Aaltoe’s Blog

The chill of fall
The bleak sunlight
Making a cold white carpet of the lake
With sparkling crystalline decoration.
Still the warmth of the sun
Creates the ambiguity of the day
Preventing a too simple reading
And inviting us
To experience the contradictions,
The contrasts and the combinations
Of differences in light, in temperature, in mood
That tap our imaginations
In ways a colder day cannot.
There is no doubt about the direction of change,
Toward cold,
Toward greater distance between self and circumstance.
Needed will be layers of clothing,
Restrictions on type and time of outdoor activity
Clearer separation of the internal and the external.
The present affords the luxury
Of easy movement
Back and forth
The special privilege of these days
At the edge of seasons.

Near sunset
An orange sun
With a faint ring of purple
Possible to look at directly
Its haze created by California’s fires
Now reflected
Here in Squam Lake.
No sunset beyond the orange disk
The sky without color.
How odd
To have our place redefined
By things remote,
By forces and events not here.
What then is our place
But momentary constructions
Some more durable than others
Where changes reveal
The nature and relationships of the different parts
The quality of light
Its color, its intensity
Its interaction with the water and the landscape.

Most boats heading for Holderness,
West,
Some extraordinarily loud
As if noise were what they were about,
Yet others, quiet, elegant
Purposeful, announcing only
Direction and intention.
The sky presiding
With shapes of varying power and texture
Still, almost.
The week’s end.
And now Saturday
Oddly not accentuating shifts of activity
Or place
Hovering in a space and time
Internally defined,
Trying to find purpose and meaning
When actions have no consequences
Other than what one imagines.
Isolation is my new friend
Hard to get to know
Not very talkative
Forcing memories upon me
Not helpful in making sense
Of the here and now,
Exaggerating the impact
Of contact with others
Calling out for worlds of my own making
Worlds however unrealistic
To satisfy my yearnings for coherence
For purpose
For the meaning of being.