Archive 07/13/10

   

Seven Days Away

                                                                  

 

I

 

Precisely one week ago tonight,

I arrived back in St. Louis, from Lake Nebagamon,

Having spent eleven days of freedom there,

Moon-gazing, sleeping, writing poems, reading, eating, dreaming,

Doing everything I could conceivably conceive,

 

Forgetting about politics, religion, responsibilities,

Letting go of demons that enslave my spirit,

Remind me of detritus, goblins, bugaboos, ghosts, past and present,

Read me riot acts for no good reason, save spite, disdain,

Demons that have no place else to go but deeper.

 

What a supreme delight to pursue serenity, seclusion,

In a retreat that takes its beat from nature's metronome,

Forgo schedules, eschew appointments,

Suspend beliefs that make no sense, anyway,

To anyone not wired to proselytize societal hypocrisy and lies.

 

But now, it's as though my most recent North Woods sojourn

Never materialized, arrived, existed, was,

Never developed, evolved, outdistanced its expectations,

Never concluded, finished, achieved closure,

Never transfigured my dried-up existence into a vital spirit.

 

II

 

If only I could recapture the slightest essence of that freedom,

Retrieve those late evenings at dock's end,

When I'd gaze at the amazing waxing and waning gibbous moons,

Choreograph Wisconsin's nocturnal Milky Way ballet,

To the music of Lake Nebagamon's precious few wailing loons,

 

I'd do so without so much as a breath of regret,

Alter, while I still have time on my side, who I am, will be,

So that I might hurl myself, my diminishing history,

The metaphysics of my paltry mortality, through contracting space,

To that cabin clinging to the precipice of that silent shore,

 

Where, for ten nights and eleven self-perpetuating forevers,

I sang and danced and ran naked, in the glory of my privacy,

Reveled in the golden melodies of humble birdsongs and raindrops,

Bee-buzzings, butterfly flutterings, and dragonfly hoverings,

Believed myself to be inviolate, indomitable, indispensible —

 

A gentle, delicate creature exempt from routine's egregious squeeze,

The limitations of human existence,

An elite being capable of being one with pine trees and ferns,

One with dazzling pastel sunrises and sunsets,

One with yellow-green northern lights, pulsating across the night,

 

One with whatever sacred elements, agencies, energies, spirits

Beckon my unbridled passion, imagination, creativity

To explore, step into, over the borders of the lake's shores,

Those waters that wash my cerebral cortex gently,

Persuade me to compose verse, wave by wave, lapping my sensibility.

 

III

 

Now, precisely one week from my homecoming,

I'm confused, dumbfounded, find myself dismayed, floundering,

Sense my advanced age closing in on my poetry,

Feel the blood Lake Nebagamon so recently transfused into my soul

Flowing backwards, my heart's arteries, veins collapsing,

 

Drowning me in its dried-up tributaries,

Relegating my mind to the timebound idiosyncrasies

That deny the sovereignty of purple martins, pileated woodpeckers,

Red foxes, black squirrels, chipmunks, lupines, yarrow,

October and late-April snows, groaning lake ice.

 

Tonight, seven days away from the home I know owns me,

I dream of those walls, those windows, that roof —

That cozy, not-much-to-write-home-about cabin —

And, reading the writing on time's wall as mine,

Realize that youth and age have coalesced, died, decayed, faded.

 

 

 

                               

 

07/13/10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 
   
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