Category: Series

2.11.2024 – quizzical sense earth

quizzical sense earth
far more fascinating place than
allowed it to be

In my reading I often come across a short collection of words by an author and I say to myself. that might work as a haiku if I could connect it with something.

In my adventures, I often come across a scene and take a photo and I say to myself that might work with a haiku if I connect it with something.

We had taken a walk today along what is called Fish Haul beach on the north end of of Hilton Head Island.

This is the location of the one of the first successes the Union Army and Navy had back in 1861 in the Civil War.

You can look out over the waters where Port Royal Sound and the Atlantic Ocean come together and I said to my wife that take away the few cottages you could see, and this is what it looked like back then except there were 40 warships under sail, moving a circle as they fired some 4000 shells at Confederate forts on the Phillips Island to the north and Hilton Head island to the south.

The shelling lasted about 4 hours and all the Confederates ran away.

“And nothing has changed,” I said again.

It was an extremely low tide and we were able to walk further back along the salt marshes behind the beach front.

We came to a pond that we have looked at for years but never from this side before.

There were dead trees and reeds and marsh grass and sea shells.

It was place and a view new to us.

And I thought …

In a few hours, the tide will come and rearrange all this.

Nothing in front of us will stay the same.

This view, what we are seeing, will never been seen in this way again.

And I thought of this passage from True North by Jim Harrison.

“ … [the] quizzical sense that the earth was a far more fascinating place than I had allowed it to be.

I was not inclined at the moment to blame anyone else for the number of ways I had been single minded in the wrong direction.”

I told my wife I wanted to stay at the point until the tide turned and wait as long as possible amd leave just before the tide cut us off.

I wanted to see it.

My wife stared at my and shook her head and walked back the path out of the marsh.

I have this quizzical sense that the earth is a far more fascinating place than I had allow it to be.

I am not inclined at the moment to blame anyone else for the number of ways I had been single minded in the wrong direction.

But I am trying to enjoy the path I am on.

2.8.2024 – God, it is something

God, it is something
face the sun know you are free
hear the undersong

IT is something to face the sun and know you are free.
To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth
And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean:
It is something.
To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands,
Clean for the day book today and the record of the after days,
Held at your side proud, satisfied to the last, and ready,
So to have clean hands:
God, it is something,
One day of life so
And a memory fastened till the stars sputter out
And a love washed as white linen in the noon drying.
Yes, go find the men of clean hands one day and see the life, the memory, the love they have, to stay longer than the plunging sea wets the shores or the fires heave under the crust of the earth.
O yes, clean hands is the chant and only one man knows its sob and its undersong and he dies clenching the secret more to him than any woman or chum.
And O the great brave men, the silent little brave men, proud of their hands—clutching the knuckles of their fingers into fists ready for death and the dark, ready for life and the fight, the pay and the memories — O the men proud of their hands.

Clean Hands by Carl Sandburg as printed in Smoke and steel, (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920)

Yes, go find the men of clean hands one day and see the life, the memory, the love they have, to stay longer than the plunging sea wets the shores or the fires heave under the crust of the earth

On June 17, 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Monroe, “I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. The pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect but the utility greater. It will make you adore your own country, it’s soil, it’s climate, it’s equality, liberty, laws, people and manners. My god! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.”

Two years before the Constitution, they were both future Presidents but that was a job that didn’t even exist yet.

As I drive to work and face the sun with clean hands I feel the sun on my face but cannot help but hear the sob and its undersong.

I read the news and I think, My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of.

1.26.2024 – fog, little cat feet

fog, little cat feet
sits looking over harbor
on silent haunches

From Fog in Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg (Henry Holt and Company, 1916).

I will bet you one dollar you knew this poem.

I will double that bet and guess you knew it was Mr. Sandburg.

I will double that bet and guess that its the only poem by Mr. Sandburg you know.

Maybe a safe bet, but if there are two things I hope from all this is that most folks know this poem and that it is by this poet and for today, and you know what, that is enough!

So let us go on out to the kitchen and grab ourselves a beer to celebrate if I won or do the same thing if I lost.

Fog as published in Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg (Henry Holt and Company, 1916).

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

By the way with a 60 degree swing in the temperature since last weekend and with the ocean still at about 55 degrees, we gots ourselves a FOG warning here in the Low Country / Coastal Empire.

That’s what they call it down here.

1.25.2024 – briefest moments can

briefest moments can
have explosive power that
overwhelm the times

Back to Jim Harrison, but then I am driving to work so Mr. Harrison is much on my mind when I sit down at me desk.

In the sometimes painful book True North (Grove Press, 2005), Mr. Harrison writes:

The easily perceptible linear thread through our lives causes a basic misunderstanding when we tend to give the same weight to years, months, and days.

The briefest moments can have an explosive power that overwhelms the time around them including what preceded them.

It occurred to me that my own point of view was unique on earth but this was not a comforting idea. Wherever I stood and looked I was the only one there.

The easily perceptible linear thread I thought was very good especially on a warm humid morning in January in the Low Country of South Carolina.

I drove the east towards the ocean into a thick fog bank that reduced my world to about 10 feet in front of me and 10 feet behind.

Nothing was easily perceptible.

Everything was hidden, even the great Atlantic Ocean that covers 20 percent of the earth’s surface.

I got to work and parked in the quiet of a gray, wet morning in January in a summer resort town.

Quiet.

But there was this sound in the background as I walked the path to my office.

I couldn’t place it.

I figured out that through some freak of acoustics in the fog, I could hear the ocean.

Couldn’t see it, but I could hear it.

Moments that can change lives can cause a basic misunderstanding when we tend to give the same weight to years, months, and days.

Our own point of view is unique on earth.

Wherever you stand and look, you are the only one there.

But keep in mind this.

In one of Anthony Bourdain (if there was ever a literary complimentary combination like that of bacon with eggs it would be Bourdain and Harrison) shows, Mr. Bourdain spent the day with taggers, those folks who decorate subway cars in New York City.

These fellers described how they would paint a car in a certain pattern and then sit in a certain location with their buddies, a place were their point of view was unique on earth, and wait for hours and hours for that specific car with that specific pattern to come by.

Sometimes, when a train with car showed up, it would be going the wrong way and the pattern would be on the side away from that their point of view was unique on earth.

The briefest moments can have an explosive power that overwhelms the time around them including what preceded them.

And sometimes, those moments are facing the wrong way.

The truly goofy part of my illustration of the taggers is that THEY KNOW they missed the moment as they say the other side of the car.

How many moments, explosive moments, come and go, never revealed.

Can you march to a different drummer when you don’t hear the drum?

Lots of thoughts for a foggy morning.

To be honest, I just liked the painting Mr. Harrison did with his words.

I continued down the beach past the path to my tourist cabin toward the estuary of the Sucker River a mile or two distant. The moon’s sheen on the water followed me as I walked for reasons not clear to me. It occurred to me that my own point of view was unique on earth but this was not a comforting idea. Wherever I stood and looked I was the only one there. The few sounds of the village diminished, and I mostly heard my feet in the damp sand, and then a loon call ahead in the estuarine area. To the left far out in Lake Superior the lights of a freighter made their slow passage to the west. I heard a coyote out on a forested promontory called Lonesome Point and single dog.