Apr 4, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Plateau and Quietude
©April 4th/5th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
A plateau of bald rock
At the very top of Wright’s Tower
Lies back like a woman
Baring her midriff to the sky
On a quiet beach.
She breathes quietly.
The trees encircling her
Whisper sweet nothings,
Turning light into leaves.
A hawk wheels patiently
Far above in the sun-beaten
Rain-saturated sky of Spring.
We cross the highway,
My dog and I, two wanderers
Taking a known path,
Seeking the unknown.
We reach the woods.
Green-gold slippery shadows,
Daffodil-yellow sunlit paths,
A burst of quietude –
These are ours today.
I walk, hoping for sudden
Red flash of fox, or
Grey-brown dart of coyote,
Holly runs forward and back
Looping around me, hoping for pursuit.
An impudent squirrel, semaphoring insults,
Or rude rabbit, flashing its behind
As it taunts her, will do nicely.
She slices through the green wood-light
As it parts neatly
In her canine wake.
We see nothing that we seek.
Just a pair of loud, proud geese,
Walking confidently towards the pond,
Which, rain-swollen and ready for turtles
Makes room for them,
The water trembling in the light
Like a vision in a sweet dream,
From which I would never want
To emerge.
Holly is cautious;
Geese are loud, belligerent
Hers is an exuberant nature,
But geese worry her;
Of course, she’d never admit this.
She looks elsewhere, casual
As a girl walking down a city-street
Hoping to not be noticed.
The geese pay no heed,
As they slide into the water
Honking like mad rickshaw-horns.
We leave them behind,
Rippling the water into green-gold silk.
Holly lopes up the slopes,
I follow, sometimes stumbling.
The Tower looms in the distance.
The gravel path gives way
To dark earth, squelchy mud,
Soft pine needles, leaves.
A sudden movement scatters them,
And we see young, striped snakes
Skittering away into the undergrowth,
Vanishing at our approach.
Tenderness floods me.
I am grateful for this glimpse.
We climb up the hill,
Reach the tower, sit on a rock,
Watch the traffic move far below
On the improbable highway:
Two shimmering metallic snakes
Flowing in two different directions.
I shudder at them.
My dog pays no heed.
She is of the Moment,
And the Moment is Eternal.
The silence of mid-day is broken
A single bird-song questions the air,
But there is no reply.
I try and forget the things
I always remember:
Rising seas, melting glaciers
Punishing heat, dying animals,
Plastic-swollen seabirds,
Parched snakes, ailing bees.
How could all that be
On a day such as this?
I push that reality away
And seek these woods,
Knowing that illusions exist,
Contradictions collide.
I grieve the loss of all
That I’ve yet to see,
And the world is vast.
But for now, my dog and I
Reach our plateau that,
Lies like a woman
Baring her midriff to the sky,
And I lie on my back
Right there, and watch the skies
Wheeling around me, the rock
Sunning herself, solid and quiet,
The trees whispering to us,
And my dog panting
Quietly by my side.
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Today’s NaPoWriMo Day 5 prompt was to “write a poem that is based in the natural world: it could be about a particular plant, animal, or a particular landscape. But it should be about a slice of the natural world that you have personally experienced and optimally, one that you have experienced often. ”
Tags: #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #walkinthewoodswithdog
Jun 3, 2016 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings
The Sky-Clad Man on the Trail
©June 3rd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Today, I took my dog to the Sheepfold part of the Fells near our house, and she had a grand time romping around, chasing, and being chased by other dogs.
My dog is a bit like my daughter, my husband, and me, in that she loves the company of her kind, as we love the company of our kind, but after a little while, she longs for solitude, or for quiet time with a loved one.
So, after this mad dashing about with other dogs, doing doggy things, and chasing after sticks, she came up to me grinning. I said, “Walkie?” She wagged her eagerness, and I slipped the leash back on her. The dog-romping area is a wild-flower-studded, broad meadow, ringed by woods, and this is the official area where dogs are off-leash.
The day was clement, somewhat cool, with cloudy skies alternating with sunny, blue patches overhead. The trees looked grateful, and richly green. The ground was springy under our feet, and old pine-needles made a soft brown carpet underfoot. Holly and I walked happily, a unit. Sunlight fell softly upon our shoulders, and the air moved easily in and out of our lungs. I felt alive and happy, and judging by Holly’s expressive tail and eyebrows, she felt the same.
We took the usual trail, then changed course, and went on one we hadn’t been on before – this was uphill. At one point, we found ourselves looking down a steep cliff at a large pond below, although we kept to the forested path much of the time. We met a bicyclist who had parked near a tree and was looking at a map of the trails, who told me that the pond far below was called “Dark Hollow Pond.” How magical and mysterious – nice!
You would think that I, a person who likes to think philosophical thoughts, read and write fanciful fiction and poetry, would have some deep insights into life or nature, or existence, while doing this kind of walking with my dog.
And you would be wrong.
I think NO thoughts, or no thoughts that I can remember when I walk. Mostly, I’m a seeing, moving, sensing creature, completely attuned to my dog’s state of being. I’m an utterly blank page. The few thoughts that I do entertain are of an essentially trivial and forgettable nature.
On one of my window-sills in my blue room upstairs sit a few, very tiny, perfectly cast, bronze statues of Buddhist monks – a couple of them are in sitting meditation attitude, and another couple depict them in a frozen state of walking meditation. I feel like the monks in walking meditation mode. There is a deep, deep calmness that descends on me in the woods. I could walk forever, and die walking at such times.
At one point, I went from feeling cool to feeling very hot (after much uphill trekking), so I paused to remove my light jacket, keeping the dog’s leash firmly between my knees, while I worked my arms out of my jacket.
Suddenly, I heard a meek voice say, “Could you please hold your dog?” I turned, and saw an elderly, somewhat flabby-looking man, shirtless, with a backpack. I said, “I am holding her, see?” and showed him her leash. Elderly Man sighed in relief, and walked on. I am always surprised by the nervousness with which some people view dogs. I see dogs as being more or less either friendly towards, or uninterested in, humans. Very rarely have I met a completely unfriendly dog (of course, street dogs are another matter, but even when I lived in India, I knew many amiable and amicable street dogs, on several of whom I bestowed treats and names.)
Holly and I walked on, upwards towards an even rockier place, which we hadn’t seen before.
And there, a couple of hundred yards ahead of us, right on a craggy outcrop, I got the shock of my life.
With his back to me, a white man stood, completely naked to the world. Framed by the sky and rocks around him, ringed by trees, he stood, his arms raised, as if in trance.
The picture froze in my mind, as I froze there on the rocks below.
And the following non-thoughts/reactions coursed through me in that instant of seeing:
Was he part of some sort of cult?
Was this a nudist colony?
Was that shirtless old man I’d seen earlier on the trail part of this man’s coterie of naked men?
Were they old, gay men meeting up secretly, far from their families and friends?
Maybe the Naked Man was the leader of some horrific black-magic, Tantric, Satanic cult.
Perhaps, he was sacrificing his own son to his God.
(Or, maybe, he was just enjoying the sunshine on his ageing, naked body.)
In any case, from my brief and horrified glance, it was clear that he was not young, maybe in his sixties. How I could have deduced all this in one split second, and just from seeing his back, buttocks and legs, I cannot say, but that much was clear.
Holly and I stood there, aghast for that split second.
I didn’t want to go further. He was right on the trail and we’d have had to see him in all his naked glory (or not) if we’d continued. And, heavens forfend, I might have had to (shudder) chat with him about the weather, or exchange pleasantries about how nice it was to be naked in the summer, far from the madding crowd.
That is not the kind of thing yours truly does. I. Am. A. Prude.
So, as if moved by one united impulse, both Holly and I literally turned tail, and ran back down the trail whence we had come – and we did so almost silently, except for the jingling of her dog tags, and my mangal-sutra. We didn’t stop to look until we’d gone a safe distance. I heaved a sigh of relief. The Naked Man hadn’t heard our approach, or seen us.
Thank goodness.
I don’t know why I ran. I felt like a frightened, Victorian maiden. This was odd. I am NOT a spring chicken, fainting away at the sight of a naked man. Okay, chicken, yes, but not a spring one!
I think it’s because I wanted to let the man be in his own happy, private zone of freedom, a true digambara (“sky-clad”). And I did NOT want the vision of some naked stranger to mar my beautiful walk. AND, I think I had the teeniest bit of primeval fear. (Sorry, men!)
Well, anyway, Holly and I returned to the beaten path, and ventured up some other, lovely, twisty trails, going higher and higher on the path, until we met two women and three unleashed dogs (a beautiful Australian Blue-Heeler, a charming Mutt, and a handsome Australian shepherd). The women were very nice, and when they saw me hesitate and stop with Holly at a safe distance from them, they immediately leashed their dogs (if you own a dog, you know that the relationship between leashed and un-leashed dogs is mostly fine, but sometimes fierce and odd. Something about the leash, I guess. It was clear that they understood this, because when we exchanged hellos, and I thanked them for leashing their dogs, they were very gracious).
And then, goodness me, I saw the Elderly Man with the backpack whom we’d met on the trail, before I’d almost run into the Naked Man. He didn’t recoil in horror from Holly this time, and even allowed her to sniff him. “You’ve had a long hike,” he said to me. “So have you,” I replied. Smiling, he went on his way, and we went on ours.
After another long uphill climb up the trail, and back, Holly and I made it back to the Sheepfold, where she said hello to a few canine buddies. Then, she looked eagerly at me. “Holly want to go home?” I asked. She thought-beamed a clear “Yes,” at me.
And so, we went home. She’s one happy dog today.
And I had a story to tell my family.
And the skies remained cloudy, with clear, blue patches (in case, you wondered).
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Okay, so I’m feeling very clever right now! Why, do you ask? Well, it’s because I’d published this same post about an hour earlier and I’d titled it, “The Naked Man on the Trail.” Within my post, I’d made a mention of the Indian Jain term digambara, which translated, apparently means “sky-clad.”
So, I cleverly changed the slug on this post, and retitled it, as well.
But why? you persist in asking.
Well, The Daily Post’s Daily prompt, which I only just read a few minutes ago was the single word, “Sky.”
Tags: #essay, #Ramblings, #walkinthewoodswithdog
Jan 7, 2016 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings
A Bit of Abrupt Reality (Dog-Tail #3
©December 6th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I went to the woods today — TWICE!
The first time, I went with the Hod. It was a beautiful day, and she was excellent for the first part of our walk. Then, on the way back, she was VERY bad — ran off and didn’t come when I called (and this is the first time she’s done that — must be adolescent rebellion), darted amongst trees in a tantalizing manner, then vanished. I yelled out her name several times with increasing panic in my voice, then said, “I’m going!” and set off briskly back down the main path, close to tears. My husband told me not to worry when I called him on the phone, semi-hysterical. I told him I wasn’t worried that she would run away — I was worried that she’d find her way home (which she can) without me, and I was terrified of the traffic near our home.
Well, I needn’t have worried. I heard the familiar jingling of her tags, and turned around, to see her running towards me, nose to the path. This dog tracks perfectly.
Alas, I WASN’T pleased, however. I behaved like those parents whose children disappear in a public place, then yell at them in relief when they reappear. So, I scolded her, and she let me put the leash back on her. She may have been abashed, but it’s hard to tell. Her tail was wagging, and she seemed cheerful. And her legs were very wet.
We went home (in icy silence on my part) and I gave her a half-bath from the chest down. I could now see how utterly filthy she had gotten — the water ran brown for a long time. She must’ve have found a cold mud-puddle.
Anyway, she was very good after that — for a while, at any rate — until she stole some food that my husband had left out. She was a bad dog today!
After a while doing various errands, I realized I’d lost a lovely earring that a friend had given me, so I determinedly set off to the woods to find it. I retraced all my paths, knowing in the way that I know when an object I’ve “lost” is near me somehow. Didn’t find it. On the way, though, I found what I think was the source of Holly’s distraction: A family of three deer, two adults and a fawn, leaping gracefully across icy slopes. It was arresting and beautiful. Then, I continued my search, which was fruitless.
On my way home, I thought that I would definitely find my earring, if not today, then tomorrow (I really don’t like losing things, more so than most people, I think, because I go crazy looking for them, and in most cases, find them).
Reached home, thinking that perhaps it would be on the floor, if I got lucky.
And my daughter opened the living room door and said, “I FOUND it!” (It had been on the floor — near the radiator!)
I am never wrong about things that I’ve lost that I know will be found.
AND I clocked in at 5 1/2 miles of walking today.
Perhaps, I should just pretend I’ve lost an earring and go to the woods twice every day, instead of once.
And take Holly with me.
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