Adonais: Spring Beckons

. . . and time reckons.

Saline Drip

"Ice-Diving in Hudson Bay"

ICE-DIVING IN HUDSON BAY

When we dive down in those cool and crystal
Blue waters, clumsy with our double wetsuits,
Steel tanks, and that thirteen feet of frozen sea,
Will we worry whether the ropes rub raw
On the rough-edged ice--safety-lines snapping,
Drifting from the ice-hole as we lose our way?
Perhaps, as we dive, swimming along stiff walls,
Sea-carved corridors, chill labyrinths of ice,
Our lamps might dim, or die, leaving us to grope
Blindly in that deep and dark, sightless world?
Will we wonder, what if--while we blindly swim--
The ice-hole freezes over, trapping us
Forever until the slow spring thaw?

Or will we be just like that Captain Hudson
And his young son, boating out on those quiet waters
Of the new-found bay, watching their tall ship sail
Beyond winter's ice.  A grim Captain-Boatswain yells
Hasty farewells from the fleeing crosstrees.
Winds bring their cries across cold, shifting seas.

--Matthew Duckworth

A fragment, a figment, from my youth.  Winter 1980: Poetry-Writing with Carl Dennis.
Undergraduate work here that I'm enjoying with hindsight.

Keith, my buddy Keith, was my partner in imagination, diving beneath the ice.
Fare well, rest well, strive well, my friend.
I miss you.

--MD

McIlvanney: "The Language of My Living"

Here's a passage from one of William McIlvanney's novels that I've always liked.  The juxtaposition of humility and arrogance, the mix of what others think versus what the narrator knows, has stuck with me, has resonated over the years.  I recall giving this passage to a colleague, for I felt that the passage conveyed both his affect and his self-understanding, but he just smiled as he read, so I wasn't given a full commentary.  I relate and don't quite relate to what's voiced here, but it always resonates.

Here, read for yourself:

'Well,' she said.  'I'd better be going.'

I looked at her and nodded.  She smiled and pointed to the ground behind the cars.  There were tread-marks on the grass.

'Those,' she said.  'They'll always remind me of Scott.  Him and me here.  I wonder how long they'll last.  What is all this about for you really?  I mean.  What is it you're doing exactly?'

'I don't know exactly.  I suppose I'm trying to make my own peace with Scott's death.  I suppose this is how I do it.'

'How do I do it?'

She started suddenly to cry.

'Damn,' she said.  'Will you hold me one time for him?'

I crossed and held her.  It was a small, chaste ceremony of mutual loss.  Her hair in my face gave off a melancholy sweetness.  Clenched to her, I felt the tremors of her body, how the edifice of beauty was undermined from within with deep forebodings.  In the embrace I experienced our shared nature--so much questionable confidence containing so much undeniable panic.  That was me, too.  Some of my colleagues and bosses liked to say I was completely arrogant.  They misunderstood the language of my living.  Arrogance should be comparative.  Humility was total.  Faced with simplistic responses to life that tried to fit my living into themselves, I was arrogant.  I seemed to meet them every day and I knew I was more than they said I was.  But when I sat down inside myself in the darkness of a night, I knew nothing but my smallness.  I knew it now and shared it with hers.

--William McIlvanney,
Strange Loyalties,
A Harvest Book,
Harcourt Brace and Company,
1991

This is the third Laidlaw book, and the other two are worth looking for.  This one shifts the narration from third-person to first-person (and for excellent reasons).

Touchstone: from Kirk Russell's "Redback"

Here’s a passage that matters to me, a passage that truly evokes emotion and thought, from the fourth John Marquez eco-thriller by Kirk Russell:

At dawn it was quite cold and he made coffee, ate bread, cheese, and dates, and then walked down to the lake and filtered enough water for the hike up.  He slid the water bottles into the pack.  He slipped the pack on and started up with an ice axe in his right hand.

There was no trail or any real need of a trail.  The weather was fine and he could see ahead and knew his route.  It was steep and long and jumbled with granite and talus, and then he climbed on snow.  It was steep, and there were places where you wouldn’t want to fall, but nowhere did he need a rope.   On the saddle between Banner and Ritter he drank half his water and cleaned his sunglasses before starting up again.  Here, the snowfield steepened and he kicked the toe of his boot in harder and used the ice axe.

When he summitted Mount Banner just before noon he could hear Brad’s voice in his head.  On top, it was cold and clear.  Over the Minarets the sky was dark blue.  He caught his breath sitting on a rock looking down at Lake Ediza, small and beautiful below, and at Thousand Island Lake and east toward the desert, and then down the long reach of the Sierras.  This was a place Brad loved and Marquez walked the summit looking for a spot, then climbed down between rocks and found a place to tuck in Brad’s good luck talisman.

We do things to say good bye that defy rational explanation.  You take what you remember and loved in a human being and you hold it in your heart, but still at times you need a photo or a ring or a piece of clothing, something you can touch, a tombstone to visit where you can talk.  Marquez knew from time to time he’d come back to this mountain.  When he could no longer climb it, the mountain would still be here, and if part of Alvarez’s spirit lingered with it, and if the talisman held any good luck, the mountain would be safer for those that climbed.  What better spirit to guard climbers than Brad?

--Kirk Russell, Redback,
Severn House Publishers Ltd,
Great Britain, 2010/ USA, 2011
(pages 94-95)

Grief's Visage?

Weird brother to go with the weird sisters in Macbeth this week?

Or, Grief's Visage?
Hollow-eyed and empty-mouthed?
Can you hear the wailing?

Herald:
stoneware; sea-foam glazing.

Grief's Waters

Undertow, rip current, whirlpool, maelstrom:
grief will pull you into deeply dangerous waters.

Salt For The Wound

Such salt solaces -- even as it burns.

(Photos from a happier day: PG / January 20, 2013.)