It's raining, windy, about 40 degrees. True Maine spring day. I've been sitting in the kitchen on the small rocking chair we put there, looking through the rain splattered window. Outside is the raised bed, naked soil except for that hardy thyme plant that seems to have survived. Behind that, the bird feeders on each corner of the sagging garage. No birds this wet morning. Yet.
The other day I was sitting here on a sunny morning, watching Mourning Doves hunt through the grass, House Sparrows make their round trips from the honeysuckle vines on the corner of the house to the garage feeder and back, again and again and again.
I was thinking how happy I am to be here, to have managed finally to do this - buy this old small house in a small town in Maine and move here. I was thinking how I wish I could have done this a long time ago. I was wondering how it affected my children that instead of growing up in a house, their own home, with a (albeit small) yard, in a small town, near the ocean, instead they grew up, at least from when they came to live with me in NYC, in a city of 10 million. I think it made them strong in some ways, and opened them up to the diversity of human beings. But they missed out on things, too. I'm sorry for that. I like to think that even living in an apartment, Sam is living in a neighborhood where his kids are getting some of what I'm talking about. But I hope he and Melina can buy a house while the boys are still boys, and while he and Melina can enjoy it for a good part of their own lives, too.
Still, the feelings I've had are not just about owning a house; they are also about moving here, to this town, to this place, where things are ... smaller, slower, less frantic, less stressed. There are still problems - we have homelessness, including homeless kids! - and a hell of a lot of poverty, and drug and alcohol addiction - but at least these problems are taking place on a smaller scale within a less frenetic environment where the actions of people seem to have a better chance of having an impact.
I bought the "New Collected Poems" of Wendall Berry lately and in them is the following poem, which I take liberty to reproduce here with thanks to Mr. Berry and the book's publisher, Counterpoint, in honor of April being Poetry Month, and in honor of Wendall Berry himself. This poem speaks to me so deeply and to what I felt for so many years before I moved here:
The Thought of Something Else
By Wendell Barry
1
A spring wind blowing
the smell of the ground
through the intersections of traffic,
the mind turns, seeks a new
nativity – another place,
simpler, less weighted
by what has already been.
Another place!
Ii’s enough to grieve me –
that old dream of going,
of becoming a better man
just by getting up and going
to a better place.
2.
The mystery. The old
unaccountable unfolding.
The iron trees in the park
suddenly remember forests.
It becomes possible to think of going.
3.
a place where thought
can take its shape
as quietly in the mind
as water in a pitcher,
or a man can be
safely without thought
see the day begin
and lean back,
a simple wakefulness filling
perfectly
the spaces among the leaves.
* * * * *
So here I am at last, in my own space among the leaves - which will come back soon. Already they push their buds through the wet bare branches. The willow tree glows palely yellow in the morning light.
Peace.
