In the backstretch of the year between clinical medicine and writing, I feel some need to use a little horse racing terminology, as I just finished Horse, by Geraldine Brooks. A good read, though the last chapter left me with some questions about the narrative structure and rhythm. I’m relieved to be able to generate a few ideas about plot, dredging up faint memories from the mid-1970s when I studied English at Hamilton College. At least one of the MFA programs to which I intend to apply has asked, as part of their application, for an essay on craft. Yikes.
Today, Independence Day, we participated in our neighborhood 4th of July parade, red white and blue and flags and no political posturing, just community and conversation. Kids and dogs wore costumes. There were prizes and lemonade, hot dogs with yellow mustard and green relish under the trees at the local library. A few judges and our District 1 Councilmember chatted in the shade with just plain folks. No nametags.
The real judge of the day – the guy assigned to adjudicate the costumes and taste the pies – was walking backwards along the curb, keenly eyeing the spangles and banners and jotting scores, I imagine, on a small clipboard, stubby pencil. One star for honorable mention, five for first place, question mark for just plain weird, and … whoops! A small blue wagon filled with a five-year old girl in braids and flags caught him just so, right below the knee. The center of gravity shifted. It was not a fast fall, and not a slow one. Half-fast, as I’m sure he felt as he cascaded into the wagon, sliding into a sort of crevasse on the left, next to, yet not crushing, the girl. No injuries but a full measure of chagrin.
We do such things at times. As the late CPT Ron Van Wettering – a physician assistant in another land, long time ago – used to say, when we averted yet another catastrophe, “Whatever!”
Happy 4th of July. I lift my cup of cool pink lemonade and offer a toast: To freedom and balance. And the character to preserve them.
Don’t trip.
~ ~ ~
I was thinking about Mt. Moosilauke and wondered if anyone had written a poem about it. Several have. Here’s one.
Updraft
I climbed the heavy miles of rock
hot through the forest up
to the gravel avenue through the krummholz,
the heat now descending to cooled tundra
paved with tiny wildflowers
yellow and white and berries
twisted among miniature ferns
under the bonsai spruce—
the path here a portal through the laws
of gravity to the next height opening
clear ahead like an oncoming
hypnosis of space or surrender of weight—
till finally into sky light above tree line I rose.
I rose and was on a green cloud flung wide
with more mountains spinning
in every distance—I was held aloft
hovering on the updraft between them
or I was the updraft, I was
awake and arisen
like the raven with its wings
spread far and floating fast in place
on that mountainous
rapture of air or I was the air
or the hand of air
had turned tangible
as I moved and breathed—
by Alice B. Fogel, the New Hampshire poet laureate from 2014 to 2019. Accessed online on 4 July 2024.
Photo of the summit accessed here.
Scott D. McLean, MD 