An Anemologist by Nature of Listening

A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman, released 1891
Fog by Radiohead, released 2003


Stinson, 1971

       Fog lifted off the waves, drifted the few feet and commingled with the steam rising from her mug. The waves licked at heels and the sun nipped at closed eyes, tempting them to reopen. But a moment longer, that’s what she needed. A moment longer in memory. It was the seagull that brought her back, pulled her from the recesses and asked that she rejoin today. Seagulls have a very poor knack for identifying melancholy.

       The seascape appeared once again before her, inescapable. The gull nipped at her heels this time, bold for one so small. But for all its inability to identify a sad soul, it did know a friendly one. The gull scuttled back as she leaned down, pulling a handful of bread from her left pocket. As the gull ate she watched and pulled a handful of parchment from her right pocket.

       Crisscrossed in the sand she wrote on the paper. The seagull ate. And they were this way for some time. I don’t remember who finished first, the gull or the girl, but at some point they both rose. The gull moved on to find other friendly souls and the girl walked to the waves.

       The first paper that she placed on the face of the ocean didn’t melt away immediately as one might expect. It held its integrity for a few eye blinks before being taken in. Heavy paper stock, perhaps. A few eye blinks. Then she placed the second, then the third and more. Each lasted a few eye blinks. The ink stained paper held for a moment then took its words into the depths. I can’t tell you what was written on each sheet. But it might not be the words that matter, but the action of writing and releasing them.

       “Filament, filament, filament”, as he said.

       Soon all the written pages had been gifted to the waves. So she sat, silent as she had been in placing each sheet, but perhaps in a different silence. Not the silence of remembrance, no, something else. More the silence of the present. The silence that surrounds the waves, the trees, the mountains, the valleys, and all between. The noiseless force that moves boats, forms valleys and lifts hearts. She sat in this silence and nothing else. She sat with this silence for years. Listening to it, knowing it, loving it.

       And so she learned to catch the wind.

He Held It All Within

He held it all within

The expanse of the cosmos
The gaze of the deer
The crash of the waves

He held these moments

The tears for a woman
The love for a woman
The affection for a woman

He held eternity

The movement of the sea
The heartbeat of the trees
The stillness of the sky

He held it all within

The pain of then
The confusion of now
The hope of tomorrow

He held it all and asked,

“Am I allowed to live?”