Big Surf

The last few weeks feel like I have been tumbling in wild surf. Living on the edge of what I know. Constantly bobbing above the waves looking for the horizon.

Robert Davis Hoffman came to town a few weeks ago. He is a poet who was raised in Kake, a nearby Tlinget village. His words evoke this country, framing and illuminating it as the best poetry does. He also speaks to the challenges of being human, fighting the tides of time, and doubt and loss.

Robert also is a woodcarver, and someone asked him after his poetry reading if his carving “took him away from his writing”. His thoughtful response turned into a lifeline for me this month. He replied that it “was all part of the same play”. He described dancing as a way to carve the air, and carving as a form of poetry. He made me see that I do not have to feel as though I am neglecting my creative soul just because my life is overfilled..

I have been frustrated that my work schedule and flagging energies seem to conspire to keep me from writing. I have three jobs that I love, and then life happens around them. A death of a beloved neighbor, the needs of close friends. Writing a eulogy can be poetry, dressing the dead is a kind of prayer. These long busy days do not need to separate me from writing. It is just that I am living inside my poems these days. I am carving the air around me into poetry. Standing in the late afternoon light, watching the spirit leave a body, shadowed like a painting stretching across 93 years of history.

Listening to children playing in the yard next door, like small wild birds, just like their parents did, and their parents before them. These moments are music.

So although I don’t slow down long enough to hear an entire song, or read a book, or write a post..there is a transcendent beauty in these days when I remember to look.

Advertisement