October's End

October 2010 was breathtaking - awash in orange light.  I'm always struck by the way each hardwood tree radiates a sort of incandescent light for a couple of weeks - even in the rain.  Then the light goes out  and a few days later, its branches are bare.

 

 

The Island In Summer

The way the bedroom door catches
so I have to shoulder it open
in the morning.

The way the fog hides the lobster buoys

littering the cove and makes
a small cup of the world.

The way the osprey pleats the air
on her dive and cuts the fish
so cleanly from the water.

The way the water sluices over rocks,
slicking a smooth black skin
upon the sea.

The way the knotted wrack stands, swaying
in the tide, like a choir singing
dark green hallelujahs.

The way you sit reading in the wicker chair
all afternoon, while sailboats
stitch water to the sky.

The way you look at me across the table,
and raise your empty glass to catch
the last clear drops of sun.

The Mount

I've been a fan of Edith Wharton's fiction for nearly fifty years. Last week I finally had the opportunity to visit The Mount, the Berkshire estate she designed and built in 1902. The weather was hot and humid, but the gracious peace of the grounds and the cleanly elegant lines of the house, inside and out, made me forget the heat.

The library's bookshelves are set into the walls and house Wharton's original collection of books.

Lines at a Wedding

The truth is no one can tell you how

to do this thing you've started now.

No one has the slightest clue,

not even those who've said I do.

Don't trust those who tell you otherwise.

From here on out, you alchemize.

Summer at the Circus: A Political Poem

We spent summer at the circus
riding carousels all day.
We saw elephants parading
and donkeys prance and bray.
Clowns shot themselves from canons.
A strong man swallowed fire.
One threw knives at women
while singing sweetly of desire.
Women dressed in spangled tights
careened above our heads.
Blue dogs jumped through hula-hoops.
The lion roared from his sick bed.
We lived on cotton candy,
Italian ice and chewing gum.
The big tent band played ragtime,
on trumpets, sax and drum.
The ringmaster stood before us.
tipped his hat and made a quip,
then declared the circus over.
as he smiled and cracked his whip.
Drunk on noise and color
we went home, our stomachs sore,
relieved that we were going
back to work once more.

Red Shoes

You stood there
in the dappled light,
dark dress and jacket,
body slight.
You smiled - at me -
though years and miles
had separated us
from college lives.
You were sixty,
modest and well-bred
yet the shoes you wore
were crazy-apple red,
like our joy
each time we met,
bubbling into mirth
that so often went
untempered by
a proper etiquette:
we danced in rain
and sang duets
across the meadow
hemmed with trees
where you now sleep.
We jumped in leaves
and slid down
snowy graveyard hills,
shivering, exultant,
laughing still.
When, on that lucky day,
we meet again,
I expect red shoes and
laughter in the rain.

Pictures and Poems

Lately I’ve been checking out some other blogs, particularly the “Blogs of Note” selected by Blogger Buzz. I’m not sure why these particular blogs are chosen. Nor do I aspire to have Shifted Light added to the list, but I was curious to see what other people do with their blogs, and then I grew interested in what makes a blog “noteworthy.”

The answer was not what I expected. It seems that noteworthy blogs don’t need to have many words. About half of these blogs of note are dominated by large artistic photographs, explained or commented on by a few lines of text. It’s a pleasure to look through them – some of them are very polished, and I’ve even found a few that I’m now enthusiastically following. Though these photo blogs sometimes stimulate my creative juices, their written content is rarely meaty.

The photos in these blogs are often stunning. Some make me smile. Some remind me of places I’ve been or people I’ve known or things I’ve made. Some make me want to visit places I’ve never seen or try something I’ve never done.

This may be a sign of the times. We are surely a culture in the midst of change. Yet I find it a bit odd that so many of our most noteworthy communications are mostly visual. That the written word frequently serves as an annotation to a photo, not the other way around.

Yesterday evening while I was chopping green peppers and tomatoes for a salad, I listened to a man on the radio read a short poem by Kenneth Rexroth. It was a poem about love and death and the passage of time and there was so much truth and beauty in it that my eyes filled with tears.

I can’t remember ever seeing a picture that was so true it made me cry.