The Sanctuary Project
Tomorrow evening I’m supposed to be performing at Carnegie Hall. I’m supposed to be reading a poem, a piece commissioned for The Sanctuary Project, a collaboration between New York based chamber ensemble Lunatics at Large and several composers and poets. I was paired with composer Alex Shapiro, a very happy pairing in my opinion.
There is a series of performances starting with Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall and then moving through several “sanctuaries” throughout the city in April. If you know me and want to go, I have a few complimentary tickets.
However, we, Georgia and I, have been working on our own sanctuary project and the two have come into conflict. We’ve been readying to adopt and we’re about to reach some deadlines for initial paperwork and home preparation. So, I will be wishing all the performers good luck or break a leg or whatever is appropriate, from this great distance. My friend Dave has volunteered to read for me. He has a much better reading voice than I do, anyway—deeper, richer in tone—I’ve coached him in all the difficult or made up words. The poem goes like this:
Near the edge of the night sea we
found two western grebes hidden in dark
feathers, stranded on the sand.
Two grebes with necks like tendrils,
with voices like children scissoring
on rusty swings.
The day before I was lost
in gray light, on a headland, wondering
what comfort there was for any warm
creature in the autumn water. Even whales
had fled. Only birds—I saw them between
lines of rolling foam and crashing that fifty feet
behind the cliff’s grass lip had us
shouting. I could see birds through binoculars,
impossibly west, diving, surfacing, in flight.
Cormorants, pelicans and other gristly
feathers and I saw, delicate as pulled glass,
pairs of fishing grebes, always pairs.
The land is their ocean, with too much
friction for flight. They arrive by night,
by mistake, folding their wings over reflecting
beach or pavement or tossed in a jab of bad air.
Only pity or Providence or awkward
effort keep them from starvation,
from claws or razoring beaks.
We found their hidden spot following
the dull shine of a gull. It sulked aside.
We’ve seen these gulls grab befuddled
guillemots and auklets out of the surf,
blind them, then follow their small struggling
bodies as long waves push them past
driftwood and broken jellies. Perhaps
we are Providence. The grebes rose, balanced
themselves, calling each other again and again,
stumbled toward the waves on feet set
like propellers far behind them.
Once a year they stand, side by side, and dance
across water, falling together to mix their blood,
build their nest. Here, rough earth trips,
tires and bruises, each step tantalizing the ready
gull, following and hopeful for our confederacy.
Are we confederates? Are we merely amused by this
graceless progress? I’ve been in the graceless place,
I’ve been compromised by feet seeking purchase
against strange elements, many times.
Where should I push this metaphor?
The two of them, the two of us, the gull.
They made the long, difficult or defiant
walk to where water reached for them,
slipped under them, pulled them back to safe
footing. We raced those same waves to loose
sand and boardwalk.
What I’m remembering
most, these months and many miles later, is
their voices. Tender, startlingly tender, cutting
easily through the incessance of the rough surf.
