Twenty Degrees of Silence

Twenty Degrees of Silence

One: the silence upon waking when the furnace shuts off,

A cozy 20 degrees achieved after the night setting blinks to day.

Late fall at the cottage, no outdoor sounds 

but the distant thud of long waves breaking on the beach.

Two: the hum of the cooling systems in the fridge and water cooler

During your attempt at meditation at the end of the yoga routine.

Even after forty years of practice, silence is mostly out of reach, 

Struggling to still your mind, quiet your thoughts, but sometimes, lately, it works.

Three: walking on the beach, the silence a combination of water dragging over the sand and

Wind whistling through the boughs of Black Spruce on the rocks above.

The sun filtered through gray clouds glints off ripples of wind on the water

Throwing a thousand flashes of light into the pewter-coloured morning.

Four: the silence of being in your own head, especially while walking alone.

Solvitur ambulando, Latin for “It is solved by walking,” a phrase you had taped above 

the desk in your office at the college for years, but only today learned from a Google search,

Is a metaphor for finding a solution through practical experiment.

Silences Five through Twenty: experiments to decide whether silence is good or bad

Resulting in, of course, neither. (Thank you Hamlet) because 

“Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,”

And so it is with silence. 

But in this case, perhaps context, more than thinking,

As the silence of conversation that doesn’t flow

Or the silence of the ones you miss, 

Or the silence of sadness and loneliness

Are not of equal weight. 

May your silences be mostly good ones, 

Or maybe not; 

Have some of each, 

And feel them, and live them,

In ways that help you understand yourself 

And the world you quietly inhabit.

Traces

"Our imprints on nature are not only from the soles of our shoes." Two plastic items frequently found on the shoreline: spent shotgun shells and tampon applicators. One is all about death, the other about bringing to life.

Young Buddha Looking East

Head tilted back,

Chin pointing forward,

Young Buddha looks on thoughtfully;

His ideas emerging from his forehead

Like a dream of yesterday's clouds.

Beautiful Barnacle

The barnacle 

wore its exoskeleton

like an exquisite wedding dress,

peeking out with the coy smile of a new bride,

followed closely by Shelly, the smallest flower-girl ever.

This Pseudo-Haiku Has Two Verses

Eider duck and his wife

Race where the sea meets the sand;

He a sports car, she a sedan.

In matters of style

He wins the race,

But in questions of speed

She is holding her place.

Permeable Horizon Line

The sky is leaking 

onto the sand, and the clouds

have come down to rest.

The Photographer-Poet

The photographer-poet walked down the beach;
A young girl and an old woman at her side.
Behind her, one set of footprints stretched back to where she began.

The young one waded barefoot through the tide pools,
The poet was thankful for her sturdy waterproof sports sandals
And the grey-haired woman marvelled at the way her green boots from L.L. Bean
Had held up after all these years.

When they reached the rocks the young girl scrambled up,
Nimbly making her way over the difficult parts
While the photo-po picked her way carefully,
Thinking of dangers and consequences.
The old woman just stayed by the rocks,
Wishing away her osteoarthritis and remembering
How wonderful it felt to scamper across sun-warmed surfaces.

The poet-photographer and the young woman continued on,
There were no footprints to show how many passed on the rocks,
At least once their feet were dry.
At first some of the rocks were slippery with seaweed,
And the barnacles made it challenging for the girl’s bare feet
But she was young and tough and made it through with ease.
The poet took longer, her progress slower,
In part due to her knees, which didn’t work as well as they used to,
But also because she kept stopping.

She stopped for more than one reason,
Yes, there was the knee problem,
But she also stopped to watch for whales,
Minkes, in French “les petits rorquals.”
If she was patient and just watched long enough
She would see their shiny black backs
Break the surface of the water, especially on a calm day
When the sea was a “mer de l’huile” shining smooth and white in the sunlight.
On days like this the whales were easy to spot.
They would surface three times, short, short, and then long;
Whale Morse code meaning: I am moving through time;
Don’t destroy my ocean; what are all these plastic bags doing floating in my world?

The young girl looked back at the photographer who had stopped to capture
The close up miracle of a barnacle waving its feather tongue.
The girl did not slow down; she wanted to keep moving forward.

Sometimes the photographer-poet stopped to listen:
The waves sucking on the sand as the tide shifted;
The ocean breezes lifting the hair around her face;
A white-throated sparrow calling almost mournfully
In the Black Spruce on the cliffs above.

Sometimes it was the smells that slowed her down:
Can rocks have smells? Wet rocks, dry rocks in the sun.
The sand, chilled or warmed.
Seaweed, like this bright sea lettuce,
Its fresh leaves limp and wet, chlorophyll green.
The poet picked up the plant, separated a piece of leaf from the rest,
Rinsed off the sand in the brine and put it in her mouth.
Salty and strong, she squinted her eyes and chewed anyway,
Swallowing this ocean offering, imagining survival skills.
Remembering a day in Maine, a sea urchin cut open with a jack-knife
Orange roe offered up on the blade; the pungent taste.

The photographer poet is alone again.
She is standing on the highest point of rock between two bays.
She can look forward and back over the way she came up.
The sea stretches out endlessly in front of her, blue and moving.
She takes a picture.