4 a.m., May 3…….
Looking up from reading Wolf Willow
…the clock quietly ticking…
suddenly I’m not alone in the cool
lamplit room:
Stegner is sitting there in the squeaking rocker,
rocking slowly, by the cold wood stove.
He says nothing, just a wry smile,
a knowing look, deeper
than his starry Manitoba sky.
Facing each other in old worn chairs,
Beston and Borland muse about New England,
blue blizzards and lilacs, blowing
endless seasons across the ancient glacial hills;
how gold sunlight shimmers the steep sand,
the white sea birds, cold blue waters
sparkling, forever breaking, shaping
the outermost Cape.
At the black window, holding a red and silver
balalaika, Pasternak stands vigilant
in an embroidered peasant shirt, looking out
into tall bare birches, cold spring stars.
He turns to me with that perennial question
on his raw-boned Russian face, revealing
the deep pathos of shattered ideals,
of war, and loss.
Suddenly Akhmatova blows in from the night,
chilled, scented with passion and dried perfume,
broken loves like tender blossoms,
drops of blood on late spring snow ….
And over in the shadows sits
dark-eyed Jane Kenyon: her fingers resting
from gardening, from making luminescent words.
She puts down her half-empty glass of red wine
and crumbles old newspapers with split kindling.
Her voice is rich with flowers, and the sorrow
of killing frost, saying to the rest of us
“someone needs to build a fire”.
*
*
–Quilla
From my journal…
*
*
*
*
*
From January 28.13
“Night Sounds”
A morning cup of black tea, toasted oat bread spread with blackberry jam. The hazy winter sun flickers through bare trees, fire flutters in the stove, wisps of smoke drift down the grey wind.
Last night I was reading again a portion of the Northern Farm by Henry Beston, one of the winter chapters I enjoy most, and reread every winter or two. Part of the draw is Beston’s excellent writing; part is my love of winter itself, since earliest memories of childhood; and something in me longs to live again in Maine.
Given that the wild north has a strong pull for me, like a winter tide. Yet it has never seemed do-able, or even the right thing to do at any given time, for a variety of good reasons, to leave the North Carolina mountains for Maine. But sometimes I second-guess myself with tinges of regret for not responding more fully to this inner call. It is a Loon’s haunting music echoing from the far mists of a northern lake.
Most of the time I choose to let those feelings go, contenting myself with infrequent visits to the north every few years. I have traveled enough to know that in some real ways it is better to visit a loved place than it is to live there. One’s senses open up to the newness—the particulars we perceive so readily: the quality of light, the lay of land, unfamiliar sounds, various and unknown plants and birds, even the unique fragrances wafting on the morning air.
And it works the other way as well. One becomes partially blind and dumb to the humdrum that inevitably dulls our minds and souls as we get accustomed to things.
But back to last evening. Reading Beston in the quiet minutes before sleep, I was lulled by the sound machine’s round of recorded waves crashing on some unknown shore. I paused from the reading, hearing some slight sound from outside, beyond the closed window. Turning off the wave-maker, I opened the window and listened to the winter darkness. Cool damp air rushed into the lamplit room, with that certain smell and sound of soft rain on fallen leaves. A gentle breeze was ringing the chimes, clanging the large one designed to make the sound of a sea-buoy rocking on the foggy waves.
Behind all those higher-pitched sounds groaned the low rumbling of a slow train, rolling upriver full of coal, toward town. Apart from the mystery and romance of a train rolling through the night, also comes the knowing that this lonesome night-sound is a vital part of an electrified civilization.
The quiet sighing of the mountain river beside the tracks reminds me that trains and electricity are fairly recent inventions. But for several generations, trains have rumbled through our nights, as if groaning from the primordial memories held in the bones of our race. Surely our cave-dwelling forbears themselves awoke at night to the primitive sound of distant trains rolling through the darkness, causing packs of wolves to howl.
No. But trains have long been with us, an integral part of ‘civilized’ life as we’ve come to know it, with a deep dependency upon electricity. Fundamental to that cultural and individual addiction is some source of power to fuel the intricate process of fire, water, steam, generators and thousands of miles of wire to deliver the miracle electric “juice” to our hungry homes. Indeed, both my recording and your reading of this post could not happen without it. Ah, how much we assume.
This process keeps the trains rolling slow and full of coal uphill, upriver, then empty and faster, back downstream to Kentucky or West Virginia. The steel rails were laid down long ago beside our mountain rivers. Still the great tonnage groans as it rolls through the darkness in the winter rain.
I stand at the window, and listen to the soft night music. As if answering my listening, the diesel blows two short, then three long blows, approaching a village crossing a mile or so away.
*
*
Ruach 333, by Quilla 