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May 29, 2005
Green
Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
From "Spring" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Over the past two weeks, the dogs and I have lost our long views through the woods, replaced instead by leaves of beech and striped maple unfurling their summer standards -- even the tips of balsam fir have erupted into feathers of brilliant green, and the few white oak that thrive here have tentatively spread small leafy curls. Gazing off into the woods lately, I have found myself drawn toward these nearby leaves stretching out into the (finally) warming spring.
Although a bit behind more mild regions in this part of the world, our woods have burst upon spring with a well-watered vigor. Our walks often arc through the fields across the road, and today, I could hardly make a step without tromping on the cinque-feuille of a feral fraise. Even the much-maligned dandelion was a specular spectacle before the sun dried its dew-laden petals.
Orion, too, has found a renewed capacity for stretching himself on these sunny days -- after two weeks of nearly perpetual rain and cold, there are few who don't cherish at least a few moments in the sun.
As the leaves bring my own focus out from the periphery and toward more immediate concerns, Orion places himself squarely in the center of each day, and while accomplishing the necessary tasks of the day can sometimes prove a challenge, he reminds me of the real value of each moment in the day -- whether playing or reading together inside, laughing out loud together, or sitting quietly among the dandelions on the lawn as Orion touches his first real flower.
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye...From "Six Significant Landscapes" by Wallace Stevens
Posted by pavel at 2:41 PM | Comments (2)
May 12, 2005
One Hundred Haiku
From this year on
just carousing...
this world of blossoms
Issa
--
May morning
the door opens
before I knockJohn Stevenson
--
amidst the deep mountains
on my hat
only the sound of falling leavesKikusha-ni
I spent the first part of this week in the woods just southeast of here with seven high school students and Larry, a fellow instructor. Our trip itinerary included rock climbing, hiking, haiku, haibun, and renga poetry, and some discussion and practice of Zen, the later facilitated by Lorianne, who had graciously agreed to join us for our last night and morning.
One of the images I shared with our group, and which I took with me from the trip, came to me during a solo hike on our first day. The steady rain and low temperature had kept the whole group fairly sedate, as though we were simply waiting for the next day and better weather. I walked out in front of the group for several minutes, my ears attuned only to the sound of the river, still swollen with spring snow, and the rolling of gravel underfoot. As, I, too, began to think of reaching the campsite and finding respite from the rain, I caught only the briefest glimpse of a red trillium flower, bent in the cold morning – also waiting for the sun. I carried that intimate moment in my journal and my mind throughout the trip, and, soon, the students added their own moments of personal connection with the world. By the end of the trip, as we packed our things in warm sunshine, the students read the haibun they had written, and their words about our days in the woods together simply left me – uncharacteristically – speechless.
Accompanying Lorianne and her dog Reggie on the four-mile hike in to the campsite, much to everyone’s surprise, were Jen, Orion, and our dogs Pika and Pemi. I was in the midst of describing an activity to the students when, in an unexpected moment, there was my son, smiling on Jen’s back, perhaps wondering where he was, but certainly happy to be outside and among friends.
The warmth of the next morning drew everyone onto our cooking platform. Some of us sore from the previous day’s climbing, some looking forward to the return to school, we learned something also about staying in place. The “pearl” I found in the trillium blossom and the moment I saw Jen and Orion arrive in camp rooted me firmly in place on this trip. As the hiking and climbing become memories, I hope the collection of moments that becomes Orion’s life continues to grow but not outpace his ability to connect with and fully live each day.
I have walked this trail six times this spring, and every time the world seems remade – snow recedes farther upslope, streams “too lofty and original to rage” wend their way alongside the trail, their courses changed as snow melts back. Today, the tight dark green spears of new growth unfurled themselves to declare themselves in the rising chorus of spring’s arrival.
New blossoms in afternoon
pendulous yellow flowers
each day a new season.
--
Who says my poems are poems?
These poems are not poems.
When you can understand this,
then we can begin to speak of poetry.
Taigu Ryokan
Posted by pavel at 11:14 AM | Comments (2)
May 1, 2005
Yellow Wood
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I've been teaching this Frost poem again, and I always love my students' reaction to the ambivalence they inevitably read in the speaker's contrariety toward his choice. I also like the poem for its attention to woods with which I am myself intimately familiar; like many Frost poems, this one helps lead me on my daily tramps through the woods behind our home.
Yellow has long been the color that frames my seasons; late August's flames of goldenrod are bittersweet harbingers of autumn, and the final colors to fade from the landscape in late October are the yellow, downy needles of the tamarack.
Among my favorite signs of spring -- not that I don't cherish the snowdrops, crocuses, and now daffodils that have poked their heads above the warming soil -- are the wild yellow violets that speckle the trails across the road in astonishing clusters of tiny petals on sunlit slopes. Starved for color, I get on my knees on the black-trodden leaves both to cherish the discovery and to think ahead to the cycle of seasons that begins with this intimate moment on the damp earth beneath still leafless trees.
Last weekend, Jen, Orion, and I attended Jen's grandfather's unveiling. As the sun broke through wind-driven clouds and a chime on a nearby maple measured its own time, we remembered the man from whom our son takes his middle name. I thought about Jen's grandfather and about his great-grandson, and the life that he might now lead -- of which paths he will choose that he might live as rich and long a life as his great-grandfather.
For now, I'll hold him close as we look at the first yellow petals of spring together, and maybe take some guidance from him before I enter my own autumn's yellow wood (perhaps as my Virgil sometime after nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita). The choices may indeed not ultimately be that important, but attention to the path we walk together -- with its flowers underfoot -- is essential.
Posted by pavel at 4:18 PM | Comments (3)