Sweet Water

April 10 2011

I have always lived on the shore of a lake,

in easy sight

of water.

Its possibility, and promise.

What lies beneath

its glassy calm,

the white froth

when it freshens.

When the nearest city

is too far to see,

and the knowing

is good enough.

A mere glow

on clear nights

somewhere south.

There is the harbour, the narrows

- a quicksilver finger

tempting our land-locked state.

Where the breeze quickens

gulls wheel, and screech,

water

advances, recedes.

The mind empties

the world breathes.

Seasons succeeding

as they’ve always done.

The breaking-up, an early freeze.

A flotilla of ducks, the skirl of geese.

The first loon

slipping seamlessly under.

Today, flat and grey.

A small lake, no way out.

So I circumnavigate the world

here,

paddling alone

hewing to shore.

Could reach out and touch

but don’t.

The beginning of spring:  an odd season to have written this.  The explanation is that this poem comes out of a fragment of a sentence, an allusive expression, I read, and couldn’t resist:  nothing at all to do with the season.

The weekend Globe has a regular Arts feature that reviews in bullet form 3 magazine cover stories. This one came from some obscure outdoor/adventure magazine. It was about scavenging for natural and “found” foods in Central Park (New York):  what to look for, and where; and how this is almost becoming a competitive sport; and whether it’s sustainable in such a small patch of wilderness.

There was a mention of “frost-sweetened crabapples,” 3 words in which I immediately sensed such irresistible tension, a series of implied opposites. There is the sense of sweetness juxtaposed with the notoriously sour fruit. There is  sense of the adversity of fall -- of longer days and increasing cold -- endowing them with sweetness:  of unexpected comfort in a season that implies adversity. And the compounding of two words that seem to cancel out:  of “frost” with “sweetened”. And finally, that the despised crab apple should have become so desirable.

So this was one of those inspirational (as opposed to “perspirational”) poems that come in a flash, and in which the writing seems much more like channelling than calculation and artifice. There is much about it I like, things I try to achieve in almost every poem I write:  the natural conversational rhythm, and internal rhyme that doesn’t seem intrusive or shoe-horned in; the emphasis on microcosm and close observation; the first person perspective, with its easy intimacy, its feeling of authenticity; and the allusion to something bigger from something small, the finding of the universal in the particular (which I hope isn’t done pretentiously or in a way that hits the reader over the head, but rather lets her take or leave, as she wishes.) In this case, think about the "toughening" and the "sweetening" that come out of adversity, and how this calls back to the old man's hand.


And something else of which I’ve lately been rather guilty:  an unseemly dose of nostalgia, a lot of poignant references to childhood! (So if I’ve ever tossed a rotten crap apple at your passing car, my sincere apologies!)