The Narrows Brook riffles into white curls as it runs over rocks, ice-free except for laced crystals at the water line.
High on Water
Yesterday after I finished the Pumpkinman Triathlon (as fun as every year and the only triathlon I got to do this summer, so doubly fun), since we were already in Maine, David and I headed to York Harbor to check out a show of ceramics by our friend Al Jaeger. We’d never been to the George Marshall Store Gallery and were delighted to find it housed in a historic building on the bank of the York River, overlooking York Harbor.
Yesterday was a brilliant day — clear, dry, cool, and blue as days can get in New England. York Harbor was exquisite, water shimmering with sunlight, sharp wind, hot sun, river banks green with tall oaks and stately white houses, a bright harbor full of fishing boats and sail boats and dingys and Boston Whalers. We wanted to come back and kayak up river, into the expanses of marsh we’d glimpsed between houses as we drove towards the gallery and the harbor.
Today we got up and out early enough to be on the river an hour before high tide, so we could ride the current up, and then come back down river with the tide. With another perfect day of clear light, hard sun and cool winds, we felt like we were kayaking into a gift. As we passed the gallery and the Barrell Mill Pond Dam I wrote about when I was in York Harbor last March, we saw what looked like dozens of herons, egrets and ducks in the marsh to our right. “Do you see all those herons?” a man in a dingy said to me. “There are at least 10 of them.” “Is that unusual,” I asked. “We haven’t kayaked here before.” “Yes,” he said. “You might see one or two, but never this many.” We counted 11.
The river wound around corners, past marshy banks and the trim green of a golf course, past bleached wooden walkways out to docks, and eventually under Rte. 1 and then Rte. 95, the Maine Turnpike. I’d never kayaked under an interstate before. It was loud and surreal to watch trucks and cars flying by on the long bridge, just above our sight line of the water.
Kayaking back downriver, we hugged the shorelines, staying out of the east wind that had come up, making us have to paddle in spite of the strong tide running in our favor. Along one bank I found an arrangement of rocks on top of a stone wall. Someone had made a bit of art on the riverbank, miles up river from the art that brought us here in the first place.
Beach Haiku
Sandpipers scurry
Bobbing beaks poking wet sand
Water washing wind.
More Poetry Play
First, today has been a total 10 on a 1 – 10 scale of perfection. The sun is clear, hot and sparkling on the water of the bay, the air is cool with a light breeze, and I’m in a waterfront house with only a tiny bit of work to do. And there was an earthquake today! Sitting on the deck eating lunch, I felt everything start to move back and forth. For a minute, I thought there was something wrong with me, some inner balance suddenly gone so that the world was now a shifting quiver. I looked up at David in the kitchen and said, “Is there an earthquake going on?” “I think so,” he answered, and then the quaking stopped. Thankfully, it appears to have done little damage, even near the epicenter.
So, here is the poem David wrote almost two weeks ago, during our morning of poetry play. The word prompts were the same that gave me the poem I posted two days ago: ruffle, marshy, sun visor, visible, tenuous, waiting, cobble, gibbous, orb, oblong. Tomorrow will be another poem from David, using words we had our family generate following day. Lots of poetry in my life right now, which is a very good thing.
Sargent and the Four Daughters
There must have been a gibbous moon unmasked
the feathering of the Earth
softening the chill edge into that curtain
drawn deep across the shadows of the painting.
One is barely visible in the darker folds,
her sister more forward in the brushed light
before the bright one in ruffles
who draws the eye naturally.
I cannot see the fourth I know is there
somewhere else
searching for words in the road.
Droid Post
I’m back in Stone Harbor, on vacation. Yes real vacation. No gardening (though cooking all the garden vegetables I brought with me), no cleaning out the storage pod in the driveway and reorganizing the barn (David’s new studio in the barn is done), no cleaning out the decades of accumulated stuff in David’s parents’ house in Lancaster (which is what I did for the last two days until I was bone-achey and as dirty as I ever get). We have 5 more days here and Adrienne, Matt and Emilio are here until tomorrow night.
Today we sat on the dock with Emilio at high tide, when the water rises over the walkway a few inches, and introduced him to salt water. He loved it and happily splapped the water and sucked our salty legs. Tomorrow I want to plop him in a pool of water at the beach.
Then days of reading, writing, sleeping, thinking. The one major drawback is the lack of reliable internet. So I just downloaded a WordPress app. Thus, my first post via my Droid. Workable but tedious. One finger typing is way slow as you all know.
Connections
Somebody said to me recently that there are only 12 people in New Hampshire, and we all just change our hairstyles and clothes a lot. Everyone here is connected in some way. We walked into Susan and Woodie’s big screen porch overlooking Squam Lake, and of course already had connections with the other couple there, though I’d had no idea they knew Susan and Woodie. I once worked in the same building with Deb, who worked with Susan two jobs ago, and David and Deb’s husband worked together and I had met him last winter at a poetry reading.
Mark and Andi and other friends were out on their boat, so I texted them where I was on the lake and they came by the dock and got off for a visit. More connections, of course. Mark keeps his boat at the marina where Susan’s son works so they know him, and Mark knows one of the carpenters who recently worked on an amazing house Susan and Woodie had been describing from a recent visit for a benefit party.
But the best part of the whole little Squam vacito was just the connection with letting go. We spent the afternoon overlooking the lake, chopped by wind and ruffled into a sparkled blue. We took a short cocktail cruise in Woodie’s 1965 wooden motorboat, a gleaming beauty, and watched the fledgling eagles flapping their already great wings around a tall pine as the sun set through clouds over the Squam Range. Susan and Woodie and David and I threw together a random dinner of nachos, garden green beans and caprese salad with goat cheese and ate on the darkened porch, only citronella candles providing light as we moved into an after dinner recounting of family histories. And for David and me, we kept reconnecting with the reality that even though Monday morning was just around the corner of the upcoming night’s sleep, we didn’t have to go to work.
Squam Lake Haiku
Flies dimple still lake
Shore pines drape gray granite rocks
Late sun sings summer.
Puerto Rico Haiku
Frogs singing clipped chimes
Surf rolling soft roar warm air
Door open to night.
Dock Talk
I’m back in New Hampshire, back from the family visit at the Jersey shore, back to regular internet access. A sweet tradition with David’s family is gathering on the deck overlooking the bay after dinner to watch the sunset. Every sunset was wonderful, even if not glorious.
One night while we were there the almost constant wind died and the water reflected every color and nuance of the sky. We talked about the unusual array of colors and shades and then David’s father said, “When the water is this still, it makes me suspicious. That’s what I don’t like about lakes. They just sit there and look at you.”
Ninety-two year old wisdom to ponder.
Swimming
We swam in Long Pond today, our first open water swim of the season. Coming down to the water, the sun was low across the pond and full on summer hot. Two years ago the water didn’t warm up enough to swim until well into June and we were still wearing wet suits in July. Last year I heard from my neighbors, the second week in June, that they’d been swimming Memorial Day weekend. It’s been a hot week, so after a hot day of gardening, we thought we’d try it.
The water was dark and thick with pine pollen and plenty warm to swim. After a winter of crawling up and down the 25 yard pool at the Y, minding the lane, making room for other swimmers, turning every 30 seconds, turning, turning, chlorine scent on my skin all day, using up the boredom of the back and forth to try to zone out, it felt gloriously free to just swim. Arm out and up to the sky and turning my face to breathe and seeing the trees on the shoreline, swimming and swimming and swimming and only turning after covering the quarter mile width of the pond. This is swimming; this is summer.
Grace Mattern 