Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • Rest in the Grace

      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

      There is reassurance to be found in witnessing the dignity with which so many who, seeing the darkness in the world, have chosen light instead. There is calm to be discovered in poetry spun from words magically sorted together in clarifying and entrancing ways. And surely—even now—there are still wild places far from the noise of life where we may find stillness.

      If we are indeed what we consume, does it make sense to soak up the anger, fear and misery imposed by a world that wants us to buy in, or to shun it in favor of a more natural information diet? What liberates us from the shackles of a maddening world? With clarity and focus, we are better equipped to find what we seek. And even that which we aren’t fully aware we’re in need of. In moving away from the noise of the world, we may finally hear what was whispering for us all along.

    • Boundless As the Elements

      “There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth — an open-air art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.”
      ― Claude Debussy

      Listen to Clair de Lune again, having read Debussy’s purpose for writing music. There’s magic in the music, released to dance in the moonlight—and with our imagination. It’s a breathtaking journey taken five minutes at a time. Sometimes I’ll simply play it on repeat and write, that I may reach the places the piece will take me to. May we all reach that level of mastery in our own work.

      Debussy was inspired to write Clair de Lune by a poem of the same name, written by Paul Verlaine. The poem is breathtaking in it’s own right, and one can see why Debussy drew inspiration from it. We in turn may draw inspiration from each ourselves. L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune…

      Below is a wonderful translation of it by Chris Routledge in The Reader:

      Votre âme est un paysage choisi
      Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
      Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
      Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

      Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
      L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
      Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur
      Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

      Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
      Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
      Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,
      Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

      Your soul is a select landscape
      Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go
      Playing the lute and dancing and almost
      Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

      All sing in a minor key
      Of victorious love and the opportune life,
      They do not seem to believe in their happiness
      And their song mingles with the moonlight,

      With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
      That sets the birds dreaming in the trees
      And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,
      The tall slender fountains among marble statues.
      — Paul Verlaine, Clair de Lune (Moonlight)

      Here lies the beauty of the creative life. We write and create art that represents our verse, shared with humanity for as long as beauty rises above tyranny. Life is surely bounded with an expiration date stamped for each of us. Our timelessness isn’t our physical presence, it’s the ripple of spiritual presence carried onward through relationships (love) and our creative expression, as boundless as the elements (should we set it free).

    • Pacing our Quest

      You must turn back to the simple things, just as your dream says, to the forest.
      There is the star. You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things.
      Why not go into the forest for a time, literally?
      Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.
      — Carl Jung

      Up earlier than normal, I read a book of poetry by a well-known author. One singular poem within it, read in a moment of searching, prompted me to buy it. Reading it again, I can’t for the life of me see it the same way. Everything has its time—we are the ones rushing through life.

      Lately, I’ve found myself licking my finger to turn the page well before I reach the end of the one I’m on in my haste to move forward in my reading. It’s a habit born of heavy non-fiction reading, and forcing myself forward to just get through some paragraphs I’d otherwise be lost in trying to understand. That may be okay for textbooks, but surely not appropriate for poetry.

      There’s a lesson here: we must know where we are in our lives and adjust our pace accordingly. Our pace of life isn’t meant to always be frenetic. We can make a case that it should never be. One day perhaps I will return to that book receptive to what that poet had to say. In the meantime, it rests on a shelf with all the others. Books are far more patient than people are.

      Pace is the thing. The right pace will lead us to awareness, holding our hand even as we try to pull away at every new thing crying for our attention. We must learn to slow down and see what we’ve been rushing past. Just as a poem isn’t meant to be quickly scanned on our way to the next, our hours are only ours when we pause this mad dash through our days and set a more gentle pace.

      What are we really trying to find anyway? Meaning? Knowledge? Satisfaction? These aren’t scooped up like power-ups in a video game. It isn’t found on the next page, or the next chapter of our lives, it’s found here and now, waiting for us to slow down enough to notice. We must pace our quest accordingly, if we ever hope to find what we thought was somewhere else.

    • The Restless Surge

      Little one, you have been buzzing in the books,
      Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers
      And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues.
      Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike
      Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here
      And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the restless surge
      Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone,
      Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I know?
      How much do the wisest of the world’s men know about where the massed human procession is going?

      You have heard the mob laughed at?
      I ask you: Is not the mob rough as the mountains are rough?
      And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and rise again as rain to the sea?
      — Carl Sandburg, On the Way

      These days I see more clearly, and I chafe at certain things that used to wash over me. We learn and grow and become someone hopefully better than the character we were before. Each step is revelatory, each step confronts others with the changes within us. That confrontation is sometimes reflected back towards us in subtle ways. Pokes and prods—just to see if the illusion shatters or if there is a new truth to the story of who we are now.

      We rise, relapse and rise again in a lifetime of growth and stumbles, but our story is always set in the present. What has become of us? Where is this going? And just who will join us on our way, and do we dare to wonder—who won’t?

      “I am”… I said
      To no one there
      And no one heard at all
      Not even the chair
      — Neil Diamond, I Am… I Said

      This restless surge of change relentlessly washes away the sandcastles of fragile identity. We are obliged to rebuild them every day, or we are swept away into something entirely different. Made up of the same substance—nothing but grains of sand in our time, yet no longer the same. Only we know the truth of who we are, only we may hear the call. If we dare to listen.

    • Sea Change

      Nothing of him that doth fade,
      But doth suffer a sea-change
      Into something rich and strange.
      — William Shakespeare, The Tempest

      “Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.” ― Alain de Botton

      We know when we’re deep in the midst of massive change in our lives. Transformation is palpable and omnipresent in our days. In such moments, we hope we’re in the driver’s seat, though sometimes we’re simply on the bus. We ought to buckle up and see the ride through at any rate.

      This is a year of sea change in the world, and most certainly in my own world. We cannot control everything, but we can control how we react to change, and act to change that which we may influence in positive ways, that we go in the direction that we wish to go in. We have agency in our lives—we must remember this and be active agents of growth and transformation. Life demands this of us, or eventually sweeps us aside. Because life isn’t fair, it simply isn’t. It’s demanding and has high expectations of its participants. So we must rise to the occasion if we hope to optimize our experience in this one go at things.

      The thing is, one rung up the ladder of progress helps us see things differently than we did on that lower rung. We see where we’ve influenced our outcomes, where we fell short, and what might work on the next step up from here. Steady, consistent progress towards better on whatever ladder we’re climbing. Our story isn’t complete, not just yet, but it’s evolving with the times. Take it somewhere even more compelling.

    • Our Quiet Proximity

      Oh good scholar,
      I say to myself,
      how can you help

      but grow wise
      with such teachings
      as these—
      the untrimmable light

      of the world,
      the ocean’s shine,
      the prayers that are made
      out of grass?
      — Mary Oliver, Mindful

      Yesterday I watched a skunk shuffle along in that skunky way, sniffing and moving through the neighborhood. Bad break for those of us with dogs, and a reminder for us to be more aware. Dogs have no problem being aware, and boldly curious, which is why they end up on the wrong end of skunks all too often.

      On that very same walk, I watched a snapping turtle glide underwater in the stream as I walked over the bridge. The turtle is an active participant in the stream—I’ve seen her before, seen where she had buried her eggs, and expect I might see her every time I walk. But sometimes I see the blue heron instead, or the river otter, or the ducks moving through the slow August current. These characters aren’t fond of spectators hovering over them on the bridge, so I’ve learned to ease up slowly and glance discreetly down. And so has the pup.

      On the day that my father passed from this world, I remained very much a part of it, fully aware of what surrounded me. That we should rush through life without noticing the blessings around us is the curse of a busy mind. If my long goodbye with my father taught me anything, it was to appreciate the gift of presence for all it offers. It’s not a eureka moment, it’s a lingering awareness of all that is and will be in our quiet proximity. The light of the world continues to shine through in unexpected ways, simply awaiting our notice.

    • Small and Transitory Grapes

      How the clock moves on, relentlessly,
      with such assurance that it eats the years.
      The days are small and transitory grapes,
      the months grow faded, taken out of time.

      It fades, it falls away, the moment, fired
      by that implacable artillery—
      and suddenly, only a year is left of us,
      a month, a day, and death turns up in the diary.

      No one could ever stop the water’s flowing;
      nor thought nor love has ever held it back.
      It has run on through suns and other beings,
      its passing rhythm signifying our death.

      Until, in the end, we fall in time, exhausted,
      and it takes us, and that’s it. Then we are dead,
      dragged off with no being left, no life, no darkness,
      no dust, no words. That is what it comes to;
      and in the city where we’ll live no more,
      all is left empty; our clothing and our pride.
      — Pablo Neruda, And the City Now Has Gone

      Life, dear reader! We must live in our time, while there is time. That’s always been the message: Tempus fugit. Memento mori. Carpe diem. Time flies. Remember we all must die. Seize the day.

      We must remember our days are short and use the highlighter with abandon. Sprinkle these moments zestfully with awareness and joyful intent. Do what must be done immediately! For tomorrow is not our day. We believe it to be so at our peril.

      This blog will one day end. That it continues at all is an indication of the stubborn persistence of the writer. It’s merely bread crumbs placed gently in line, one after the other, marking the hour or two of who I was in the moment. These moments pass, and what is left are some memories, maybe a photograph, and some words published for all to see if they somehow stumble upon this impossibly hard to find jumble of words. But we bloggers know that the universe isn’t shifting its attention to see what our thoughts were today. The ego thus shattered, we shift our own purpose to growth, where it should have been all along.

      Words flow through us like days in a lifetime. These small and transitory grapes have found you today. But where will the writer be on this occasion? Somewhere further along, or fallen by the wayside—who’s to know? We can hope for a better place of awareness and refinement, but we know the score. It’s best to simply release these words of who we were today and not worry about tomorrows. We must each do what we can with this time, for we all know the score.

    • A Quiet State of Being

      If I had another life
      I would want to spend it all on some
      unstinting happiness.

      I would be a fox, or a tree
      full of waving branches.
      I wouldn’t mind being a rose
      in a field full of roses.

      Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
      Reason they have not yet thought of.
      Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
      Or any foolish question.
      — Mary Oliver, Roses, Late Summer

      The heat of summer has propelled the growth of the Musa zebrina (blood banana) plants. Bananas have no business growing in Zone 5 New Hampshire, but they don’t follow the rules layed down by zones any more than I do. I’ve had these blood bananas for more than a decade. I bring them out after the danger of frost, patiently wait for signs of life, and watch them reach for the sky when the days grow long and hot. The season is too short for them to produce blossoms, but long enough for them to thrive in their time before I reluctantly drag them back to the cellar to winter over yet again.

      My bride and I were talking about everything that’s happened this summer, and everything that will happen if things go according to plan (we know how plans go, but we also know that some things never happen without a plan). Life is moving along thusly, and we are swept up in the current of being. We are where we are, doing what we believe we should be doing, one blessed day at a time. We may thrive in our time, or simply dance with the days as best we can while we have them. We determine what we can, and accept that whatever will be will be.

      So many people work so very hard to be happy. As if you could earn happiness by how much money you make or how many likes you have from your latest post on social media. Happiness is not an objective, it’s flows from us as a byproduct of purposeful, engaged living. Purposeful in turn is simply moving with awareness towards something. Those potted bananas are trapped in pots, reliant on my inclination to save them from dying of thirst or a killing frost. Yet they dance in the sun each summer day anyway. Are they happy? Or simply living a quiet state of being in the time that they are given?

    • Perfectly Reasonable Reasons

      “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” — Mary Oliver

      It’s always the poets and the artists who draw our attention away from the straight and narrow path. And if we ever need a poem to call us out and force us to reassess what we’re focused on, reading Mary Oliver’s Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches in the quiet time before the world awakens to demand we fall in line will do the trick. We listen at our peril, for to do so is to shatter the illusion that this life we’ve wrapped around ourselves in this protective shell is enough.

      How long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters, caution and prudence?
      Fall in! Fall in!

      What are we doing with our time? Have we noticed, even as we’ve entered the height of summer, that the days are growing shorter? We must venture to the tingly work now. What is bold and a little scary? What are we truly working on but clever excuses and perfectly reasonable reasons for not leaping? Do we really believe the audacious life will sit in the corner awaiting our approval?

      What do we see? What do we seek? Go to it. For our time grows ever shorter. May this day leave us breathless with wonder at what we’ve done with the time.

    • Being Mad in a Prudent World

      “Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.” — Rumi

      We are too often prudent. We like to think ourselves mad, but we gradually move back to doing what is expected of us, what is logical, what will pay the bills and such. When all along our wild side cries for release. Do you still hear the cry, or has it been smothered to death?

      I’m not suggesting we each take the sum of our 401(k)’s and put it all in at the craps table, merely that we stray off the straight and narrow more often. Do what nobody ever expected of us now and then, just to keep them from believing they have us figured out. We are more than the expectations others that have of us—at least we ought to be.

      We stack our experiences neatly in a line, one day to the next. Towards the middle, we start to see a trend as our collection of experiences become our identity. This is who I am is as powerful an anchor as any. To slip that anchor in favor of this is who I will be is a scary proposition. And this is why most people never sail beyond that safe harbor. They reach the end of their days wondering where they might have gone but for a little courage to weigh that anchor and set the sails for adventure.

      I see my light come shining
      From the west unto the east.
      Any day now, any day now,
      I shall be released.
      — Bob Dylan, I Shall Be Released

      A blog is a form of expression. Perhaps it’s a way to let the cries have their say, or to document the gradual release of this writer from the anchors that once held him firmly in place. There’s far more to say and do, and following the heading of who we will be is easier said than done. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are we, friend. The voyage begins with each step away from prudent, towards what once seemed quite mad. We find that what was prudent at anchor is mad when we’ve sailed beyond who we once were.