Year: 2018

Sidewalk-Creep.

You know what it is, though you may not have heard the proper name for it.

There is nothing quite so savage, as those tufts of grass that grow up along the edges of our our sidewalks, slowly moving towards the center…threatening to reclaim domestic footpaths for “The Wild”.

Kind of leaves you wishing that Uncle Gary and Aunt Linda had gotten you that edger for Christmas doesn’t it; instead of that fuzzy pair of socks and 30 bucks to your favorite restaurant?

Why do we seek absolute comfort and perfection and trim back the wildness, with such disdain?

Recently, I left running from the cover of my front porch on the morning of a steady rain. A part of me opted to return to the house, get in my car, and use the treadmill at my father in law’s house.

Why does it feel like such a primal thing to go running in the rain?

Here, I met another kind of Sidewalk-creep that I adore; the kind that comes up along the “edges” of my soul.

This morning I started down the street, my mind a blank slate; ready to receive from my surroundings, as I felt each drop of rain against my face.

At first there was only the quiet,
voices too timid to be heard.
Or, I too timid to hear them?

I heard only the beats of my feet.
I turned left, right, then left again.
Passing the factory-sized bakery at the one mile mark (though I did not bring a device to beep off my mileage)-yet another way I have become a savage! I ran down Broadway and rounded the corner, glancing up at the backside of the city water tower, as I turned into the wind and rain that moved down Main Street, in a slant.

Next was the brick crypt before the Baptist Church, dedicated to a man called Jack who shares my Surname-though as far as I know-I am the first of my kin in this area I still wondered about his story.

I passed two antique stores and a gift boutique. Two not yet open for the day and one open by appointment only. I reminded myself to stop in and buy that lamp I have been eyeballing, and took notice of the stained-glass shutters in the darkness of the third shoppe.

Moving past the bay window, and the last of the storefronts, my thoughts became more lines of poetry, though the lines were not orderly framed within words. At the same time I was aware that I was no longer having to will my feet forward; I drifted in a numbness of ease along the iron fence of the cemetery, welcoming the soft morning light. And bowing a head to the concrete angel, and memory other names around-Blackburn, Staniford, and Weber. Who were they to you?

Another left.
Halfway down Mountgomery now.

The small, painted, yellow-brick house.
Modest with oversized porch lights, holding three candle bulbs each; not closed into square glass encasements, but shining through numerous, polygonic plates refracting light into the still, brightening of morning.

Not last of all the stone house,
chimney affront,
front door just to the left.

I have often felt my soul wish to inhabit this place. In, through the blue door, beneath the red leaves of two Japanese Maples.

The stone white.
The house small.
My soul, wishing to be simple.

But then there was something else-I began to see the hawks.

This was a new kind of interest. These birds were powerful, illusive; emblematic of feeling so large that I can’t quite comprehend and poignant in a way that I can’t explain. Though I will not cease in trying.

I began to have vague feelings that my sightings of these creatures coincided with something deeper within myself; it was always at times of introspective significance that a hawk would appear sailing above me, cry out through a thrilling, bleak voice, swoop down into my path while I walked in the fields at home, or appear in pairs, sometimes circling, sometimes perched at rest on a hay bale. My neighbor told me that I was seeing them because the Hawk is my totem; an auspicious messenger of power, clarity, and spiritual awakening. I figured that it was just a renewal of interest in my surroundings, a signal that I was healthy enough to once again find peace in the quiet goings on of the natural world. But at the same time, their movements matched so closely my mind’s wanderings in such a way that made me question myself. Was I really just projecting myself into my surroundings; fabricating my own reality?

We tend to do that; environmental sociologists have noted this sort of social projection in a variety of constructs. Some assert that we both model our realities after our perceptions of the natural world and cater our interpretations of that which is not human to our own systems of understanding. It is a way that we make meaning and situate ourselves within the context of our state; as liminal beings that are both part of and separate from the natural world.

For now, I convince myself that this argument can come to no conclusive end, and continue in my walk.

When I first began to take interest in our family farm, I started to take routine walks along the Kentucky Coffeetree-lined stone fences and mused about my ancestors who farmed here before me. I can trace my family back seven generations on our land and now I read their story engraved in the limestone landscape. During each walk, my mind would meander through a rich tapestry of hypotheticals swelling with the nostalgia of things that I had never lived.

I think about my great, great, great, great grandmother Harriette, who raised her daughter and five boys in a two-and-a-half room cabin (the half counts the little attic bedroom that Gentry, Clarence, Cline, Floyd, and Charles shared). I think about her as she made the funeral arrangements for her 20-year-old Idalia, who died of typhoid. I imagine her bitter sense of familiarity in the walk that took her daughter’s coffin across the creek and up the hill to the family cemetery where 30 years prior, she had buried her older brother Simeon, on his return home from Camp Douglas, in a rough-hewn casket lined with smudge pots; his pistol carefully situated on his chest. I think about her hardships as the female head-of-household on that rough farm; how bleak and grey the winters must have looked.

But then, I walk up to the highest point on the farm on a March afternoon, where limestone outcrops peek out from the loamy soil and grass that is just regaining its verdant rigor, and I feel her long-awaited exhale as spring renews its promise of another year of abundance. It has been on these walks that I have gained an acquaintance in a silver-winged hawk.

Almost every walk I took, the hawk would make an appearance with such regularity that it became a sort of game. Sometimes she sat in the taller branches of the old, giant Ash trees that are scattered in the rich Maury Bluegrass soil lining the creek-bed at the front of the farm; a patchwork section that bears a semblance of the ancient Blue Ash Savannas that used to characterize the Kentucky landscape. Most of the time, I saw a flash of silver wings and tawny belly as she flew from East to West across the farm (likely in her return to her Ash tree roost). I began to see her as an omen, take or leave the uneasy implication of social projection, of acceptance. I saw her flight as validation of my homecoming-as a powerful indicator that what I was doing in my return was right, was good, was whole. I wondered if Harriette had watched the hawks.

I walked the farm one day with my father, checking the cattle mineral feeders as we made our way to a karst spring on the back of the farm, that my grandfather had allowed to grow up and remain forested. I caught a glimpse of silver above me to my left and muttered, without thinking, “there she is.”

… “So you’ve seen her too?” he inflected.

I don’t know if I was more startled that I had inadvertently verbalized my thoughts or that my dad knew exactly who I was talking about.

I continue to watch the hawks. I continue to read into their flight, making note of the direction they go, their speed, the tone of each cry…I am hard-pressed to discount some semblance of significance when I see a hawk perched in the highest branches of a tree, sitting stoically as it is bombarded by three crows crying their outrage, or when I watch two Red-tails circle each other on updrafts and thermals visible only to them, or when a small Goshawk flutters wings against the wind, remaining suspended in place just long enough to mark a target, fold its wings and dive.

Maybe my interest in them is the same mystic pull that lent a sense of power to ancient diviners and oracles. Maybe it is my own personal desperation to find meaning in my experience. Maybe it is both. Or maybe playing the “Other” for a moment, it would be a mistake to categorize my fascination as dangerous practice or delusional pursuit, assuming we don’t all want for the same kind of actualization, the same kind of meaning, the same kind of lift in our chests: that moment you feel like you have entered into something bigger that you. Regardless of the whimsy of my extrapolations, in these moments with the hawks, I am aware. I am present.

Before she knew us
Safely, we had arrived
Into the circle of her prayer

Daily she sends out, these
Her little ships of prayer

Quiet, eyes closed
She sits with palms overlapping

One thumb,
Resting against the other;
A centering, of her prayer

Our chairs, gathered close
Sweet smells dwell in the room
A formality of introduction

We meet a woman—Mary
Her voice, a distant shore
Prayers, mixed in among the flour
As her hands, had kneaded the dough

Our hands resting here,
Her spirit, outside of time

Our minds, adrift
Upon turbulent seas
Awaiting the days ahead

Sending us away, this evening
With a Sister’s blessing:
Her prayers for us, yesterday
Baked into bread, for today

Little triangles, of lemon-raisin scents
These, the sails of our ships;
For stormy days ahead

Ships of blessing,
Fit to travel the midst of un-calm seas

I walk the gallery of things forgotten.

Brushing past the curved back of a maple chair,
sliding a withered hand over the smooth, worn surface of a wooden desk;
a desk holding an empty photo frame.

I trace the smoke, lines of birch wood.
My fingers led to grip an object…slim and red with enameled handle;
fanned bristles at one end.

I have lost the word.
A man I know, used one well…and used one often.

I cannot tell. Are the bristles damp to the touch?
Was it years ago he painted flowers for me,
or has he only just rinsed the paint…?

Even when I forget the name of ‘flower’,
will I remember how much I have loved them?
Will I be able to receive their healing fragrances,
even when I have forgotten how to act towards them?

I am afraid. Soon all the words will go,
like the face vanished from the photo frame.

The picture, removed. Now only rivets;
holding against the folding rest, of the frame.
I am afraid of when the frame will go.

Then, I feel a familiar hand on my shoulder.
Now a familiar voice.

It no longer matters, what photo, the rivets had pushed against;
what round imprints were made against a face,
for which I have lost the name.

Soon, the wooden desk will be reduced
to just a desk, and then something less;
something far from resembling a tree.

I am unafraid that the last things I shall know,
are tree, and rock, and water. And flower;
long after I have lost their names.

Long after the names have gone,
Will be a calming voice:
You are my rock and my guiding light.

By his words, he still paints pictures for me.
And when the last names go,
he will be someone who still remembers…
the path, to the fountain, at Hahn Circle.

How I love the movement of the trees,
how I love the fragrance of the flowers,
and the sound of water sweeping over rock.

I am beautiful.
And he, is my frame.

As I fall, again, into repose, I become aware;
that all things must come to rest.

The push to the summit, perilous;
there are those that will refuse to kneel.

Rest, for them, will not come at the top;
for those bent on conquering another hill.

The mountain, stands
that I may learn to kneel.

In repose, I gain strength
and a mountain rises up within me;
a mountain, to match the mountain.

From repose, I rise.

Plateau Point is located just a little over five miles from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, most easily reached by the Bright Angel Trail, the world-famous access route that most notably allows thousands upon thousands of awestruck tourists to dip their toe into the proverbial waters of this deep ravine. Most only make it over the lip.

The industrial-strength route of choice will bring you down seven or eight miles of classic scrambling and skittering known as the Hermit Trail, until you make a right and eventually emerge over the top of Tonto Pass (not the actual site’s name but it should be). After a cold, clear night under the stars at Horn Creek campsite, one can light out before the sun and arrive at Plateau Point right when the gods show up.

For months and months, Plateau Point was just a name on a map.
Or a picture on a computer, like so many other special places. Seeing pictures of this place was the inspiration behind putting the Grand Canyon trip together.
But in an instant, it became something else. Something more.
Like so many other places.

After my wife and I fumbled around by headlight, breaking camp and pulling on our 30-pound packs for the third morning beneath the rim.
After trudging tired feet down the short connector of trail, feeling the presence of the huge expanse lying dormant off to our left, our boot sounds the only noise in the silence of the predawn canyon.

After arriving at our destination, dropping our packs and finding just the right seat for the show. After brewing a hot cup of coffee to serve as our show time companion. After the sky peeled back layers of black to gray and seeing things around us take form, signaling the time to switch off the headlamps.
After the red burst from the East. After the slightest sprinkling of day that drew colors from every corner within view, colors that show their faces only at dawn and dusk. After the sun. After the river. After the wind.

Plateau Point became more than just a place.
We sat for over an hour, neither saying a word while the world was revealed around us. I thought right then that I would never forget this time, this place. Then I immediately wondered if that was true. How many times have I been somewhere, a place beautiful and bountiful, where I thought in the moment that the memory would be etched forever in my mind? Only to be overcome by the next place, the next sunrise, the next moment.

Some memories stay, some go.
This morning, from high on the point, the Colorado River seemed a dull greenish-brown strip bearing down through the rock walls. Our previous nights’ camp was on the waters’ shores, and I can’t help but marvel over the contrasting perspectives. Up close, the river was raging and fast, loudly galloping along its path. From 1300 feet up, it is merely a silent partner, one element in a comprehensive landscape.

Rage.
Silence.
Although out of range to see its true self, I knew it was still down there, cutting and carving this beauty with its power and persuasion. The surface was lively and sporting, masking the raw carnage taking place at the bottom, the tearing apart and wearing down of the very surface it had worked so hard to reveal. The struggle was admirable, the river tending every day to its creation, one born out of friction.

And maybe that was the difference. The turmoil that was the Colorado had created something eternal, something wonderful and lasting, but it was made through pain. Up close, it was so hard to see that wonderful purpose because of the rage and the waves, but a little perspective had changed all that.

Maybe it was the struggle and the journey.
Like the one we took over the last three days to get here this morning.
Maybe we would remember this place forever, not in spite of but because of the pain we went through to get here.

Maybe this was more than just a place.