Island

I'm not entirely certain why John Donne's meditation popped up in my head tonight. I think it may have more to do with newspapers than nuanced pondering. We have been bludgeoned by bad economic news, frustrated by lack of solutions, and infuriated by political infighting for so long that some of us may feel the need to just drift away, across that sea of doubt and dismay, to a place insulated from the noise and (at least) seemingly under our control.

Hemingway's Islands in the Stream paints problematic pictures of those who seek idyllic isolation. Then the popular song lyrics sculpt an ideal landscape: Islands in the stream that is what we are. / No one's in between how can we be wrong? / Sail away with me to another world.

Simon and Garfunkel's I Am a Rock resonates with Keweenaw residents: A winters day / In a deep and dark December; / I am alone, / Gazing from my window to the streets below / On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow. / I am a rock, / I am an island.

Perhaps the final words of their song strike closest to home for writers like me: I have my books / And my poetry to protect me; / I am shielded in my armor, / Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. / I touch no one and no one touches me. . . . And a rock feels no pain; / And an island never cries. In the Keweenaw, especially in the winter, it is easy to feel isolated from the rest of the planet -- despite the invasive news broadcasts and the constant links by Internet, phone, and cable. The sheer physical immensity of the snow, the cold, and the winds make you feel small and sealed away beyond a ocean of doubt -- in a frozen, white redoubt.

I guess it is the conundrum of human nature -- to seek isolation and yet be connected to one another -- "because I am involved in mankind." Tonight, I write from my island in the snow.

Mick

Island

I'm an island in an ocean of doubt,
My own little kingdom, where I'm the boss.
There are bridges in, and some bridges out;
I decide who's allowed to come across.
I also decide who's allowed to stay,
To visit, or take up their residence --
Until I tell them to just go away,
Or I let them stay, but behind a fence.
I dug the channel that keeps us apart,
For more control and to keep things cooler.
That ocean of doubt helps protect my heart,
For I used to be so peninsular.
"No man is an island," said old John Donne,
But I know better because I am one...

Mick McKellar
October 2009


John Donne
Meditation XVII: No man is an island...

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Dirt Clods and White Sound

Memories are quicksilver, tricky and shiny and always coming and going. I know not where they reside when they're not visiting me, and I'm not certain I want to go visit them. While daydreaming this afternoon, I was suddenly transported to the bedroom I shared with my three brothers on Crown Street in Westland, MI. It was the end of a long summer day and the last trailing flickers of green and golden twilight were tracing lines on the blue walls of the room.

I was on my side, my head aching and my hearing temporarily replaced by a hissing noise, a white noise that blocked the other sounds of our house. My brothers and I had been waging a dirt-bomb war with a group of neighborhood kids. Near our house was a gravel pit that also had large hills of clay soil -- sun-baked and crumbling into pieces just big enough to throw at each other. They would explode when they hit an object like a rock, a tree, a back, a leg, or a head.

I caught a high-arching clay grenade in the right ear and went down like a felled tree. I was about ten years old, and a casualty of the Cady Street Clay Wars. I walked home, but was sent to bed because my ear was full of dirt and I couldn't hear very well. Mom always cleaned our cuts, scrapes, and various and sundry wounds with hydrogen peroxide, which would foam and help cleanse them. With cuts and abrasions, this usually hurt like the dickens. How was I to know it wouldn't hurt to float dirt clods out of my ear?

Mick

Dirt Clods and White Sound

Long green shadows of twilight on the wall,
Flickered as the sun and clouds collided.
I felt Mom's footsteps -- heard nothing at all;
Nothing but hissing white sound, provided
By a clay-bomb smashing into my head,
And packing my right ear with dusty dirt.
Cool fingers probed my ear, swollen and red,
And I moaned to let her know that it hurt.
She turned me over and smiled in my eyes,
But I saw the brown peroxide bottle,
And the room filled up with my frightened cries,
As my siren roared up to full throttle.
While I squirmed, and I tried to get away
From the foaming touch of peroxide's sting,
She pinned my head on the pillow to stay
Put, and poured cold liquid into the thing.
I stiffened, preparing my shrieks and cries,
As I felt the foam and bubbles billow,
But pain never came, and before my eyes,
The dirt clods fell right out on my pillow.


Mick McKellar
October 2009

A Hole in the Sky

I'll admit it: I am spoiled. The warmth of this September has lulled my winter warning system to sleep, with promises of warm and colorful days, followed by cool and comfortable nights. Open windows have permitted sleep with the whisper of mid-summer's blessings in harmony with the first harvest songs of summer's end. Bright, sunny days tell tall tales of long warm nights that now linger only in memory and seem to promise abundance they cannot deliver.

Twilight shadows come to visit earlier each evening, but carry only cool winds and billions of brilliant stars. That was the dream, drowned in the gray dampness of the first true fall morn, the shadowy billows of moisture laden clouds adrift upon a river of Canadian air. The low gray brows of the scowling sky frown down upon my up-raised eye, and a tiny prayer escapes upon a whispered cry...Lord, let the sun shine through a hole in the sky...

Mick

A Hole in the Sky

On a dreary Sunday, cold-pizza dawn,
An iron gray sunrise slaps the window,
Makes steely mud of the dew on the lawn,
And drives the rain like a wind-blown shadow;
To pierce window pane, and chill my old heart
With darkling thoughts of old man winter's song.
Though Autumn's paintbrush has had a fair start,
The icy-blue rain light makes it look wrong.
The air feels heavy as chilled, soggy sand,
Or cold, wet laundry piled high on my chest —
This is not the morning that I had planned:
The warm, sunny start to my day of rest.
Lord, please warm my heart and brighten my eye,
Let the sun shine through a hole in the sky!

Mick McKellar
September 2009

Time and Tradition

Understanding the need to reign in the ingrained desires to strike out when livelihood and survival are in jeopardy, does little to assuage the deeply-felt drives to provide and protect that are such a part of the human, and especially the male ego. Many men, myself included, were raised in the traditional system that taught us to judge our worth by how well we provide for our families and how well we can protect them from the elements, from attack, and from oblivion.

Knowing that collaboration, cooperation, and communication are fundamental attributes of the successful person in our current society does little to remove the urges arising from all those hours spent as a child learning and preparing to do battle with a hostile and uncertain world. Change is needed and it will happen, but it will take time to change, especially in a world that still holds dangers that may yet require us to test our mettle against aggression. It will take time to contain the drive to meet economic threats and even deprivation with that cold steel core which cries out to fight back with fists held high -- fueled by anger and fear.

Reason calls for its day in the sun and I hope we are all strong enough to grant its ascendancy.

Mick

Time and Tradition

My mind says I should talk.
My gut says I should fight.
But can I walk the walk
On paths I know are right?
The games I played in youth:
Always rough and tumbled -
Taught winning was the truth.
That losers will be humbled
On the sporting battlefield -
Where young men must excel,
And only weaklings yield;
And winners get to tell
The world that they are best!
Traditions long in-bred,
Are difficult to wrest,
From out the heart and head.

And now my world has changed,
My world-view modified;
My mind-set rearranged;
My prejudice denied.
But, I will need some space,
Some time, and yes, some slack.
For, though change runs apace,
My training holds me back:
I still need to provide;
I still need to protect.
Deep feelings I can't hide,
I'm certain to project.
I understand the needs,
To join the revolution,
But change will come at speeds
Of human evolution...

Mick McKellar
September 2009

Swim

I wondered what a dolphin must think of the frenetic advance of man upon the planet we share. Are they intelligent enough to make a judgment about us? Is their intelligence so much lower, or simply too alien for us to understand? Science is certain we are smarter, but science was also certain that there were canals on Mars and that nothing smaller than atomic particles could exist. Yet, we stand now on a higher soap box, and can see further over the wall. We talk of terraforming Martian landscapes we have seen through the cameras of probes we sent to investigate and of matter constructed of vibrating strings of energy.

Douglas Adams said, "Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons." Is there perhaps a grain of soggy truth in his whimsy? Do we need to examine our actions, our efforts, our lives with the liquid lens of the minds of aquatic mammals we find so amusing?

Perhaps the world would be a better place if we took time to eat more fish, play around more, and swim...

Mick

Swim

I swim free and answer to none at all.
I spring from depth and dance above the waves.
I greet the sun while spinning in free-fall,
And dive to frolic in deep green sea caves.
You pound the Earth with feet covered in dust.
You build your structures, reaching to the sky.
You drive machines that quickly turn to rust,
And then devour each treasure that you pry
From deep within the mother's mantle fair.
While you rend her dear heart and scar her face,
You foul the water and pollute the air,
Dancing the dark dance of death without grace.
While you make war, believing you must fight,
I swim down deep and fear you may be right...

Mick McKellar
September 2009

Water

It has been the wonder of my life that I am allowed to savor the liqueur, the small things, the daily cordial distilled from the mighty rush that inundates my mind. For it is in the details, in the tiny flecks of light that dance on the floor when summer morning light shimmers through the leaves and touches the dew on the window pane, and in the small sounds a loved one makes as her nightly dreams come to their sweet closure...in these and in the thousand thousand other whispers in the wind that I find the savory spice of my life.

Tonight, my throat parched and raw from a raucous rehearsal -- I filled a glass with simple, cool water and let the beautifully bland brandy of the sky slowly roll across my tongue and down my damaged throat. The feeling was exquisite -- Milton's luscious liquor in the raw -- aqua vitae for my tired and sleepy mind. Simple water -- simply wonderful!

Mick

Water

I sipped some ice-cold silver from my glass,
And let the lively liquid touch my tongue.
Its fragrance told me tales of wind-blown grass,
After the summer's storm song has been sung.
I tasted sky from which the fluid fell --
The flavor of the summer sun shined through,
A cloud-borne precious gift from Heaven's well,
That sparkled like the sunlight morning dew.
I slowly savored sips of nature's draught,
That flowed and floated, flooded, fell, and froze...
I thought of all this silliness and laughed,
Which forced my liquid treasure out my nose!
I loved it, though I choked, near fit to drown,
Because it tasted so good going down.

Mick McKellar
September 2009

Disconnected Profundity

I posted these little poems together because they are related...half-siblings with shared alleles from the same frustrated donor. Although I know Facebook , Twitter, etc. are social media watering holes, I cannot help but be reminded of my days on the playground, trying to get the attention of my friends, my teachers, or even my parents by shouting the loudest, waving my arms, or falling off the jungle gym. The competition for attention, interest, and response was challenging. The noise level was deafening. The visual impact was akin to a hundred TV commercials running simultaneously.

Eventually, even falling off the jungle gym garnered no attention, because two other kids just fell off the slide and one did a swan dive from a swing in mid-flight. I remember feeling isolated and disconnected amidst the cacophony, adrift on a sea of noise; invisible in the bright light of frenetic activity. The roar receded and deafened by the clamor, I went about my business of playing -- in a cocoon of my own construction. I could shout that my left foot was on fire or that a chunk of the sky just descended upon my aching head with a Martian martini attached to it, and no one would ever know. I could dance in the daylight, sing of long-lost sunny days, and utter the most profound wisdom available to a first grader -- all without worry of rebuke or even recognition. The only danger was that, occasionally, someone else noticed and then a chain reaction faster than light speed focused all attention on my imaginary flaming left foot.

You know, I miss the quiet pleasure of getting a letter...

Mick


Disconnected

Two fellows stood, with megaphones in hands,
Up on their rooftops, straddling the peak --
Voicing their opinions, making demands,
Reveling in their certain right to speak.
Soon, all their neighbors had joined in the fun,
Armed with megaphones, signs, and flashing lights.
Each competing to be the loudest one,
Or have the most compelling sounds and sights.
The media sensation quickly grew,
Spreading like a virus across the land.
They all broadcasted everything they knew --
Shouting until hoarse, till they could not stand.
The grand cacophony would not abate,
Even though they could not communicate.

Mick McKellar
August 2009

Profundity

My message said I stayed up late,
While trying to communicate,
My thoughts, profound and wise.
I posted them for all to see,
I shared the very core of me,
In front of all their eyes.

I thought, perhaps, a small response,
Would justify, upon the nonce,
My self-effacing boast.
But, hours later, all I read:
That you had risen from your bed...
And you were making toast.

Affronted by this simple snub,
I poured hot water in my tub;
I sat and had a soak.
And later, when I mentioned it,
My tub-soak posting was a hit!
Please tell me that's a joke...

Mick McKellar
August 2009