The River Casts Its Flambeaux

27 January 2008 -- my son's birthday; he's forty-two.

Hard to believe so many years have passed that, until just a moment ago I had never looked through binoculars and witnessed oak leaves transformed into cat's eyes and emeralds, bare stems and branches laced into ethereal lattice. This is too early, really, for me to be on the deck with binoculars. I usually do sunset here, and it is only 3:00 p.m.

The various sizes of cypress knees, through the binoculars, appear to be nested like Russian dolls on the opposite bank. It is a little cold and very sunny. Thomas is here, too; he's sensed I'm leaving tomorrow morning and, so, sticks to my side.

Below, the sun is so bright in the water it's unpleasant. I squinch my eyes and look beyond the sun's reflection, further south where the water has divided itself into kajillions of crystals, each many-faceted: water become jewel; it took us a long time to see this, that water is precious and prized beyond any other jewel but air.

The train whistles over on SR 41, always melancholy, reminding me of other places, people far away, Jack Nicholson as Francis Phelan, riding the rails in the movie, Ironweed.

On the opposite bank, bright sunlight brings fire to the longleaf pines; small miraculous mirrors dangle from the oaks. I must have been forty-two myself before I could see the beauty in a leafless tree, how its form was freed, arms lifted to the sky. And, because I was so late appreciating winter and because we have it for so short a space each year, I am jealous now of these winter days and want them to pass more slowly.

As much as I love springtime, I want to shout at the Florida maples, now all flame along the roads, Slow down. You are coming too fast. You spend your beauty too quickly. Let me look at you.” And to the wild huckleberry bushes and the pink-lipped film of the wild azalea, I want to shout at them, too, and insist on slowing time.

Let me see you open, huckleberry; do not open while I am sleeping or my back is turned. Open one blossom at a time. Wait a month or a year because I know this is one less winter, another winter gone. Ah! Mr. Housman; one season less of my mortal store.


The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux


The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.

There's one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,
One season ruined of your little store.
May will be fine next year as like as not:
But ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.

We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.

It is in truth iniquity on high
To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they crave,
And mar the merriment as you and I
Fare on our long fool's-errand to the grave.

Iniquity it is; but pass the can.
My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;
Our only portion is the estate of man:
We want the moon, but we shall get no more.

If here to-day the cloud of thunder lours
To-morrow it will hie on far behests;
The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours
Soon, and the soul will mourn in other breasts.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

---Alfred Edward Housman