Friday 

10 March 2017

— Since 6 January, the sun now rises a good 200 yards farther east along the road to Ringsted.

Good Morning All,

After my whine yesterday, thanks John, Inez, and Jim for your kindly words and great pictures (as usual) of the grand opening of the new C.I.S. residence. Since all three of you suggested the invitation process was spotty and haphazard at best, I’ll assume some snafu or other got in the way! But—holy cats—who’s genius idea was it not to invite aa single one of the alumni/ae?! They are the school, or they certainly were when you guys were running things!

Anyway, I sat here stewing enough until a poem came out. Well, the rest of a poem came out to go along with two  stanzas I wrote back in sophomore or junior year of college. At that time, I had absolutely no clue what they could possibly mean. Now that the poem is finished (I think!), I still don’t have much of a clue, though I must say I get a kick out of the speaker. He drives all the way from upstate New York to visit Walden Pond, which is apparently some sort of shrine for him, and then he sits in the parking lot and doesn’t get out of his car. Definitely my kind of person!

Take a gander, if you like. I have attached it below.

My apologies for not getting out yesterday’s attic quiz on time. Here it comes now. I do believe it is a toughie, so if you get more than half right, you’ve done well!

Also, I am trying something new today. Since some of you have gently suggested to me you wouldn’t mind your e-mail not being on such public display, what with the proliferation of hackers and what not, I’ve moved you all to BCC, which I understand to mean “Blind Carbon Copy”. I hope this is an improvement.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

 

Reading Walden Near Walden

Bheka Pierce

I have driven east all the way from Ithaca

Where I teach biology in the middle school.

On the passenger seat, my dog-eared copy

Has made the trip like a child holding its breath.

On this winter day, I am in the public parking lot,

Alone, a good hundred feet above the pond itself,

Now ice covered, visible through the pines,

A lone red-scarfed skater forming figure eights.

Cold rain has begun, spotting the windshield

In random patterns, so perhaps I’ll not get out

Just yet to take the path past where his house

And bean field stood near the railroad embankment.

Perhaps I’m still reluctant to invade the privacy.

I rev the engine twice for heat, switch it off,

Take up my volume, excited, realizing--as the rain

Increases--I am myself the breath-holding child.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather

The bulk of them, I lived alone in the woods,

A mile from any neighbor, in a house which

I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond.

This year is 2004, 150 earthly revolutions

After those words first found print, the author

Now dust, you might think, though I can now feel

Him here enjoying this winter, longing for spring.

The skater has disappeared and the spaces

Between the author’s sonorous words

Link up and rush down the page like the drops

Of rain upon the modern windows of my car.

Beyond them, below the hill, on each page’s

Opaque ice, dead Henry and I seem to join hands

To skate, to ponder, to rejoice in the murk

And memory of blackened bog-myrtle leaves.