Ask Me
A Poem About Transformation
This time of year, the dark, the candle-lit, seems like a good time to release this four-part poem. Is it a poem? It doesn’t conform to a category, I don’t think, otherwise. This narrative spans four years of experiences that would ultimately transform my perception of reality, of pain, of struggle, joy, and of growth. It renewed my sense of self, of connection with the land, and how I relate to the outer world through the internal. It is intensely personal, and ultimately, a story of reckoning and rebirth. This year, and the particular time I am choosing to publish this work, marks a turning point for me, and I hope this piece conveys even a little bit of that journey. Enjoy.
I
Ask me about fear, and I will tell you a story that begins with almost-loss, and then loss, and then what happens after you walk through the fog.
To say I’ve been thinking about fear for the past few years is accurate, and it has been more than thinking. Being forced through it. Living alongside it. Getting to know it. Learning how it helps you grow, and heal by leaning onto it.
Fear can be friendly, if you sit long enough that it starts to whisper, instead of threaten. Offering something unknown and splendid on the other side of it.
There is so much to unravel. It’s in the beautiful, it creates its own kind of beauty. It asks us to decide, right now, what we will do.
It’s easy and quib to speak of fear as a liar, as an obstacle to be overcome.
It’s another thing altogether to welcome it with eyes wide open, saying: “there you are, and here I am,” and then look at each other.
Standing still is often what’s called for.
II
Fire is, perhaps, more enjoyable than it has ever been. I don’t remember the last fire I built, before the wild one raged through. That summer, I wondered if I’d ever enjoy fires again. Seven months later, there I sat more transfixed than I realized could be. Watching the embers race skyward. Each a little life running its course in fractions of seconds. Evidence of the transformative process that the heat, fuel, and oxygen I coaxed into this glowing cycle was making possible, even as it burned on top of a sheet of ice and snow. There was neither surprise nor relief that I was enjoying its heat on my skin. Just a depth of understanding between us, this fire and me, as though welcoming each other back to some sacred communion. Water and fire - these are my elements. Always transforming what they touch in large or small ways, slowly or quickly. Being at ease with both again felt like coming home.
III
Ask me about the few seconds of fear traded for the robin’s spared life. Or about the slow seep of floodwater, welling around the house while we slept, And the joy-grief at the sight of grey goslings, unbothered in the pond’s mist— the otters will soon return. How the heart cracks open, but can never respond, to the frantic, incessantly-bleeting whitetail doe, sharing with me the only island of green within many square miles of ash and charred trees, still burning—both of us here, wanting to not be alone—wheezing scorched air, bewildered, looking for the comfort of another. Ask me how watching eight doves, flocking at dusk, sharpens eternity to the point of a single breath. Or of the red fox in the yard, limp hare in its jaws, leaving a trail of colorless tracks, And the bright crimson dots, melted into the snow, showing the way to the place where the struggle had ended— the blood was still warm. How was it that the calf moose died, not minutes before we found him, his final bed among willows and lupine and marigold, green aspen shoots all around—not thin, nor injured, his mouth full of food—as though in the midst of the most heavenly thought, his heart simply could no longer bear the—dreadful—beauty? Ask, and I’ll tell you of so many things—the glance of the Chickadee’s wing on the cheek, flavor of wild strawberry tea, digging through wetlands, bare-handed, for the roots to heal somebody—it’s a land steeped with life, and devotion. With blood, and with death. Ask what, then, is next, when the joy and the grief and the love draw so much? I’ll tell you: To take up the place in your arms, and heart. To see, to dwell, to give, and go on.
IV
Among keepers of notebooks, I am devotee. Jotting thoughts as inspiration arises, or, as the words demand to be written to being. Half a poem, a fragment of scene, and then, the thread dissolves—close the book. For years now, it’s been sparks in the tinder. But only sparks. The small moments, and personal. Observations of the world around me, the Others. Tucked, unimposing, among the mundane. Not sure it’s enough to expand upon, enough to say, or anything that might live its own life in the world. How do you tell which spark will set the blaze? Is it ready? Am I ready? Is there coherence enough to say out loud? To stand and look at the fear of the act of creation, like an edge you must choose to cross, or not. As the ghosts of old forests whisper: Are you willing to coax this blaze?
