Atopia

Notes from Nowhere

laugardagur, október 01, 2005

This dewdrop world

I feel dead to the world. I came to the cemetry on the edge of town - I knew that this is was beautiful place, that if I could open my eyes and my heart, the trees would reach out to me with long slender limbs and bring me into place, into line. The gravestones that speak of lives lived fully or cut off in their primes could communicate in their stony, monumental way of how to live, right Now. Even the squirrels, or the family out to pay respect on their Saturday, the folly, the chapel, or the endless collections of variously redded chestnut leaves, might wake me to the moment and back into life. But I am behind a veil, my heart is heavy, my head is bowed low. I have upset a loved one, a friend is going away indefinitely, and I am leaving my home. How I wish for eloquence, for endurance, for permanence. I cannot have them now, but I wish to lay this sadness down here and sing my fickle friend, beauty, back into my tired life.

'This dewdrop world
Is but a dewdrop world
And yet . .
,
...And yet'

- Issa

The way conditions conspire together and bring forward these and other miracles; friendship, falling leaves, flight; is a rare constant, and constantly surprising, ultimately delighting and at the same time threatening and resoundingly heartbreaking. I'm sitting on a growth in the trunk of a huge old beech tree under her generous wide canopy, sheltering; within and without feeling the tectonic plates of the seasons make their cyclic frictious meetings about me.

Summer endures a parry of rain from his inevitable successor. Autumn swiftly rounds on him and enters in again with grave intention, locking horns, shaking the leaves from the wreath on Summer's head. Then he retreats, leaving a colder blue, emptier sky. He rounds once more, with a hunger in his eye, and the old senior knows it's time to retire. Ground rising, shaking, the cloud army of Autumn floods the sky and toasts victory with a shower of rain.

Soon summer will be a memory and a remembered hope, and I'll forget the shining intensity of the year's zenith; the chestnuts and the pumpkins will bring me back to simplicity, back to earth, but as payment the fleeting season will ask another haiku for pasts and passing, and some long, strange offering, for the return of that hiding, beaten Sun.

In memory of Albert Thomas Tyler
1845 - 1945
And Gwendoline

1 Comments:

At 11:13 f.h., Anonymous Nafnlaus said...

hey lovely anonblog friend! good to read some of your musings - not enough time to really take you in but will visit again soon - i'm so excited by this blogging (totally new concept to me) that i've blogged myself up immediately - you can find me at jowace.blogspot.com
much love to you....

 

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