I climbed Blue Hill today, to remember and honor our most beloved Toby, the very best of hiking companions. It is a fitting memorial.
We had Toby put down this morning, not wanting to prolong any longer his suffering or ours. Toby, you are forever in our hearts!
the horror is mothers contemplating adoption because they cannot feed their children
the horror is food rotting in the fields because it is too dangerous to bring it to market
the horror is a nurse watching her daughter be snatched by thugs along with her
the horror is aid workers and food vendors being kidnapped and raped
the horror is Haiti’s first president being ousted
the horror is Haiti’s forty-third president being assassinated
the horror is stinking piles of rubbish in the streets
the horror is children playing in open sewers
the horror is a teenager brandishing an AK-47
the horror is a gaunt young boy clad only in a pair of ripped shorts put on backwards
the horror is the interminable misery of a beautiful people
the horror is the insufferable ravaging of a beautiful country
the horror is the unconscionable neglect of a heedless world
the horror is almost no one cares
long damp grass grabs at the edges of my sandals
wetting the tops of my feet between leather straps with clammy coolness
and I am grateful
hobbled obliging dog lurches over the lawn doing his jobs
dragging a sock-booted paw behind him
and I am grateful
gangly Big Dolly flaunts its luxuriously swooping yellow and coral blossoms
drawing attention from the barren deer-bitten lilies surrounding it
and I am grateful
dingy spent blossoms still glom to the severed laurel dangling from my hand
recalling the brilliant candy cane display that just days before had brought such delight
and I am grateful
viscous mist rolls up from the Reach clinging to stark spruces and greyed blueberry barrens
belying persistent memories of sun-drenched and dazzling Maine summers
and I am grateful
among scattered clouds orange sun looms
still high in the southwestern sky
its orange light bathing orange sandstone boulders
jumbled in shallow emerald waters
from high above we first spy the pond
this jewel among the mountain peaks
an beatific island floats at it center
and dark green spruce crowd its banks
following sea blue blazes and stacked stone cairns
we descend the grey granite ridge
tired legs and tired lungs
still recovering from the grueling climb
at the shores of the alpine pond
we gaze over its glistening waters
delighted by the flittering schools of chub at our feet
and promising splashes farther out
after shedding our day packs
we zip off the bottoms of convertible hiking pants
and replace hiking boots with water shoes
eager for a fishing adventure
we piece together fly rods
and rig lines and reels
doing our best to ignore the swarming black flies
as we assemble leaders and tippets
I tie on a hare’s ear wet fly
with soft partridge hackle
wading out over slippery rocks
to a stable spot from which to cast
the next two hours will see many casts
a few overeager chub brought to hand
and six magnificent, extraordinarily beautiful, elegantly exquisite — did I say, magnificent?
Tumbledown Pond brook trout
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. The gift. The gift lovingly and impishly prepared for me by my loving and impish wife for my birthday nine years ago. The best of gifts and the worst of gifts.
She presented me a 24×36 inch piece of light blue poster board adorned with two flaps, two six-inch squares of purple construction paper folded at the top and taped to cover whatever it was that lay on the poster board beneath. The flaps were labeled “Door #1”and “Door #2..” It was just like “Let’s Make a Deal.”
“You may choose one,” she said, “Door #1 or Door #2. Open the door and what you see will be your birthday gift. But you can only choose one door, you will only get one one gift, one and not the other.”
“Door #1, Door #1,” my grandsons, Jack and Sam, urged. “Door #1.” What door should I choose? What thoughtful and wonderful gift might be revealed (because my wife’s gifts are always wonderful and thoughtful)? But what of the door I do not choose? What precious gift would I forfeit … forever? Door #1 or Door #2? As with all the very important decisions I am obliged to make, I stalled at the brink, not wanting to make the wrong choice. Finally, I went with my grandsons. Door #1 it is.
I lifted the flap and there it was, a most thoughtful and wonderful gift indeed. There, beneath the paper door, glued to the poster board, was a photograph of a Caribou, a Current Designs Caribou, the kayak of my dreams, a Greenland-style sea kayak, quick and responsive and gorgeous. I had paddled a Caribou in the Union River estuary in Ellsworth one weekday evening the summer before when Cadillac Mountain Sports was hosting a boat tryout. I fell in love with the boat immediately and knew I wanted one … someday. But someday had come! I was really going to have a Caribbean-blue Caribou of my very own!
“Open the other door,” my wife said. “See what you could have had if you had chosen the other door,” my loving and wicked wife said. I lifted the flap of Door #2 and a lump grew in my throat and tears filled my eyes as the image beneath was revealed: the photograph of an Australian Shepherd puppy.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
That summer on our return to Maine, I picked up my Caribbean-blue Caribou at the Cadillac Mountain Sports store in Ellsworth and have paddled miles of ocean in it with great delight ever since. But no puppy.
Until that next fall, when we drove to Hazelton, Iowa, and as I knelt on the floor of the garage at the home of Cloverfields Aussies to greet the litter of ten-week old pups, the blue merle male who would soon bear the name Toby ran to me and jumped up to eagerly lick my face. Because my wife is most certainly the giver of thoughtful and wonderful gifts.
duck harbor sunset
(an acrostic poem)
black silhouette of mast and forestays pierce
cotton candy clouds edged in waning light
dark limbs of jagged spruce and duck harbor’s looming headland
extrude from the periphery of the photograph
framing the numinous scene ever seared into memory
gracious moment intimating an inexpressible
holiness for which neither word nor image suffice
ineffable, transcendent, and sublime
into the familiar flow of an ordinary day
there breaks a brief instant
of exquisite longing
not for another world, but for this world
for what it could be, what it should be
what it can be
longing for synchronicity
for synchronous affinity, for multilateral humility
for unrelenting comity
for eyes attentive
to subtle tonalities of stone and leaf
and human skin
for ears attuned
to the glorious cacophonies of wind and wave, of bird song
and human speech
for hands offered
palms open, not fists closed, intimating the offer too
of a human heart
for mouths enouncing words
not to cajole or outdo or intimidate, not to revile or ridicule or fulminate
but to reveal, disclose, elucidate, to heal, delight, appreciate
longing for an unquenchable thirst for life itself
and for the glory of sharing it, one with an other
one with every other
into the familiar flow of an ordinary day
there breaks the breathtaking luminescence
of an exquisite longing
Old snow has lost its poetry
the feathery flakes dusting fronds
of fir and spruce in dazzling white
become gritty granules of grey ice
humped in dirty piles along the edges of roads and driveways
No harbinger of spring, only its precursor,
winter stubbornly refusing to give way
when its time is up
warm and sunny days belied by still cold reminders
of Maine’s longest season
Old snow has lost its poetry
no longer a hibernal playground, just a nuisance,
clogging ditches and slogging woodland paths
not a thing to wonder at but
only to wish away
Alas! to have left glory and beauty and wonder behind
your only merit the fading memory of
what you once were
now sullied and unsightly and unheeded
you are nothing but an unwanted vestige