earth day

taking refuge

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the world is kin, but it is only on some days
when the cloud hangs low and thick, and any light
if at all, is diffused, that i am able to recognize it
where there were seventy three trilliums in June
now lies ninety five tamarack needles

all my life I have been warned of geography, do not step here, or mingle there
if it was indeed so dangerous, how could i live 
with snow, having been brought up with the sun
now history is another matter, yes that
would certainly kill, unless you strike first

if i have to constantly fight
over geography, and history is
bound to be our downfall
let us take respite from raping
each other’s stardust
and take refuge in arithmetic
when seventy three trilliums is being
replaced by ninety five tamarack needles, with more incoming
let us look directly at the stars, being plucked away in patient hurry

Lower St. Regis

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Lower St. Regis.

I work by this lake. Not too long ago, I used to live within walking distance of the lake. 

Needless to say that it has been a source of profound joy to walk along the shoreline. By myself, often with my dog, and camera, sometimes with students and colleagues. 

Here are some images made recently, during the Spring thaw. This time, more than any other period of the year, the lake is a dynamic, shape-shifting, animated being.

The end product is after all, just a product. But I hope it conveys the joy I felt in being at the shoreline. And if you are fortunate to have access to a water body, I hope you find the time to witness the periodic eccentricities of the seasons as well.

Breaking Up

Waiting

The Light That Breaks

Siblings For A Day

March of the Ice Stars

The Long Arm of the Sun

If There is Magic on the Planet…

Thoreau’s bookmark

Farewell to Winter

Epilogue

/ Saikat / Leave a comment

On this Earth Day, unlike many others- individuals to organizations, I have no agenda. Instead I would like to speak about April. 

April is November in reverse. November withdraws, April approaches. While November is frightening, April can but merely be threatening.  It was in April, six years back, when I made my first solo trip to the Adirondack mountains. Coming to this place without any friends, not just for fun, not for group hiking with a checklist, but just being there- helped convince me of the importance of not having any agenda. If love was to be truly loved, it was meant to be in this land in April.  Now it has been two years, two Aprils, that I have been living on this land. And I wish to spend the rest of my Aprils in this land, bereft of agenda. And any good, which I always wish and strive for- for the land or anyone else, is merely a by-product of my actions.

* The following, follows from ‘Seeking November’ https://saikatchakra.wordpress.com/2023/01/15/seeking-november/

I waited for one infinity
-with my black dog4

Aji e probhat e rabir kar
       Kemone poshilo praner por
Kemone poshilo guhar aadhare probhat-pakhir gaan
Na jani keno re eto din pore jagiya uthilo pran6

We are in the month of April. The light is strong, but the season is wrong.

I was waiting for the revolution to come down in sleet, another month for the blood to thicken- in the thin of things. Before I could summon the hatred necessary to inflict the necessary, the ice was out. As if that was not enough, the speckled alder budded. The fever broke. Pus oozed out of the maples.

I was older in November. I am younger in April. 
I found ballads in all the places I came baying for blood.

We cannot know both the position and momentum of a subatomic particle with perfect accuracy.7

As I am being recklessly restored, a student comes and declares the bird they have met.

Wail wail wail tremolo yodel hoot wail wail
Not one she’s seen.
One bird she’s met.
One.

April is for greeting each one anew.

The first trillium
before the meadow takes over.
The first loon that serenades you
The last shard of ice that this lake offers to you.

And what must we do with this bounty?

This, you must learn, that April too has no value
For it was given to you,
And you must give it away.
The brown, passing through, makes space for the green.

References

  1. Bloom by Emily Dickinson
  2. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
  3. O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman
  4. adapted from Mahabharata
  5. adapted from The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling
  6. Nirjhorer Swapnobhongo by Rabindranath Thakur
  7. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle