up late

 

The sunset after the storm

This is late for me, but I had a friend over for dinner and I've been snowed in for the past few days. The Baltimore/Washington metro area received over two feet of snow over the weekend. My city has 33.8 inches, and we are expecting ten to twenty inches (quite a range) over the next couple of days. School has been canceled for today and tomorrow and we will probably be out Wednesday. It is a possibility that we will be out the rest of the week.

I am fortunate because I have not lost power. I also live near a supermarket, so I was able to get out (barely) and pick up some food for the next few days. The plows have been out in force but there is so much snow. More snow than I have ever seen at one time. The piles on the side of the road are over 6 feet high in some places. The off/on ramps in most areas are barely passable and the roads are covered in ice. Poor Maryland---this state is struggling to keep up and clear before the next storm.

I went snowshoeing today at the golf course across the street. It was beautiful and eerily quiet. At one point, I thought that if something were to happen to me, no one would know. That scared me a little bit.

I have been studying and trying to get some work done. As for my students, I have emailed them but many are without power. I'm not sure when I will be returning to work--maybe next week? It's hard not to know.

 

TJ shoveling, Saturday

-----

A little poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed in a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Tomorrow's Toussaints
By Kalamu ya Salaam

this is Haiti, a state
slaves snatched from surprised masters,
its high lands, home of this
world's sole successful
slave revolt. Haiti, where
freedom has flowered and flown
fascinating like long necked
flamingoes gracefully feeding
on snails in small pinkish
sunset colored sequestered ponds.

despite the meanness
and meagerness of life
eked out of eroding soil
and from exploited urban toil, there
is still so much beauty here in this
land where the sea sings roaring a shore
and fecund fertile hills lull and roll
quasi human in form

there is beauty here
in the unyielding way
our people,
colored charcoal, and
banana beige, and
shifting subtle shades
of ripe mango, or strongly
brown-black, sweet
as the such from
sun scorched staffs
of sugar cane,
have decided
we shall survive
we will live on

a peasant pauses
clear black eyes
searching far out over the horizon
the hoe motionless, suspended
in the midst
of all this shit and suffering
forced to bend low
still we stop and stand
and dream and believe

we shall be released
we shall be released
for what slaves
have done
slaves can do

and that begets
the beauty

slaves can do

-----
Please consider donating to the relief effort. A list of organizations can be found here.

from Iron Flowers: A Poetic Report on a Visit to Haiti by Kalamu ya Salaam. Published in New Orleans in 1979.

not needing all the words

A photo and poem to start the week.

 BIRCH BARK
(for George Whalley)

An hour after the storm on Birch Lake

the island bristles. Rock. Leaves still falling.

At this time, in the hour after lightning

we release the canoes.

Silence of water

purer than the silence of rock.

A paddle touches itself. We move

over the blind mercury, feel the muscle

within the river, the blade

weave in dark water.



Now each casual word is precisely chosen

passed from bow to stern, as if

leaning back to pass a canteen.

There are echoes, repercussions of water.

We are in absolute landscape,

Among names that fold in onto themselves.



To circle the island means witnessing

the blue grey dust of a heron

released out of the trees.

So the dialogue slides

nothing more than friendship

an old song we break into

not needing all the words.



We are past naming the country.

The reflections are never there

without us, without the exhaustion

of water and trees after storm.

 
from The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems by Michael Ondaatje. New York: Vintage International, 1997.