Lonely

If I had you beside me
walking this ocean path,
and we could laugh and talk
about things
we had understood differently,
turn ideas over in our minds
and laugh at how naïve we were
to proceed along certain lines
all those years ago.

If I had you near me, my friend,
I would not be so compelled
to the page,
writing my ideas
to channel them along.

I wonder,
then quickly dismiss,
the idea that all writers
must be solitary.

In my case, however,
it is true.

I have always been drawn
to places where there are few people,
and even fewer
with whom I have much in common.

I have had to accept this.

I have had to arrive
at the understanding
that it is a choice
between being awestruck by beauty
and being comfortable
in the companionship
of like-minded people.

After I graduated
from Vermont College,
my husband and I considered moving
to the town where the college resides,
to be around minds
creatively questioning,
stimulated,
asking more of life
than closed-circuit systems
usually consider –

family,
workplace,
tightly knit community.

And yes,
it gets lonely.

That is a word
that deserves far more embellishment
than I can give it here.
That is a word
that lives with me daily.

And I understand
it is the only descriptor
I have.

Time Warp

I find myself wistful
about northern New England.

If only I could live
in the deep cold anymore.

If only my heart
would not break
each time I saw
the desecration
of wild land
I remember in my bones.

Clear-running streams
with flashing brook trout,

even the shiny green
of poison ivy
along the banks –

forcing my eyes to remain open.

If only I could bear it.

But as with so much change
recklessly accelerated
by overdevelopment,

what I remember
is gone.

Fifty years
collapse into dust.

The absolute stillness
of the lake
as evening settled in,

loons cackling
over the long water.

If only my heart
would not break.

Because I cannot live
without loving the land.

And even now,
walking this ocean trail
in Hawai‘i,
our home
for more than twenty years,

I witness
what a hurricane
has done.

I do not use the term
devastation lightly.

Wind scoured the shoreline
like a careless giant,

grabbing and twisting trees
rooted in lava,
shallow in the earth,

upending them
as easily as a child
sweeping dolls
or puzzles
from a table.

That abrupt.

Roots exposed,
shade gone,

the familiar path
altered
for a very long time.

And so perhaps
I am built
to witness

the massive changes
our precious mother
is enduring,

much of it
at the hands
of my own species.

Ode to the Beloveds

As I sit here
on this ocean’s edge,
what arises is that
if my mother were alive,
she would still be part
of the close weave of my life.

I would call her,
probably now,
once a week.

And humming in the currents
running through my life
would always be
my mother.

But she died
about a decade ago,
leaving me an orphan.

Orphans occupy
a particular place
in the scheme of things.

My father was orphaned
as an infant
and placed in the care
of a Catholic orphanage,
which scarred him
in ways he could speak about
and in ways
he could not.

But I was orphaned
as an adult,
well after the birth
of my two girls,
and well after
I had begun to glimpse
something of myself.

Not my reflection
in a mirror,
but some sense
of my own depths,
when I was finally able
to sweep my inner chamber clear
of self-judgment,
remorse
and regret
over things
I no longer had
even a modicum
of control.

And so I come
to the conclusion
that the dead
do us a service, too.

It is not as though
we can bring them back –
not by force of will,
not by all the prayers
ever spoken.

And in their absence
we may discover
something more
of ourselves
than we ever could
in their company.

At The Grocery

Two women in brightly colored shirts ahead of me,
one man accompanying them with humor,
two pushing groceries to the checker,
one bagging,
all smiling,
but it is clear they are short of cash.

He insists on paying.
One woman fumbles to intercept,
both debit cards flying
onto the floor.

Exasperation.

A small-framed Hawaiian man behind me,
eyes cast down,
one can in hand,
and I apologize for taking so long
as I count out ones,
bulking up my wallet
for too long.

He says,
uncharacteristically for a local,
Pretty soon Trump is going to take this, too.

He asks the cashier
if they have a little splurge for himself.
They are out, she says.

He thanks her anyway.

Only in Hawaii, I think.

Later, after stowing my few things
in the car, I head down and around
the parking lot
and see him at his car,
hatch open,
a few small coolers.

I find myself horrified
as the can of pet food
is opened,
and he eats.

Ptarmageddon

Who are we?
Strange birds from another shore,
ancestors blown here, over land
tended by generations of first settlers,
people who knew, better than
we ever will, how to live
within conditions foreign
to most of our bloodlines.

And yet we claim our knowledge superior.
We assume wherever we go,
there we are.
Home, as we define it.
Not coarse, as we imagine
the lives of those who have
already learned to exist in its midst.
To our minds, they must know very little.

And so it is that we arrive,
over seas unfathomable
to those embarking on the journey,
seeking the promise of a new world,
employing the crudest of navigation tools.

And yes, there are stars.
Certainly shining upon us alone,
brave travelers, all.

Never mind those who have adjusted standards
to the conditions in which they find themselves.
Harsh to our urban-cushioned bodies.
Impossible to our often misinformed minds.

But no matter, we have answers
and rights, defined by a culture
thousands of miles behind
this New Land on which we now
lay claim.

If mitigation is a virtue,
then isn’t interference vice?

No Guns Required

Explosive, it arrived
just after we had gone to bed.
Sleep was underway.

I sat up, startled into wakefulness.
What was that? I said.

Groggily, he turned to me,
saying, I know what that was.

And told me that, years ago,
he had been working on a house
situated amidst Norfolk pine trees,
like those that ring our property now.

He had been doing something
to the house’s exterior
when he heard the same sound—

Crack! Like that great glob
of cobalt glass in our window
suddenly shattering.

And there they were, small seeds,
scattered everywhere. Everywhere.

In the morning I walked out.
As I do.

The grass, flowerbeds, shrubs,
small trees—

all now possessed
more than a few
pinecone offspring.

All Chris could say was,

what an amazing way
for a species to spread its seed!

No guns required.

The Sea Never Lies

Today the ocean is a turquoise jewel,
sparkling, crystalline and inviting.

Fins and mask in hand,
I wade in.

The first wave fails to render me breathless,
a sure sign that winter has passed for good.

The sea never lies.

Stroking out into deep water,
the bay, once shared with two other swimmers,
becomes mine alone.

And I soon discover why.

An offshore wind picks up,
causing me to flip on my back
and power back to the safety of sand.

Still in all, I have had my day.

Nothing could beat the feeling of freedom
this elicits, open ocean swimming, as if falling into air
before the parachute opens.

Upstairs

All these years later,
I wondered if he still lived.

He died in 2014.
Cancer.

The obituary tells me nothing.

He was a kind,
thoughtful, compassionate man.

A physician
with a passion for homeopathy.

I climbed the old, groaning stairs
to his tiny second-floor office
in midcoast Maine.

Wood everywhere.

The staircase.
The door.
His desk.

There was no receptionist.

Only him,
welcoming me in.

Big soft hands.
Warm eyes.
Presence.

He gave me remedies –
tiny pills
that dissolved beneath my tongue.

And then,
I dreamed.

And then,
he listened.

Like a clean, polished mirror.

I went to him
for nearly two years,

until we both knew
some of the deepest snags
had finally loosened,

and I walked back
into a life
that now felt,

as if for the first time,

like my own.

Morning Circles

A sparkling flash of white catches my eye.

Having more than once spotted dolphins
out in this stretch of ocean,
I know those cetaceans
would make more of the water.

As my attention narrows,
there appears a circling
around that tiny eruption.

Perhaps it’s only memory.
Dolphins almost always circle,
surfacing for air or simply to play.

Other small ripples and flashes continue,
but no obvious creature appears.

Before, on other parts of the coast,
I have spied flying fish,
their translucent greenish fins
flexing in the sunlight.

This is not an area for them.
Though once, offshore,
what I first took for an orca
proved to be a false killer whale.

And so I’m left to wonder
at this perplexing pattern.

There are so many creatures living
in these deep mysterious oceanic waters.

Middle World

There is no room in a world
converging on the hybrid human,
possessed of both its innate nature
and artificial intelligence,
for the magical, the imaginative,
the unknown.

For these under-explored regions,
these frontiers of human potential,
inhabit the middle world –

a world beyond reason,
beyond certainty.

And certainly the courage required
to allow oneself to travel there
needs no caveat that would prove useful.

There is no conveyance
but our own minds,
our own imagination,

our own ability to switch off
the rational mind,
to close out the society
in which we find ourselves
firmly entrenched.

It takes a willingness to suspend
not only our original beliefs,
but what we have absorbed as fact,
learned in school,
learned from the world around us.

We must let these preconceptions loose
in order to welcome regions
beyond the known,

every bit as much as early explorers
of the physical world
had to do in order simply
to set out,
to set forth upon their journey.

This is not courage born
of the strength of determination,
nor the steeling of nerves
of the explorer intent upon discovering
unknown shores,
different peoples,
a culturally unrecognized landscape.

Those explorers carried questions
they had not yet answered
because they did not yet know
they needed to ask them.

How will we survive?
Upon whom may we rely?
Is the weather kind or cold
in the lands to which we venture?

No.

The region I speak of
is not one that can be mapped.

It cannot be planned.

It must be allowed.

And the only rule,
if there is one,
is to be willing,
with as much heart
as one can summon,

to suspend everything known
about the laws of the physical universe,
about the qualitative differences
between beings.

There may be no handshake here
that would be recognized.

There may be many
who would attempt to sway
the traveler from these regions.

One has to possess
the conviction of a world explorer
and beyond –

the conviction
simply to allow.