11 11 07
-- through metaphor to reconcile
-- through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Thinking about William Carlos Williams’ short poem A sort of a song. That reconciliation is difficult, even when I know there’s no real separation, no such thing as independent existence. It’s what Dogen meant when he wrote of mountains constantly walking. The bedrock does not protrude from the mosses, it wears them. The trees don’t displace air & water, but contain them.
The night of the new moon & the rain has not let up any, coming in hard twisting ribbons curling across the woodland. In a search for shelter, or maybe just restless, frogs leap high across the road. A sullen elk-wet stag, shaggy & hunched, steps out from my torchlight & behind the dripping oak at Camas a choirce.
The following day in Morvern, by Laudale, the wind persists, buffeting until the shelter of the trees at Aird Beitheach, the high birches, is reached. Leaves swoop back into these trees with the wind, dipping from tree to tree, up at the last moment to land on the topmost twigs, to resolve themselves into a flock of tits & treecreepers, momentarily leafing the bare birch & oak in their own fashion. At night small mammals are constantly running across the road, perhaps mice or voles, tawny brown & rushing from one side to the other before revealing their nature as dried leaves scuttering in wind.
Then, last night, pulled from the trees, the last downtwisting small birch leaves, despite the intense cold, become what they maybe were all along: flimsy breezy moths. There’s a brown owl sitting on the fence, fully awake, & I guess tired of moths.
(No ideas
but in things)
Williams wrote in the same poem. Things have their own ideas, they’re themselves, sometimes idea-less, happening, an event, walking their own way.
Thinking about William Carlos Williams’ short poem A sort of a song. That reconciliation is difficult, even when I know there’s no real separation, no such thing as independent existence. It’s what Dogen meant when he wrote of mountains constantly walking. The bedrock does not protrude from the mosses, it wears them. The trees don’t displace air & water, but contain them.
The night of the new moon & the rain has not let up any, coming in hard twisting ribbons curling across the woodland. In a search for shelter, or maybe just restless, frogs leap high across the road. A sullen elk-wet stag, shaggy & hunched, steps out from my torchlight & behind the dripping oak at Camas a choirce.
The following day in Morvern, by Laudale, the wind persists, buffeting until the shelter of the trees at Aird Beitheach, the high birches, is reached. Leaves swoop back into these trees with the wind, dipping from tree to tree, up at the last moment to land on the topmost twigs, to resolve themselves into a flock of tits & treecreepers, momentarily leafing the bare birch & oak in their own fashion. At night small mammals are constantly running across the road, perhaps mice or voles, tawny brown & rushing from one side to the other before revealing their nature as dried leaves scuttering in wind.
Then, last night, pulled from the trees, the last downtwisting small birch leaves, despite the intense cold, become what they maybe were all along: flimsy breezy moths. There’s a brown owl sitting on the fence, fully awake, & I guess tired of moths.
(No ideas
but in things)
Williams wrote in the same poem. Things have their own ideas, they’re themselves, sometimes idea-less, happening, an event, walking their own way.
1 comment:
after a wee bit of juggling with passwords I finally got this message box for posting comments to you Gerry. What a palavra! I like they way you are weaving in quotes from WCW and others. The journal reminds me of John Muir. You give me a feeling of being there - walking along beside you. The detailed observation such as the footprints of stag and heron evoke a longing in me for wild places. I hope to come and visit before you leave Ardnamurchtan. When will that be?
Larry
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