“It shall be kept free and open” for Dr. Allen Ross Memorial Canoe Launch and Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust
by Michael Mauri
Written with all due respect to any person possibly referenced or implied here and to any person not specifically mentioned or acknowledged, and in appreciation of the work of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-1921), whose words “I am signaling to you through the flames” inspired the opening lines of this poem; and to Rich Holshuh for sharing his insights on language and perception in his presentation “Alosada Kpiwi - Let's Walk in the Woods: Finding Our Place Among All of Our Relations,” presented on June 15, 2021; and to all those who have worked and walked this land and worked to protect this land and will continue to do so to the extent they are able.
A mindset of availing oneself to inspirations that may lead to the creation of a poem means being willing to go along in unforeseeable directions. My agreed-upon assignment for this poem was to be inspired by a certain place, a canoe launch to be soon created on the Connecticut River, though not yet existing. Standing there and looking across the wide river on a very cold late afternoon in November, I did not realize that my thoughts would be pulled strongly upriver, and then up another river, and then up yet another, to a mountain that still is, to people and visions that once were, to a place, also, which through the culture, foresight, and efforts of the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust and the collaborations and affiliations it naturally attracts and fosters, has been protected. And though the old paths have been obscured and the rivers blocked along the way, the two places are still very much connected. And if at times a bald eagle floats over one, at other times barred owl calls out at the other.
Mike Mauri
Jul, 2021
It shall be kept free and open
I am writing to you from across this river,
I am writing to you from across time.
And if there is no time, or if time is not real, then I am not writing to you from across time or from across this river, but maybe from a different season, a season when the oak was all aglow and the trees somewhat shorter, though does it really come down to the inch?
A season when old Mr Harbindge still stood in the dooryard of his house at the eastern toe of the mountain, beneath the steep and stony cliffy slope, at the base of it, in the all-embracing bree and lurious blithe of its braeful baern and glith, and he said I want you to cut all these pines,
but just the pines,
for only to these are we allergic, for they block the sun,
and they block the air we need, and they fill it with their pollen,
and the Mrs. is most allergic to them, come that time of year.
And he says cut these pines right to that ever-shifting, half-calculated, Cartesian-concoculated, cross-zigged confabulation of invisible ambient lines across the base of this mountain that serve as our boundary.
Cut, he says, right to the rusting, tilting wire fencing sagging ever inwards and nearer.
Cut right to the freshly re-calibrated strands of twisted wire fence repositioned every year when He who annually bookkeeps the inward-reaching bushy scruffy scrubby growth of the pines comes around to reset fence posts to the furthest conceivable inward heliotropic reach of branch and needle and thus, alas, to our ever-accretioning reduction.
And thus are we somewhat vexed and ambiguated in the finding of the true and deedful boundary as recorded in the registry of deeds in the county courthouse at the county seat, which is the locality where such perplexing and perpetuitous geometries are properly housed, and where they are fastidiously logged in to bound books and numbered pages and faithfully kept track of, he says, though the very county itself be abolished.
And because of aforesaid you can even cut over that old fence a little, he says.
But now a hermit thrush sings in the woods, his nest near to where the house was, in the redolent pine of the air of the piney shady sunshiny redolent air, near the winding cicada heat of the sun-warmed gravel road, near the whirring mosquito shade of the cool maple grove, in the unending pines that can never be cut in their entirety.
And now a prairie warbler shimmers its ungrounded electric winding circuitry song of copper wiring and rewiring from the tall and un-mowed grasses, forbs, ferns, sedges and shrubs that once were hard-won fields of hay and pasture.
That once were logged-off, burned-off, stump-pulled, stone-picked, stone-hauled, stone-stacked, walked-over, scatter-sown, scythe-cut, raked-up, ricked-up, wagon-tracked, hoof-trodden, cow-called fields of hay and pasture.
And now that prairie warbler sings over across the gravelly dead-end road that did not used to be a dead-end road but now trickles out into a pine-needle footpath not far north of here.
And it sings over by the small dug pond that sits at day’s end in the long, long shadow of this startling upright mountain being a mountain, come whatever may.
Well, they got cut, some of the pines did, anyway, and they even got cut again, at other times, but so, too, did the Mr. and Mrs. themselves, and the loving house, even, disappearing into the mountain on one side and set back out onto the other side or just never even seen again - man, wife, house, dooryard and all.
And now there’s not even a cellar hole to tell of it, or even a last lilac bush to bloom lately at the spot, or even a sign saying here stood a homestead where a pleasant and honorable life was lived, but why would there be such things? And can it be any more obvious that in thus-like manner all must go?
And now their loving spot is but a grassy swath and sward, and now it will remain such and even shall remain such, it is decreed, if that registry at the seat of that which is no longer a country in a true sense of the word keeps its enduring lock hold on each line, number, compass bearing and sentence, keeps its filed-away reference to each pipe, gun barrel and pin, stores its recorded mention of each purposefully-laid pile of stones and notable rotten stump, each momentous rusted axle and each torch-cut length of angle-iron sticking out of the ground.
And it shall be kept free and open.
Free and open for any buzzing pollinating wasps and bumble bees and twirling flapping butterflies and moths inexorably summoned by wild inflorescences, should any survive those actions we may yet still take or not take.
Free and open for any singing tumbling timber doodles fervidly sounding out their cold spring evenings’ joy.
And for the hapless turtles shuffling along in strawberry season heat between pond, pines and fields, crisscrossing and scuffing in the sun-baked, long-gone dooryard at their hard-shell pace, marking with bent blade of grass and faint rescuffling of sand the wild dooryard where once we stood talking about pines, oh, pines.
And though true enough, all of these particulars are but part of the general case, not its entirety, and not necessarily even that which was observed earlier today by a clamorous indigo bunting impatiently peering from the top branches of the caterpillar-chewed, singular stout oak tree being an oak tree, between vanished house and persistent pond.
And may this unregisterable poem be a welcome and useful calling to mind of all of that.
Michael Mauri became involved in poetry in 1985 just as a way of writing down thoughts. Mike walked in the woods in a carefree manner for many years before deciding to become a forester by trade. The forests Mike sees in his work - along with the landscapes and history in which they are embedded - play a big role in his thoughts and his poetry. Mike’s poems include evidence and visions of living on the land in great overlapping cycles of communal producing, building up, creating, using, succeeding, failing and falling apart. Mike has self-published series of small books of poetry which have been available at the Bookmill in Montague, MA, and for the past six years Mike has been working on a very long book of poetry based on earlier times. Mike has read his work in a range of venues including classic coffee house situations in towns around the Valley, most notably in Wendell.
Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust (mountgrace.org) benefits the environment, the economy, and future generations by protecting significant agricultural, natural, and scenic lands and encouraging land stewardship in northern and central Massachusetts. The core strength of Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust is our focus on completing significant land protection projects and actively stewarding the conservation areas we own. Our effectiveness is a function of our “just do it,” no-frills approach and responsiveness to the diverse conservation ethics held by the landowners of our region.