I have lived in this house they called New Eden for 25 years on a quarter acre lot around the corner from Long Island Sound.
There’s a claggy pond out back, and a nature preserve just a stone’s throw away.
It’s Heaven, really, never mind the state road on the other side of the eight foot privet that keeps the peace.
The day I moved in, two bright green parakeets landed on a branch of the great old Maple in the back corner of the yard.
They seemed as auspicious as the lilac, beloved since first sight, blooming at the edge of the driveway.
Every year, I pray the lilac will bloom again, that the Maple will survive another storm to keep company with her resident squirrels and raccoons. And me.
She and I wept together when the grand Oak came down, and we still laugh at dusk when the rabbits come out to play.
Seasons come and go here at a predictable pace,
the sublime hush of winter steps aside for spring birds who sing in sparks of poetry usually lost in the busy buzz of summer
before the breeze of autumn shivers the knotweed and startles the monarchs who make no tracks, but the field mice do
tiny footprints criss-cross with bird notes and the straight firm steps of the coyote
turtles come and go, too, snakes, hawks, owls, and once a frog so big I thought he might be a prince!
this sweet spot has revealed its secrets for ages — snowdrops bloom where never planted, a robin’s nest appears beside a window, and salamanders tuck in by the bird feeder
just last week I discovered a small sliver of ocean just to the south, in between some saplings, hidden from view until now
No wonder the ospreys fly so low, and waves sometimes wake me from dreams.
There’s an archnemesis on the playground and devils at the pulpit, people are afraid of words words! ideas, thoughts, stories
the holy rage through traffic to get to their entertainment complex
pass by the street beggar praying he’s not gay or trans or black or blue or whatever their god teaches them to hate this week, this century
and history repeats
I had an archnemesis once she threw rocks at my face and called me a whore but names will never hurt me
it’s the rage I worry about the everything-that’s-old-is-new-again-rage fueled by the mouths of demons and poor pages of books tossed in the street, there next to the beggar who picks one up and reads
“He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”
In my next life, I want to live here in this crazy loud city where everything feels iconic and ordinary all at once, where pavement steps aside for flowers and small spots of cool grass, and trees carry the sound of musicians and pigeons, where the ordinary walk side-by-side with the out-of-this-world and I, anonymous, don’t care about reflections in buildings made of glass, where everyone arrives at the park by noon and it doesn’t matter who or what you are, because you leave soon, for a few bucks careen through the underworld, arrive somewhere else entirely, like magic, knowing where you were, and every place else, goes on without you.
I promised you a diamond he says of our courtship, but never a ring — and he laughs with that smile, like I’m in on the joke. We make a contract — verbal, never signed, then I invite them in and tell them my stories.
I’m charming and kind, in just the right ways, endearing and fun everything they want, until it’s time for me to leave. That’s the hardest part, as they forget the agreement, so I do it slow to start.
I pack up my interesting bits, then take back my affection, I pull at the threads of what’s left until there’s nothing to hold onto. That’s when they leave — THEY end it and the contracts breaks by default.
He sees me crying then and shapeshifts to the one I remember, pulls me to his chest and holds on as tight as that first embrace years ago, the perfect fit, the smell of old books and cedar, then a devilish laugh and I wake to the sound of tears pouring down, midnight thunder and wicked, wicked lightning.
This is to be expected. I don’t come with a pedigree or a PH.D. I don’t wear laurels or titles well I haven’t kissed ass (or any of you), and I know, I know I should have bowed low and deep before the queen but I’ve never been one to follow the rules or jump through hoops of anyone’s making but my own.
You’ve got a bit of hate there stuck between your teeth
cover up that weak mind, it’s embarrassing
not cool dude more wrong side of history than team spirit or patriotism, even
maybe patriarchy
kinda red car nuclear missile escalation compensation
if you ask me
which you didn’t
and wouldn’t
because you know already everything I didn’t say
and you’re gonna wear it like a badge of honor proud and defiant full of fear and lockstep down a path towards an epitaph that dogma won’t ever resolve
and the people went thirsty and the animals died and the viruses spread and the innocent suffered and the kids were slaughtered and the fires raged and the books were burned and the idols were worshipped and the empires crumbled
and the people argued and the people took sides and the people hated and the people judged and the people fought and the people cried
My path along the ridge this morning gives the impression of sky walking the fog heavy in branches that burst in cumulous tufts of the palest spring green like clouds, to be expected here meeting eye level with birds who suggest I should be singing
Val-deri, val-dera Val-deri, val-dera Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
It was New Hampshire for God’s sake and I hoped it would imprint us how could it not? those ridiculous mountains their shock of snow and sharp air so fresh your lungs get greedy — But you were miles away ghosts on your lead line climbing summits of regret a backpack full of memories bitter and sweet stuck to the roof of your mouth — which explains the dead silence yours and mine as we watched the snow fall covering over our footprints on the path outside.
The half-life of Uranium is either 4.5 billion years, 700 million years, or 250 thousand years depending on how you examine its primordial isotopes, that which remains of its interstellar medium its stardust — like us, formed inside of stars when stars collide so what then is the half-life of love? its biochemical chain of events a Big Bang complex interplay of pheromones, dopamine, and oxytocin elemental does it decay more or less quickly than that which lights up the sky? does it leave traces? its luminescence still seen sometimes its volatility, too rapid and unpredictable change just another reaction, expected meltdown, its core damage
I love these places of waiting this quite axis of the world a point around which things spin he on his way there and she on hers there they, together, embrace and part or run, race, return and I, here, silent silent and of no consequence to their what-comes-next nor to my own, really I am here-and-now, a great pause a smudge of time a nothingness into which pours everything peace, poetry, god
before the painted parking lines and engineered bridges before the pervasive blazes that welcomed every one before the storm that created a war zone there was a trail in the woods a simple trail that wound from an unpaved lot up a long, slow incline and down, slowly, into Eden or Shangri-La or Paradise or whatever you call the place that brings you back to yourself without contortions without effort except for moving and breathing and letting go and paying attention to the song of white pines, and the path of the pileated, to the fetal curl of spring ferns and the sweet Spring Beauty so small but significant you get down on your knees like a prayer whisper your apologies for the trespass weep at the loss of her secret spot, there at the base the Oak now fallen, our heavy footfall her sure demise
He makes headlines now and then one book and then another false tears and faulty claims a prophet for profit. How do you know for sure, a friend asked. It’s posture, I explained. No, not how he sits — though his aggressive leaning and pointing are tells, for sure it’s how he postures his point twists his words like he twists his face pushes his prophecies and perversions like he pushes the energy in a room hand gestures feign truth like magicians or priests at the pulpit, predator preaching his Rules, his black and white dogma with a heavy fist to the table so it must be true, and you must believe God Damn It.
From the fascia that constricts — wants my body fetal some days — I cannot extract the kamikaze pilot, tweeze him from his destructive path save those who drowned or the family of survivors who struggle, still, some days, to keep their heads above water.
I cannot extract the boy in the photo unawares and smiling while sea battles raged and mothers wept eyes blind to the the hard fist of the drunk who pounded on doors and broke happy spirits.
Some things float, you see, carry on despite the damage.
A most graceful dense mounding shrub with broadly spreading branches that create a weeping effect with the deep green, finely textured foliage.
What would the old tree say of her current predicament — wedged between the state road and the utility substation, her circadian rhythm forever disrupted by the flashing traffic light, her water source, runoff from the nearby shopping plaza
More than a century ago, she lived here on farmland acres, and they named her Weeping despite her attributes — a vernal fountain of perpetual joy — she, a specimen, divine fated to become more beautiful a champion of time
But the hour is cruel marches against the Sargent’s desire changes our perception of beauty sephos, Sepphōra, Sephora®
Her graceful curves and fountain sprays of green have grayed, and she is deaf to the song of her breeze
She is not long for this world — and probably for the best — we insist ourselves so loudly now even the bees are grieving.
It is certainly not quiet this morning… 5am and the spring peepers are already singing their songs, a chorus of them proclaims April! bright and loud and just an hour ago, the coyotes joined in rejoicing in triumph, that soulful sound as seasons change
and now the rain begins no surprise
April showers bring May flowers
besides thunder in the east was fair warning a storm approaches
quick or wicked we never know except soon the birds will wake shake off their damp wings call out to the dawn again another day for the lucky ones
There are tractor marks in the rabbit warren, that sweet spot on the path where the bittersweet and grapevines arbored the trail, where the sounds of commerce faded just enough to hear the rabbits waiting for you to pass.
It’s bulldozed wide, now four-persons across nevermind the rabbits or the winter sparrows who found refuge there or the jays who loved the grapes or the pileated whose only recourse is to tap out an S.O.S. on a nearby dying ash
They’re building infrastructure in the woods, you see plowing back desperate saplings, piling debris where the wild asters grew flattening out the turtles’ fertile slopes
laying instead their misplaced traprock paths and sweet-smelling lumbered bridges giving us more room to tramp about another ingress marked by colored flags nailed deep into the skins of trees
Tell me please… Will the rabbits find sanctuary before the snow? Were the turtles buried alive? Do the trees weep before the hammer strikes?
A lone osprey circles in the near-winter sky bides time with the resident gulls and wonders at the familiar landscape now gone foreign
The sudden slow change went unremarked, the memo of departure mislaid, and communal cues misread
For wont of thermals, aloft now on fortitude alone it flies along the coast — searching maybe or reeling in the easy, quiet solitude a spin, swoop, spiral dance
Perhaps both, like me — a jubilant embrace belies the ache of cold, empty air.
One of my favorite things about the work I get do to for my books and zines is the sleuthing. Hunting down random (often misappropriated) quotes, getting permissions to reprint, finding hard copy proof. Evidence for my readers — and myself — that I have done due diligence to make what you hold in your hands valid and true to the best of my abilities.
As a student of English literature and journalism, and as a life-long writer and citer, I feel an incredible responsibility to validate as many of my references as possible. To remind my readers, for example, that it was Henry Stanley Haskins who wrote “What lies behind us and what lies before us are but tiny matters compared to what lies within us,” not Ralph Waldo Emerson or Gandhi, and not Buddha.
When I was writing LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, in which I used that quote, I actually spent six months researching and properly attributing quotes. That task included rabbit holes like the quote sourced to a 1970s motivational poster printed by an academic publisher in Texas written by a retired social worker in Oak Park, Illinois.
I get a little geeky when it comes to that kind of thing. Like a dog with a bone. Truth be told, I love it as much Alice loved going on her adventures!
My most recent adventure involved Leonard Cohen and a 60-year-old book.
While I was working on the spring issue of MANIFEST (zine): CRICKETS, I found a beautiful poem by Cohen called “Summer Haiku.” The poem appeared in his book The Spice-Box of Earth of which there was a rare, limited edition hardcover edition that included illustrations by Frank Newfeld, a renowned Canadian illustrator and book designer.
There were several copies of the book available online starting at around $200, which is a tad higher than my budget for the zine project. Less expensive copies did not include the Newfeld illustrations, and by this point in the adventure those were key.
I did find and purchase issue number 56 of The Devil’s Artisan: A Journal of the Printing Arts that featured Newfeld’s work on delicious, offset-printed, antique laid pages. It even included a letterpressed color keepsake of Newfeld’s illustration for Cohen’s poem “The Gift,” which appears in The Spice-Box of Earth.
I went on to find a bookseller in Canada, Steven Temple, who owns a copy of the 1961 edition. Searching through the 10,000 books he attends to in his home-based bookshop, he found and took the photo of “Summer Haiku” that appears in CRICKETS.
Of course, I was still curious. What did the rest of the book look like? How many poems were there? How many illustrations? How could I see it? Read it?
My local library did not have a copy of the book, nor did Google Books. According to a 2016 article in Toronto Life, the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is “home to 140 banker’s boxes worth of Cohen’s archives” including “handwritten notes and letters, portraits, CDs, paintings, novel manuscripts, books, early drafts of his poetry and lyrics, and even art he made when he lived as a Buddhist monk.” Would it include a digital copy of The Spice-Box of Earth?
It did not.
Nor did the online Library and Archives of Canada or the Canadian Electronic Library. But on the Hathi Trust Digital Library website there was a helpful “Find in a Library” link that, when clicked, revealed some familiar and within-driving-distance names: Yale University, Wesleyan University, Connecticut College.
Lightbulb! I immediately emailed a woman I know at our local library, Deb Trofatter, who is the Associate Librarian for Reference Services and Technology, and asked…by any chance…can you get a copy of…
Which is how, on May 15, I came to have in my hands a 60-year-old hardcover copy of Leonard Cohen’s The Spice-Box of Earth to savor and share.
NOTES & LINKS
• The Spice-Box of Earth, illustrated by Frank Newfeld. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1961).
Alice photo from a Fortnum & Mason (London) holiday window display, possibly 2006. Photographer not found yet.
MANIFEST (zine): Crickets is a riff and a rant about the consequences of creative bravery. It’s a 24-page, full color booklet that includes a curated Spotify playlist for your listening pleasure. Click here to order your copy today!
The storm took so much it’s difficult to consider — gone the familiar, the known path. Feet so sure there was no need to gauge progress. It was how I became present again, how I stepped back in the moment.
It was where I could breathe, let go, release my rooted stride. Slough off thoughts. Embrace the solitude with just a heartbeat and birdsong for company.
But her wide canopy of solace is gone now, and I have been hobbled.
Those sacred spaces of breath and respite are changed.
And so am I.
So I take a different path this morning and it comforts me.
It whispers…
This rabbit will caretake the old path.
This turtle, hopeful, lays its eggs. As does the robin.
Part of this snake is here but its heart has moved forward,
and this spider writes her poems in the spaces left behind.
Perhaps it is the same flock,
the one I met years ago,
the one that startled me
here on this shore
that very first walk,
when every rock and curve,
every wind and wave
was unfamiliar still.
Perhaps it knows me now,
this flock of small fidgety birds,
always nervous or impatient,
quickened by anticipation of
the next wave, skittering
to the beat of their sharp trills, quickly quickly ahead
never near enough for hello again.
Until this morning when I,
in keen focus on a resting shell,
became for a moment
likewise and warmed by the sun,
looked up to find myself surrounded,
heart quickened and nervous
that one false move would startle them,
their gathering at my feet.
The new white tuft in my hair
reminds me of the rabbit
who lived in my yard last spring.
I called her Idiom,
soft brown fur, also white tufted,
she taking time to smell roses
when I could not.
Now there is all the time in the world
to smell roses,
to smell daffodils, tulips, lilacs, iris, peonies
each in succession, not waiting for us
or virus or waves or protests or
the great collective consciousness to
wake the fuck up and see how it’s all connected
the microscopic virus,
the pandemics of greed and hate,
the white tuft in my hair,
the small new rabbit,
the small new baby, even
who mews like all new creatures
white, black, furred, feathered
who may or may not outrun the fox
to meet the multiflora rose next June
introduce themselves to the clover
its bumble and honey companions
I step softly over so as not to disturb
their humble prayers or mine
to a god who needs no standard,
requires no bloodletting,
asks no more than sweet, simple reverence
The contrast of
misty gray
against
May green
in the treetops
out the window
tells me it’s raining
before I even hear
the gentle tapping
on leaves
and grass
and spring flowers
bowed in gratitude
for the veil of quiet
descending
even poets bow
for the respite stay inside
the rain says, there’s a poem waiting
I’m in the woods.
Grandgirl says
as she steps her
wee self off the trail
and into the leaves
then gallops
ahead to chase
the butterfly
see the meadow I’m in the woods!
he says, too,
as Nephew leaps
from the inside
breathes the outside
and careens
down a path
in front of us
climbing rocks
light saber at the ready
running
running
running
randomactsofwriting.net 