This is Part Two of a three-part series about my relationship with what became my Golden Goose Pond.
By the beginning of 2020, a small retention pond had become my morning routine destination. The road adjacent to it, the gate blocking access to it, and the trees surrounding its perimeter, had for years hidden the pond. However, in October 2019, the gate was opened to facilitate dredging.
A portion of the pond bank had been cleared of all trees, bushes and undergrowth. A small tree stump became my morning perch.
On February 28, 2020, the first US fatality from the pandemic coronavirus was reported in the Seattle area (two months later, the CDC would reveal that at least two deaths had occurred in early February). Like most American citizens, I was gripped with fear and anxiety, but gratefully, I knew where I could find safe refuge.
By the end of November 2020, I had taken at least 2,000 photographs of the sun rising over Goose Pond . . . photos that I will feature in future posts. For 11 months, the pond had been my pandemic refuge. When I got home, I picked up the volume of poetry I was reading at the time, Ararat by Louise Gluck. The poem was bookmarked to the next poem I would read: “Celestial Music,” the last line of which was, “The love of form is the love of endings.”
Had I experienced the end of my Goose Pond refuge?
NEXT — PART THREE: A year of leave-taking.
In case you’re interested, here is Louise Gluck’s poem, “Celestial Music” — one of her more accessible poems, albeit still somewhat difficult to take in on first reading. [FYI, this platform does not replicate the poem’s original line breaks]:
I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she’s unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.
We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I’m always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.
My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I’m like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-
In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We’re walking
On the same road, except it’s winter now;
She’s telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I’m afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-
In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It’s this moment we’re trying to explain, the fact
That we’re at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn’t move.
She’s always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We’re very quiet. It’s peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It’s this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.
“Celestial Music” is a challenging poem. This morning, I pondered it some more.
I am the person in this poem who is always “moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality, quick to shut my eyes”; “the child who tells herself that light causes sadness.”
The last lines of this poem make me wonder if the “friend” in this poem is my golden Goose Pond.
We’re very quiet. It’s peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering–
It’s this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.
First, for those of you looking at these photos on a phone, don’t. Do yourself a favor and view them on a desktop, laptop, or even a tablet.
Each image is so unique. Clouds, mist, coloring, vegetation. Again, it amazes me how a retention pond can be beautifully photographed.
I’m curious how many of these photographs have made it into your calendars?
Thanks, Adrienne.
What amazes me is how quickly the vegetation all grew back. It took less than 8 months! There’s got to be lesson there.
Three pond photos made it into last year’s calendar and just two this year. April’s image this year is of the pond.
After using one of the more spectacular pond sunrises as an image for a month — February of the 2021 calendar — I decided to save the other more spectacular sunrises for something else. I don’t know, but something else. Perhaps their own calendar. A book? I dunno.
What is there about mists? I’m especially fond of the pictures with the mist. Something about that hiddenness which speaks of our understandings of life.
Wish I understood better Gluck’s final line. I love the “it’s the stillness we both love,” but not sure I resonate with “the love of form is a love of endings.” Why endings and not beginnings or process? Any enlightenment for me?
Carol — I have hundreds of photos of the pond mist. I purposely chose ones for this post to make my point about the growing bank vegetation. There are dozens more that are simply breath-taking. I don’t photograph these moments as much as I just hold up my iPhone 7 around the general image and press the button thingy. Mother Nature does the rest; actually Mother Nature does about 97.5% of the work.
Louise Gluck’s poems are tough nuts to crack — and she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in Literature in 2020! I own all of her volumes of poetry, but must wrestle with them.
RE: “The love of form is the love of endings” — what “forms”? The sunset, the rocks, the road, the air? Who knows? Once we love “form” do we begin to lose something? Watch it “end”? Like trying to explain God or something? I’m still wrestling.
Oh my Dear–beautiful. I am with Adrienne–amazing that a retention pond can be so lovely. OK nature does most of the work–I do get that AND I sing out to your editor/arranger eye. Like the poet you see the beauty and sense meaning in the most mundane. I can’t always explain. Your pictures resonate with my heart.
Thank you, Charlotte — the setting resonates with my heart. Not sure why. It probably has something to do with solitude and silence. We need more of that the older we get. At least, I do. xoxo
Ahh, my friend, there is such beauty, even in this broken world. Thank you for sharing it with us. I heard this quote on a video this morning from spiritual environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams: “Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.” Thank you for creating beauty and for sharing it to nourish us all.
You’re very welcome, Beth and thank you for the inspirational quote from Terry Tempest Williams . . . indeed, it is fuel for more morning journeys. Maybe someday we’ll have an opportunity to take one of these journeys together. xoxo