Browsed by
Category: writing

Old Snow

Old Snow

Comments 1 comment

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

Home

Home

Comments 1 comment

There is one thing in my life that, for better or for worse, I cannot change, one thing that has powerfully shaped my sense of identity, that I am rootless. Born in Pasadena, raised in Philadelphia, in town and in suburbs, then scattered across midwest and northeast in adolescence.

Grade four: Oakmont School, Havertown, Pennsylvania; best friend, Hunter Clouse; no girlfriend. Grades five and six: Red Cedar School, East Lansing, Michigan; best friend, Carlos Malferrari, girlfriend, Pam Nystrom. Grade seven: Huntingdon Junior High School, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; best friend, Stephen Katz, girlfriend, Liz. Grade eight: East Lansing Junior High School, East Lansing, Michigan; best friend, David Backstrom, girlfriend, Kathy Lockwood. Grade nine: Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, Hamilton, Massachusetts; best friend, Charlie Barker, girlfriend, Holly Cone.

Six years, five different homes, five different schools. Dear friends made and lost. Always letting go. Always starting over. Always the new kid. No place to be from. No companions to grow up with. No extended family because half of the extended family is half a country away and the other half is a whole country away and I know little, so little of their stories.

Who are you? Where are you from? Who are your people? Where is your home?

        “O Lord, you have always been our home.”

The Lord has been my home. From the age of four, I have known that before I was my mother’s son, before I was my father’s son, I am a child of God. That is where I live and breathe and have my being, in a space, spiritual and material, that is God’s own creation. Everything I see, I see through that lens. Everything I am or strive to be is measured against that sense of belonging.

For better or for worse. I am grateful, so grateful, for always being home, always being held in God’s embrace wherever I am, whatever may befall me. I am grateful, so grateful for a rich and varied life, for friends from Brazil and India and Argentina and Liberia, Jewish and Mormon and Hindi and Buddhist, musicians and athletes and scholars and thespians.

But I crave roots. I crave a human identity: ethnic or cultural, familial or regional. Which is why I was thrilled to discover, among my father’s papers, years after his death, a genealogy and family tree researched and published the year I was born by a cousin of my father’s mother, Jessie Laing Sibbet. Nearing the age of seventy, after retiring from my life’s work, after traveling three times to Scotland and falling in love with the land and its people, I have learned what I never knew, that I am one quarter Scottish, that my people come from Markinch in Kirkcaldy, that there is a place from which I come, at least from which a part of me comes.

I am hungry and thirsty to know more, to let this wanderer see where the journey began, to push down roots, to lay claim to a home, which though never was nor never will be where I live, is mine.

Free

Free

Comments 1 comment

The latest from my Tuesday morning writers group. Our prompt this morning was: “Describe a time in your life you felt entirely free, truly yourself.”  This is what I wrote …

It was beautiful. The world was beautiful, the world that was my kayak, a paddle, the amniotic waters of Blue Hill Bay, and whatever happened to hold my gaze as I floated along the Brooklin shoreline.

I had launched that morning from Center Harbor, sliding my kayak into the water from the pebbly beach below the Brooklin Boat Yard, intending to paddle the fifteen or so miles to the South Blue Hill town wharf. I slipped past Chatto Island, paddling south and east down the Reach. My arms and torso settled into a steady rhythm, boat and body melded, a single machine, quiet and smooth and efficient.

I paddled past the Torreys, the Babsons, Hog and Harbor. It had been an hour or so, I suppose, but time and even distance mattered little. What mattered was simply being there, dipping my fingers into the cool waters, feeling the glide of the boat under my hips, delighting in the marine paradise that is Maine.

Turning north around Naskeag, making steady progress across the mouth of Herrick Bay towards Flye Point, the easy rhythm continued uninterrupted, and I marveled at how far I had come already, so quickly, so easily, and with such joy. Halfway already!

As I neared the base of Harriman Point, I celebrated the day, this wondrous and beautiful day that I had chosen for my expedition: light breeze, calm waters, smooth sailing. I had no more finished this thought, when I looked ahead to see a dark and angry and turbulent shadow rushing toward me down the bay from the north, a sailor’s cat’s paw multiplied a thousand times.

I beached on Harriman’s Point scouting the route that would take me across Blue Hill Bay to the wharf. What did I have left? Four miles, five miles? I waited for a lull, but no lull came, just more wind, relentless and furious. I thought of hiking overland, but I had no phone, no way of letting my wife know where I has landed, where to find me.

So I launched.

There was no smooth and easy rhythm now, but an all-consuming fight for survival, no steady progress, but a battle for each yard, each foot, each inch. Right blade, left blade, dig, dig, stroke, stroke, pull, pull. Soon, all too soon, arms and upper body and will were exhausted, but I dare not break this new and frenzied rhythm. If I stopped paddling even for a moment, I would lose all my precious gains or be swept back onto the point. So, dig, dig, stroke, stroke, pull, pull.

I still waited for a lull, but wind and surf only grew more intense, twenty-five knot winds and three foot waves. Right blade, left blade, dig, dig, pull, pull, never stopped, but at the same time I had to fight to remain upright, all the time imagining where and how I and my boat would be pushed by the storm if I were to capsize, and whether either of us would survive it.

Wind blew into my face and waves crashed over the bow and gunwales of my boat, drenching me in cold and salty ocean. I screamed at them. I screamed aloud into the wind and waves shouting at them to leave me alone, to let me go. Every moment, all my moments, were now the same, the ocean, my boat and me locked in eternal struggle, the sea forcing its will on me and me refusing to relent. This was my life, this is my life. I had never been so trapped, so held against my will, so threatened by irresistible powers so far far beyond my own. And I had never felt so free, so much myself …

Eggemoggin Reach Review book cover

 

Also, we have just published Eggemoggin Reach Review Volume III, an anthology of poetry and prose from members of the Deer Isle Writers’ Group. I have five poems and two essays in the anthology. The book is available through Blue Hill Books.

Memory speaks

Memory speaks

Comments 1 comment

sometimes memory speaks unbidden
        unwelcome intruder
        harping haranguing harassing
        suffering no rebuttal
        to its damning accusations

sometimes memory speaks summoned
        happy companion
        buoying brightening blessing
        empowering the miracle
        of tasting the same joy twice

sometimes memory speaks uncertain
        unreliable witness
        hedging hemming hawing
        groping for shadowy apparitions
        that elude discovery

sometimes memory speaks in conversation
        incomparable interlocutor
        delineating defining delighting
        weaving disparate moments
        into a seamless story

and sometimes memory speaks simply
        simply speaks
        enfolding encouraging enthralling
        transfiguring a life mundane
        into something ineffable

Happiness

Happiness

Comments 2 comments

A piece written this morning for the Deer Isle Writers Group …

Happiness lives in the space created by all-consuming beauty, all-consuming because in that space, in that moment, the beauty itself, whether perceived by eye or ear or nose or mouth or hand, or somehow, simply, strangely known, is everything. The beauty is, is all the world to me in that moment, and I am happy, though it is not even exactly true to say that I am happy, because, in that place, in that moment, I have no awareness of “I,” the beauty, the overwhelming beauty simply is, and I am somehow gifted with briefly being in the same place and moment as the happiness that is, with or without me.

The stone, the rock, the enormous erratic, perched on the granite ledges extending into the water from McGlathery’s eastern shore, seemingly out of place, is very much in its place. It defines, commands the place, but would be other were it not in that place, that numinous space, surrounded by human activity, but regardless of it, ledges washed by the tides, visited by ermine and gulls, islands emerging near and far from the ever-restless sea. When I turn the corner and see it, when it is not just that I see it, but that in that space and in that moment it becomes the world, all the world, there is happiness.

The frenzied, but careful and ecstatic, interplay of cello and violin and piano, creates its an irresistible gravity that draws me, draws everything, into its orbit. The ears are piqued, are pleased, by the sounds, but it is the heart, the loins, the stuff of being itself, and of my being in so far as I may share being itself, that is moved, deeply stirred, transported, transformed, awash with happiness.

The waters of the creek run clear and cold and powerful, iridescent, translucent, an uncanny green, flowing, rushing, ceaselessly careening down the rock-strewn river bed bearing waters from glaciers high above on the flanks of Mt. Baker into the the ever-burgeoning Skagit River. I watch, I look, I become the looking, there is only the looking, the flowing, the sparkling, the cavorting, the dancing, dancing, dancing of the waters. And there is happiness.

I hold the two broken halves of the crusty bread in my hands and I say the words, “This is my body,” but it is not my body and not my words, and, though it is my hands, it is not my hands that offer this bread. I am, in that space, in that moment, consumed by a giving, an inviting, an all-consuming, but all-creating loving, that is so much beyond what I can give, beyond whom I can invite, beyond what I can create. I am invited into that space, into that moment, along with all who surround me in that sanctuary, and, indeed, with all who surround us in the sanctuary that is the earth. There is in that space, in that moment, a being, a loving, a beauty that fills us and binds us to each other and to the One from whom flows all the beauty and all the love and all being. And there is happiness.

Katahdin

Katahdin

Comments 2 comments

Katahdin looms — imposing, intimidating, unnerving — its implausibly enormous bulk dominating the skyline.  Katahdin is no singularly outstanding feature of this wild landscape; it is the landscape, and all the rest — forest, stream, foothill, me — we all lurk in its shadows.

The enchanting voice of my Maine muse, Carolyn Currie, cantillates from the speakers of my Santa Fe: “Red hawk’s rising on the back of the wind and she’s circling with an answer and I finally understand how to begin.”  Red hawk’s rising.  I play the song again and again as I make my resolute approach to the campground and trailhead at the base of the mountain.  Red hawk’s rising.  It is my mantra, my rallying cry, my anthem, as I steel mind and body for the quest that awaits me.  I will not soar like a hawk on the back of the wind, but I do intend to rise.  If it will allow me, I intend to rise to the top of this fabled mountain.

Fabled, renowned, iconic, Katahdin surely is, but, today, none of that matters to me.  Today, Katahdin is not Pamola’s mountain or Thoreau’s mountain or even the mountain of innumerable Appalachian Trail thru-hikers celebrating the denouement of a two thousand mile odyssey.  Today, it is my mountain.  Even surrounded by dozens and dozens of other hopeful summiteers, I climb alone — not to conquer an adversary or meet a challenge or check off an achievement on some life list.  No, any such motive would demean, demystify, devalue the majesty of this mountain.  I climb not to overcome Katahdin, but to be deemed worthy of meeting it, of learning some of its secrets, of being welcomed for a few unforgettable moments into its numinous space.

The trail begins, beguilingly beautiful, following dazzling Katahdin Stream as it ascends gently among birch and spruce and hemlock until reaching fifty-foot Katahdin Stream Falls cascading over a series of granite ledges.  The impressive cataract is well worth the mile and a quarter hike from the trailhead.  Undoubtedly, many a casual Baxter visitor ends the journey here, contented with traversing this splendid wilderness path and rewarded by the spectacular visage of the falls.

Beyond the falls, the climb begins in earnest, ascending four thousand feet in five miles.  The trail is relentlessly steep, up and up and up, not walking a steady incline, but scrambling over ledges and boulders among scattered glacial erratics.  I feel strong and stronger yet as the path grows steeper, taking some pride as my sixty-something body overtakes more than a few twenty-something or thirty-something bodies along the way.

I emerge from the trees at the base of the Hunt Spur, the crux of a Katahdin ascent via the Hunt Trail which also serves as the terminus of the Appalachian Trail.  Steep and long and difficult, the Hunt Spur is a naked ridge of jumbled boulders — car-sized, bus-sized, boxcar-sized.  Though marked by blue blazes painted on the granite, the way up is not always clear; every step must be carefully puzzled out, clambering over and around and between the massive boulders.  The climb is physically demanding, but even more mentally exhausting.  The immensity of the mountain, the unsettling exposure, the demanding route-finding, and the unrelenting steepness make an ascent of the Hunt Spur a daunting endeavor.

And a profoundly satisfying endeavor.  I crest the top of the ridge and step out onto the Tablelands, a wide, flattish, tundra-like landscape.  I walk steadily, part of the long procession of hikers following the trail roped off on both sides to protect the fragile alpine ecosystem.  We wind our way over the plateau, pass Thoreau Spring, mount the short summit ridge, and we are there.

I am there, standing atop Baxter Peak, surrounded by dozens of other happy climbers, but still very much alone, alone surveying the breathtaking panorama — Pamola and the Knife Edge, Chimney Pond and the Cathedrals, alone steeped in the joy of this moment, alone celebrating this mountain which has now become a part of my story and I a part of its story, Katahdin, my mountain.

home

home

Comments 1 comment

As soon as I cleared the last of the spruces and stepped from the needle strewn path out onto the granite ledge and scanned the panorama stretched out before me, green and grey and blue, I knew I was home. There were Cadillac and Newbury Neck, Long Island and Naskeag Point, Isle au Haut and Eggemoggin Reach and the Camden Hills. I could name them all, but it was not the naming that made this home. No, it was this space without edges, beautiful and mysterious, readily seen but not readily known, a space so much bigger than me, so much uncareful of me, yet unquestioningly including me, that made itself home. This is no house built of human hands, no hall or office where I strive to prove myself worthy. No, this is a home so much older, so much wilder, so much truer, a space, a place, where stripped of the need to perform, shorn of the need to prove or to be approved, that I remember, that I remember what I am, that I remember who I am, that I am home.

One hundred and seventy-three

One hundred and seventy-three

Comments 1 comment

Suppose you were to meet a stranger today and suppose that stranger were to speak to you and say, “One hundred and seventy-three.” Suppose he were to say just that, nothing more, nothing less, just “One hundred and seventy-three.” What would you make of it?

Perhaps he was thinking of days, perhaps of June 22, the one hundred and seventy-third day of the year. Was he thinking of his birthday or the birthday of another? Of his anniversary, or maybe of the day on the stream he caught the two-pound salmon on a Barnes Special early in the morning before the sun had cleared the tops of the spruces?

Or perhaps he was thinking of one hundred and seventy-three days ago or one hundred and seventy-three days hence. What happened then? Or what will happen then? Does he have one hundred and seventy-three days yet to live? But how could he know that with that kind of precision, or, if he did, would knowing it be a blessing or a curse? If you happened to meet him again tomorrow, would he say to you, “One hundred and seventy-two?” And would it break your heart to know his days were so quickly slipping through his fingers, slipping away faster and faster with each sunset? Or would it make you glad to know he was counting the days, prizing each one, fully open to the wonders each day brings?

Or maybe it is not days, but years, one hundred and seventy-three years. Why would he want to remember one hundred and seventy-three years past? Why does he hold the year 1848 in his mind? Was that the year his great-great-great grandfather stepped onto the dock at Ellis Island, debarking the ship that had brought him from Markinch to a new and unknown life yet to unfold, the great-great-great grandfather whose burgeoning family would make home in Vermont and Michigan, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, and now Maine?

Or maybe he has one hundred and seventy-three dollars in his wallet. Or is impertinent enough to ask if you have one hundred seventy-three dollars in yours. Or maybe it is a price, the cost of a gift, a Christmas gift, a tourmaline necklace for his wife or a remote control sailboat for his grandson.

Or maybe it is not days or years or dollars, but people, the number of people in his high school class. Was he reminded of them by the reunion he was unable to attend, remembering not just the number but the faces, the faces so dear but now fading in memory, the faces held in memory as they were: eager and ambitious and curious and hopeful and delighted, full of the unrepeatable delight of youth?

Or is it not one hundred and seventy-three people, but one hundred and seventy-three whales, one hundred and seventy-three known right whales still swimming the Atlantic, one hundred and seventy-three right whales bearing amongst so few the destiny of their species? Does he worry about them, so much that he broods on their number, speaking their number aloud so that speaking it may declare their existence, declare their right to exist, declare their need to exist?

Or perhaps it is mountains. Perhaps he counts the mountains he has climbed, remembering them as a group, but remembering each one too: the scramble up the Hunt Trail on Katahdin, intimidating and exhilarating, breathtaking and soul-filling, or the day on the Traveler Loop, the unforgettable day summiting Peak of the Ridges and The Traveler and North Traveler that he replays in his mind again and again and again, the steep and bouldery climb up Center Ridge, the brave and thrilling traverse of Little Knife Edge, the cliffside views of South Branch Pond just before the steep descent back to camp, the exhaustion and the satisfaction and the sheer joy.

Or maybe one hundred and seventy-three means nothing at all. Maybe it is something he chooses to say just because he chooses to say it. Maybe it is nothing but a number, a number that follows one hundred and seventy-two and precedes one hundred and seventy-four.

And yet, it is not one hundred and seventy-two and it is not one hundred and seventy-four. It is more then one and less than the other, not anything else other than itself. And it implies abundance. It is more than one, more than two. It is many. A world in which one hundred and seventy-three may be spoken is a world of abundance, of complexity, surely of variety, a world where if one hundred and seventy-three is possible, one hundred and seventy-four or even one hundred and seventy-five is possible!

And you, the one to whom one hundred and seventy-three is spoken: you live in this world where one hundred and seventy-three is, and where you are, more of this than some and less of that than some, not anything else other than yourself., a world where you hold dear your own memories of days and years and people and places … and possibilities. The next time you meet this stranger, what do you think you will say?