Saturday, September 7, 2024

Hilton Head Island: Saturday evening and some poems

 


I am sitting on the deck around sunset after a day of rain.

I don’t believe that the above distorted panorama taken with my iPhone fully expresses the beauty I am experiencing.  Skull Creek is glistening silver in the dying light and as I glance up two egrets are flying between the shore and the marina, left to right.

A slight breeze.  A pleasant temperature.

I cherish these moments.  I cherish this unexpected beauty.  I never imagined I would enjoy living in a marsh.

Carol has retired to the bedroom to read.

I came out here and was watching a video of Julio Inglesis “El Amor’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

I am still filled with passion.  Perhaps unseemly at my age.  For women and for life.

Of women, they became singular when I met Carol thirty years ago.  I admire the beauty of the young without envy or regret for I had my time with them decades ago and do not want more.

But, and not unrelated, I think about despair, of which I have known much, some with women, and still do.  That might be surprising.  I have done much with words and wind and women, but…And I pause at the ‘but’.  Perhaps it is just as I have written:  joy does not need explanation.  It is its own justification.  But we wish our suffering had meaning and I don’t know that mine does.

Artists have made careers conveying their despair to others.  That is appropriate for they are expressing an almost universal human experience.  I have in some of my earlier writings expressed despair myself.  But with time I have learned that the greatest strength is to absorb the evil that has been done to you without passing it on.  A Christian virtue not historically often practiced by Christians, of which I am not one.  And as an artist to keep my despair to myself.  Everyone already has enough of his or her own.  They don’t need mine.  And to offer as much hope as I honestly can.  

I do not claim any rational justification to be on the side of hope rather than despair.  I just would rather be.  Probably, as most is, a quirk of what I got from the genetic lottery.

So I sit here immersed in beauty and know that perhaps experience of beauty ought to be enough, but for me it isn’t.  

I have lived far longer than I ever expected, yet I confess at eighty-two I live in hope that I will last until I am eighty-five and embark on another voyage beyond the edge.  Somehow for me moving toward that gives meaning to all the rest.

An old man with hopes and plans is truly egregious, but then I always was.  In the root meaning of the word.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/egregious-word-history-and-meaning#:~:text=The%20Latin%20word%20grex%20means,Latin%20%E2%80%94%20something%20that%20stands%20apart.

As I have been writing the sun has lowered beyond Pickney Island and the colors of sky and water have become more intense.

I raise my empty glass:  To making whatever you can of our butteryfly’s cough of life.


Emily Dickinson  1830-1886







Xu Zenquing 1479-1511


William Shakespeare  1564-1616



4 comments:

  1. Beautiful sunset. I can taste the freshness of the air. Would be a good night to be anchored out, anticipating a fresh cup of coffee in the morning.

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  2. Webb - I enjoy and appreciate all of your postings. This one is notable and especially memorable. Thank you, as always, for sharing your insights and wisdom. This posting deserves several careful readings and contemplation. Perhaps while sipping a gin and tonic in the cockpit.

    Best regards,
    Scott
    S/V Free Spirit
    1975 Ranger 23
    Los Angeles

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  3. Now, in my 8th decade, I find hope and encouragement, in your comments, to keep on sailing, and enjoying the beauty of this world. Thank you. And thank you for sharing the poetry. I would like to recommend poems [and songs] from the book of Psalms. There you will find passion and more hope.
    To your comment about 'those passing on evil may say they are Christians', but sadly, they are not. I take solace in your comments that you are not among those passing on evil.
    I will pray that you will be able to make more voyages, both on Gannett and to the Lord Jesus Christ. You are so close.

    May the peace of Christ be with you, always.
    Pete W.
    Chesapeake Bay

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  4. As I expect you know I, too, am in my 8th decade, much to my surprise.

    I have read THE BIBLE through twice, although I confess to having skimmed the begats.

    Your suggestions that I reread The Psalms is a good one. I remember many of them as great poetry. I will.

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