by David Adams
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
—“Renascence”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
—For Leslie Henry and Dorothy Quimby, librarians, both, and stewards of our words.
The fog below, the clouds above, the mists between.
I remember well the times when that pewter lens
Was all this altitude revealed. So I looked,
As always, within it for the way beyond.
On that day of unexpected clarities
From atop the mountain we could see
The whole reach of Penobscot Bay
Where the sun could shift its shape across
The waters, the islands once so close,
So familiar, dispersed like children,
The spruce dark mystery no one solves.
One winter a friend and I had paddled out for lunch.
There was a cabin crumbling to its cellar.
Some logs and blocks, a rotting squirrel.
But the shafts of light between the trees
Speckled down on everything. We almost spoke.
But suddenly the wind came back northeast,
And we beat hell for home like frightened prey.
Later there was time to wonder what we’d learned.
All of that was someone else’s life now long ago.
Once in summer, I made the climb alone,
Tracing the very steps she took between
The sun and the footfalls of shadows
In ghostly firs, as if bracketing a line
That quivers between hope and desolation.
From there that water that could terrify
Seemed quiet as a mirror. It may be
The oldest tale: water, stone and wood,
The light, the dark, and those who see.
So many years ago I left a cruel interment
In the valley of the Carrabassett, a daughter gone,
Her hope extinguished by a patch of ice,
The dark trees welcoming beneath the stars.
Christmas looming. It happens that way.
When I was so alone, I used to listen for the silence
Between carols on the radio. Waiting.
As if each soul would find the moment there
To seek ransom from its captive life.
I am guessing that she would understand.
That sunny day atop the mountain,
We crouched where she would crouch to contemplate
A life as open and as fearsome as the Bay.
Lights on the rocks like words,
Burning even on the glyphs of lichen.
Tonight the snow is spinning, and we are home
In Ohio, almost a universe away. I should know.
I do not need a photograph to see your smile,
To feel your hand half around my waist.
A night ago I watched you light a little candle.
I wanted to say something. I have stories
Like candles, but I decided just to watch and wait.
I think I know the tricky craft of hopefulness.
“Look one way and the sun is going down,
Look the other and the moon is rising.”
“Father, do we go to heaven,
Or does it come to us?”
But thinking makes nothing quite so dear
As the breaths we share. Tonight they wind above
Our shoulders like a prayer.
A prayer is a story, too.
I believe that she would understand.
To friends both near and far. Leslie and I visited Mt. Battie this autumn past. It was a perch that drew me many times and in different moods and seasons during my nearly 30 years living in New England. The image stayed with me, especially after rereading the plaque bearing the lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s famous poem “Renascence.” I went back to that poem, and one of my own began to stir. By November, having visited my mentor Frederick Eckman’s paean to Millay, I realized I had stumbled on the next Advent poem. A curious poem about the hope of the season, perhaps. But aren’t they all?
The first set of quoted lines near the end are from Randall Jarrell’s poem “The Mockingbird.” The second set came from my older Advent poem, “Advent at the Looking Glass River.” They seemed to fit.