Misplaced Inspiration

I made my first spring walk this morning and was greeted by a north-west wintry gale that chilled one side of my body, while the other warmed with strong high-pressurized sun. Weather like this clears the air. The sky accordingly was bottomless blue and the river sparkled with daylight and white caps.

I passed an American flag whipping up a frenzy in the wind. Nothing else moved in the yard. Further down the road, at a construction site, carpenters were about to begin their daily routine of hard work and easygoing conversation. I heard an occasional word: ‘girlfriend’, ‘weekend’, ‘basketball’. But the crack of hammers soon drowned out every sound including the morning songs of birds.

At the signal old maple tree, I turned to walk back home, and saw a tall man out walking his dog. The stranger wore a long black coat with a deep black hood. I felt a piercing in my left side like a hypochondriac confronting a sudden certainty and felt a dizziness rushing to my head.

It’s a wicked time in which we’re living. Terror and revenge have been blowing in the wind for so long now that its energy has bent our minds like the mountain spruces one will see at tree line. Seldom a day goes by without its drumbeat drowning out domestic voices in some unkind way.

Even poets lose themselves in its overwhelming shadow forgetting all about everyday passions and emotions in favor of politics and partisan prose. Turning back is difficult though. It’s not an academic issue to be bandied about like so many angels on the head of a pin.

There’s a necessity now to affirm life in no unqualified terms. Whitman called for democratic poets of the west to rise, but his voice has been silenced by the cliques of dissimilar codes. And fear is overwhelming; I know its darkness sends a chill into my heart paralyzing my very actions.

But still I walk on knowing that warmer weather has to dawn. The calendar is stronger than our fears, and to turn Thoreau around, time is life-consuming. So I pray for some kind of insight although there’s nothing I can do right now but avoid the intermittent occurrence of oncoming cars rushing their way to work.

While stepping to the side of the road, I notice a flock of Canada geese on the riverbank hunkered down, their heads turned inwards. They look like so many soulless poets. And I know the feeling. All I can think about is readying myself for work to make that long commute to somewhere other than where I want to be.