When I Arrive at Still Waters was written for the voice of its female narrator. It contains only two references to stars, one of which is our sun:
‘The wind chimes in the garden ring the windy hours twelve by twelve...
Chalky winter sun meshed in bare branches. Alone at still waters
I see that star still burning in the southern sky,
care less and less how men have come into my life and gone.’
This, at least to me, is one look at our essential loneliness in the face of eternity. We are primates, social creatures who grow and learn with others, depending on their love and care, and our love of them, for nourishment and hope.
And yet, and yet, here we have these big brains, brains quite capable of questioning everything, wondering why we’re here, wondering what here is.
This kind of questioning has taken me past the limits of my relationships with others. When I look up at the dark sky I often feel I am an isolated wanderer. When faced with such immensity all of who I am and all my relationships appear as the tiniest of sparks.
Not even bright enough to show up on a camera. How can I live with such isolation?
I don’t want to. I fill my mind with newspapers and gossip, Netflix and sports, pictures of my friends on social media. There is nowhere that is not full. And yet, in this pursuit of relationships, I often feel like I am doing exactly the wrong thing: filling up the cracks through which I might truly see anyone else, or gather any deep sense of my own
self.
lyrics
She is kind enough when she needs me.
The life she struggles to maintain
more precious to her than mine,
even on the night I was born.
Yet I am still her daughter, do what I can.
It is only a month, only a week,
only one more weekend till
I set out for still waters.
But then a year’s gone by,
and were it not for what I make
I would not survive. It would all be way too dark,
and friends too faraway, and I would feel torn in two
with desire to run, obligation to stay.
And still waters would be an illusion, receding,
down past the end of the driveway,
past the self-same houses of suburban somewhere hell.
And so I have set out for still waters,
waters so calm and deep they mediate
the anguish and the rage, the oil on water on the boil. Beyond
the love and rage of a broken marriage
how is it I am so alive?
When I arrive at still waters the jumble of my life
will fold into water and water fold into itself, and slowly, slowly
motion will halt, and only the ripple
of thought will well up from the depths:
Silence without, meet silence within.
Now I am at still waters
and hauling rocks I work my arms and shoulders
till the muscles twine like cables cross my neck.
Even at still waters the wind kicks up in the aspens
and the soil’s half frozen in winter. And there are still rocks to move,
and the moss garden is an old fool’s beard, tossed snow white and disordered.
The wind chimes in the garden ring the windy hours twelve by twelve..
Chalky winter sun meshed in bare branches. Alone at still waters
I see that star still burning in the southern sky,
care less and less how men have come and gone.
Nothing is as it should be, except, strangely, me.
Soon I will leave still waters, wander north into the world of snow
And when we merge the two—my spinning world and his the whirling one—
gold sparks will crackle where the two wheels touch, where our heels kick up
Now the wheeling world drops seasons in its wake, turns gold into straw,
pulls water to itself. And from this whorl of life the branches toss up
leaves at every turn, and every one attentive to our
little yellow ever-burning star.
And out of these days in motion I feel my muscles stretch against
A lifetime wound so tightly around me
it’s a fabric, a sari, binding me to all I know and all I’ve seen. .
I weave the fabric into straw,
stilling my thoughts, blessing myself and the spirit from whence I came.
And he, what does he feel?
the one who wrote these words?
It’s not so faraway, his land of frozen water.
His thoughts go quiet at my touch. It takes such heat when ice melts into water.
credits
from Dark Sky Preserve,
released February 19, 2023
Clarinet and fx by Louise Campbell; spoken word by Esbie Goncarova; poem by Ian Ferrier;
Ian Ferrier and Louise Campbell have been improvising and performing together for the last six years. Ian is a well-known
poet, performer and musician; Louise is a musician, composer and improviser.
Dark Sky Preserve is also a book from Clay Grouse Press. It includes the poetry, prose and musical scores for this work....more
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