In Writing: Dale Hobson

The hinge of the season is an interesting time. Not the one, not the other, but blending both. Its own thing, really, were we not so ingrained in our dualisms. April only seems a cruel month if you have no memory of January.

As April Comes

As April comes, winter wrestles spring again,
winning one day, losing the next, losing more
and more often as the southwest wind gusts in,
drives rain, liquefies the stinking soil, hooking up
jumper cables to the life which bides sleeping.

And inside me, where life has also lain sleeping,
I hear the wakeup call of the roaring night wind.
Its electricity in my brain shakes me from sleep.
I emerge from blankets like a bear from its lair
and stumble-foot to the kitchen to make coffee.

Water stands now in those hollows of the yard
that yesterday held snow. Good; good. Too long
has this world been frozen. A bit of greening
by the south-facing wall, which tomorrow (should
weather hold) might pop a spray of snowdrops.

A day, for once, for walking ’round the village:
going to the church for tai chi, going to the stores
for food and resupply, chatting with friends
not seen for months, moving on to the diner 
for gossip, burger, fries — a day for the library.

A day, perhaps, for driving nowhere in particular,
just because the roads are clear and because 
the winter coat, the hat, gloves, scarf, and boots
can stay behind in the hallway back at home. 
A day of lightness, warmth, and ease. Yes, please.

As winter ends, but before it really ends, it’s sort of 
Rip Van Winkle, sort of dubya-tee-eff. Tomorrow might
be “Remember me?”– back to drifts, shivers, shovels,
back to hunker down. But that’s what makes today
so sweet. It’s freeze and thaw that makes the sap run.

Note: unpublished draft

Terry called me just after the second tower fell. My first words to her were “We’re going to war.” And of course we did, several times over. The catchphrase was “Everything changed after 9/11.” But it all looked like business as usual to me. Just missing a little of the candy coating. Here’s a poem I wrote shortly after waking in the night to hear the endless line of transports carrying 10th Mountain troops to Afghanistan in October 2001.

How Everything Didn’t Change

Just after the shotgun blast the maple shakes off
its cloak of blackbirds. They shriek, dive and rise.

Three times round the field they flap,
wheeling this way and that, and all together.

But it doesn’t last—the flock returns and settles,
in order, each to the same accustomed perch.

After Ida

A week later, I still can’t write the poem I wanted
to write about Cape Cod and the ocean, the storm
and after the storm. I wanted to write about fear,
being awakened at midnight and told “take shelter.”

But there was no cellar, nowhere far from windows.
I wanted to write about waiting out waves of lightning,
torrential rain and wind as long as we could stay awake, 
then giving up at last before dawn, to hope, faith, sleep.

And I wanted to write about the awe with which
I always approach the ocean – endless, infinitely
mutable but always itself. The cleansing simplicity
of sand and surf, its peacefulness and its violence.

I wanted to bring in natural history, how the Cape
was laid down by glacier, how the ocean was comet
melt and volcano breath from before life began
and long after the Cape washed away would remain.

I tried to write it four different ways and couldn’t reach
that point where I say “hmm,” say “done,” and turn
away. It was all too much for one poem. So instead,
this, the few lines that always rang true in every draft:

“Next day, when rain ends, we walk back through 
pitch pine, white oak and holly to stand again
above the beach where the ocean, wholly wild
now, pounds out its oneness on the drum of sand.

“My body, itself a bag of seawater, feels the drag
of the yellow moon rising at the world’s edge.”

When dealing with a puzzle, the inclination is to take it one piece at a time, scanning, sorting, studying minute differences, getting frustrated, then boring back in. Finally, only when the last piece clicks in, do you draw back to fully see what one the many have made. It’s as much a puzzle as before you began.

Jigsaw Buddha

From random shapes and colors,
start from the edges and work in.
Here’s a half-closed eye, half a hand,
a fold of robe. Make mistakes; persist.
Face and form fill out emptiness.
Whose face?