April 29, pale Tuesday, clouds gathering, cool.
Check out my post from April 2015 in the archives column! It’s a poem about an experience that occurred forty-two years ago today.
April 29th is special to me for several reasons:
Happy Birthday, Summer!
And Happy Birthday, sister Cathy (may you rest in peace).
And Happy Anniversary, Elaine and Shawn!
Happy April 29th to all!
A Post-Easter Question
.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands
of the living God. (Hebrews 10:31)
.
So you jarred us from sleeping walk
To tread air in glorious light,
Fused two souls into single love
Resplendent gift—to you, to us.
.
That gift secured, where to roam now
In dark shadow of that shining,
Heirs to its eternal promise
In these ever faltering frames?
.
Are we fated to mourn its mark
Left on faces sinking in time,
Intended to wander long night
In prowling quest for crystal sight?
.
Or thrust forth to proclaim this love
As sample and substance divine,
Another offer transcendent
From boundless store the other side?
.
Only to witness proffered glimpse
Dismissed by world ensnared by sin
Not able to perceive or touch
Vision perfect, offering pure.
.
Or are we released to rest in
This permanent circle of love
Once granted welcoming harbor
Of solace and embrace sublime?
.
Which our calling, our fate
In the wake of sudden seizing
Or being seized of your brilliance—
Our harnessed longing, burning curse?
I clutter my life and my room
With potent objects recalling
You—photos, drawings, figures, urn:
Dozens, hundreds—each its own clear
Window on a distant moment’s
Touch and a present moment’s pain:
A cobbled together bridge to
A time now gone, a fused as one
Soaring span to a promised future
When the walls of this room will be
Wiped clear, the sills and desktops swept
Clean, and there will be no more gap
Between this hand that brushes the
Memory and the life that glimpse
Recalls.
Till then I reach to grasp
The tangible and summon your
Face—happy hurting man.
1.
Did you really think you’d be forgiven?
Really?
2.
Well, not to worry.
3.
And you thought you had beautiful sunsets.
4.
You always said it was impossible
To have absolute order out of
Total chaos. But then you’re back there.
5.
How to describe this abiding beauty:
Do you remember those mornings by the sea?
When the fog would condense to heavy mist?
You’d look out far and all blended the same.
But you’d focus close and each drop formed its
Own world suspended before your eyes.
And all of it, blur and vivid detail,
Wrapped you in its embrace and love.
6.
Did you consider squishing that ant? Don’t.
7.
Do you remember how I wrote about
The line of geese walking up the hill to
The pond in the sun, how it was something
I saw driving to work? That’s important.
8.
You know the fire of the sky at sunset,
How it looks like it could keep you warm
Across all those miles of air? It does.
9.
And the wide glow of the dawn turning to
A huge blazing ball then to a brilliant
Dot. Yes.
10.
Recall how in the spring we lay under
The blanket on the hillside in the dark
Watching the shad boats in the river with
Their lanterns in the stern calling the fish
Fat-bellied with roe to the surface, how
Though the lights appeared still in time they passed
Out of sight behind the quarrystone dump,
How you fell asleep in my arms and we
Woke covered in dew.
11.
Or when you hatched the eggs I found in the
Hayfield and the five ducklings followed you
Everywhere until we took them to the
Mill pond and you released them quacking to
Their kind and you thought the snapper dragged one
Under the surface as the others flew
Off? Well, guess what?
12.
The lingering beech leaves quiver in the
Wind here too–copper-colored, luminous.
13.
Those snakes I killed to protect our pups
Absolve me, lay their hands on my head, kiss
My cheeks.
14.
We are all one; we are all separate.
You tell me how.
15.
Turns out that in the dry creek bed at the
Bottom of the hill there was always a
Trickle of water but we never looked.
Go now and look.
In my fictional memoir titled Before the Mellowing Year, there are many characters of varying significance circling around the protagonist Zach Sandstrom. Early in the novel, Allison absorbs most of Zach’s time and attentions (and frustrations). In Book Two, Becca becomes a brilliant and magnetic light that neither Zach nor the reader can ignore. But out of this whirlwind of people and events in this very full and rich period, one individual inexorably makes his way to the center of Zach’s life and heart, and stays there. Barton Cosgrove is friend, teacher, mentor, father, brother, son–and these titles barely scratch the surface of their broad and very deep relationship. In fact there is no word in the English language for what they mean to each other.
The last paragraph of Before the Mellowing Year both reveals and defines this bond. Zach and Barton are at Christmas Eve midnight mass at St. Catherine’s Cathedral in Bethlehem, and they’ve become separated as they stand in the crowd during distribution of holy communion.
Only then did Zach realize that Barton was no longer beside him, a squat Palestinian woman in dark shawl and head scarf in his former place. Then Zach spotted him–a few places farther down the line, closer the priest, in the front row leaning over the velvet rope railing. With the priest still a few worshippers away, Barton took a moment to look back toward Zach, his eyes aglow with expectation and hope, the only one in the room.
My just published novel Driven Nests, Book One picks up Zach’s life on his return from Israel. It chronicles his relationships with characters both new and old. But as in Before the Mellowing Year, the inexorable pull of the narrative matches the inexorable pull in Zach’s life, as indicated by Zach’s realization early in the novel as he prepares dinner at Barton’s house:
His joy this day ran deeper than dinner preparations. For one thing he loved this house and the rural setting that surrounded it, in resplendent sunlit display just now beyond the window—the broad pond (edged with ice from last night’s moonlit hard freeze) off to the right; the deep gully between here and the road with its lofty oaks and hickories clicking in the breeze, a narrow creek winding its way west then south; the huge beech trees (their nubbled gray bark “like massive elephant’s legs” Barton said) bordering the drive and the turn circle beyond the carport.
But more than the house and its surroundings, he loved the house’s owner. And now, for the first time since the previous break-in, he saw clearly a purpose for his life, a calling to match his sizable ambition—he needed to watch over Barton and all that Barton cared for and about, to protect you the rest of my days. He’d never forgotten that promise made a year and a half before, had lived it to the best of his ability under the prevailing circumstances. But those circumstances had included a jumble of flourishing then failed affairs in both his life and Barton’s, and the associate redefining of what “protection” might mean for them both. After these last several weeks—the glorious and gratifying time in Israel followed by the break-in—a new-old vision of his future had emerged, as clear as the winter afternoon laid out beyond those windows: take care of the one that needs you most and is asking. Zach, never one to ignore a duty or calling, stood ready to rise to that challenge, whatever it might require.
As it turns out (no surprise here), that commitment will face many challenges over the course of the novel. The question before Zach, and before the novel, is will this singular relationship survive the challenges the world and their lives put before it?
If you are curious to find out, Driven Nests, Book One can be downloaded or read online for free here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1136959 .
I remember readings.
They seem church services
Now—awestruck silence and
Grainy air. But once they were
Carnivals of the heart
With tinted lights winking
In ordered cadence, bass
Notes drumming as inside your
Bones, and the fat fryer
Scent of transformation,
Faint whiffs of the other
You might this minute be
Or become under the
Spell of these spoken words:
Price’s baritone thunder
In slow measured peels,
Spender’s thin-lipped whisper
Not masking his wry lisp,
Welty’s bashful yet sure
Ethereal humming,
And Dickey stalking his
Green-eyed feline across
This lesson-room stage as
We thirty-odd watchers
Breathlessly awaited
Its pounce.
At the heart of the photo you sit double-face:
The one you grown, adult lines and arcs,
Blond hair, tan skin, breasts and legs;
The other you shrunk, infant in the elder’s lap,
Pale skin, dark eyes, mouth realizing awe.
Wedded generations, you climb down ages.
Frozen here, the older half looks down
In mute contemplation; the younger looks up
In stark anticipation. What will come
Of this union? Do the halves share wisdom
With their flesh? Can they save each other?
.
(The viewer, this viewer, knows one thing—
He loves the pair. His eye wanders,
Burns briefly in the white tropic sky
At their backs, before returning to their harbor
Of light and shade.)
.
To Cathy
July, 1981
How can I say,
And how can I say—
That all the longings
Of all the days and
Nights dark as ashes,
All the longings
And all the hopes
And all the wishes
Should float downward
As a feather—
Down down down down
Till it settles on you,
Your heart.
How can I say
That?
The sea that is you ebbs and flows.
Immersed therein, I taste you with each breath.
Yet I have no fear
Finding comfort in the sure knowledge
You are where I am.
jeffreyandersonfiction 