Miscellany

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver

 

It may not be the Beach Boys for all of us but who hasn’t a headful of songs that conjure up thoughts like these?

Cruising with the Beach Boys 

So strange to hear that song again tonight

Traveling on business in a rented car

Miles from anywhere I’ve been before.

And now a tune I haven’t heard for years

Probably not since it last left the charts

Back in L.A. in 1969.

I can’t believe I know the words by heart

And can’t think of a girl to blame them on.

Every lovesick summer has its song,

And this one I pretended to despise,

But if I was alone when it came on,

I turned it up full-blast to sing along —

A primal scream in croaky baritone,

The notes all flat, the lyrics mostly slurred.

No wonder I spent so much time alone

Making the rounds in Dad’s old Thunderbird.

Some nights I drove down to the beach to park

And walk along the railings of the pier.

The water down below was cold and dark,

The waves monotonous against the shore.

The darkness and the mist, the midnight sea,

The flickering lights reflected from the city —

A perfect setting for a boy like me,

The Cecil B. DeMille of my self-pity.

I thought by now I’d left those nights behind,

Lost like the girls that I could never get,

Gone with the years, junked with the old T-Bird.

But one old song, a stretch of empty road,

Can open up a door and let them fall

Tumbling like boxes from a dusty shelf,

Tightening my throat for no reason at all,

Bringing on tears shed only for myself.

“Cruising with the Beach Boys” by Dana Gioia from 99 Poems. © Graywolf Press, 2016.

 

May we be the ones

May we raise children
who love the unloved
things – the dandelion, the
worms and spiderlings.
Children who sense
the rose needs the thorn

& run into rainswept days
the same way they
turn towards sun…

And when they’re grown &
someone has to speak for those
who have no voice

may they draw upon that
wilder bond, those days of
tending tender things

and be the ones.

Nicolette Sowder

 

Autumn

“Autumn is the slow movement;

We gather our harvest and thank the lofty dusk.

Although glad for the grain, we are 

Aware of the husk.”

Philip Larkin

 

Soft water

As single-stem mixers tend to dominate, the days are fading when contemporary writing has to distinguish between cold or hot taps. At Ham House, they used to go one further with a ‘soft’ tap for rainwater – always my mother’s favourite for washing hair. However, she would have been more than happy to have had a hot tap!

Dreams

One can feel the beginnings of madness in the frustration of trying to remember dreams on waking.