In Writing: Dale Hobson

We’re in the fleeting thick of it now—trillium time, apple blossom time. It is only a moment in the wheel of the year, so savor. How quickly a square of chocolate melts in the mouth and is gone. What if you could only have one once a year?

Trillium print by T. Ellen Fisher, c. 1900.

Spring of the world

When the heron is home,
when trillium light the path,
when apple petals dust
the yard and all the leaves
are young, I remember–
we were built for Eden.

This pure cumulus white
against a piercing blue,
light like honey poured
out over rolling hills—
yes, yes–I remember
how it was in Eden.

Would that it could stay,
not boil off into summer,
nor burn with autumn,
nor freeze the long dark.
We were built for Eden
but had to have the world.

The long tail of winter is tough on me, not least because I never know when it is done having its fun. And this winter has been tougher than most, one of relentless tumult in the country and the world — raised voices, uncertainty, tense encounters and waiting upon the unpredictable next thing. But mostly — a long, dark, cold, biding time.

There is one moment, however, that signals a sharp divide between winter and the more blessed seasons to come. There may be more weather in the offing, but something, unquestionably, has busted loose.

Photo: Paul VanDerWerf, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

April Light

All day warm wind withered the late fall of snow,
runoff sheeting over still frozen ground, down
a hundred runlets toward the river. A gray day
with low clouds ripping north on bluster from the south.

Yesterday sunny and cold, today cloudy and warm—
weather upside down. All night long south wind
moans, as I read by the bedstand light, sleepless, uneasy,
as if something in me knows what is about to happen.

It starts with a long, loud crack, then grinding, booming–
the whole reservoir welling up, breaking the back of the ice.
The spillway chock-a-block with jostling slabs and roaring water–
ice-out, like a hammer through a plate glass window.

Come morning, I go to see. Snowdrops by the foundation wall
forecast fairer days. The trail down the bank is a slash of mud.
Fast black water churns under a pale sun, milky in clots with slush.
A full-grown cedar hangs by its roots halfway over the dam.

After the ice storm. Archive Photo of the Day: Mike Corse, Pierrepont, NY

Woke to the whirr of the furnace this morning. The weather page tells me it’s in the low single digits, and looking out the kitchen window I squint into the glare of a bluebird sky blasting back from a dusting of new snow.

A beautiful day, suitable for framing–in a window that is, while I sit next to the heat vent in the kitchen and sip coffee. I love the light of January, if not the numb nose and cheeks and ears of it.

Here’s a poem for January, which is easy on the eyes, but has a heart like ice.

January Light

After the ice storm, the clock blinks 12:00 12:00 12:00,
a sign that linemen have worked through the night.
A harsh chainsaw song cuts air where town crew
clears out the river road north to the village.

For two days, the light has been ominous, pearl gray,
as drizzle and sleet accrued to every twig and needle,
a waxing crystal burden bowing birch, apple and pine
to breaking. Ice plates the car and the drive is rink.

But from the west, overcast gives way to cirrus clouds
and clear sky. Then sunshine riots through the woods,
reduplicated in a million refracted winks and sparks.
Ice light everywhere, diamond-sharp, mercilessly bright.

The front brings ten degrees of cold, gusts and a harder rain
as flexing limbs loose their carapace of ice. In an hour it’s mostly
down to ground. Trees unbent resume their dark winter’s watch.
By afternoon the snow returns to hide away the shards.

Archive Photo of the Day: John Tenbusch, Waddington NY.

The winter solstice is soon upon us — the dark of the year — and for many, the dark of a difficult year. And yet, the biggest celebrations come with the end of the year, too. It makes a useful paradox on which to hang the last installment of “Light Year,” my series looking at the unique qualities of light in each month of year.

Safe holiday travels to all, if you are heading out on the road. And enjoy the light of family and friends, if the sun provides you a little too little.

December Light

What little light December spares is dimmed by frosted windows.
Both ends of night overlap the edges of the workday. At home
the windows are blackened morning and evening all week,
and all that daybreak has to show is snow blown sideways.

Where autumn burned the leaves, now we burn the trees.
Anything for a little more light. Under a paltry imitation of sun
I rig for silent running aboard the submarine of winter. Until
weather breaks, until the wind dies, it won’t be safe to surface.

I’d pay twenty more degrees of cold for a fair sky — a full moon
convoyed west by wisps of cloud, bold Orion riding above cedars,
moonshadows cast across the snow. But no. So little light;
so much night. Fat flakes thickly fall far as feeble porch light shows.

And so we conjure what we can — candlelight, Christmas lights,
angels glowing in the yard. We build up the fire and sing aloud,
throw feasts, give gifts, raise a clamor of bells. We huddle
with family, friends, to squeeze the very last light from the year.

Summit of Cascade. Archive Photo of the Day: Stuart Delman, Chestertown NY.

It’s been a tough year to follow the obits, a tough year period. No sooner do I get my head around one human-shaped hole in the universe, than “another man done gone”—or woman.

Too much loss, too much worry, too much anger and fear: blessings hard to give thanks for. These things were on my mind last month as I was sitting in the library at Twitchell Lake Inn, reading the work of some older men who were also contemplating mortality and gratitude.

Looking ahead to Thanksgiving this week, I give thanks for that most basic of all blessings—for life.

Happy to Be Here Now

Beside this rustic lodge a glacial erratic rests, just short
of sliding down to the lake. On it, a plaque–
Earl Covey built this place. Lodge and boulder remain,
but Earl Covey? Gone since nineteen fifty-three.

“There’s only one dualism that counts: Being and Non-Being,”
Gary Snyder said, “It’s all ecology otherwise; it’s all
interactions.” Being on the being end of the continuum
at this moment, dry and warm, I say, “Thanks, Earl. Nice work.”

But not to keep. Gravity takes the long view – logs will lean,
the rooftree fall. The boulder will roll to the lake bottom,
which will in time silt in, sprout up into white birch. Meanwhile,
“Let’s go dancing while we’ve still got feet,” David Budbill said.

He said of dead, “It’s back to the undifferentiated Tao with you.”
Now he can speak with authority. I say, “Thanks, David. Nice work.”
North of sixty is a surplus of memento mori. Asked “What about
age, sickness and death?” Snyder said, “Enjoy them while you can.”

I climb up, beyond bonsai mountain ash at the timberline,
beyond fear, sentiment, to the mute anorthosite bulge of summit,
to one solid illusion of eternity in a kingdom of wind. There
I take off my hat to scratch at the scar where cancer once grew.

My recent Adirondack Center for Writing residency allowed me to complete drafts of the five remaining poems in my “Light Year” series, exploring the qualities of light in each month of the year, and to do some revision work on the seven I had already completed. I’m happiest with the following draft for October. The remainder still need some more time to stew before revision.

In the meantime I am seeking illustrators who might like to work on visual accompaniment to the series. If you feel drawn to any of this work, let me know at dale@ncpr.org.

October Light

It comes first from the north. After setting the Gatineau Hills aflame,
it burns south across the broad valley. It comes first at the timberline,
then pours down the mountain shoulders toward bog and pond like lava.
It blares out of the east at sunrise and smolders west at close of day.

It comes from above, painting the waterside trail like the aisle beneath
a stained glass window — lemon and crimson, an hallucinatory shade
of vermillion, each leaf charting a different path from green to brown,
single pixel in a gob-smacking tableau of river, lake and mountain.

It sifts down, collecting in drifts like golden snow, ashine above, aglow
below, aflare on scented air. Nowhere here the light doesn’t touch.
Nowhere the wind doesn’t stir paint on the marbled ground.
Nothing that doesn’t glimmer from the shadows or gleam in the sun.

It burns day after day, week after week, until all of summer’s fuel
is spent. Just here and there a thin brown banner of oak leaves
blows, a few yellow coins quiver on the birch, a few withered apples
on a limb. Then one dawn–all gone, turned to a blank white page.

Archive Photo of the Day: Sr. Mary F. Barnes, Ogdensburg, NY

We all have one special thing that is the real sign of spring for us. It might be the first trillium, the first lilac. For me, it’s the first heron. Here’s a new poem from a moment long ago when that bond was set.

Hunt at Spitfire

Following just behind its shadow and just as silent,
a heron ghosts into the slough from Spitfire Lake
no more than five feet off the water, close enough
to hit with a rock, my Stone Age genes advise.

The heron too is of a hunter’s mind, spilling air
to light in an open shallow amid marsh grass.
Where fingerlings flit and feed in warmer water
the heron stands still and straight to prey.

Out of line of sight I paddle closer, careful dip
and pull to make no splash, slowly, slower,
until I ship the paddle, lie forward and slip
into reeds, pulling myself along hand over hand.

I wait and watch, feet away, as the heron steps,
stops, waits and stabs downwards. One stab,
one fish. Good hunting. Nothing is in my eye
but heron, whole mind gone heron for a spell,

until the hunter squats, leaps, beats great wings–
once, twice, thrice–splashing on the downbeat,
willing its weight into the air, a little higher,
higher, away. “Oh! Me too,” I cry. “Me too!“