Monthly Archives: July 2009

Coming down the slope from that solar eclipse and heading toward yet another lunar eclipse. That’s three eclipses in four weeks. Stay awake. Don’t want to miss anything.

#1278, c. 1873

The Mountains stood in Haze —
The Valleys stopped below
And went or waited as they liked
The River and the Sky.

At leisure was the Sun —
His interests of Fire
A little from remark withdrawn —
The Twilight spoke the Spire,

So soft upon the Scene
The Act of evening fell
We felt how neighborly a Thing
Was the Invisible.

Last night Lance and I went out to the lake for a walk. We saw a tiny sliver of moon. Funny how the moon appears different sizes all the time depending on where she is in her cycle. Sometimes she is a small, white marble, distant and cool. Sometimes, like last night, the moon hangs so low, fat and heavy in the sky that we might brush our fingers against the soft, gold fuzz. So close to our plane, you can almost taste it. Last night the moon tasted lemony with a dusting of sugar.

Speaking of tasting . . . while we were wandering around the lake shore in near complete darkness, I turned Lance off the leash. He found something to eat that was so utterly foul, I can’t even tell you about it. If I used the right words to describe it, my computer would melt with disgust. His breath still stinks. I won’t go near him, nor will I kiss him. Lance has this marvelous ability to undercut the romance every time.

Back to last night and the beautiful moon. Our shadow, the earth’s shadow obscured most of the moon. A black blot against the gold glow, allowing a trace of light to show around the edges. So we can see both an image of the earth and the moon at once. Then it all disappeared. I turned my back on the moon for a moment and couldn’t find it again. Only the empty sky.

Lance and I sat on the concrete bulkhead at the edge of the lake and watched the water push itself against the low mossy step. The lake was as flat as a mirror. No breeze in the air. Then some movement in the surface of the water would come to us. A raised line made a wide, swelling pattern that rolled in silence to the edge, bumped against the step and turned on itself, moving in the opposite direction, back to its source. It came from far away, deep in the midnight blue horizon.

Something that I could not see had set the surface of the water in motion. The evidence of that thing, that precipitating event, whatever it was . . . a boat? Maybe, but the lake was empty and silent. A leaping fish more likely or something else. I’ll never know because it was not visible to me. I can only speculate about what brought this ripple in the water here. That evidence of its existence came all the way across the lake in the form of this gentle wave pattern in the water.

“We felt how neighborly a Thing/ Was the Invisible.” Emily says it is all around us. We may see evidence of it in the physical material of our world, not the thing itself, but all of us responding to the thing. That thing, that Invisible, is right here among us each moment. Our neighbor, close upon us.

Of course, it’s easy to say what Emily meant by Invisible. My sense of it is not so easy. I imagine it as something like the moon and her cycles. Sometimes dropping on us like a glob of lemon curd. Other times withdrawing from us and showing only a hard, cold face, far beyond our senses. She goes unfelt on those nights.

That Invisible comes and goes in my life. There are portions of time when I sense I am moving through a web of intention. That the air breathes with me. That I am part of something alive. I don’t have name for it. And it is invisible. To the degree that I am willing and able to acknowledge the existence of something I can’t see or completely grasp with my mind, I move in concert with the Invisible.

Despair is losing the step in the dance. Losing sight of the moon. Sometimes I reach for it, and it’s not there. Other times the Invisible comes upon me with such unexpected power that I am shamed by my arrogance, my failure to allow for what I cannot see.

Emily says: Walk gently with palms outstretched. Welcome the Invisible. It is closer than you know.

This is just what I needed to hear today. A message from Emily that is not exactly reassuring. But it is true.

#1106, c. 1867

We do not know the time we lose —
The awful moment is
And takes its fundamental place
Among the certainties —

A firm appearance still inflates
The card — the chance — the friend —
The spectre of solidities
Whose substances are sand —

The best among us, and Emily is the best, are the ones who are most likely to place confidence in an appearance of clarity, faithfulness, strength. A sterling person assumes the best of others. What else does she or I or you have to go on? If you are at all disposed to be transparent and genuine and substantial yourself, you’ll assume others are as well. That’s the truth you walk in. Imaginative, trusting Emily says, she will be gulled by an inflated appearance. Her willingness to believe what she sees will leach away that valuable thing, time. She warns: Do not be gulled by what appears to be a serious obstacle or a serious friend. These are insubstantial. Mistaking them for something more solid, robs us of our only real asset. That is the precious life.

Inflated troubles, inflated friends. These are all the same. Hot air.

Some mornings, Emily doesn’t feel like writing more than two lines, so we get this:

#1127, c. 1868

Soft as the massacre of Suns
By Evening’s Sabres slain

No punctuation by the way, save for one demure and yet necessary apostrophe.

So, I re-wrote the rules again. Maybe I am still playing by Chance, but I have to admit that this caught my eye when I was looking at another poem on the same page. I couldn’t turn away from this one. Furthermore, I was saving it for today because today is the solar eclipse. This two-line murder of the star at the center of the our solar system seemed like the right fit.

We are on the border between Cancer and Leo. The sun is about to move into his place of exaltation. Before ascending the throne, the sun king first has to die and then come back to life again on the other side of the line.

Soft as the massacre of suns. I want to say those words over and over. By Evening’s Sabres slain. All those S-sounds. When I say it out loud, I whisper. Even when I just read it, the voice in my head is whispering. Soft. Massacre. This violence drops below the horizon, and we are in darkness.

I went looking for the Purple Martins. They used to congregate beneath the Causeway Bridge during the month of July. It was quite a show in the past. Clouds of birds moving in a supple, twittering, ellipsis, up and around the bridge. This went on for an hour before they came to rest beneath the bridge. Purple Martins are odd, territorial birds. The clowns of the air. A flock of knuckle-heads. They love coming back to the same place again and again, even if it’s not a good idea. The end of the Causeway Bridge has been their nesting place for as long as anyone can remember. Someone built a platform under the bridge so that the humans could watch the birds settle in for the night. Now, I have found that you can’t get to the viewing platform. It’s been closed off since the storm. They’re bolstering the levee, I imagine. Who knows? We have been cut off from our Purple Martins, one more casualty of the storm. Soft as the massacre of suns. One more thing we’ve had to live without, and for the most part, without knowing it’s gone either.

A soft massacre is one you might not notice. It happens with little outward sign or sound of violence. It’s that silent descent when no one is looking. When the enemy takes his quarter quickly and without rancor. It’s not personal. It’s not sneaky either. There is no moral corruption in such a murder. It is the natural order of light moving into dark. One must take the other. A relief almost. A death undeniably. A loss certainly. But one that releases itself without resistance.

Soft as the massacre of suns. I love writing it and saying it. This will be my mantra today, all day.

There is no enemy and no ally in such a battle. We know the sun will surge past the evening sky again the next morning. But when the sun comes to the end, when Emily looks at the sky, she sees a contest that the bright, life-giving force loses every time. Softly, softly. What is this muffled defeat? Her tone here is not neutral. Actually I hear excitement, as though she relishes the sight of this falling monarch. Each day, the sun king dies. In the moment of his death, the sky turns gorgeous colors and softens. In dying, the sun finally gives himself over, not only to the night, but he also releases the last portion of himself, which is the softest part. Those remaining whispers of sunlight are the most beautiful and the most tender. Only under duress and under the force of the night coming upon him, will the sun finally drop his armor and reveal what he has been protecting all day. The tender, delicate, most soft center. That explosion of pink, orange, blue, gold and purple bands of light before the end.

It’s a pity the evening has to kill the sun in order to pry loose his loveliest part. But some are stubborn that way.