Water flight

I had to renew Robert Macfarlane's book The Old Ways (2012) and I'm still just inching my way through it.  The writing is so tight and creates such word pictures and stories of the old pathways by land or by water that I will soon fork over the money to buy the book.  The hardback library copy is beginning to get beat up in my bag.  It seems like each word and phrase brings me new discoveries. 
Let me read you a piece...but first a little background.  Ian, a sailor, leads the author by boat to the North Atlantic rocky island of Sula Sgeir following the old water and flight pathway made by the gannet.

     Ian told me a story, an old one that I had encountered before.  Ver-
sions of it exist near the gannetries of the Irish and Scottish west
coasts, revised to freshness with each new telling.  A small open boat
is sailing out to St Kilda--or to Rona, or the Blaskets (choose your
distant island)--when, far out of sight of land, it passes through a
herring shoal so profuse that the surface of the sea seems firm enough
to walk on.  The herring brings the predators:  whales, dolphins and
gannets, gannets in their thousands, thumping down from the sky
in the sea all around the boat.
     'Suddenly,' said Ian, 'there comes a noise like a firearm being dis-
charged.  Pack!'
     A gannet has dived by error into the open boat itself and there it is,
up near the bow, stone dead, its body limp and its beak driven clean
through the timber of the hull, its great wings, six feet for sure from
tip to tip, splayed on the thwarts.  Twenty miles from land in the big
Atlantic waves and with a hole in the hull; well, that should have been
death to the boat and its people.  But then they realize that the gan-
net's impact has been so powerful that it has plugged the hole it made.

pages 130-1, The Old Ways, Robert Macfarlane

This book is filled with great stories and beautiful language that ripples and deepens what we know of the old pathways.

Denis Streeter

The gift

What is your complexion
Mine is varied
But nearly always complex
Tell me you are engaged and show me your ring
And I feel genuine happiness for you
And genuine pain for myself
Simultaneously
And in this season of dying
For I have heard more than I care to know
Til I'm cold sweat, blue in the face, ready to pass out
Hold on...
I have also heard more engagements than I was ready to know
And through all my contradiction I feel hope
A sort of complex hope
Mixing with my darkness
A candle flame with black smoke
Curling my mind
Switching back and forth
Happy sad hope grounded
And that longing to be understood
Though words and actions make no sense
Actions better understood
They are the groundwork for what lies beneath
When words misunderstand or lie
"You were staring at me", she said
"No I wasn't", I replied
"Yes you were...and it creeps me out."
Was or wasn't, was or wasn't
Emotions a fleeting moment
That sometimes stay in reflection
A self contained reality
That bubbling anger
"They were wrong..."
"They won't admit..."
Its complexion
The contradiction of self
Raising its beautiful flame yet threatening to consume us
Reality and hope weave a fine chord
One to hang us, one to hold us up
But maybe that isn't the all of it
Maybe between the waiting and the doing
Contradiction and complexion
Weaves a length of beauty
Waiting to be understood
Perhaps waiting to be blessed
To be the gift.

Denis Streeter  5/22/13

Mathemagical thinking

This is a true story problem...
Kayla worked Grace's Thursday shift.
Grace is working Kayla's Saturday shift.
Kayla and Grace are working together on Monday.

So...

Let G=Grace
Let K=Kayla
Let T=Thursday
Let S=Saturday
Let M=Monday

If T, then K=G
If S, the G=K
Therefore
M=K+G

Denis Streeter  5/17/13

jumblevision

screw in the wiretaps
jumblevision too long
wrap up the chords
say what to say
short to the point
misunderstanding
jumblevision
say it is my song
say I listen alright
conference call I can not follow
shutdown to make it slowdown
fill in the pieces
mind left behind
wandering moors
forever wondering
knowing
tapping in

I did not get it right
I did not get it wrong

denis streeter  5/15/13

Others pain

When will the anger stop
It's about me
I get an email from my sister
Showing how much she cares for a friend of ours
I don't know her friend that well
Why does my sister have to reach out to every person she knows
Who is in pain
I don't know
I do
It's not a question mark
She carries the pain of others and buries her own
Until it becomes too much for her
And even in the caring email she sends to console
There's something oddly generic about it
She can't go deeper because she's dealing with her own issues
She gets information wrong
Then when corrected, she goes on to explain what she's going through
I didn't ask to hear any of it
And yet it goes on
One pain after another
And we diminish ourselves
Forget we are worth anything
Because others pain is so much greater than ours
The problem is
Everywhere in this world
There are people suffering more than us
Where does that leaves us
Our needs are important too
And the weird thing is
Now this sounds like a boohoo piece
"Our needs are important too"
How trite, how obvious
The key seems to be
How much is too much
The obvious answer seems to be
When our health is diminished by caring for others
And we continue to crumble because there is always someone worse off
Then comes the anger
We feel others are abusing us
But they aren't
They didn't ask for our help
We offered it
It's not about my sister
It's about me
It's about each of us
We have a choice
We always have a choice.

Denis Streeter  5/8/13

Tidal pull

Written after reading part of Robert Macfarlane's 2012 book The Old Ways:  A Journey on Foot.

Snoring shores shifting sands
Impermeable light water sky
Everything changes rules of sight
Eyes filling silt
Feet baking sinking sand clay
Your feet cast mold
Harden to clay
And the feet keep walking
Senses sharpen and bewilder
Water sand silt sky
Cast in magic
Straightlines curve, curves straightline
Big is small, small big
Imaginings gulls to eagles
Driftwood trees
Nonsense land that slippery silt
Freshmade indestructible feeling
Walking you to sea
Tidally pulling your chest
You hear your sirens, sights unknown and personal
Clamshells speak, crabs scurry echo ear, sanding land water sky
Cracked you laugh, fight to return, wanting to drown
The no-time sense enticing
Feet and head argue, body follows course
That course of safety and regret
Exhilaration
You'll never forget
Timeless made new, imagination
Making tracks in mind and shifting worlds

Denis Streeter  5/6/13