Every Fifteen Seconds
Lines composed in recollection of Portland Head Light and "The Lighthouse" by H.W. Longfellow
Every fifteen seconds,
the blaring hail
of the Portland Head Light
wails across the gaping span
of the harbor.
Two stately vessels fade to purple on the horizon.
Every fifteen seconds,
the voice of the Head Light
cries to the edge of what can be known
to those on and beyond the horizon.
Sail on!
-DJW 8/4/23
So Much To Do
So much I must do.
To which task should I turn?
Lawn mower outside.
The Archers Have No Bows
Athletic ambitions can take a toll, even on young bodies, and by the fall of my junior year of high school, my ambitions in the domain of cross-country running had so inflamed my left knee that I had trouble walking, let alone running ambitiously along the fields and fairways of Katonah, New York. So it was that in that fall of my junior year I went out for archery, a sport even less confrontational than cross-country running, and therefore very much to my liking. The coach of the archery team was my AP English teacher, Mr. McBee. His first name was Burrett, but we stood on ceremony. As good an English teacher as Mr. McBee was, he was, for my money, an even better coach. To begin my case, let me tell you what the first two or three weeks of my archery career was like, for you see, we had no bows. There we were, six of us, standing on a firing line, our slanted shadows lengthening in the low October sun, with no bows to our names. Our fiberglass recurve target archery bows had had to be ordered. It would take them three weeks to arrive. In the meantime, we practiced. How did we practice? Bowless, we practiced by standing in a field, feet apart, facing right, the first toe of one foot on the firing line, with our bow arms (the left arm if you're a righty, the right if you're a lefty) upraised and our shoulders down as if we were holding our bows. What did this pantomime accomplish? For one thing, it got us used to keeping our shoulders down and our arms up for long periods of time, both of which we'd need to do when our bows arrived. Second, and more importantly, I think, standing in a field, holding nothing, keeping one arm up, in full view of our whole high school, subject to taunts as the soccer team jogged by, bonded our merry archery team like nothing else could have. We looked ridiculous. We knew we looked ridiculous. The emperor had no clothes. The archers had no bows. And yet, we had each other.
Quietly
experience
quiet
stillness
most often
sitting
alert
attentive
not prospective
not anticipatory
itself sufficient
enjoy
supportive conditions
notice
what is happening
listen
a
profound state
in which
to be
