Archive
05/20/10 - (2)
Noon's Shadow
This gloriously sun-burnished Thursday high noon, An enormous lone glistening black crow and I Have the whole boys' camp to our quiet-seeking selves,
Assuming my focus excludes the multitude of creatures Just doing what they must, in this procreative season — Spiders, birds, butterflies, chipmunks, squirrels, ants, mosquitoes, bees —
And the more elusive ones — muskrats and foxes, Possums, otters, raccoons, skunks, badgers, bears, and deer, Fish, owls, turkey buzzards, loons...breezes, scents, dreams.
I can tell that the crow and I wish each other no harm, Intend not to intrude on one another's solitude, Rather go about our single-minded purposes, in this preserve,
I my power-walking/meditation, it its foraging; After all, our primary responsibility is to nourish ourselves, With it sustaining its corporeal energy and I feeding my soul.
And so we proceed on our separate ways, Until, once again, our presences meet, at the Council Ring, Where the crow is poised atop the totem pole,
As it happens, on the highest carved image — a spread eagle — Eying me as I circle the most sacred space of my youth, The place where, every Sunday night, two months each summer,
I would gather the flames, sparks, embers of the logs Crackling, singing, whispering to me and my camp mates And pack them away, in memory's capsule, to last my lifetime. Not letting my pulse rate flag, I head farther out the range road, away from the cabins, Past the archery and riflery shacks, toward the gate at Highway B,
Then right, to the dunes, that my ensuing run to the upper diamond Might remind me of my days as a counselor, When those sandy climbs kept me in shape for college crew.
On surmounting the steep hill, slightly winded but exhilarated, For proving to my sixty-nine-year-old body that I can still do it, I recognize a now-familiar shadow in a nearby red pine.
Neither of us finds our "chance meeting" merely coincidental; I know this, though I can't explain its hows or whys. Both of us seem to sense something our hearts can't articulate.
Swigging from a bottle of water my right hand grasps, I'm off again, down, down, to the tennis courts, lower diamond, Past the shrine, the Lumberjack Village, the waterfront.
All the way back to my cabin, along the shoreline, That enormous lone glistening black crow shadows me, First from a tamarack tree at camp's back gate,
Then from the rooftop of a condo where the old school stood, Finally from the huge, precariously lake-leaning white pine Clinging to land, in the cabin's side yard.
After heating up and eating last night's vegetable soup, I walk down to the dock, in bare feet, shorts, to rest. For the next hour, I catch glimpses of a shadow that's not there.
05/20/10 - (2)
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