And here is the river, covered by ice, covered by snow, covered by sunlight, covered in turn by a hush that feels like a choice. And over all this something has gone running, small and light, across the softness and the slickness and the darkness buried beneath.
I walk across the snow and write small, snowy poems while the world’s current roars. Aren’t they pretty, my tidy footsteps? Aren’t they pretty, my lovely words?
Not going to lie, I miss this snow already. Everything already feels so much more soggy and real. I can let myself believe almost anything in the snow.
After the back of my skull had a swift and passionate meeting with the ice, I was of two minds.
My human mind: I’m so glad nobody saw that.
My forest mind: I wish I could feel this snow falling on my face forever.
My human mind: That means I can just lie here a while.
My forest mind: That means I can just lie here a while.
And so I did, softness slowly covering everything that was broken.
I’m okay, really! But this poem is late because I fell and thwacked my head, and was trying to avoid screens in case of a concussion. That’ll teach me to rush out the door without taking the time to put on my spikes.
For those who move quickly, winter brings a harsher cartography to the land. Geography gives way to geometry, all lines and boundaries and starkness. Simplification in place of context, inky brushstrokes on parchment. An outline of a place, an idea of a place. Plato’s shadows sharp on a marble wall.
Here is a tree, the quick-moving eye declaims, the fractal form of it on a field of white. Here, a power line, an arc described by gravity.
As for the other trees, they are all trees. As for the other wires, they are all wires.
But for slower visitors, place still tells the world in its fine-grained glory, a story of leaf scar and lenticel, of freeze and melt and the inimitable scent of snow.
Did curiosity bring you here, slow one? Did desire, or pain? But I am glad, so glad to see you stopping here. Sing me a song of seed pods, and I will trace for you every tangled filament of what I know.
It’s funny, I was proud of how much more I noticed on my walks than folks who whizzed by on cars or even bicycles. But then I realized how much I was missing while walking than sitting still. These thoughts brought to you by every bench and stump that’s perfect for sitting, the poetry and prose of Wendell Berry (a huge influence on me), and the book Seeing Trees, by Nancy Ross Hugo. If you’re looking for help with truly looking at the trees in your life, I can’t recommend it enough.
An aside: I know that’s the husk of a hazelnut and not a seed pod. But I don’t have any seed pod photos and “A Song of Nut Husks” is just never going to fly.
I am completely alone in the woods, except for the bluejays and the chickadees calling overhead.
I am completely alone in the woods, except for the bluejays and the chickadees calling overhead, and the pines and the hemlocks and the maple trees all around me, creaking faintly in the wind.
I am completely alone in the woods, except for the bluejays and the chickadees calling overhead, and the pines and the hemlocks and the maple trees all around me, creaking faintly in the wind, and the brambles that curl around their trunks.
I am completely alone in the woods, except for the bluejays and the chickadees calling overhead, and the pines and the hemlocks and the maple trees all around me, creaking faintly in the wind, and the brambles that curl around their trunks, and the ferns and the fungi hiding themselves in patience in the soil beneath the snow.
I am completely alone in the woods, except for the bluejays and the chickadees calling overhead, and the pines and the hemlocks and the maple trees all around me, creaking faintly in the wind, and the brambles that curl around their trunks, and the ferns and the fungi hiding themselves in patience in the soil beneath the snow, and the stones between them, waiting for nothing at all.
I am completely alone in the woods, except for the bluejays and the chickadees calling overhead, and the pines and the hemlocks and the maple trees all around me, creaking faintly in the wind, and the brambles that curl around their trunks, and the ferns and the fungi hiding themselves in patience in the soil beneath the snow, and the stones between them, waiting for nothing at all, and the water freezing within their fissures and pressing them always further apart.
I am completely alone in the woods, except for the bluejays and the chickadees calling overhead, and the pines and the hemlocks and the maple trees all around me, creaking faintly in the wind, and the brambles that curl around their trunks, and the ferns and the fungi hiding themselves in patience in the soil beneath the snow, and the stones between them, waiting for nothing at all, and the water freezing within their fissures and pressing them always further apart, and the air entering and exiting my lungs.
We are completely alone, these woods.
So I wander home.
Looking for more thoughts on aloneness? Read Taxonomy of Loneliness over at Survival by Book, by brilliant local writer and fellow Kilowatt Park aficionado Courtney Cook. Seriously, it’s fantastic.
crowned myself in evergreens (there are no laurels here).
And as for the land, it’s never minded when any bird or wild thing
added a voice to its own.
Sure, I named myself Poet Laureate of Kilowatt Park, at least for 2022. But nothing would make me happier than to share that title with others. If you want to join me in this project, please let me know. Your poems, songs, choreography, watercolors, photos, stand-up routines, quilts, carvings, sketches, cakes, stories, and puppet shows about our neighborhood park are all welcome, and I’ll do what I can to help share them with the world.
And if you decide you’d rather be Poet Laureate of Boston Lot or the Hazen Trail or the Hartford Community Garden or the Upper Valley Haven or the Hartland Diner or the Hanover Circle K or any other local place, that’s amazing. Consider yourself crowned. You officially have someone’s permission, so nobody can stop you now but yourself. Go write something beautiful.
But sometimes in waiting, you get to witness sudden sunshine.
So here you are, starchild,
face flushed and sweaty, thrashing against the necessity of rest
as the clouds break open all around you and drench you in unasked-for light.
This poem brought to you by fresh snowfall, two bad knees, a weak right hip, and a foot that isn’t too fond of walking either. It’s also brought to you by Anne Lamott, whose book Hallelujah Anyway I was reading at the time. While we’ve never met and she’s never heard of me, I like to think of her approving vigorously of this poem, about a human in all her stubborn horribleness, and the things she doesn’t deserve and would never ask for, but somehow, absurdly, receives anyway.
I’m not sure I even recognize the ever-presence of mercy anymore, the divine and the human; the messy, crippled, transforming, heartbreaking, lovely, devastating presence of mercy. But I have come to believe that I am starving to death for it, and my world is, too.
We deck the trees in color to reminds us of joy when darkness comes.
No need,
says the land, garlanded in winter fruits. But we didn’t come to listen,
did we?
Every year the dog walkers decorate the park for Christmas, and it’s always such a happy sight this time of year, when the sun sets at 4:15 and there’s so much gray in the world. But on this walk, I noticed these bright berries not two feet from a decorated tree, and they were as bright as anything that was strung there. It made me pause.
And then I laughed, because one of the ornaments was a pine cone. Hung on a pine tree. With red yarn. That’s humans for you.
“It’s kind of … small for a writing project, isn’t it?”
Of course it is. It’s a narrow strip of greenery between some power lines and a river, where a mill used to stand. You can hear cars on the road, and when you can’t, it’s either because there’s a train running past just to the west of you or a motorboat just to the east. There’s a picnic area, a soccer field, a parking lot, a power substation. The roads are paved, the river dammed. It’s all about as artificial as you can get in a park that still contains real trees.
But I didn’t ask for untouched wilderness. If I wanted to go all John Muir on you, I have plenty of opportunities to do so. (Whatever else Vermont is short of, gorgeous greenspace isn’t one.) But do you know how much is written every year about the Green Mountains? The Appalachian Trail?
I’m not sure either.
I do, however, know how much is written every year about Kilowatt Park: virtually nothing. And while Muir may be right that grand views of remarkable wilderness have the power to save us from the crushing forces of materialism, I also know that frequent access to a bit of green is what can save us from the crushing forces of our everyday lives.
Every park deserves a poet. Every garden, every stripe of wildflowers growing in profusion along a roadside berm. Every tree house and snow fort has a history that isn’t written down in any glossy guidebook. We may have lost our way to nature, but nature is still here for us, meeting us where we are.
And where we are today, or at least where I am, is a space wedged between the dam and the train tracks. Limited, like a sonnet. Cultivated, like a child. Brief, like laughter.
