I write a lot of poem sequences, so some of them
end up getting fairly long, and so
I'm going to read a few that are excerpts from the longer
sequences or series.
And this one, too, is set on Grand Manan,
and I'll just read you the first section.
The village where my place is is Castalia,
which is a name that came from ancient mythology
of the home of the muses.
Castalia is known as the home of the muses.
I don't think anybody on Grand Manan knows that anymore.
When I ask, people say, I don't know.
I think it's in the Bible.
So.
Castalia.
I cut a three mile trail in the woods on my property
after my mother and brother died.
It was either that or lie in bed for a year and disappear,
so it seemed like a good idea to go to the woods.
"Castalia."
"During my darkest grief, the forest
was like an open sea, birch trees
the beacon I used to study my position.
My brain felt at home among saplings,
that tangle seeking light, that part of the soul Aristotle
thought we held in common with plants.
Days and weeks cutting trail, at first moving three feet
through thicket, then 10, then deeper into black spruce, bow
saw, and clippers slung on my back like Diana's quiver,
trying to sense how the path should rise,
past cobble and copse into high fern meadow,
and beyond into balsam fir, towering so high
they make beneath them a living room of reindeer moths
and fungi, woods long worked by men, timbers and field stones,
oxen hauled downhill, even the skins of island homes
cloaked with fish scale of cedar shingles cut here,
where hardly a cedar tree can be seen,
so fruitful were those times of building.
The Greeks had a way to speak about depth so
that each spring had a name and history,
and a supplicant had a place to go to beg for wisdom or healing
or song, to make that part of the soul held in common
with song feel at home.
North Head Seal Cove, Dark Harbor do well for singing,
but every place needs its Castalia,
where older thought emerges like steam from vents in a caldera."