Landscape Survey

And what about this boulder,
knocked off the moutaintop and
tumbled down a thousand years ago

to lodge against the streambank,
does it waste itself with worry
about how things are going

to turn out? Does the current
slicing around it stop itself mid-
stream because it can't get past

all it's left behind back at
the source or up in the clouds
where its waters first fell

to earth? And these trees,
would they double over and
clutch themselves or lash out

furiously if they were to discover
what the other trees really
thought of them? Would the wind

reascend into the sky forever,
like an in-drawn breath,
if it knew it was fated simply

to sweep the earth of windlessness,
to touch everything and keep
nothing and be beheld by no one?

-John Brehm, 1999

A couple weeks back I returned to Tromsø, as I've been doing, now, since I arrived a year ago. I leave Tromsø, I come back. The route, even when it wends its way through airports, feels familiar now. I will watch movies between Boston and Keflavik, even when I should be sleeping; I will sleep from Iceland to Oslo, even if should stay awake; I will drink black tea between Oslo and Tromsø, because my sleep schedule is already pretty well shot and they don't have ginger ale.

It's weird to me that I take air travel as a matter of course now, because I've always found the process of picking a person up out of one landscape and dumping them down in the midst of another a bit strange. There may not be much but ocean between Massachusetts and Norway, but my journey erases it and replaces the specific vastness of the Atlantic with the small void of an airplane seat, like any seat on any airplane. And, for all my gripes, I'm grateful for it, because I would not be able to hopscotch so easily between continents otherwise. But my return to Tromsø struck me, not when the plane touched down on a dark afternoon two weeks ago, but when I came out from the mountains this past Sunday. It's strange for me to be rounding a year here, to cross familiar landscapes in familiar seasons. Maybe--probably--it shouldn't be. On the other hand, one year ago I came to Norway for sixth months, and if I'm still here twelve months later, there's something a bit odd going on. Or I am very poor at planning (truth).

All I can say is that it's nice to be settled for a time, to come back. I'm looking forward, now, and towards other places, but for the time being it's good to be back in Tromsø, where life is cold and dark and--strangest of all--familiar.

Tree

It is foolish

to let a young redwood   

grow next to a house.

Even in this   

one lifetime,

you will have to choose.

That great calm being,

this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.   

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

-Jane Hirshfield, 2001

Snow

Snow,
blessed snow,
comes out of the sky
like bleached flies.
The ground is no longer naked.
The ground has on its clothes.
The trees poke out of sheets
and each branch wears the sock of God.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
I bite it.
Someone once said:
Don’t bite till you know
if it’s bread or stone.
What I bite is all bread,
rising, yeasty as a cloud.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have a pail.

-Anne Sexton, 1974

North

I returned to a long strand,
the hammered curve of a bay,
and found only the secular
powers of the Atlantic thundering.

I faced the unmagical
invitations of Iceland,
the pathetic colonies
of Greenland, and suddenly

those fabulous raiders,
those lying in Orkney and Dublin
measured against
their long swords rusting,

those in the solid
belly of stone ships,
those hacked and glinting
in the gravel of thawed streams

were ocean-deafened voices
warning me, lifted again
in violence and epiphany.
The longship’s swimming tongue

was buoyant with hindsight—
it said Thor’s hammer swung
to geography and trade,
thick-witted couplings and revenges,

the hatreds and behind-backs
of the althing, lies and women,
exhaustions nominated peace,
memory incubating the spilled blood.

It said, ‘Lie down
in the word-hoard, burrow
the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.

Compose in darkness.
Expect aurora borealis
in the long foray
but no cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear
as the bleb of the icicle,
trust the feel of what nubbed treasure
your hands have known.’

-Seamus Heaney

The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness
---Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
---From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
---Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me,
---That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
---That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
---As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
---Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
---And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
---Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
---Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
---Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
---And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
---Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
---Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
---And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
---Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
---The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
---That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
---The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
---The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music
---And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
---And as silently steal away.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow