Discovery Drafts

Cold night, heavy rain Late October You stay up And wait for the light To see what’s left  But you know. You feel the needles, Leaves, and broken limbs Under your bare feet As you duck under Severed power lines. You know. There remains Above you, around you, In the dark Fragments of a fallen season.  You know.  Light comes And there is a vaster sky Blue like you never saw before. The crisp air Offers a new season.  It’s November.  It’s cold.  November: why we learned to build fires, Why we gather ’round them, Why we cherish the stories we find there.  You know.

The stars:      An ancient script     Holding every story     Ever lived           Refusing words           As inadequate           To the mystery. The Milky Way:      Stories constellated      In a conversation      Between silence and solitude          All fire and light         On the limitless palette         Of eternity. The turtles:      Silent and solitary as stars      Emerging from the sea      To punctuate our story         With life          That begins and ends           In endless silence and solitude. Uranus and Gaea:      Between the turtles and the stars      Creating this moment      Creating every moment         Embodying eternity         Embodying the mystery         In their embrace.

The diving in, The moving through water, The water moving you: A good swim Is a tight embrace, A liberation, A shared solitude, A deep breath, A rising to the blue sky, Saying out loud, "Damn, that is blue." And going down again. That is the present. That is accepting The love you deserve.

Orpheus gave up on loving Women After he lost Eurydice To death A second time. So what about her? Silent, peripheral, Enigmatic. Silent: Eternally so. So she's worth thinking about: Whatever he did not have or hold, Could not say, do, Or understand, She was. Think about it: He gave up on generative love. He died misunderstood. Was he arrogant for presuming to take her? To claim the chalice, To drink fully of life? Was he wrong to chance The opportunity to be his own song By claiming his muse-- To force his way Into the secrets of his art That he might know the divine? Orpheus knew: Without her, He could not be himself. Claiming Eurydice: Claiming himself.

The glint of setting sunlight On the Connecticut River Highlights the deep, yet softening, crease Of time on this landscape. The platinum light Beguiles my attention As I slip Through the clouds To paradise And the sea, The same light Melding with the ever effacing shore: All fire and heart, So unlike The cool and distant colors of home.  Water, life, consciousness, Every hope and dream: Love aching for life: To be.

I don't know anything about the story behind this sculpture at Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.  I do know, though, that I love that she is representational art on a college campus. When does that happen?  And here she is, unselfconsciously welcoming a new day, being herself inside her  body.  Loving the sun.