Sometimes you just want to look at things, straight on, without feeding your own story into them. That’s impossible, of course. The second you look, the invented word for it comes to the surface, and then your thoughts about it, your memories. Still, there is no place more possible, for me, to see straight-on than here at the lake in summer. We sit on our deck and eat lunch, the birds so used to us that they eat their own lunch right in front of us. My picture got the chickadee landing on the feeder, its wings a blur.
We know the names of our birds. That’s one layer of knowing, imposed by us. If we sit long enough, the birds begin to be individual, the one more ruffled than the others, the smaller one, the aggressive one. The longer we watch, the more individual they are, the more our knowing becomes barrier-free.
It occurs to me that poems like to be nearsighted. So is a lot of good prose. That doesn’t at all exclude the big picture, but you want to see the pixels it’s made of. You begin to feel yourself as one of the pixels, which is the truth, of course.
There was a dead deer beside the road. Since I walk there almost every day, I followed its decomposition. First the fully formed body, its head at an unnatural angle. Then the stomach broken open, writhing with maggots. The smell. I crossed the road. Then the desiccation, the shrinking back. Yesterday it was nothing but bones, themselves disappearing, some tangled in the grass, some carried away, maybe. Magical, the appearance of beings and their disappearance. Magical, the appearance of mushrooms, of ducks, of cornflowers. The more I limit my world to this small cottage on this not-very-big lake, the more I see, which I suppose is why so many poems get written from here.
I just finished a novel, Never, by Ken Follet. I wish I’d never read it. It’s a description of the beginning of a full-scale nuclear war. You see how it would happen, step by step, no one wanting it but no nation willing to lose face. You back up far enough, away from the gentle molecules, the wings of birds, the maggots, and you see only ideas. You think they need defending against other ideas. And then you’re off and running, toward doomsday.
If I wanted to make an argument for rubbing people’s noses in poems, it would be that. It would be the breaking down of the barriers of our ideas.
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Jerry’s family is here now. Last night when we went to bed (much earlier than they do), we could see them across from us in the big cottage, sitting on the screened in porch, talking. A reason to bring people together: to get closer to truly seeing them. The longer we’re apart, the more we see them as our idea of them. Sometimes the reality is a surprise. Oh, you’re not the person I thought you were, or oh, you’ve changed! It’s all messy and fraught, but crucial for understanding.
And crucial, I think, for our own maturation, our own re-ordering of our sense of who in the world we are. The less exposure, the more we remain children.
My Merlin app identified what I had correctly guessed was a kingfisher—a belted kingfisher. What a cool bird, the way it glides out over the water and dives headfirst after fish! I love knowing its name, as a way to begin the process of getting to know it. I love the picture of its funny tufted head, even if it goes by too fast to see it in person. If I’m lucky, I’ll have enough evenings on the porch to get better acquainted. Although it moves fast. At least I’ll know its sounds, its chitter. I am in favor of getting to know as many details as I can. It helps stitch myself into the family of beings.
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Speaking of details of the natural world (what a funny expression, since we’re all members of the “natural world”) I’ll be reading at the Bos Winery in Elk Rapids, MI, from 6-7:30 on October 23, but not just a reading. I’ll also be offering a workshop the next day from 1-3 at Grass River Natural Area Education Center in Bellaire, MI. Look for more on this, and a way to sign up, coming soon. I’m really looking forward to this, since Grass River is one of my favorite places.