Treetops and gargoyles

I spent this morning responding to and marking papers from an introductory non-fiction writing class I often teach at this time of year. One line really caught my attention in a piece recalling being a child and climbing a favourite tree. The last line was "When you're at the top of the tree, you don't think about the ground."

This afternoon I took the memory of that line off to Cally's Teas, a place I have not had much recent time to sit in and just relax and let the words happen. I started in with that memory, and this is what came out:

From the top of the tree

   is no thought of the ground

No fear of falling in the cuddle

   of gently swaying limbs of last resort

The climb not from, but to

  once done is gone, past concern

What matters is the up here and

   the out there, rarefied

Solitude, alone with the heights

  keeping private company with

    the  

           sky

Which evolved by July 23 into:

Gently swaying limbs of last
resort fold around, cuddle,
erase thoughts of solid ground.

No longer in transition,
no fear of falling from the top
of a climb accomplished, alone,

waiting for the tree to grow, gradually
sprout the next inviting step?
Or whispering, "Feathers. Feathers. Feathers"?

 So imagine my surprise tuning in to Shawna Lemay's blog site, CALM THINGS, and finding her quoting this:

When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

- William Wordsworth, from The Prelude

I was waiting at Cally's for someone to ask for a poem on a topic of personal interest--and I got a reassuring request from a regular, asking me to write about the surprise one feels after being in a loving relationship for fifty years, having it end in the death of her partner, then finding that she can get that feeling again, with another, even so late in life. I wrote it for her, and for her only.

Then I picked up a line from Sheila Watson's Paris Diary, about a day walking the streets and not conversing with the gargoyles. Again, an image to conjure with. This came out of the hat:

I did not have time

to chat with the gargoyles

on sunny days dark, mad-eyed

crouching witnesses to the passing

scene of busy feet going…

    ... God knows where,

on rainy days grim, spitting

trouble-makers focusing

random drops from above

into malicious streams of cold

discomfort down unsuccessfully

turned collars below.

    What took my time

from chat? Who can recall?

The gargoyles never cared to ask

and my mind wandered.