Alexandersmap

    Tag: Carl Sandburg

    • 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.

    • A Walk in Dense Fog

      The dense fog presses up against the glass, tapping on the window lightly, wanting to come inside. Or calling me outside. I listen and layer up for a walk to the bay. I know it’s out there, if only from memory. And walk slowly to the water.

      The fog comes
      on little cat feet.
      It sits looking
      over harbor and city
      on silent haunches
      and then moves on.
      Carl Sandburg, Fog

      The birds carry on their morning song, but not so many today. Early still. What does 98% humidity sound like? It sounds like it looks; muted and disorienting. I close my eyes and let my bearings reset. I’m the only human outside this morning. Or possibly one of thousands – who can tell in the gray billowing dance?

      Down by the water, surprising wave action on a still morning. The bay is restless, like a sleeping child with a fever. Fog blurs hard lines. Instead I focus on what it amplifies. The lapping sounds of the waves slapping on the beach. A loon hidden from view out there somewhere calling its kind. Reaching me.

      Walking up from the shore, the sweet smell of dune grass requests a moment of my time. I gladly linger and thank the grass for the invitation. The air feels different as you walk away from the beach. The waves recede, birdsong grows and the world brightens. Dawn is approaching even as the fog asserts its hold on the world.

      Much later, fog lifting, you see the details fill in. I admit I liked the ambiguity of the fog just a bit more. If only for a momentary change in perspective. And, ironically, the clarity it brought. Swirling in the darkness by the bay.