Turning Earth, March - "Storm at the Manor"
"'March' is a gust of wind flinging grit.” ― Adrian Bell, A Countryman's Spring Notebook
“Getting saved is easy; becoming a community is difficult―damnably difficult.” - Eugene Peterson, “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places”
I have a lot of feelings about this poem that I don’t know what to do with. That goes for this entire collection, honestly―it was created in a year of observation, in large part as a testament and tribute to a community that has since disintegrated. Or, I might and should say, to my concept of a community that I tried to hold together like a lone sailor lashing my body to a fleet of ships and then holding onto my little, singular boat’s mast for dear life.
Community is a beautiful concept, and I know that there are places and moments where it’s real. I point to some of those moments in this work, and I believe that those connections are no less genuine or beautiful for their eventual dissolution. That is, in part, what makes the grief so great. But moments of connection do not a community make, and I’d been holding onto a lie sweetly-spun of ignorance, good intentions, and yes, in some places, willful, unmitigated deceit. It’s always been my way to believe in the possibility of a thing more than of its true state.
I still believe that’s a better way to live.
“I will not regret having set out chairs and risked sitting down. In the end, it is better―the cold in the bones, the howling wind, the tumbling uncertainty―than huddling alone in the gloom of some shelter, waiting for a storm that does not pass.”
- Shigé Clark, “Storm at the Manor”
I decided long ago that I’d rather risk being taken in by a lie than to stop believing in the possibility of good when people promise it―and that’s coming from a person who utterly despises lies and manipulation on a visceral level. Life is not so dichotomous, of course, and those aren’t our only two choices, but it is often so for me in action―choose to believe the goodness that the person in front of me offers or keep my guarded walls up in preparation for it being a honeyed lie.
Ultimately, I chose to retain this poem in the work because I still believe in it. The storm rages, the wind batters, the lightning crashes, and we set up chairs and sit down together, in gentle defiance of all that would attempt to tear us apart. If the storm sweeps me out, and I fly scattered, lacerated, and isolated into the dark, I will not regret having set out chairs and risked sitting down. In the end, it is better―the cold in the bones, the howling wind, the tumbling uncertainty―than huddling alone in the gloom of some shelter, waiting for a storm that does not pass.
Storm at the Manor (March 26)
The thunder shakes
the walls, lightning makes
them white and yellow
in the night. The windows rattle
in the gale, stung
by side-flung hail. Feet clatter
down the haunted stairs, where some
have come seeking shelter
in the hall. Rain batters, but
we all stand
at the edge in awe and
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