Poetry

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

Tessellations in Time

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“If your Lordship should consider that these observations may disgust or scandalize the learned, I earnestly beg your Lordship to regard them as private and to publish or destroy them as your Lordship sees fit.” – Anton van Leeuwenhoek

van Leeuwenhoek was the first person to study microbial organisms from his local pond in great detail in the 17th century. He developed his own macro camera aka the compound microscope! He was the first person to witness the blood flow in capillaries. All chaste subjects! But his colleagues egged him on to venture beyond the prevailing ethics of the time. He finally came around to the idea and examined his own ejaculation.

Life is rife with speculations, but especially so during his time. Some theories suggested that tiny pre-formed humans were nestled inside the sperm cells. Even Leeuwenhoek himself was skeptical about the ‘blasphemous’ experiments. Hence, the above disclaimer while sending the results to the Royal Society. Remember Galileo. Remember Giordano Bruno. 

But Leeuwenhoek was fortunate to be in good company. The same cannot be said of sperm cells. They have to fulfill their destiny in a foreign environment. While they do not have a pre-formed life, they do possess the precursors that can bring life in conjunction with their counterparts. Millions perish, but they need to be successful only once.

Twelve thousand years ago, I might have hoped to go for a nice swim in Death Valley and make a hearty meal out of some crustaceans, not too unlike the organisms studied by Leeuwenhoek. If I were observant enough now, I could have come across the chemical remnants of the species that once called this place a home. An abundance of moisture, and a low-lying basin with no outlet made for a flourishing environment in a sub-tropical climate. But the tide changes with time. A host of geological factors that led to increasingly arid climate choked the pluvial lakes on their own minerals. Now, on a clear and warm evening,  I walk among the neat, geometrically energy-efficient alkali crust left behind from ages of desiccation. 

And on rare years, as thunderstorms bring rain to the valley, I see the tessellations disappear in a salty slush. I see before me a memory of what once was. 

The next morning, I hike up and away from the tessellated hexagons. With the elevation as my guide, the intricate patterns in the salt flat, the alluvial fans from the dried-up lake bed, the residuum of a plethora of species that was, the dirt and dust and mud in the this Land of Little Rain– all coalesced into a green oval spermatozoon.

A camouflage of biological life, waiting with the elements. For the tide to turn again. For the Tüpippüh to flourish once more.

(adapted from original writing in 2021)

Bartering Hope for Meaning

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Between the world with all of its offers, and slow mornings on the peat, the choice was always easy. I take Moose, the dog, for a short walk around the nearby wetland before I set up the camera, if at all. Usually, he romps about off leash when I am making images, oftentimes making interesting patterns in water (that I can possibly include in my image), or getting me curious about that flower he is sniffing. Being early in a “non- descript” wetland has its advantages of having no other bipeds to worry about. But no off leash running for him until his leg heals. After his walk, I put the leash around my ankle while I set up my tripod. Bad idea for sure! And yet, in all these weeks, he has not brought the tripod, and me, crashing down. 

On my right, the pink sky is giving way to blood orange. Soon the mist will turn to vapours of gold. The tamaracks will briefly adorn this gold, pretending it is Fall, while the temperatures very well indicate mid summer. The labradorite landscape to the left starts to catch hints of these yellows, here and there, with no apparent rhyme or reason, guided by the whims of the sun playing truant with the fog. Not so long ago, there was just one lilypad, the first of the season, floating under the watchful eyes of bygone pines as water- bugs frolic. And now there is a whole family. 

Edward Abbey said-  “….in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”

Things are a little different here, in boreal country, with a holistic bounty of flora and fauna. With a generous gift of light and water for every lilypad and black spruce, each stem of the bladderworts, the living organism grows out of the sphagnum with dignity and grace. The extreme mist of the wetlands is equaled by the extreme fellowship of boreal life-forms. Love flowers best in love.

I hear the splash of a beaver. Of course, Moose has heard it. I grab the leash and start walking away before he makes a dash towards the beaver. A short distance away, there is a lady slipper, blushing with the mirth of the pre-dawn pinks. What are the odds of seeing a lady slipper in my life? A narrow range of soil and climate nourishes them; even when I made a journey of ten thousand miles to this place, it wasn’t until my ninth year of exploring that I first heard of this orchid. I could never have hoped or planned my life to meet a lady slipper. I had hoped for “bigger and better things” with my life, and for a good part of my life, planned and pursued them. But I am glad the smaller, meaningful things never went away. Sure enough, it did require a nudge every now and then from a book’s wisdom, a poet’s word, a hiker’s fatigue, and whatever the thing that whiskey does. Now that I have met this lady slipper, and that this is an important meeting, mere hope and planning do not suffice anymore.  

Wendell Berry wrote- 

“Let us see that, without hope, we still are well. Let hopelessness

shrink us to our proper size.

Without it we are half as large

as yesterday, and the world

is twice as large. My small

place grows immense as I walk

upon it without hope.”

This wetland too, grows immense as I walk upon it without hope. As night turns to day on this sphagnum, I stand in silence before the venous pitcher plant. I learn about the flowering leatherleaf, I quiver with the budding lady slippers, I rejoice with the geese, I spin with the water-bugs by the daunting lily pads. Between the shallow shoreline and the point where the water suddenly gives away to depth, amidst the swirling galaxy of shy pine cones and the bold pollens, the pickerel weeds quivering in the sunlight- a mass of yellow and green in the blue expanse, a dispatch from Spring, that I am reading on this warm summer morning. I come close to all that is holy, and unholy, as the light, ever so lightly, fills me from horizon to horizon. 

I cannot stay here all day because there are lectures to be prepared, and assignments to be graded. I slowly walk back with Moose: he is dragging his feet while wagging his tail.While I know my day will be long, I know that I have enough sustenance. In the graveyard of my erstwhile hopes and dreams, I have gathered my meaning. 

And this is what I have gathered this spring and summer- three trilliums, a swallowtail on a foam flower, one lady slipper (because you should not have too much of a good thing), a pitcher flower and three grass pink orchestrating a ballad of bladderworts and sundews, a million black flies so that I learn to value them all, three dragonflies to give me a brief respite from the black flies, a clump of rose pogonias around a budding tamarack, thirteen blooming water lilies, and two more at the cusp of a bloom (because you can never have too much of a good thing), seven bog candles, and a path lined with goldenrods.

Seeking November

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To be a Flower, is profound Responsibility1 – if that is true, then November is a land without law. I do not know if I am seeking November, or if I would like it. But since it is here, all I can do is place myself in its path. Maybe seeking is, after all, about something not sought after.

They say that the winter snow is like a blanket of kindness that drapes the barren landscape. November, with odd snow days, does not try to even out its edges. Like a holly leaf near the bottom of the plants developing spikes, November dissuades grazers. The tourists dissipate; the locals hibernate until the snow is good enough for skiing. At this time, when nothing happens, where the land neither cares, nor cures, maybe it is easier to insert myself. 

I remember the time my father lost a tire in a marsh, and went back the next morning to find it: an ordinary day in an ordinary country- of little liberty and ample beauty. Here I am now, in another ordinary country, on another ordinary November day, losing myself in a marsh- and finding it, next morning. I see the last dodo that refused to see fear in a handful of dust2. I see Thomas Roe lowering his anchor in Surat. I see the dwindling lights of Samarkand, the burning ghats of Banaras. I see the retreat of the tundra, and the victory of the algae. 

As a light snow falls on this November night- I think of the little rights remaining, and the ample beauty still left: where continuity stands in the way of liberation, it is inevitable that a pine sapling takes foothold in the murky memory of spruce and leatherleaf and tamaracks and rose pogonias.

If all is stardust, why should one be better than another?

It is in this great leveller of seasons – with no flowers to sanctify, no black flies to vilify; in the browning heath, and a slightly frosted sedge, the indecisive hardening of sphagnum, anxious footprints of a coyote in the sudden thaw-lines in a slowly freezing lake, the tanning of the grass by the water’s edge, the bare aspens, the barely clinging beech leaves, the grey November light, unimpeded by greenery, walking deeper into the blood- clotted landscape- that rights and kinship, sans ownership, sans privilege, is facilitated.

In this light, at this time of the year, I can read the landscape better. And contribute a verse3. 

 I wait for one infinity
in the cold and bleak.
-with my black dog4

It is amazing how easy that is to do.
The leaves go first.
and then the shade
and then the loons
and then the sunshine
finally, it is November.

Telling it like it is- without the rage of monsoon, or the softness
of autumn.
without the-
summer fruit, or the spring flowers; 
when the snow is not yet deep, and there are no promises to keep.
November slips in
as if nothing ever happened.

I have been to the brothel of Autumn
and bartered beauty in maples
I saw your world, 
and held your light-
until I plucked warm stars 
out of the moonless November sky
and pinned them
to the tamaracks
I see you now. I see you now.
I walk in your shadow.

Here is the secret of the seasons-
where the river has died
and the black dog and I need to hide
there is not enough light.
there is not enough night.
-for all that is brown and living,
November offers nothing.

The first lover, and the last empire
had their share-
now it is time, for the brown lilypad
to summon you.
into this unholy peatland.
all night long, this November light
carries the Brown’s burden
The peaceful poems of the savage5

there is beauty in the aftermath of the war, 
where the worst is over, 
and the best is best–
kept at bay. 
there, you can hold-
the empty purpose, just you
and the world- 
ending the world. 

and then I wait
for one more infinity
-with my black dog4

References

  1. Bloom by Emily Dickinson
  2. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
  3. O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman
  4. Mahabharata
  5. The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling

If, only

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If you love me, give me a metaphor.

I want to know how I remind you of the first time,

You got hurt playing in your childhood home.

How it felt to see the sun going down.

If you love me, tell me how I am commonplace,

In the mud and bog, in the stardust of everyday life.

Churning the same old adjectives.

How I can be replaced.

If you love me, bid me farewell,

In the repeating seasons of grey.

All that leaves without a mark.

How it is all the same.

Beauty Lies

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Beauty lies

In the present, of a future time

A home, in a foreign land

A turquoise lake, in the blue mountains

A library of lichens, on a glacial erratic.

A thicket of flowers, burning in a forest fire

Now, in then

Here, in there

Near, in far

Iron, in blood

Love, in hate

Mutations, in evolutions

Helium, in stardust

Hope, in regret

Magnesium, in geranium

Fragrance, in squalor

Guitar chords, in book markers

Beech leaves, in winter

Hail storms, in summer

Peace, in entropy.

In declamations, and proclamations

Confusions, and conclusions

In tall reeds, reaching for the old man’s beard

The black reflections, on a crimson pond

The revelations, in the revolutions

Ideals, in violence

Luftpause, in a just cause

Mountains in the mist, strangers who kissed

Migrating loons, and paddles under the full moon

Summer euphoria, and college nostalgia

Rainbow ridges, and alpine riddles.

Beauty lies

Not in the eyes, and neither in the beholder.

Beauty lies.

In the space between the words, hanging in the air.

A monologue trying to be a conversation

A holler, drowning into a lament

Arguments, conceiving justice

Answers, birthing questions

Carbon atoms, crystallizing into diamonds

Thoughts, becoming consciousness

Caterpillars, morphing into monarchs

An outlaw, becoming a poet

And a vagabond, always remaining one.

Beauty lies

Not in the eyes, and neither in the beholder.

The eye lies,

And beauty leads to the truths.

Beauty lies

In the space between the words, hanging in the air.

Between “you look beautiful, and you are beautiful”

Between now and then, here and there

Between love and hate, hope and regret

Between spring and thaw, ripe and raw

In creatures void of form, in chemical formulas with chromosomes

In the wrinkles of old skin, the creases of a dear book

In departed souls, taking one last look

In leaning closer, to hear someone better

In chewed up pencils, while writing exams

In nervous stutters, and solemn whispers

In sunlight, on spring greens

In sunlight, on dead pines

In the time to feel frostbites on fingers

Eight and a third of a minute.

“Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine.” 

My forests, my dreams

My hills, my nightmares

My lakes, my gambles

My blue hour, my slumber

My rain, my geosmin

My trails, my holy grail

My light, my photosynthesis

My rose, my little prince

My lilies, my poems

My sun, my name

My land, my home.

Beauty lies.

Not in the eyes, and not in the beholder

But in the space between the words, hanging in the air

Would you let it be? 

(“Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine.” – quoted from Bob Dylan’s ‘Shelter from the Storm)