Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • The Heart of the Bay

      Nobody owns the sky or the trees.
      Nobody owns the hearts of birds.
      Still, being human and partial therefore to my own
      successes—
      though not resentful of others fashioning theirs—
      I’ll come tomorrow, I believe, quite early.
      – Mary Oliver, Winter and the Nuthatch

      Oliver writes of building trust with a nuthatch that eventually learns to eat out of her hand. One morning she arrives later than other mornings only to find her nuthatch friend eating from another person’s hand. And thus she resolves to arrive earlier the next morning. I’ve felt this myself, not with birds in the hand so much as places of solitude.

      Early Spring is still a time of hard frosts and temperature swings. Maple syrup weather – when the sap flows and gathers in buckets around Maple trees throughout the region. But not here. Cape Cod is more temperate, not subject to the extremes that draw the sap out. And then there’s the trees themselves, which seem to prefer the other side of the bridges. No, here we have a different sap drawn out in the early mornings. And I’m drawn to the light and the chorus.

      Buzzards Bay, well before the dawn, is awash in deep blues and burnt orange and the calls of thousands of Eider Ducks off in the distance. They have a lot to say to each other. It must be breeding season for these migratory birds. They didn’t pay much attention to the stranger on land, and I let them alone in their banter and flirting. The chorus felt altogether different from the bay in warmer months, when outboard engines of fishermen roaring off to favorite holes pierce the silence. Eiders quickly become white noise as I refocus on the task at hand.

      I crunched across a deep frost, leaving footprints in the grass on my walk to the shoreline. Low tide drew me out further into the bay, right to the waters edge quietly lapping in quiet surges like a heart beat. The bay is alive in this way. Alive in its vibrant, nutrient-rich, welcoming way. It pulls at me as it pulls at the Eider ducks, down from northern regions for their version of Spring Break. I suppose I am as well, looking for a change of scenery from New Hampshire to Buzzards Bay. For a return to salt water reflections and big skies.

      The chorus of Eiders ends with the sun breaking the horizon. Mating time gives way to feeding time. I leave the shoreline myself, for I’m not adorned in the down of a duck and the morning chills me in lingering too long. Hot coffee and inadequate words await me, with the glow of the morning alive in my mind.

      Buzzards Bay

    • To Roam the Roads of Lands Remote

      “To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
      To gain all while you give,
      To roam the roads of lands remote,
      To travel is to live.”
      – Hans Christian Andersen

      Good God I’m ready to roam remote lands again. Exploring faraway places in a world that has shaken off the pandemic and opens its arms in welcome. We aren’t there just yet, we know, but every day we get a bit closer. A year into this and I’m chomping at the bit for the quirky randomness of faraway travel.

      Such thoughts are low agency conspiracies, for the world is right outside, awaiting our arrival. Crossing borders to lands remote may be just out of reach, but crossing thresholds is still very possible. And so the question isn’t the roaming, the question is the focus. I can row a million meters away (and be a different person when I arrive) right in my house, I can time travel in the chair behind me, and I can fly above the earth on snowshoes just outside the door.

      The secret all along? To push through our own borders, wherever we are, is to live. To become by working through. To move. To breathe… to gain all while you give.

    • What Is

      “What is left
      is what is.”
      – Wendell Berry, The Broken Ground

      Lingering soreness from a long winter hike and tackling a foot of snow with a snowblower that quite halfway through the task, leaving only shovels to overcome mechanical obstinance. Fatigue, not all of it in muscles, wished me a good morning with a smirk.

      Looking out the window, I saw the tip of a snow drift dropping down from the roof, as if a wave frozen in the middle of its break. This naturally lured me outside for a look, which led to a walkabout, which led to slipping on snowshoes for a walk in the deep snow out to the bird feeders at the edge of the woods. Silently carving my two foot path across the yard, nothing but the rubbing clumpy sound that cold snow makes when compressed. One foot in front of the other, out and back, feeders filled. Were the yard only longer, for I wasn’t quite ready to finish.

      The feeders were wiped out by Starlings. Greedy, sloppy eaters who cast away seed by the shovelful to get at the dried fruit and other choice treats they favor. What’s left is an empty feeder and a mess on the snowy ground that is gobbled up by squirrels and Mourning Doves and other such ground feeders. The food is there for this purpose, so do I have a right to complain? Only at the waste and frenzied emptying. I can either pause feeding until they find somewhere else to ransack or tolerate the intrusion. But once you commit to feeding the birds you can’t very well stop after a heavy snowstorm.

      For all the dry sameness of the inside of the house, outdoors offers something new at every turn. The second morning after a big snowfall lacks the drama of tackling the job at hand, but it makes up for it with time to have a look around. To see what’s changed. To assess the landscape and yourself. To see what’s left. What is.

    • In the Grace of the World

      “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 children’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

      The iPhone is a blessing and a curse, for all that it brings. Sometimes you want to be away from the made up frenzy of short traders and politicians and debates about which quarterback is best (long since answered).  Great for a picture and for safety in a pinch, but best left stowed away the rest of the time. I used to post pictures while I was still on the summit of a mountain, for that we’re here! moment. But the act of posting takes you out of the moment, and so I leave it be until later in the day locked in as a memory of what was. #saveitforlater

      Walks outside in quiet places serve the body, but mostly the mind. Free from the frenzy we create for ourselves. One notification at a time, relentlessly poking a hole in your soul. What have we done to ourselves with all of these pings and vibrations? Pavlov couldn’t have dreamed up a more diabolical experiment in self-torture.

      “To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.” – Alan Watts

      The wind shakes the house and reminds me to bundle up. January days are short in New Hampshire, so you’ve got to get creative with your time in the grace of the world. The edges of the day work, and sometimes, dog-less as I am at the moment, late night star-gazing walks with a flashlight or headlamp to fill in the blanks and keep stray cars at bay.

      I’ve learned to pause longer. To fill the void with more silence. To quiet the mind and seek out small pockets of stillness. Time flies by anyway, but it feels like yours once again. Isn’t it, in the end? Step outside. Find the stillness. It’s out there waiting for you.

    • Here, in This Place

      In the place that is my own place, whose earth
      I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
      a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
      Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
      hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
      There is no year it has flourished in
      that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
      that is its death, though its living brims whitely
      at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
      Over all its scars has come the seamless white
      of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
      healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
      in the warp and bending of its long growth.
      It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
      It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
      It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
      In all the country there is no other like it.
      I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
      the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
      I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
      and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.
      – Wendell Berry, The Sycamore

      I’ve both loved and resented the roots I’ve grown. A wandering spirit, I’ve chafed at being caught in place for too long. Yet I’ve been deeply nourished by the community I’ve planted myself in. I reach towards the sky, trying to fly. While rooting deeper and wider still. Such is the way.

      Roots are built on routines and responsibilities, done with love and established over time. You don’t have to feed the birds where you live, but when you do they reward you with movement and song. They bring life in return for your investment in time, money and persistence. And so it is with a community. When you help nourish the community you’re rewarded in ways you might not have anticipated when you first set roots there.

      Old growth trees come in many shapes and sizes. Some grow impossibly high. With others, thick trunks support wide canopies. And those in the highest mountains remain low to the ground, clustered tightly together and shrinking in on themselves, constantly buffeted by the harshest of winds.

      The pandemic abruptly stepped into our lives about a year ago and still informs. I’ve learned to appreciate the firm ground I’m rooted to all the more when the storms blow. For here in this place I’ve grown more than I might have otherwise. Here in this place the worst of the winds blow over. Here in this place we’ve built lives for ourselves. Bonded to this place and each other, roots interwoven together.

    • Living This Now Moment

      “We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I’m talking and you’re listening, is eternity.” – Alan Watts

      Well, we’ve reached it
      again.
      Now.
      Did you expect it to be more?

      Now.
      Such that it is.
      Our time; our only time.
      Make it shine.

      I thought about Sal and Dean and those other characters moving from coast-to-coast and back again chasing the next thing in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In some ways, that’s all of us, isn’t it? Chasing the next thing, always going somewhere else in the future.

      I’ve tried to turn that into making exceptional nows out of otherwise mundane nows. Visiting waterfalls is one way, but so is getting up early and watching the sky gradually brighten as the world wakes up anew. And so is walking out in the woods just to see what a winter with no snow smells and feels like out there. Eternity is watching a squirrel sort out how to get into a squirrel-proof feeder. And it’s the next wave swelling to meet the retreating salty foam undermining your feet in the surf. A poem stacked together just so.

      This is our little bit of eternity, living this now moment. We either spin it up with wonder and magic or we ignore it at our peril. For it won’t come this way again.

      Happy Monday.

    • A Realm of Sunset and Moonlight and Silence

      “My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

      I’m returning Emerson once again, partly to counter the din of political tweets and headlines that dominated over the last week, and partly because I’d like to read or re-read all of his work in 2021. Which brings me back to his essay Nature, for (I believe) a third reading. And I couldn’t help but linger on the sentence above, which resonates in this time, and for this place I myself reside, in a house in low land, with limited outlook, on the skirt of the village. Emerson had the Concord River to paddle to truth. I have the New Hampshire woods and the wildlife it sustains to show me the way.

      Days like these, a quiet bit of immersion in the forest seems in order. We live in strange times, distracting times, and I’ve seen the impact on my writing lately. Thankfully, I know where to find the remedy: in nature, in tapping into the Great Conversation, and in solitude.

      “Accept what comes from silence.
      Make the best you can of it.
      Of the little words that come
      out of the silence, like prayers
      prayed back to the one who prays,
      make a poem that does not disturb
      the silence from which it came”
      – Wendell Berry, How To Be a Poet (to remind myself)

      A special thanks to Maria Popova and Brain Pickings for pointing out this particular poem in a recent tweet. This poem immediately served as a catalyst on two fronts: to search for more Wendell Berry and seek the silent contemplation I’ve stolen from myself absorbing the madness of the world. Silence, as they say, is golden.

      So outside of paddling off on my own or building a small cabin in the woods, how to bring together the natural world and the silence necessary for contemplation? The answer, for me, lies in early mornings. The conspirator against a quiet mind is the whirl of madness in the world and a desire to keep up and understand it. In these times, finding a way to paddle or walk away from it all, if only for a little while, seems imperative.

      If only to find your own voice again.

    • From This Moment

      “How quietly I
      begin again

      from this moment
      looking at the
      clock, I start over

      So much time has
      passed, and is equaled
      by whatever
      split-second is present

      from this
      moment this moment
      is the first”
      – Wendell Berry, Be Still In Haste

      Two weeks into the New Year. About as distracting a beginning to a New Year as I can ever recall. We know where we’ve been, where we’ve come from. But what comes next? We change from moment to moment with the ticking of the clock, but what do we do with that change?

      Start over. Again.

      “Time does not exist. There is only a small and infinite present, and it is only in this present that our life occurs. Therefore, a person should concentrate all his spiritual force only on this present.” – Leo Tolstoy

      Sometimes it feels like we’re marching on a treadmill, especially during a lockdown, but you look back and see progress despite the illusion. A pile of actions that didn’t work. A few, sifted through the remains, that did. What do we make of it? All that has passed, has passed. This moment is the one that counts. This moment is the first.

      Keep trying. Again. And again.


    • Another Dance

      “Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
      It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.”
      Mary Oliver, Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?

      When the world show you more than fair winds (this week surely did that), a sprinkling of Mary Oliver poetry soothes the soul. Don’t think I don’t recognize the tendency to turn this blog into a Mary Oliver fan page, and really I’ve tried to move to other things, but too often Oliver seems to have the words readily available. Funny how a few words piled together just so seems to center you. To harden your resolve to get through the darkest days with an eye towards the light.

      “Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?”

      I don’t suppose the angry mob has time for poetry. It’s clear they aren’t dancing joyfully through life either. Spun up in conspiracy and hate, and believing false gods. They can’t see beauty when they’re blind with rage.

      But we can. So long as we continue to look for it. Hate burns out when it runs out of fuel.

    • Too Cloudy to Forecast

      The plan was to drive out to the wrist of Cape Cod for a sunrise picture. I’ve patiently waited for the right weather window to appear, and when my head hit the pillow it seemed all was a go. But the weather always has other plans, and teaches you to listen even when you want to hear something else. And at 5 AM the clouds obscured everything above Buzzards Bay. A check on cleardarksky.com confirmed that my destination was also overcast with transparency rated as too cloudy to forecast. And so I wrote instead.

      I’m working on my own forecast. Specifically the ten year plan, for the influencers I read tend to recommend thinking in decades not years. Seth Godin just had a great post about it yesterday, which likely planted it front and center on my brain. But he’s not the only one thinking in ten year chunks, and I’d like to be more forward thinking myself. Ten years seems about right for me too.

      Does creating a ten year plan run counter to living in the now? I don’t believe so. I believe it sharpens the focus on now. Instead of going with the flow you’re making the most of the opportunity that now creates. And you’re more inclined to check boxes you might have otherwise put off for some date in the future.

      Ten year thinking involves calculus on maintaining good health and fitness, mental sharpness, financial responsibility and investments to achieve goals, relationships and career. What kind of person do you have to become not so far from now? What do you need to do today to move you closer to that? What do you need to stop doing?

      The future tends to be too cloudy forecast, but we can always move to clearer skies. Or bide our time. As the last year has taught us, the unexpected will surely surprise us, but if we build enough resiliency into our plans we can get beyond even the deepest valleys. We can only see just so far of what lies ahead of us.

      But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
      In proving foresight may be vain:
      The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
      Gang aft agley,
      An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
      For promis’d joy!

      Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
      The present only toucheth thee:
      But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
      On prospects drear!
      An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
      I guess an’ fear!
      – Robert Burns, To a Mouse

      Last night I saw the potential for a nice sunset down Buzzards Bay. I walked down to a better viewpoint and waited it out in the gusty wind. I thought it would make a nice bookend with the sunrise this morning, but since that never materialized the sunset turned out to be the only picture. I’m glad I didn’t hold out for just the sunrise instead. It serves as a good reminder to enjoy the moments along the way even as you plan and scheme and guess at the future.

      Sunset, Buzzards Bay