Poetry Mixtape #7: By the Sea

I have always wanted to live by the sea. Even though I have grown and lived landlocked in the Midwest all my life, something about the sea draws me. It has a certain magic that can’t be matched by any other body of water. Rivers, streams, waterfalls, lakes – all lovely in their fluid beauty, but they cannot hold a candle to the ocean for mystery and allure.

On a different note, yesterday was Elizabeth Bishop’s birthday, and although I love many of her poems (and could easily have chosen ones that are more recognizable, like “One Art” or “The Fish” or “The Question of Travel”), this poem is one of my favorites because of its incredible descriptions. Read and then we’ll talk.

The End Of March

It was cold and windy, scarcely the day
to take a walk on that long beach
Everything was withdrawn as far as possible,
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken,
seabirds in ones or twos.
The rackety, icy, offshore wind
numbed our faces on one side;
disrupted the formation
of a lone flight of Canada geese;
and blew back the low, inaudible rollers
in upright, steely mist.

The sky was darker than the water
–it was the color of mutton-fat jade.
Along the wet sand, in rubber boots, we followed
a track of big dog-prints (so big
they were more like lion-prints). Then we came on
lengths and lengths, endless, of wet white string,
looping up to the tide-line, down to the water,
over and over. Finally, they did end:
a thick white snarl, man-size, awash,
rising on every wave, a sodden ghost,
falling back, sodden, giving up the ghost…
A kite string?–But no kite.

I wanted to get as far as my proto-dream-house,
my crypto-dream-house, that crooked box
set up on pilings, shingled green,
a sort of artichoke of a house, but greener
(boiled with bicarbonate of soda?),
protected from spring tides by a palisade
of–are they railroad ties?
(Many things about this place are dubious.)
I’d like to retire there and do nothing,
or nothing much, forever, in two bare rooms:
look through binoculars, read boring books,
old, long, long books, and write down useless notes,
talk to myself, and, foggy days,
watch the droplets slipping, heavy with light.
At night, a grog a l’américaine.
I’d blaze it with a kitchen match
and lovely diaphanous blue flame
would waver, doubled in the window.
There must be a stove; there is a chimney,
askew, but braced with wires,
and electricity, possibly
–at least, at the back another wire
limply leashes the whole affair
to something off behind the dunes.
A light to read by–perfect! But–impossible.
And that day the wind was much too cold
even to get that far,
and of course the house was boarded up.

On the way back our faces froze on the other side.
The sun came out for just a minute.
For just a minute, set in their bezels of sand,
the drab, damp, scattered stones
were multi-colored,
and all those high enough threw out long shadows,
individual shadows, then pulled them in again.
They could have been teasing the lion sun,
except that now he was behind them
–a sun who’d walked the beach the last low tide,
making those big, majestic paw-prints,
who perhaps had batted a kite out of the sky to play with.

*

What did I tell you? Amazing, right? This is one of the only poems I know where I am completely swept into the scene. I am there, feeling that cold on one cheek then the other, being dazzled by those multi-colored stones, that tangle of string. And, oh, that house!  I want to live there and do “nothing, or nothing much, forever” in that artichoke of a house, reading old books and writing notes. And the strange animal of that ending, the lion sun batting around a kite and leaving its paw marks in the sand. There is much to learn from Bishop as a poet. For me, this poem is a reminder of the power of the image – she trusts her eye and her ear and gives the reader a perfect snapshot of this walk on the beach while making it so much more.

If you are inspired to write:

Using Bishop as a muse, write a descriptive piece where you happen upon your “dream” retirement/writing spot. Transport the reader to this place.

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