Well, the boat got sold and is gone. A family with young children and a friend that knows fiberglass bought it for a song. Sad to see the empty space in the back lawn, but I am glad to have it go to someone who might actually get a few more years out of it. My history with the boat (it never really had a name), was mixed at best. Emica and I were remembering sailing on the Saco and I was knocked out of the boat and she sailed away for about 50 feet or so before the boat came around into the wind and broached. I can close my eyes and remember the watching that beautiful boat in water and thinking how sweetly it sailed in the same moment terrified that Emica was alone in the boat. Fortunately, Emica is a natural fish and just swam away when the boat went over. OF COURSE, we were both wearing PFDs, as all boaters big and small should. That and the storm on the lake are probably my worst memories, but I do have good ones of looking up at the sun flashing off the bowed sail and the gurgle of the water under the hull and thinking this was/is the life. Well it was fun while it lasted, I guess.
This poem by Richard Wilbur has nothing to do with boats or sailing, but it does have to do with beauty, so there. From Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America, Volume II published by Macmillian. I carried this book with me in Spring of 2003 and remember reading it often in Machias while I was on site there for an implementation. I marked this poem then. I especially liked the second stanza.
THE BEAUTIFUL CHANGES
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous-blue Lucerne.
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder. (1947)
Well, the boat got sold and is gone. A family with young children and a friend that knows fiberglass bought it for a song. Sad to see the empty space in the back lawn, but I am glad to have it go to someone who might actually get a few more years out of it. My history with the boat (it never really had a name), was mixed at best. Emica and I were remembering sailing on the Saco and I was knocked out of the boat and she sailed away for about 50 feet or so before the boat came around into the wind and broached. I can close my eyes and remember the watching that beautiful boat in water and thinking how sweetly it sailed in the same moment terrified that Emica was alone in the boat. Fortunately, Emica is a natural fish and just swam away when the boat went over. OF COURSE, we were both wearing PFDs, as all boaters big and small should. That and the storm on the lake are probably my worst memories, but I do have good ones of looking up at the sun flashing off the bowed sail and the gurgle of the water under the hull and thinking this was/is the life. Well it was fun while it lasted, I guess.
This poem by Richard Wilbur has nothing to do with boats or sailing, but it does have to do with beauty, so there. From Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America, Volume II published by Macmillian. I carried this book with me in Spring of 2003 and remember reading it often in Machias while I was on site there for an implementation. I marked this poem then. I especially liked the second stanza.
No comments:
Post a Comment