New England Septembers

I am a midwesterner, though it isn't a word.  An Ozarkian, too.  I like hospitality, and warm weather, and mild winters (with moderate snowfall).  I like being able to cross the street as a pedestrian without being honked at by impatient drivers.  And I looove sweet tea: Southern sweet and Southern strong, not the kind you have to wait a few minutes after swallowing to assess the flavor of.  Real tea.

I like the woods and national forests where it really feels wild; where the paths aren't all paved and you have to wrestle with the underbrush a bit to find that unmistakeably lovely destination.  I like towns so small and reticent toward outsiders that a foreigner is someone from the next state or even county.  Towns where no one has ever heard of hummus, and everyone's favorite way to celebrate anything is a barbecue on the riverbank.

I love windy, hilly roads that make most people sick, and red gravel roads (technically gravel, actually mostly composed of clay) that kick up all that annoying dust. 

But... there is no denying New England its claim to fame in September through October.  The colors are all the riotous glory Robert Frost wrote about.  This will be the second year I have spent autumn in the northeast, and it certainly has its beauties during that season.

Last year, a trip was in order.  Washington Irving being a favorite of mine, of course I must instigate a trip to Sleepy Hollow (the original), Tarrytown, and the Old Dutch Church and cemetery.  We took our way down through the Catskill Mountains and along the Hudson River, to cover Rip van Winkle country as well.  It was well worth the trip.  The old Dutch church is of general historic significance: it has been in use since 1697, and has one of those fine old pulpits the pastor ascends into via staircase.  In the cemetery behind it, several famous people are buried, among whom are Washington Irving and Andrew Carnegie (people leave coins on Carnegie's tombstone, apparently hoping for his good financial success).  But the main striking point of it all was how lovely the entire area was, and how the leaves teemed with brilliant color.

Old farm and estate in Sleepy Hollow, something like the van Tassels'.

A path in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery behind the Old Dutch Church.

Some fallen leaves on a slope leading down to the brook.

Light on the water.  This brook seems to be the one over which the headless horseman galloped.

Bridge over the Hudson River, seen from the Lyndhurst estate.

Now, of late the weather has been still hot enough to be summer-but the nights are much cooler than their Southern counterparts; there is a nip in the air, some days, and the maples are beginning to flame at the tips.  I believe we are on the verge of the loveliest season once again, and although I am always missing the Ozarks hill country, I am delighted to experience another New England fall.

The Colgate Tower, Brighton, NY.

Playing with geese held over locally on their long trip south.

Rambling...

Steve Curtin. http://www.stevecurtin.com/

I like to ramble, but I get lost in it.  They say Dylan Thomas wrote near the end of life that "the words will not lie down."  Now I know just what he meant; and friends and family feel the full force of it, too.  I say a thing, or more likely, write a thing, but it isn't quite what I mean and I keep repeating it but refining what I don't like... lost in an obsession to express a meaning, but forgetting the meaning in all those words.

I repeat it again, and he looks back at me with the pained expression of acute suffering as he says for the third time, "I know; I understand."

But I know he can't, not really, because I haven't truly said it yet.  Ah, me.  Hundreds of words, and only a single right one.  I know I can find it, fit it together piece by shining piece, a perfectly expressed thought or feeling, fragile and beautiful like a spider's web... but not before he gives up on my rambling, kisses me goodbye and leaves for work.  Leaves me exasperated and still trying one more phrase on like a girl trying on all the clothes in a friend's closet.

The truth is upon me but I generally refuse to acknowledge it, standing in the corner like Caesar's ghost. Meaning will never be perfectly expressed.  No matter what I do, or how I try, those with greater mercurial powers than I have had to admit defeat before.  "The words will not..." quite... "lie down."

Anonymous. www.commons.wikimedia.org

  That orbed maiden with white fire laden

Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor

By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet

Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer.."

                       -P.B. Shelley, "The Cloud"

I was thinking of this verse when I saw the new background for Scieppan with the moon in it, and went looking for a picture to go with it.  I chose this one because it reminds me of a place I saw in Poland, Łasienki Park in Warsaw.  I loved Łasienki better than anywhere else I visited; whether because of the pert, tuft-eared red squirrels, or the water birds skidding on the thin ice, or the beautiful neoclassical ruins, erected as such because it was considered so romantic during that period.

Łasienki Park, Nov. 2011

Łasienki Park, Nov. 2011

Broken

flickr.com

Flowers lying on the ground. Stalks bent

In wind too strong to bear and broke.

It was a simple thoughtless joke

to zephyrs, that they hardly meant.

Pieces glitter on the floor.  No shard

remains much bigger than the dust.

Lost grip, wet glass, and gravity just

took the counter-top off guard.

A stiff dove lying on the sidewalk. Dead?

Her mate still flutters near to ask.

The futile nest lies cold, forgotten task,

For only one life gone, for one snapped thread.

Words spoken in the heart.  The unsought strength

to kill but more than flower, glass, bird,

Defeat the heart and joy of the beloved with a word

And it will not return for any length.

Love and Experience

Every shabby or fantastic fictional love,
On screen or magazine or printed page
Or half-lived life scrawled over many times
Makes me wistful for you-not that they
Carry latent power, or potency at all: no.

It is You, you and love as strong as death
That vindicate the existence of the stories.
By experience new aspects of human nature
Open to me; I see the stories' meaning,
And I grasp, from inside-out,
What it was they meant to be or
Meant to shadow.

For spaces of solitary time they offer
Tinges of bland, imagined ease,
And 'fond imagination' shortly joins their side-
But not for long.

They are too sickly sweet, too full
Of over-dramatic vows and quick conclusion.
One never knows what came of it.
Perhaps Snow White awoke and found
Prince Charming was intolerable after all,
And being no very committed, flesh-and-bones-and-sinew
Sort of princess, left him directly.
One never knows.  So presently I shake
My mind and passions fully back awake,
To pain and parting, faith and folly,
Reality and you.

John Henry

A country man and railroad man, both he

And all the rugged workers on the line,

From future, past, dismembered.  Faces shine;

The eerie darkness glows.  His limbs swing free,

To wage one useless war against the sea

By blasting earth.  The measured holes combine,

Two seven-footers his; the drill’s one nine.

He won and died of it, shrewd prophecy!

A man today would never even start

To pit himself against the iron beast

And give his best before he’d say he’d tried.

The cold machine has atrophied his heart,

As limbs will shrink within a cast.  At least

When Henry burst his heart, a man had died.

Called

-Niagara Falls

Colored

sparks of splintered

light through prisms break

the shallow wall of

gray.

Rolling

waters thunder in falls

of endless height over the edge of the

world: just beyond, the deep blue mountains

of mankind’s desire

rise.

Notes,

the language

past the point of words,

search out the hidden heart, the

inmost core of

being.

Every day the silver cord is fraying.

He who glories, let him

Glory in the

Lord.

Contentment

The air between the earth and sky is pure,

A blade of frozen fire, strong with hope

That writes itself across the world. A gift

Illuminates our darkened hearts- full love

Comes blazing, in a ringing, golden glow;

Commands our blinded, quaking hearts to lift

Our eyes, our dreams, our fears, ourselves; to lift

The broken shadows that we are, let pure

Reality unmake us in its glow.

“You, heavy-laden: cast it down and hope,

For He is here, the One-Who-Is.” This love

Once spoke and worlds existed: such a gift

Cannot be earned. It is the only gift,

And utterly complete. A cross they lift

Beyond the shores of Time. There is no love

Like this, that uncontained by death and pure

Despair, must flash (in answer to the hope)

Forth from the grave itself a lightning glow.

This is the dawn, that in a Christmas glow

One single star proclaimed, one mage’s gift

Foretold. On luminary waves of hope

Extravagant, the inner storm clouds lift

And blow away, beyond the realm of pure

Imagination, leaving skies I love

Of azure blue, serene as peace that love

Has brought to me. The phoenix in a glow

Has hurtled flaming from the sky, a pure

And noble-blazoned image of the Gift.

Familiar strains of mighty music lift

Within the confines of the van. I hope,

When we get home (which is too much to hope)

There will be dinner left for me. I love

These frosty nights and going home; I lift

My eyes up to the hills. The moon’s cold glow

Has splashed the fields like milk. My sister’s gift

Is safe, tucked into my pocket. Pure

Anticipation  –that and the clinging hope 

Of food- has made me eager. Happy love

For God, for faith, for family I lift                

And happy thanks for healthy hunger’s glow,

That gnaws my ribs and is itself a gift.

“O Holy Night,” rings out against the pure

Blue stars with hope. The darkness is a glow

Of light and love. Great stabs of Joy, in gift,

Pierce souls, lift thoughts, to Agapě pure.