Another Country

By Thomas James Martin - Published Suite101 - 2004

Listen:there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go --e.e. cummings

Walking the woods in October, held helpless before the unimaginable beauty, like looking in the old Queen's Looking Glass.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who's the fairest one of all.
Why we are, all walking on the other side of the mirror, fairer than any fey princesses, paused on the woodland paths, held breathless in the chill breath of autumn, riding the misty winds, our red and gold cloaks billowing.

Looking with all my heart for the fairest in the mirrored lands, I find no fabulous day-glow princess ponies or pumpkin-colored SUVs or beautiful, coiffed celebrities or handsome, olive drab action figures.

I find hickory leaves still clinging to the tossing trees, etching the sky with their pale, golden lattice. I see the grasses still greening before the first frosts, a few golden apples still hanging from some bare boughs. I also see the brown remains of a few rotting pears underneath our Bartlett tree and tatters of decaying Damson plums, still slightly purple on the damp ground near the Lutheran church.

Why does Nature even in its moments of violence and decay seem so much purer to me than the manmade world of computers and ice cream?

I remember the question of what actually constitutes the "natural order" coming up several times in those endless "bull" sessions over cigarettes and beer (smuggled in those days). Some bright but shallow intellectual upperclassman would always point out that everything is really part of Nature. Thus, the argument would go that the very cigarettes that we were smoking and beer we were drinking were also "natural."

According to these "wags," a '65 Chevy Impala Convertible should be looked upon with the same reverence and awe as Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon or the stately oaks that bordered my grandparents' farm and which I dearly missed sitting on my bunk, a little country boy lost in the cold glitter of first year at the state university.

Yes, I have come to understand that in this paradoxical world, supersized fries, SUVs, CEO salaries and politiicians' egos have some kind of place in the universe. Silicon chips implanted in my noggins, hoisting a glass with my bespectacled clone--All part of the Natural Order.

So, you see, I cede the point.

Yet, I have come to value the heart over the mind, as I have put some time and perspective between those impressionable years and myself. And, yes, Nature wins the argument.

That is the Nature of: Waterfalls, the Paper Birch, Goldfinches in sunlight, scurrying squirrels, passing shades of cloud light on green meadows, the shake of a loved one's rainy hair--even the sights and smells of a flower dump at high noon
One of the first poets to touch me was e.e. cummings, the American poet quoted in the epigram. I still value many of his poems after all the years that have passed since I first read him. Among the many lines of his that I remember are these from the same poem:

A world of made
is not a world of born. . .

Walking the woods in October, gray in looks and ways, I feel as if I am walking in another country, not just one more lovely but a land so much grander, so much deeper than that inchoate, flickering land where I also must live.
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Author's Notes: The poem quoted is e.e. cummings poem entitled with the first line: pity this busy monster manunkind. You can read the entire poem at Bartleby's.

Copyright 2004, Thomas James Martin, all rights reserved.







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