Notes:
- Photo: DK with Great Blue Heron @ Daybreak. 5:55 a.m. 70° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. Other photos from this morning’s walk here.
- Post Title from Siegfried Sassoon’s poem titled: Falling Asleep
Tag: heron
Walking. With those unheard are sweeter?
4:50 a.m. Late jump. Scrambling to get out before sunrise. 816 consecutive (almost) days on my daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. 816 days, like in a row.
I walk.
Cloud cover is heavy, humidity is heavier. Twilight is patchy.
I was up late last night reading Seán Hewitt’s memoir All Down Darkness Wide. He shares an excerpt from a Keat’s Poem: ‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.’ And Hewitt continues…”And what of them.”
And what of them.
I didn’t find Keats, or poetry, until late in life. And like the toddler scrambling to catch his parent who lurches ahead, I’m still playing catch-up. I thought I understood the lines, but lacked confidence to say, yep, that’s right, you got it DK. So, I shut down my Kindle, and googled the lines for an interpretation by Meursault to validate my understanding:
This line from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is an example of Keats arguing that the power of thought, the imagination and anticipation is often greater than the act itself. Music and “melodies” that are imagined and anticipated are always in tune. They are played perfectly. A melody composed in the mind, cannot possibly be played badly or incorrectly. There is no possibility of error or an imperfect note. Therefore, Keats believes that imagining something brings more fulfillment and contentment than a “real” version ever could. He thinks that anticipation and expectation often outweighs the copy in the real world and that something real can only be disappointing compared to the imaginary.
I re-read the interpretation again, paused, shut down my Kindle, and fell asleep noodling the unheard.
So, back to this morning.
I walk.
…the imagination and anticipation is often greater than the act…they are played perfectly…therefore, Keats believes that imagining something brings more fulfillment and contentment that a “real” version ever could..
To my right, there’s a Great Blue Heron. His long legs, and webbed feet slide across the ever-so-green algae.
To my left, there’s an Egret, ever-so-white as fresh snow. Her feet in ankle-deep, cyan (?) tinted water, pausing from fishing for a moment. Go head DK, here’s my good side. I’ll wait for you to get your focus just right.
My imagination bringing more fulfillment and contentment than this?
Sorry.
That’s bullsh*t.
Notes:
- Photos: DK @ Daybreak. 5:24 a.m. July 30, 2022. 74° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here (birds), and here (landscape)
- Meursault (John Keats Forum, April 16, 2009)
Lightly Child, Lightly
The hen flings a single pebble aside
with her yellow, reptilian foot.
Never in eternity the same sound—
a small stone falling on a red leaf.
The juncture of twig and branch,
scarred with lichen, is a gate
we might enter, singing.
The mouse pulls batting
from a hundred-year-old quilt.
She chewed a hole in a blue star
to get it, and now she thrives. …
Now is her time to thrive.
Things: simply lasting, then
failing to last: water, a blue heron’s
eye, and the light passing
between them: into light all things
must fall, glad at last to have fallen.
— Jane Kenyon, “Things” in “The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon: Poems”
Notes:
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 5 am. May 16, 2022. 61° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from that morning here.
- Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
T.G.I.F.
Your mother’s favorite bird was the one in front of her.
— Richard Powers, Bewilderment: A Novel (W. W. Norton & Company, September 21, 2021)
Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:23 am, September 24, 2021. 58° F. Heavy Rain. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
…his long neck folded
All winter
the blue heron
slept among the horses.
I do not know
the custom of herons,
do not know
if the solitary habit
is their way,
or if he listened for
some missing one—
not knowing even
that was what he did—
in the blowing
sounds in the dark,
I know that
hope is the hardest
love we carry.
He slept
with his long neck
folded, like a letter
put away.
— Jane Hirshfield, “Hope and Love” from “The Lives of the Heart: Poems“
Photo: DK @ Daybreak. Heron. 6:03 am, August 22, 2021. 75° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.