THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY
PART ONE HUNDRED AND THREE:
(The conclusion and, yes, I used a different background for this one. It was too perfect not to!)
"You know," Marshall commented, "I have no idea what he looked like."
"Wordsworth?"
"There must be a portrait around here of him somewhere. Will you describe
him to me, darling?"
She found one downstairs and studied it silently a while, Marshall's hand on her
arm. "He looks like a poet," she began.
"I'm a poet," he chuckled. "Does he look like me?"
"Not in the least, but he looks like what you think of when you think of a
poet."
"I don't look like a poet?" One of his brows arched up.
"He looks pale...delicate. You look like you just returned from smiting the
Mongols."
"I have never smitten...ever!" The eyebrow went higher.
"Yes...yes, you have. You smote my heart the day I met you. It's never been the
same since. I was completely...smited."
"I don't think smited is a word."
"Well, it should be! Anyway, in this portrait he has a high forehead, thin
brownish hair, long sideburns. You both do have a cleft in your chins, though
yours is, um, more finely formed. He has nice lips."
"Better than mine?"
"No lips are better than yours. He doesn't have the cute little cupid's bow your
lips make."
"Cupid's bow? I'm not sure that sounds all that, um, manly. Especially for a
Mongol smiter."
"Trust me. They're plenty manly. His are softer, fuller, is all."
"What else. What's his nose like?"
"Fairly long, thin, with a slight, very slight arch high on the bridge. He
looks tired, worn sort of. His right hand is to his forehead. Nice long fingers,
something delicate about them, too."
"Obviously not a smiter, then."
"Obviously not. He's looking down though not really AT anything. More like he's
thinking, his mind turned inward."
"Probably thinking of daffodils, no doubt."
"Inevitably. Say, I've seen some scattered here 'n there as we've driven today.
When do you want to, um, do daffodils...officially?"
"Tomorrow. We could spend the whole day tomorrow daffodilling."
They walked through the town, around a curve, to St. Oswald's where Wordsworth
was buried.
"It's a lovely setting," Eden said. Just a simple grey church with a fat, square tower, points on each top corner, a small window high on each side of the tower, clocks below the windows, but there are shrubs and trees all around so it looks like it was plopped into a garden, and beyond
it is a high hill with a
rocky top.
Inside, the church was cool, two rows of pews separated by a wide, dark grey
slate aisle, its thick stone walls whitewashed, its peaked ceiling magnificently
beamed. Eden watched Marshall run his hand down the edge of one of the stone
arches then along the back of a pew. "It's nice in here," he smiled. "I like the
feel of it."
Damn! She wanted him to SEE it! How could he appreciate the ceiling beams if he
couldn't see them?
"You're quiet," he said softly. "Are you all right?"
"I want you to see it," she murmured.
"It's all right. Really it is."
"It's not always all right with me. I wish it were, but it isn't."
"I know, and it's all right that it's not all right...if that makes sense."
She led him down the aisle to a glass case near the altar. "His prayer book.
It's here inside the case."
He rested a palm flat on the top of the case, then moved it to cup her cheek. "I
love you," he whispered, "without limit."
Wordsworth was buried toward the back of the churchyard, his marker very simple
and serving both him and his wife, Mary, who had lived nine years after his
death. Appropriately, there were a few daffodils in bloom. Their children, Dora,
William, Thomas, and Catherine were close by. They also found Hartley Coleridge,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's oldest son. Behind the small upright marker for
Wordsworth was a flat one with deep carving. Marshall squatted beside it,
letting his fingers trace the words, his eyes closed, a small smile on his face.
"What are you thinking, darling?" Eden asked, standing just to his right side.
"I'll tell you in the daffodils tomorrow."
"I'm glad you know daffodils," she said, more to herself than to him.
He tipped his head up toward her, his eyes open again. "I have known a daffodil
in the uttermost carnal sense of the word 'knowing'," he grinned. "Thanks to
you," he added.
"I wish," she sighed, "you could know that again in the midst of a whole field
of them. Alas, there would be the voyeuristic eyes of mutton-on-the-hoof
watching."
"Mutton-on-the-hoof? How romantic!"
"Damn beasties never give one any privacy in the midst of daffodil fields," she
grumped dramatically.
"Nor, one suspects, would the countless spring hikers."
It's a shame," she said, "a real shame, it is."
"The thought is quite intriguing, I must say," Marshall observed, getting to his
feet.
They drove back down to the town of Ambleside, at the northernmost tip of
Windermere, had lunch in a nice little pub, then began to follow one of the
easier-to-manage paths that led through the countryside. In a steep meadow they
paused, sitting on the grass, the lake's end spread below them.
"There are a lot of small boats, mostly sailboats it looks like, but none of
them seem to be sailing right now. They remind me of gulls at rest, just bobbing
on the water...which, by the by, is very, very blue, bluer than the sky is
today. On the far side, the grass comes right down to the lake's edge and there
are a tons of trees everywhere right from the lake up to the hills rising
beyond."
He lay back on the grass, folding his arms under his head, letting the sunlight
bathe his face, the light breeze blow over it. "Smells wonderful. Something just
so...clean...about it."
Wadsworth lay close beside him, his chin resting on Marshall's thigh. "I have a
sense of being up," he added, "of space below me, of...distance." Lips curving
with contentment he began to quote, "Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; sunward I've climbed, and
joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds...."
"What's that from, darling?"
"It's the beginning of a poem called High Flight, written by a young
airman who was killed in World War II. It came to mind while I'm lying here."
"Have you slipped the surly bonds of earth, my love?"
His hand found hers, lifted it to his lips. "Only because of you."
They walked some more then turned back to Ambleside where Eden had parked the
rental car. In a small shop there, she found a painting of daffodils that she
loved and bought it to hang in their house in Mount Lebanon as a remembrance of
the day.
That evening, after dinner in the town of Windermere, they drove south along the lake, finding
a place they could park near
the shore and settling down atop a large rock as the sun set.
"This is about the most peaceful thing I've ever seen," she remarked quietly.
"Tell me."
"There's a tree, its branches still bare and looking black with the light now
behind them. It curves out gracefully over the lake from our left, four swooping
branches over the water itself. But it's the glow, an absolutely creamy yellow
glow that's spread over the blue of the waters and the lower parts of the sky.
It's warm... alive...the glow, like...like...what you feel in your heart when
you're with the one you love. Like that."
She took his hand, placing
it on her chest. "It's this...what's in here...what you've made be in here. The
color's like that. It's so full a color you wonder how you can contain it, how
your
ribs don't crack with it, why the lake and the sky don't explode with it and
spatter it on your face."
He knew about that inner glow, loved that he did, but the slightest frown
briefly crossed his face as, definitely unbidden, unwelcome, the tiny punctures
in the blackness came into his memory. They had been nothing like what she was
describing, nothing at all. Someday, as Helen Keller had said, he would walk
into that other room and he would see. With what he hoped was not a visible
effort, he contained the memory of the punctures, settling into what must be,
finding his contentment in the glory of the inner glow that pressed against the
inside of his ribs.
***
"Happy birthday!" Eden smiled, kissing him awake Wednesday morning. "It's the
day of the daffodils!"
"Much better than the Day of the Jackal."
"Or the Day of the Triffids."
"Or the Day of the Living Dead."
She laughed, adding, "Or The Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the
Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil,
Mutant, Alien, Flesh-eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead Part 2: In
Shocking 2-D."
"You made that up," he accused.
"Did not! It's the longest-titled film in the English language, though it's
often called NOTDOT for short. Was made by James Riffel in '91 by redubbing the
'68 Night of the Living Dead with comedic dialog. So there!"
"Wow! I'm impressed! You have started off my 37th year by definitely impressing
me."
"Though I have never seen it," she admitted.
"Thank goodness!" he laughed.
After breakfast they drove north again. "You'd think, really you would, that
Worddy could have at least been satisfied to write his poem about the daffodils
along the shore of Grasmere or Windermere or even Rydal Water but, no, he had to
go all the way up to Ullswater to find daffodils inspiring enough to write
about."
Marshall was distracted by her use of 'Worddy'. "That, I take it, is to
differentiate him from Waddy, the dog?"
"You must admit that Wordsworth and Wadsworth are all too similar, all too
similar."
"But Wordsworth was a last name and Wadsworth a middle."
"Yes, but Waddy has only Wadsworth and no first or last." The dog in question
hung his head over the back of the front seat, happily drooling on her shoulder.
"Well, it was Worddy's sister Dorothy who saw the daffodils anyway and she liked
them so much he wrote the poem about them. And Ullsworth's not all that far.
After all, the Lake District is only about 35 miles north to south and 35 miles
east to west. How far can you have to travel in that?"
"Man should've gone to Texas. Then he'd know what distance is."
Marshall just shook his head, chuckling.
Eden drove until she found the Gowbarrow area by Ullswater. That's where the
original, poemed daffodils had been seen. Sure enough there they were, daffodils
near the lake. Pulling over she said, "Well, how about THAT!" and quoted the
beginning of the famous poem:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze
(This is Jeremy Irons reading the whole poem on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQnyV2YWsto
)
"I am," she added, "definitely not lonely as a cloud."
"Are there many?" he asked.
"Well, I'm not sure it's an actual, um, host. Maybe a crowd. I do see some
fields further ahead and off more away from the lake, though, that are
definitely hosted. We can go there next."
They got out and walked to the edge of Ullswater. "These are 'beside the lake,
beneath the trees'. Here. Bend here and put your hand out."
He let his fingers glide over four or five of the flowerheads. "The edge of the
lake?"
"About six steps to your right."
"About?"
"Well, six of my steps. Four and a half of yours."
He took three steps then felt carefully with his foot. One more and just a bit
and the toe of his shoe tipped over the edge.
"Stop now!"
Marshall crouched again, his left hand on a daffodil, the fingers of his right
trailing into the water, a smile spreading over his face. She watched him
intently. This was his experience of Wordsworth's daffodils being 'beside the
lake.' That glow from last night's sunset threatened to break her ribs as she
looked at him, loving everything about him. Lifting his hand from the water, he
found the large tree just to his right. "Beneath the trees...," he whispered to
himself, something in him satisfied. He was here, here in the spot where the
daffodils, the most famous daffodils in all the world, had grown on April 15,
1802.
Sitting back against the
tree, his fingers explored the daffodil growing closest to him. A single
daffodil. Then they flowed over two, three, a dozen. His head tipped down, he
blinked several times, filled with some inexpressible feeling that had slid
quietly in. Then he held out his hand and Eden came, sitting beside him for a
long while as they said nothing, just listened to the lapping of the lake
against the shore.
He drew in a great breath, holding it, then letting it slowly out. "The sense of
it is just so present ...so now," he said softly.
"Of William and Dorothy being here?"
"Umm hmm. It's something I think about so often. I was thinking about it
yesterday but it's even stronger here."
"What you were going to tell me in the daffodils?"
He nodded, leaning his head back against the tree. "Maybe...I don't know...maybe
it's because I live in a world that has no edges. Maybe because of that."
"What do you mean, darling?"
"There's this...this...endlessness to where I live. Edges don't exist unless
I've encountered them with my hand, unless my toes have stuck out over them.
Otherwise, they're not there. Maybe... maybe it's that way with...with time,
too. I don't know. I just think about it a lot."
"In what way?" She wanted to understand what he was trying to say.
"There's this poem. It keeps going around and around in my head. About...that."
"A poem? Who wrote it?"
"I did. Only it's never been written down. I just...think it."
"About time?"
"About the edgelessness of of time. The edgelessness of...of...now."
"Now?"
"Did you ever think that every moment that has ever been...ever...was just as
present, just as real, just as 'now' for the people living it as this moment you
and I are in? What if...if...there are no edges to 'now'? What if instead of
making some long line, they all just...overlap? I know it
probably doesn't make any sense, but sometimes I'm just so aware of them, of all
of them. I've wondered if it's my concept, my experience of the world, this
place I live in, that moves with me as I move, that has no edges, maybe it's
that that makes me think about it. Like here...now...that that first daffodil
moment overlaps with this one, that somehow it's not simply...gone, that
somehow, I can't begin to understand how, that their 'now' is still real like
our 'now' is real. Sometimes I just feel merged with it. Yes, I think that's the
word I'm looking for...merged. That in my experience of my particular 'now',
all the other 'nows' are still there and...and...I'm aware of them, of their
value, of their intrinsic worth." He closed his eyes.
"I don't think I'm explaining this all that well. I'm not sure it's something
that can really be explained. It's more a feeling I have, an awareness of things
not lost."
"You have a poem...about it, about all the 'nows'?"
He nodded again. "It's been in my head for years. It comes back to me in
moments like this and won't let go until my mind runs through all its lines."
"Would you say it for me?"
"You would be the only person who's ever heard it. I've kept it in the secret
places of my heart, but you, you are there now where it is. I call it All
Things Always and tried to write it as a sighted person would." He paused,
caressing a daffodil's edges. "It just dawned on me I've never said it aloud."
She touched his cheek. "I love you so very much, Marshall Sinclair."
"It's a little...odd. Maybe," he murmured, then cleared his throat.
"In the soft encircling of the night
Where velvet blackness serves for lids
That have no need of closing,
And sense of time and even place
Hang loosely in the quiet space
Where I lie, thoughts reaching out like hands,
To grasp the unity of things...
My place in the continual flow
Of life and thought and feeling,
And I am full aware of the edgelessness of me...
How this night is all nights ever known,
And my thoughts are kin to everything that's been.
That this very 'nowness' of my now
Is just a spreading blur across the face of time,
A blending part of every now not lost as
I touch my tear-dropped cheek and my fingers know
The feel of tears a thousand years gone by
And more.
In my unenclose-ed night I feel the breath of wind
On tear-wet face when locusts ate the wheat,
When husband did not return from war,
When news, given, brought sorrow to an aged heart.
I lift my hands into remembered sunlight,
Feeling warmth of newly-coming spring
When winter went into reluctant thaw,
Revealing tenderness of grass to clothe the land
So the sheep did not lay themselves to die...
And heat unbearable in the desert sand
When way was lost in Sinai in the noon,
Lips cracking under blue just far too blue.
I lie, rocked in the swelling deep of ocean waves,
A speck upon the vastness of all seas;
I hear the snap of canvas in the wind,
The sound of whales singing in the dawn.
I know the brush of hair upon my cheek,
The touch of someone loved beyond compare;
I ache with muscles trembling from the day
Of planting rice beside my mud-squished toes,
Hear the welcome home of my dog's bark
With ears that also heard the trumpets blow
The charge against the castle's guarded walls
And felt the sudden swish of parted air
When arrow sped along the contour of my brow.
I know the sticky feel of brightened blood,
Scented silver as it flows and will not stop,
And that awareness of the coming night
With its hope the moon will rise in time,
Revealing paths now hidden through the trees
So the joy of finding lostnesses will well anew.
I breathe, chest rising, falling now again,
And know the breaths of millions in my lungs,
Each moment real, each breath of lifted chest,
As meaningful, as real as mine.
Sometimes, lying on my bed, it is all there...
All of it...all that once has ever been,
All that will ever be...
A panoply, a quilted work, woven into a single piece
Spread over and around me as I lie.
The reality, the 'presentness' of moments come
But not yet...gone,
Not gone because I know and feel them
In the air, all around me, all the times,
All the loves, all the living moments
Of each life that ever was or will be lived,
All the senses of their expectations,
All the long and weary waits,
All the fallings in and out of love,
The babies born, the young men dead in war,
The sight of land when months were spent at sea,
The sight of her come home, at last, again.
The squint when sunlight was too bright,
The laying of a loved one in the grave
And going home alone to sit and mourn.
All of it is there, each single moment of each single life,
Existing, real, in the air around me as I lie
Awake in the lilac-scented night
And see the fullness of the glowing moon
Seen by every single one who's ever looked,
And we see it, smiling, they and I.
I hear that certain metallic scrape of sword,
The sizzle of bacon in the iron pan,
And know the sudden lurch of gut
When foot has slipped upon some mountain height.
The taste of chocolate on my hungry lip,
The gentleness of sleeping after pain,
The thatch-leak that drips upon the hearth
Just in the place the cat prefers to lie,
The tilt of chin when pride has suffered blows,
The fear when riders come, approaching in the dark.
All the sights, all the sounds, all the feelings, always,
Never lost, not unremarked, not worthless
In the sum of things
For every tired flex of hand upon some well-worn hoe,
Every fear of loss, each glad-greeted hug,
Each wipe of sweat from every sunshined brow,
All times that baby cries have creased the night,
Each ring of every single chiming bell,
Flows about me in the ever-living now,
So I can feel all feelings ever felt,
And hear the singing notes of songs not writ,
Can see the ship arriving at the shore,
And know the racing rumble of a thousand hoofs
And none of it is past, none still yet to come,
But all in all is always, ever,
In some mystery never-told,
Where now is always, ever, now,
Where all the breathing, living moments
Wrap themselves about me
And are mine."
He finished and sat, rubbing his right thumb pad over his left palm. She moved
even closer to him, tracing his lips with a fingertip.
"I want, my darling love, nothing more in this moment than to wrap myself about
you, within you. You take me places I've never gone before, where I've never
thought there were places to go, and you show me, always you show me, the wonder
that is you. I can't begin to tell you what you've done with this moment, this
living, breathing moment, how you've lifted it, transformed it for me, infused
it with so much more than I was aware it held. You do that for me, Marshall. You
do that constantly and I am filled full with gratitude that you are you and that
there was a particular now in which you came to love me. I...I look at the
daffodil beside my leg and I see it in double exposure with the now of the
cartwheeling maple leaf that led me to you. I see all our nows, maybe not so
clearly as you see all those myriad nows in your poem, but it's a beginning for
me to see them all almost as one thing, that first raindrop on your muddy
cheek...the wondrous ones like that...that first moment I knew your heart was
not beating...all of them.
They all make up the story of us, are the building blocks of how I love you, why
I love you. I just need some time to think about it more, to let a fuller
understanding of it come to me. But this I know already. My love for you, all
the moments, all the nows of that, are alive, are on-going, will ever be so. I
have no doubt of that, none at all. I look at you, touch you, and they're all
there,
every one of them, real, alive, present. I...I...well, I'm kind of blithering
on, aren't I?"
He turned more toward her and without a word slid both arms around her. A sudden
breeze came in off the lake, blowing her hair, making the daffodils dance, and
sitting there among them, he kissed her in their 'now' and
almost...almost...heard Dorothy comment to her brother, "William, will you just
look at THAT!", not meaning daffodils at all.
EPILOGUE:
(NOTE: This isn't REALLY an epilogue. I just, alas, got distracted and forgot to add a part
at the end I always intended to have here. So...here it is.)
They sat there for some minutes longer, then walked back to the car where Eden reached in and picked up a small backpack that Marshall presumed contained a picnic. Once across the road they continued to a larger area of daffodils growing thickly up a slope toward some distant woodlands.
"Too thick," Eden said.
"Too thick? Is it possible for daffodils to be too thick?"
"I don't want us to crush them."
"Why would we crush them? Well, so many of them anyway?" He thought of the one most
thoroughly-crushed daffodil back in their room at the Morning Glory Inn Christmas day.
"You'll see," she grinned.
"You mean when we sit to have lunch?" She didn't answer. "Is that what you mean?"
"No." She continued onward, pleased when she got closer to the woods and the daffodils
became more scattered. Suddenly she stopped, putting an arm on his shoulder. "A deer.
It's grazing just beyond the daffodils."
"We could be quiet. Maybe it won't run away."
"I don't intend to be quiet, my love."
"You don't...?" His lips parted. "You don't have in mind...not here...not where someone could...?"
"Well, I do have that in mind, but I'll wait till we get back to Windermere. This is something
else."
"You know I have no idea what you mean."
"Yes, and I'm quite pleased about that."
"Aren't we going to eat, then? Isn't that what you have in the backpack? You should've let me
carry that in the first place."
"It ain't heavy, it's my backpack. To paraphrase a song."
"What do you have in it that's such a secret?"
"You'll find out...just as soon as I locate the perfect spot...kinda flat...not many daffodils."
"No crocodiles?"
"Yep, none of them either."
"What's this about, Eden?"
"It's about your birthday, my love. It's about the night we got married and there was a certain
activity on the porch of the inn that we weren't a part of."
He thought back to New Year's. Ryan had taken Martha's CD player out on the porch. "You
mean...?"
"The cat is out of the proverbial bag. Or," and she unbuckled the strap on the backpack, "more
correctly, the CD player is out of the pack."
"You brought a CD player...to England?"
"Battery-powered. Not too many plugs in the woods." She liked the place where they now stood.
"Here. Here is the place."
"What...?"
She set the player on a stump, pressed play and Va Pensiero wafted up through the branches.
"Our song," she said simply. She walked up close, facing him, taking his hand.
"Dancing? You want to dance...here?"
"No people. Nothing to bump into. Just you and me. Yes, I want to dance with my husband on
his birthday."
He bit his lip for a moment. "I'm not...."
"Yes...yes, you are. Remember how you and your Mom danced in the gym all those years ago?
Now it's my turn. Just listen, move into it like you do with your hand, only use your whole body."
He felt a little awkward at first, was very aware of counting his steps...ONE two three, ONE two
three...but then his natural affinity with music took over, his inborn grace rose up, and he smiled, leading her in a sweeping waltz. "My God," he exclaimed, throwing back his head, "this
is wonderful!"
She'd made a whole CD of just Va Pensiero playing over and over so they danced and danced
and then they danced some more. She looked up at his face, a look of amazement still on his
features. "Happy birthday," she said again. "Happy, happy birthday, my darling husband."
MARSHALL'S STORY CONTINUES WITH A SHORTER TALE CALLED
AND THAT, TOO, HAS A SEQUEL CALLED TUSCAN BYWAYS
I IMAGINE THERE WILL BE MORE BEYOND THOSE.
BACK TO PART 102
BACK TO INDEX
BACK TO LIBRISCROWE