Windgrove

Life on the Edge

Remembering why

For all his friendships and close affinities with family, friends, students, readers, and fellow writers, did my father achieve the connections in life he so clearly honored in his writing?

Even on the last morning
when we all tremble and lose, I will reach
carefully, eagerly through that rain, at the end —

Toward whatever is there, with this loyal hand.
from “Witness” by William Stafford

I have read poem after poem of my father’s that reaches out for kindred intelligence, an understanding heart. The reach was real for him, but connection elusive. Poetry was his school to practice the reach, and suffer the defeat of absolute connection he intuited.

Here at Windgrove it is barely morning, overcast, a bit grey, cold, drizzly. I am pondering over the above words by author Kim Stafford who has written an elegant, moving testimony to poet William Stafford’s life in the biography ‘Early Morning — Remembering My Father’.

I have the house all to myself for the first time in fifteen days after a continuous flow of day and overnight visitors and a certain knowing, a certain sadness seeps in through the consciousness of leaves dripping rain. In this momentary melancholy, a thought crosses my mind: “Why do I bother allowing so many people into my home, my life, if in the end, I rarely ever see or hear from them again?”

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I remember a girl I so admired all through junior high I carved her name into the bark of trees, and gazed in her direction out of the corner of my eye for years. In the preeminent silence of my adolescence that formed the native waters of my writing life, I don’t believe we ever spoke. After high school I didn’t see her for decades. Then one day, across a crowded room, following a memorial service for one of my students, I saw a distinguished woman approaching me.
“Do you remember me?” she said.
“Help me…”
“I’m Molly,” she said, and my heart, from a great distance in time, faltered. She was dressed simply, but elegantly. Her hair was bravely beginning to gray.
“I have read your book,” she said. “I felt it spoke directly to me.” We shook hands, looked into each other’s eyes, and she drifted away.

Isn’t that the premier dream of childhood, that someone you admire would understand you — without a word said directly but in the beam of light that travels outward from the soul? In many of my father’s poems there is a felt connection, a moment of recognition, a departure [my italics].

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And, as if to gift box the ultimate meaning behind all of Stafford’s words, the following arrives in my inbox this morning:

Hi Peter,

This morning I walked up Vodna mountain in Skopje, Macedonia, and the quiet path reminded me of my walks on Mt. Wellington Tasmania.  I found my mind spinning 11 years back to Hobart and Roaring Beach.  [My former partner] and I stayed with you for a few weeks, and although I’m not even sure you remember my meek steps around Windgrove, our time there made a lifelong impression on me. I’ve meant to write you a few times over the years, and put it off each time long enough to lose the passion behind the purpose. I’m not eloquent enough to connect my memories into any sort of story, but these are the things that I have remembered over the years, sometimes frequently…

Coffee and bread in the morning, three types of bread, farmy butter at room temperature, jam. You had a clear reverence for this ritual of morning and I shared a delight in the deliciousness of the bread and coffee. I was struck that there was no fridge in the kitchen; it’s tucked away with the roots in the cellar. I remember bright green pesto and Green and Black’s chocolate from Hobart. I remember that you spent so much money on food, and then enjoyed so much the beautiful things you bought…and shared…with us.  

At the time you could often be found with a book of Mary Oliver’s poetry. You quoted her often, and there were several other books lying around, open to a passage. I remember feeling that nature was poetic, life was poetic…as I sat on the benches of the Peace Walk.  I was so moved every time I sat and listened. This feeling is one of the stronger memories that I have, as I struggle to find quiet spaces in my life with phones and city noise and the need to fill time with something other than silence. I remember that you tended the Peace Fire every day and you plunged your body into the ocean every day.  

I remember feeling uncomfortable. I was 23 or 24, can’t remember, but I was so painfully aware of things like planting trees too close together, or not knowing how to construct a garden enclosure from pvc pipe, and not knowing how to react to a man treating me as a grown woman. The discomfort is entertaining to me now….

The lessons you learned from living off of the land before you built your house always return to me; I try to think about my impact on a place. Watching you tirelessly plant trees on previously barren ground made me realize there is always room for contribution, always a way to improve the spaces that we live in. Sometimes it’s hard to feel those urges to contribute in a city like San Francisco, where the streets are literally pulsing with energy and other people. Sometimes there are too many signals and the energy feels haywire there. The peace you have at Windgrove is such a rare and beautiful thing.  

I’ll keep reading about ‘Life on the Edge’, and hopefully make it out there to the edge again before too long.  Helllloooooo from Macedonia.

Best, Ginny

PS Both photos are of Ginny in 2002 at Roaring Beach

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