The Rockport Transfer Station, Sept-Dec, 2010

At the Transfer Station

At the transfer station, life begins again.

The old becomes new. This is the truth.

It’s like Isaiah, the old Hebrew prophet, telling the redemptive story:

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth.”

Well, the Israelites couldn’t see it.

They had in mind just what they wanted

and they didn’t want anything else.

Maybe God had in mind messiah, salvation.

Maybe God had in mind better priests, more faithful people.

Maybe the unification of the twelve tribes, a decent king—

who knew?

Because the people wanted the IKEA shelving,

some good cable TV,  a sense of entitlement and election.

They wanted a convenient life.

Though the truth is, life had never been convenient—

--slaving for the Egyptians, wandering in the desert,

hearing Moses’s over-long sermons and eating

manna, which was like some pre-vegan version

of kale.

We’re not different. Or truly keen on kale.

But it’s different at the transfer station.

Here, you have some choices.

First, you ditch your garbage in the appointed

mausoleums: paper, here; plastic, there;

glass and cans in the farthest ones.

You stash your empty receptacles back in the car;

now you are light, you are shriven.

Now it’s time to visit the transfer station

shops, one for junk, one for books.

Maybe there’s a snowboard at the junk shop,

but you don’t snowboard, so you don’t take it.

Maybe there’s a bedspring and you and your

spouse have broken yours—maybe you’re both too fat,

or maybe you fucked too much. Anyway, it’s broken.

Load the bedspring on the top of the car.

Hallow your new bed. Have a fond fuck.

Or a good lie-in.

Now visit the transfer station book shop.

You are in the market for some dog-earred Rilke, that German mystic poet who made you believe

in whatever you had to believe in, whenever that was.
This from the Second Elegy:

“Every angel is terrifying.”

Well, duh! “What does this mean?”

as Luther asks, ad nauseum, in the Small Catechism.

It means, Martin, that every angel is terrifying.

Maybe not Clarence, in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

But the rest of them.

So fortunately--so as not to fulfill your own agenda--

You do not find any Rilke at the transfer station.

What do you find? Well, you don’t find much.

Just books that smell, books that have somebody

else’s handwriting in them—an inscription for a

birthday present long since discarded, notes

from a college class, something about Yeats

or atomic weight or a French cognate.You don't find much.

Though still you manage to leave the transfer station

with a full bag. Books you figure you

won’t read, don’t need. Books that leapt,

like fish, into your bag.  You will bring them back,

you say, next time you come. And you come often

because you’re not living here for long,

near the transfer station, where every week,

it’s always something new.  You’ve only got

a few months, living near the transfer station.

And you want to leave here lighter than when you came.

You take your bag of books back with you

to your temporary home. And what do you find?

Leonard Cohen’s Psalms?
One ofThe  Boxcar Children’s books?
A writer you hate
whose book you are happy to find among the discards?

Only, there are no discards. There is only the transfer station

where God—surely jesting—fulfills Isaiah’s earnest asking:

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth,

do you not perceive it?”

Fool that I am, I don’t. Fool that I am, I do.

the Beautiful Pauses and the Beautiful Changes

JEH McDonald, Autumn Leaves, Batchwana Woods, Algoma, 1919

Okay, that post title sounds like an episode from Doctor Who. Or do I just create opportunities to allude to Doctor Who? Worse, am I using Doctor Who to lure unsuspecting  readers into reading poetry?
Of course not.

So, I found a great book at a good house sale on Saturday. All those college/grad school poets under one cover: Hopkins and Frost, Auden and Eliot, cummings and Roethke. The modern poets. Well, they had been.

Here's a poem by May Sarton I wish I'd written. I found it last summer, hand-lettered and framed, at a bookstore in Gloucester, Massachusetts, too pricey for me to buy. But it moved me so much that I scoured around for her collected poems and sent it out as my 2011 Christmas letter. But since she'd written it during October, it makes good sense to read now. 

Good advice: Read it slowly. (And at least twice.) That's how we do.

The Beautiful Pauses

                        --May Sarton from A Private Mythology (1961-1966)

Angels, beautiful pauses in the whirlwind,

Be with us through the seasons of unease;

Within the clamorous traffic of the mind,

Through all these clouded and tumultuous days,

Remind us of your great, unclouded ways.

It is the wink of time, crude repetition,

That whirls us round and blurs our anxious vision,

But centered in its beam, your own nunc stans

Still pivots and sets free the sacred dance.

And suddenly we are there: the light turns red,

The cars are stopped in Heaven, motors idle,

While all around green amplitude is spread—

Those grassy slopes of dream—and whirling will

Rests on a deeper pulse, and we are still.

Only a golf course, but the sudden change

From light to light opens a further range;

Surprised by angels, we are free for once

To move and rest within the sacred dance.

Or suddenly we are there: in a hotel room,

The rumor of a city-hive below,

And the world falls away before this bloom,

This pause, high up, affecting us like snow.

Time’s tick is gone; softly we come and go,

Barefoot on carpets, all joyfully suspended,

And there, before the open morning’s ended,

The beautiful pause, the sudden lucky chance

Opens the way into the sacred dance.

I write this in October on a windless morning.

The leaves float down on air as clear as flame,

Their course a spiral, turning and returning;

They dance the slow pavane that gives its name

To a whole season, never quite the same.

Angels, who can surprise us with a lucky chance,

Be with us in this year; give us to dance

Time’s tick away, and in our whirling flight

Poetry center the long fall through light.

There's another "beautiful" poem I wish I'd written. It's by Richard Wilbur and it's called "The Beautiful Changes." I can't put it up here because of copyright restrictions. But you can Google it. It just might make you happy.