An excerpt from the epic: Setting out for America

Setting out for America (excerpt)

What kind of artistry is equal to the silver glisten on a river, or a sunset, or lightening in the sky?

What kind of man’s artistry can compare to the great artistry of creation?

What, indeed, could compare with the silver glistening on this white iron lake?

The poet is only an echo of what he sees and hears.

A transmitter, a go-between.

Little wavelets lap this rock on which I sit.

Having been refreshed by a swim, a cool swim, 

the poet has a prerogative to swim in whatever fresh water he sees fit to swim in anywhere in America.

That’s the poet’s prerogative to bathe in nature.

It’s his primary right to do so.

No law can touch this.

This water is like a tea, like in Black Moshannan, brown cola-colored like the intertidal pool of the Missouri River.

The hard granite I sit upon, moss covered, rather lichen.

The wonderful green of lichen, and beneath it this pink granite.

This very hot and dry evening in May.

And the van, a stone’s throw away behind the little trees hidden beyond the rushes from the water.

And the calm fluttering in the elm and birch.

The little leaves amidst the steady ever-present roar of the waterfall over which Route, highway number 1 passes.

The little leaves are spindling around, waving as if in a game, then pausing for just a millisecond, standing there and then starting again, waving, teetering, now calm, now still.

And the blue sky emerges.

Then they begin their fluttering again and the sky disappears.

They come to the center of the stage and clamor for attention.

Some type of sign language I am as yet unable to read, but I know intuitively what it speaks to me.

As God speaks through these little things in nature, nothing grandiose, it’s all in the details.

Only with man do we find the ambitions to overcome and dominate the world, to rise above, to be higher than the world.

But it’s all here.

And in Minnesota, north.

Great calm.

After so many miles.

And I admit my weariness.

This road is very long, indeed.

And I’ve still got a very long way to go.

But knowing that poets like Dylan and Whitman have gone before me gives me courage and strength to move on, to carry on, not knowing where I’m headed, not lonely, but somehow disjointed, out of sorts.

We thank God for this beautiful day and we ask God to continue to bless our work and to bless Bob Dylan and to honor poets everywhere, especially those on the road.

There’s a Ptarmigan, or some such forest-type bird, poking around and stamping loudly like an angry squirrel.

By Lake La Moyant I see an ant running across this white lichen-covered stone.

This ant achieves his goal.

or if there is an obstacle in his path, he turns and finds another way.

The ant is a lowly, small creature but very diligent and hard working as the book of Proverbs says.

But there’s always two sides to every story.

Went through Ely.

The Chamber of Commerce there has the website: www.ely.org.

Look it up!

The scent of the forest is truly wondrous, dry perfume.

There is a beautiful Monarch butterfly impaled right into the center of my hood ornament.

Yellow and black wings with  one wing having 3 blue windows and behind it, an orange window, like stained glass.

Smashed, broken butterfly.

Ornament on my car.

Symbol of resurrection.

What was once larval state,

died, rose again, chrysalis, then in its colorful, beaming, radiant, beautiful, resurrected body.

And as I drive away, I see five more perfect yellow butterflies, two together and then three together.

And I notice that the name of the lake where I was swimming was Birch Lake.

Oh, Lord, I have sought to escape you, fleeing on the highways and byways, speeding down the road, all over America from state to state, county to county.

Fleeing.

We are trying to hold onto some liquid before it races erases from my fingers.

I cannot hold onto it all the same.

And now I stand empty-handed.

You, God, are working your work in me.

I’m your putty and I’m your man, Lord, and I’ll stand by.

I will stand by you.

Restore me, oh Lord, even if it means losing my voice and my poetry and my music.

If it means losing my house and my family.

If it means losing all of my possessions, my love.

You are first.

You are the Lord, most high, Jesus Christ.