at Shazam to find the source before it disappears forever.
      I seek myself in habits made and promises to myself broken, with hopes of trying again tomorrow.
      I seek myself in reaching out in service to others, to rejoice in the moment of connection ever fleeting.
      I seek myself in old battlefields and graveyards and monuments to ghosts who only wish to be remembered once more.
      I seek myself in freshly chopped vegetables, sautéing in snaps and pops that betray my anticipation.
      I seek myself in the words that dance on the page, my own or those of strangers in my arms.
      I seek myself in skimming across water, skipping like a stone on the pull of an oar or the puff of the wind and wanting only to fly a little bit longer.
      Tell me, where do you seek yourself?

    • Live Well With Who Has None

      “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,
      Drink the wild air’s salubrity:
      When the star Canope shines in May,
      Shepherds are thankful and nations gay.
      The music that can deepest reach,
      And cure all ill, is cordial speech:
      Mask thy wisdom with delight,
      Toy with the bow, yet hit the white.
      Of all wit’s uses, the main one
      Is to live well with who has none.”
      – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Merlin’s Song

      You see this Emerson poem abbreviated to an inspirational quote as “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild.”  And yes, boiled down, he says these very words.  But clearly so much more too (The quote above is an excerpt of the poem).  Who can live in these times and not read the lines “The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech” without thinking he knew the path forward for all of us?  Emerson lived in tumultuous times too, and published Merlin’s Song just two years after the end of the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  He was a man familiar with conflict and the worst traits in mankind…. but also the best.  Was there a better example than Abraham Lincoln himself?

      Earlier today I saw a re-post from someone on Facebook – one of those I dare you to post this re-posts equivalent to chain mail.  It was using a tragic event from 2011 as if it were current news, challenging us to forward it along.  I started typing a reply to point out the age of the original event to correct this deliberate oversight that’s being bounced along the uninformed, when I caught myself and deleted the comment.  An hour later I read Merlin’s Song with fresh eyes, and lingered on the last lines: “Of all wit’s uses, the main one Is to live well with who has none” and thought to myself, how often has someone lived well with my ignorance?  More than I realize, I imagine.  Believe me, I appreciate your patience as I continue to figure things out.

      These times we live in – these are not the worst of times.  Not yet anyway.  We can still get this thing back on track.  It starts with cordial speech, living well with those who might have a viewpoint that differs from our own, and taking care of our own souls with immersion in the natural world: living in the sunshine, swimming in the sea, drinking the wild, and lingering with the stars.  And then rolling up our sleeves and cleaning up the mess.  Find the moral high ground and behave like we belong there.  We don’t have to be Merlin to figure this out.

       

       

       

    • Represent Worthily

      “I learned not to fear infinity,
      The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
      The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
      The wheel turning away from itself,
      The sprawl of the wave,
      The on-coming water.”
      – Theodore Roethke. The Far Field

      In our dance with infinity it’s now a Thursday once again.  The days fly by.  Just as the weeks fly by.  Just as the months fly by.  Just as the years fly by.  And yet here we are, in the now, in this shining moment.  Nothing hammers that feeling home like being at home, day-after-day, doing the same thing over and over again.  This pandemic has highlighted for me – and maybe for you too – the dying of time in the white light of tomorrow.  The endless cycle of routine punctuated by another dawn.  What else is there but now?  Is tomorrow ours to wonder at?  There is only now.  And that brings to mind something I’d stored away long ago:

      “Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance….at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say?” – Samuel Beckett, Vladimir, Waiting for Godot

      I read Waiting for Godot in college, and found it repetitive and boring.  I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be reading such things.  I believe I felt the same way about Walden once too.  The restlessness of youth, or the immature mind…  no matter.  And yet I’ve returned to both recently.  I’ve re-read Walden three times since I was required to read it in college.  And Godot keeps coming to mind as we march along in this dance with the repetitive.  They say the mind never forgets anything, it just stores it away somewhere deep inside, dormant and untapped.  Today, after thousands of days, I’ve tapped Waiting for Godot and Vladimir stepped to the forefront with a few words of wisdom: There’s no time to be idle.  Represent us worthily, for you live in the white light of what was our tomorrow.  Don’t waste it.  And today, facing the windy cliffs of forever, that is my task.

       

    • Smile

      O wondrous creatures,
      By what strange miracle
      Do you so often
      Not smile?
      – Hafiz, Strange Miracle

      The world is challenging at the moment.  It’s always been challenging of course, but most of us never really felt the full weight of the world like we do this year.  Still, there’s plenty of reason to smile, beginning with waking up this morning.  Hafiz pokes at us, offering a challenge to crack the stoic face more often and smile.  Life is a miracle, and we need to celebrate being alive, even as we tackle the realities of our time. A simple smile breaks the spell, and opens up the wonders of the world.  Smiling is the universal language.  God knows we need more smiles now.

      “Smile and maybe tomorrow
      You’ll see the sun come shining through for you”
      – Charlie Chaplin, Smile

      I smile more now than I did when I was younger.  I wasn’t unhappy then, I just didn’t smile as much as I should have.  Always serious.  Always earnestly charging through life. Always looking grimly ahead, focused on the task at hand.  But grim is no way to go through life.  And so I remind myself to stop being so damned serious all the time.  Bring a little joy to others; smile more.

    • Consider The Hummingbird

      “Consider the hummingbird for a long moment…. Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backward. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest. But when they rest they come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving, they retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal sleep rate, their hearts sludging nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be… The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature.”

      “Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.”

      “No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.” – Brian Doyle, Joyas Voladoras

      I get a bit breathless when I read something as stunning as Joyas Voladoras, and perhaps I share too much of it here.  It’s from a collection of essays by Brian Doyle in One Long River Of Song.  I’ve been saving it until I saw my first hummingbird of the season, figuring it would be a nice way to mark the occasion.  Well, that happened over two days ago, and I’m happy to share the sparkling light of Joyas Voladoras with you now.  Welcome back, hummingbirds, I’m glad to see you return to the garden.

      I play my part in keeping them from retreating to tupor with as many hummingbird-friendly plants and flowers as I can justify cramming into the sunniest corners of my backyard.  And in return they keep me from returning to tupor, if only for this short season.  For that I’m grateful, and I keep finding more excuses to add maybe just one more plant.  The bees return first, followed by the hummingbirds, and soon the butterflies will return too and the garden will be complete.  Or maybe it’s me that will be, or maybe all of us, in this together with our collection of heartbeats thumping to the song of today.

      Reading an essay like Joyas Voladoras swings the spotlight onto my own work, and I recognize that I have a ways to go in the writing.  But the blog serves as my apprenticeship and I keep putting it out there even if it misses the mark or is welcomed with grateful indifference.  I’m silently plotting an escape for my ambitions, one post at a time.  Words and structure of sentences are one thing, but weaving sparkling light and magic into those words is another.  What makes you breathless as a reader?  We all churn inside, don’t we?  How do we share that with the world?  Bird by bird, today and tomorrow too.  There’s enough tupor in the world, we all need a bit more warmth.

    • Sharing Light

      “Let tenderness pour from your eyes
      The way the Sun gazes
      warmly on the earth.”
      – Hafiz, If It Is Not Too Dark

      There’s enough darkness in the world. Enough anger, accusation and bitterness. Outraged darkness. Indignant darkness. Resentful darkness… it’s not for me. I prefer to share light.

      Have I been outraged, indignant and resentful? Of course! There’s plenty of material out there to work with. But why throw yourself into that toxic bonfire? Trolls need people to pay attention to their fire to fuel it.  But don’t follow them into the flames, or you’ll just burn up with the others.  Their bonfires don’t warm, don’t sustain, don’t comfort.

      The alternative is sharing our light. Light is energy, just as the sun casts warmth and vitality on the earth. The friend offering reassurance and the resolve to stick with you through it all. The parent offering unwavering patience and love to a child. Seems a better place to be.  And that’s where I tend to roam, quietly pouring tenderness from my eyes and doing what I can to brighten things up.

       “We live in a flash of light; evening comes and it is night forever.” – Anthony De Mello, Awakening

      Life is a short little burst of energy followed by darkness, or if you will, the unknown.  All we have is this little sprint we’re collectively running together.  Some fall by the wayside, others think they can win this race by tripping others up or taking a shortcut.  But most of us just sprint along at the best pace we can, full of all the human reactions to the challenges and surprises along the way.  It seems that we ought to dance and sing a bit more on this march across time instead of grumbling the whole way. Inspiring and building each other up, and lighting the way for those who are lost. It seems a better path, don’t you think?

      “Let us hope
      it will always be like this,
      each of us going on
      in our inexplicable ways
      building the universe”
      – Mary Oliver, Song of the Builders

      I had one more sunrise by the bay before I make my way back to the northern woods. I debated whether to post a picture or not, but ultimately reminded myself I post pictures that highlight the beauty I see in the world. When you find something beautiful, shouldn’t you share it?

    • Surf Meditation

      “I steal swiftly from behind the blue horizon, To cast the silver of my foam upon the gold of his sand, And we blend in melted brilliance.”

      People are quick to condemn those who crowd the beaches as they re-open, but I understand the lure of the surf.  I feel it too, and I’m eager to get back to the surf line once again.  But not in the company of hundreds.  That’s people watching, not surf meditation.  I seek the quiet beach at dawn, when the world is sleeping off the frenzy of the night.  The quiet whisper of frothy ocean meeting shifting sand.  Of footprints washed away like yesterdays.

      “Many times have I danced around mermaids As they rose from the depths And rested upon my crest to watch the stars; Many times have I heard lovers complain of their smallness, And I helped them to sigh.”

      I need to wrestle with the surf again soon.  To dive into a crashing wave and let it sweep over me to the waiting sands in their infinite dance.  To hear again the music of the surf and to dance in the foam and churn of sand and salt water.  I was born an amphibian, no matter what the birth certificate noted.  I’m closer to the truth between the water and land.

      “In the heaviness of night, When all creatures seek the ghost of slumber, I sit up, singing at one time and sighing at another. I am awake always.”
      – Khalil Gibran, Song of the Wave

      There’s magic in this poem, and I fought the urge to just post the entire work here (Google it and you’ll see a wealth of tributes).  Gibran knew the song of the surf too.  He grew up in Lebanon, moved to Boston at 12 and skipped back and forth across the ocean during his education.  He knew the surf and what was beyond the surf line and over the horizon.  He knew the fragility of life at a young age, losing siblings and his mother while he was still a teenager.  He died too young at 48 and sailed one last time from New England to Lebanon, where he remains to this day, as he wished.  But I wonder if secretly he planned it that way, for one last sail before he was buried.  I’d like to think so anyway.

       

    • A Rainy Day Soundtrack in Five Jackson Browne Songs

      It’s raining today.  It’s April in New England and such things are to be expected.  I set my alarm every night for 6:30 AM, and I’m usually up well before it ever goes off.  This morning I was finishing a dream I don’t recall except that someone was about to speak and as they opened their mouth the alarm went off and it all went away.  Feel free to analyze that if you wish, I’m moving on to other things.  6:30 is sleeping in for me, and I found myself behind the eight ball on my morning routine.

      But back to that rain.  It reminded me of this collection of Jackson Browne songs I’ve been collecting in my drafts waiting patiently to fly.  So why not now?  It’s not easy to create a list of only five songs from a writer as prolific as Jackson Browne, I mean, I played the Running on Empty album on repeat for months when I was 17 or so.  That one would be a favorite album, but only one of the songs on it made it onto this list.  I think the rain also impacted my choice of songs, all of which are introspective, forgoing classic hits like Running On Empty, Doctor My Eyes and Somebody’s Baby in favor of deeper water.  Anyway, here are five Jackson Browne songs that are particularly meaningful for me:

      You Love The Thunder
      “When you look over your shoulder
      And you see the life that you’ve left behind
      When you think it over, do you ever wonder?
      What it is that holds your life so close to mine”
      This song, along with The Road and The Load-Out, was a highlight and the one I play frequently from this album.

      For A Dancer
      “Into a dancer you have grown
      From a seed somebody else has thrown
      Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
      And somewhere between the time you arrive
      And the time you go
      May lie a reason you were alive
      That you’ll never know”
      Jackson wrote this for a friend who died in a fire, and it’s one of those songs I return to when I think about people full of life taken too soon from this world.

      The Pretender
      “I want to know what became of the changes
      We waited for love to bring
      Were they only the fitful dreams
      Of some greater awakening?
      I’ve been aware of the time going by
      They say in the end it’s the wink of an eye
      When the morning light comes streaming in
      You’ll get up and do it again
      Amen.”
      If the pandemic is doing anything, it’s pushing people to question the endless cycle of mindless work they do.  If you don’t love your life, change it.  This song is the great reminder of the unfulfilled potential in all of us bursting to get out, if you’ll just stop doing what you think you have to do.

      Your Bright Baby Blues
      “Baby if you can hear me
      Turn down your radio
      There’s just one thing
      I want you to know
      When you’ve been near me
      I’ve felt the love
      Stirring in my soul”
      The link above is a Don Kirchner performance in 1976 where Jackson’s backing band was The Eagles.  I’m old enough to remember a lot about the 70’s, but young enough to have missed most of the craziness happening at the time.  I imagine there was a hell of a party after these guys played this song.

      These Days
      “These days I’ll sit on corner stones
      And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend
      Don’t confront me with my failures
      I had not forgotten them”
      I understand that Jackson wrote this when he was 16.  Talk about being an old soul at a young age.  I’m a long way from what the lyrics express at the moment, but haven’t we all been here?

       

    • Grateful For The Connection

      They say the Striper return to New Hampshire waters when the lilacs bloom. By “they” I mean a guy standing in front of me talking to another guy six feet in front of him. That the statement was overheard in a COVID-19 mandated line to get into a store is a curiosity of our times, but interesting to me if only because I don’t generally participate in fishing talk. I’m not much of a fisherman, more a fish eater, but I instinctively heard the truth in that statement.

      I’ve been in the woods of New Hampshire for a month now, and other than two trips to visit the in-laws from afar I haven’t strayed out of the 603. I’m plotting covert salt water visits in my mind. I scroll through old photos on my phone and think about excuses to visit Cape Cod once again. Salt water is just out of reach… damn. I’m told that social isolation helps flatten the curve and like most people in the world I hear the truth in that statement. I’ll remain here in the woods for now.

      “Sometimes we are starving to see every bit of what is right in front of us.” – Brian Doyle, The Shrew

      I’ve learned the truth about myself over the years. Especially now I suppose. I’ve learned that it’s easier to listen when you turn off the flow of distraction the world offers. I suppose that’s why people turn on the flow; for distraction. Or to feel connected to the world. We all do, in some measure. The truth about me is I don’t need much distraction. But I do need connection. I learned long ago to have connection you need to reach out for it, because most people are dancing with their own distraction. I turned to the poets and songwriters because they offer connection in spades, even when they’re long gone from this world. If they are so bold as to reach out to me I ought to listen to what they have to say.

      As I stood in that line waiting for enough people to exit that I might enter the store, I found silent connection with a couple of fishermen. It was a bit like stealing because I picked up pieces from them but didn’t give anything back in return. So instead I paid it forward with others I’ve spoken with since, and now with you. Connection is a chain, and we are the links. Distraction weakens the link, attention strengthens it. It doesn’t always seem like it, but I do try to pay attention. And since I have yours, let me say I’m grateful for the connection.