On Misty Meditations
Corsons Inlet
I went for a walk over the
dunes again this morning
to the sea,
then turned right along
the surf
rounded a naked headland
and
returned
along the inlet shore:
it was muggy sunny, the wind
from the sea steady and high,
crisp in the running sand,
some breakthroughs of
sun
but after a bit
continuous overcast:
the walk liberating, I was
released from forms,
from the perpendiculars,
straight lines, blocks,
boxes, binds
of thought
into the hues, shadings,
rises, flowing bends and blends
of sight:
I
allow myself eddies of meaning:
yield to a direction of
significance
running
like a stream through the
geography of my work:
you can find
in my sayings
swerves of action
like
the inlet’s cutting edge:
there are dunes
of motion,
organizations of grass, white
sandy paths of remembrance
in the overall wandering of
mirroring mind:
but Overall is beyond me: is
the sum of these events
I cannot draw, the ledger I
cannot keep, the accounting
beyond the account:
in nature there are few sharp
lines: there are areas of
primrose
more or less dispersed;
disorderly orders of bayberry;
between the rows
of dunes,
irregular swamps of reeds,
though not reeds alone, but
grass, bayberry, yarrow, all ...
predominantly reeds:
I have reached no conclusions,
have erected no boundaries,
shutting out and shutting in,
separating inside
from outside: I have
drawn no lines:
as
manifold events of sand
change the dune’s shape that
will not be the same shape
tomorrow,
so I am willing to go along,
to accept
the becoming
thought, to stake off no
beginnings or ends, establish
no walls:
by transitions the land falls
from grassy dunes to creek
to undercreek: but there are
no lines, though
change in that
transition is clear
as any sharpness: but
“sharpness” spread out,
allowed to occur over a wider
range
than mental lines can keep:
the moon was full last night:
today, low tide was low:
black shoals of mussels
exposed to the risk
of air
and, earlier, of sun,
waved in and out with the
waterline, waterline inexact,
caught always in the event of
change:
a young mottled gull
stood free on the shoals
and ate
to vomiting: another gull,
squawking possession, cracked a crab,
picked out the entrails,
swallowed the soft-shelled legs, a ruddy
turnstone running in to snatch
leftover bits:
risk is full: every living
thing in
siege: the demand is life, to
keep life: the small
white blacklegged egret, how
beautiful, quietly stalks and spears
the shallows,
darts to shore
to
stab—what? I couldn’t
see against the black
mudflats—a frightened
fiddler crab?
the news to my
left over the dunes and
reeds and bayberry clumps was
fall: thousands
of tree swallows
gathering for
flight:
an order held
in constant
change: a congregation
rich with entropy:
nevertheless, separable, noticeable
as one event,
not
chaos: preparations for
flight from winter,
cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet,
wings rifling the green clumps,
beaks
at the bayberries
a perception full of wind,
flight, curve,
sound:
the possibility of rule as
the sum of rulelessness:
the “field” of action
with moving, incalculable
center:
in the smaller view, order
tight with shape:
blue tiny flowers on a
leafless weed: carapace of crab:
snail shell:
pulsations of
order
in the bellies of
minnows: orders swallowed,
broken down, transferred
through membranes
to strengthen larger orders:
but in the large view, no
lines or changeless shapes:
the working in and out, together
and against, of
millions of events: this,
so
that I make
no
form of
formlessness:
orders as summaries, as
outcomes of actions override
or in some way result, not
predictably (seeing me gain
the top of a dune,
the swallows
could take flight—some other
fields of bayberry
could enter fall
berryless) and
there is serenity:
no arranged
terror: no forcing of image, plan,
or thought:
no propaganda, no humbling of
reality to precept:
terror pervades but is not
arranged, all possibilities
of escape open: no route shut,
except in
the sudden loss of all
routes:
I see narrow
orders, limited tightness, but will
not run to that easy victory:
still around the
looser, wider forces work:
I will try
to fasten into order
enlarging grasps of disorder, widening
scope, but enjoying the
freedom that
Scope eludes my grasp, that
there is no finality of vision,
that I have perceived nothing
completely,
that tomorrow a new walk is a
new walk.
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