I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land…
~Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I’ve always made my way down to the rivers. Even now as I sit on my back porch, I hear the rush of the Assabet a half mile to the north, already filled with an early and surprising winter melt. Any leaf of me could fall and be carried back to the fork of the Sudbury and Concord rivers. My whole life has been a continual returning to these three rivers and my common ground—the water, fields, woods and village of Concord and now, just to the west, the small mill town of Maynard.
More and more I remember less and less, but there are still granite walls that will not change for another thousand years and still a few hills to defy development; still a few farmstands with the same trucks and tractors parked by weathered sheds, and still a few cantankerous old souls hiding their smiles behind seventy or eighty New England winters. I wonder if they remember the kid who worked for them so long ago? I wonder what they remember? I wonder what they wish they’d kept?
This collection is my way of keeping what I remember. Musketaquid is the native name for the Concord River. Someone once told me that it meant “slow moving river.” It seemed like a fine and apt name to me, so much so that it didn’t bother me to discover the actual translation is “grass grown river.” The fields are now all wooded over—a bramble of Hawthorne and Swamp Maple hiding almost every view; but it still a slow moving river—and always will be. Even the Nipmucks would have to agree with that.
These songs, poems and ramblings are what I have to add to the rivers. They are the small streams of my experience becoming a smaller part of the Musketaquid, which, hopefully, flows into some greater sea of understanding and insight. They are the good, the bad, and the ugly drafts of my life scattered in here with the randomness of the winds and tides that have driven me and carried me to so many shores—and have always brought me home.
These are the poems, stories, rambles, and reflections that have been written over a long run of time, usually close to home, but often in far off places, and sometimes simply as conversations with my students, friends, or family, but always within dreamshot of the beautiful, beautiful rivers that ramble through my home.
Thanks, and I hope you enjoy some part of what is here.
Black Pond is not as deep as it is dark, dammed some century ago between ledges of granite
and an outcropping
of leaning fir, huckleberry,
and white pine.
For years I have paddled and trolled; swam, fished, sailed and sometimes simply tread water
in the night
trying to pierce
a dark, prickled sky.
Why is is that only now have I made my way towards the source, through the tangles of bulrush, loosestrife and sawgrass hummocks, to this place where
I am utterly lost and happy to finally be as far as I can go?
Last night the August supermoon
reminded me of the fickleness
of time and how
substance becomes shadow
and memories begin
to etch themselves
immutably
into the hardness
of what is
already lost.
It’s not like a poem
to come curl by my feet
on this morning too beautiful
to describe,
though I am looking
and listening
and waiting:
A rooster crows
above the low hum
of morning traffic;
the trash truck
spills air from brakes
and rattles empties into bins;
my neighbor hammers
his endless projects
with meticulous efficiency,
so I try to do the same:
Slowly sipping coffee
from an old mug
with a broken handle
I cast a trusted lure
into a familiar hole
and pull these few drops
of dark, still waters
into my boat.
Somewhere locked
in this choke of weeds
spread like a mangy carpet
is the hardened vine
of Pipo’s Concord Grape
he planted in an eager spring
three years ago.
Gasping for air and sun and water
perhaps it has found some way
to hide from my flailing hoe
and the bitterness of my neglect.
Maybe it has buried itself
below the transient roots
of witch grass, sow thistle,
and cockleburr
and can only wait
for another spring
bursting forth
from fresher ground.
My life is the poem I could have writ, But I could not both live and utter it ~Henry David Thoreau
The common man goes to an orchard to taste the fruit. The rich man man learns how to plant his own orchard. The poet, however, grows an even better fruit and gives it all away; for in its perfection no person could afford to buy these apples that never bruise or fall or wilt in the heat. It is an apple that gives more than sustenance—it is an apple that gives life itself. For the true poet, his or her life is the vessel of humanity, and in their words they carry the collective dreams, haunts, wonderings, visions, and perceptions that lifts any who read or hear out of the muck of existence and into a more transcendent experience—an uncommon experience of common life.
