Too Big

It’s just too big. It’s too big to write about in one fell swoop.

You can’t tell of its color or its size or its sounds in one sitting and

you can’t, in one session, describe its moods, whether melancholy

or violent, or how the light is reflected or the way the wind plays with the waves,

or its tides and its currents or its odors, both fragrant and foul.

The division of land from sea is a concept that requires patience

to develop and time to carefully draft and paint, frame and mount.

The granite overlooks and beaches alone can fill volumes and still

fall short of a full image of just our small piece of the shoreline.

And our status, as harvesters, walkers, boaters, swimmers and

observers could overflow photo books and decorate many walls.

All this and yet no mention of the fish and the lobsters and crabs

and the clams and the oysters and whales and other sea mammals

and insects and vegetation; the jelly-fish and squid and the

plankton and starfish, the sea-slugs and snails; the worms and

those eerie heat loving species that are only now

being discovered in thermal vents at it deepest parts.

This whole other world is both a part of and apart from us.

We feel it and hear it and see it and smell it and taste it

and are mesmerized and enraptured by it, but it’s too big

to capture and too big to paint and too big to describe in

words on one sunny July afternoon.

So let us understand what we can, view what we will and

allow its mystery and majesty help teach us how we see

ourselves on this earth and in the universe.

“But, if a man would be alone,” Emerson said, “let him look at the stars.”

To this we should add, let him also look at the sea.

Marty Luster

Up in the sea of sky a lake of fragmented mackerel clouds drifts in one piece like a school of fish.

John Updike – Rabbit, Run

From My Window

From my window I see the canvas on the easel

ready for the artist to spread her vibrant hues throughout

the day, bringing life to the gray-dawned morning

and color to the lightly sketched scene that sprawls  before me.

Throughout the morning she works on the greens and yellows

of the trees across the river, bursting with young spring

life and the promise of a full summer of cool shade

and comforting shelter from sudden soaking showers.

Next, she takes her brush to the foreground to highlight

the new delicate leaves of the closer trees that hint

of the color they will wear when the air turns cool

in autumn, as a newborn’s dependency foretells old age.

Finally, as the day wears on and the tide floods the flats,

the artist applies her blues to the sky and the river,

covering the brown mud and shrinking the island,

like a child who hasn’t learned to color within the lines.

Marty Luster

These Many Cards

Early in the morning on Wednesday, the 22^nd of August 1906,

Donald affixed a 1 cent stamp on a card that

contained a fine German print of the Annisquam Light.

By 1 o’ clock the same day, the card, having passed

through the Gloucester Post Office, was received

in West Medford and was soon delivered to Miss Mary McLeod.

A year after that, Annie sent Sydney Davison, then

residing at 10 Duke Street in Liverpool, England

two cards, each with color scenes of Annisquam;

one of the Yacht Club and the other of the bridge

across Lobster Cove. In one she laments her failure

to write more often and, in the other, she promises to “be over” soon.

Margaret, too, writes to Sidney assuring him that she

hasn’t “quite forgotten” him. She thinks the fellow

sitting alone on the rock in the picture of a yacht

race in the Squam River looks lonesome.

On August 31, 1909, Rosie, of Gloucester, drops a card

featuring the surf at Long Beach to Mary Davison of

Annisquam letting her know that Marj came down on

Sunday and was sorry she couldn’t get over to see her.

These many cards, these timeless scenes, these stories

partly told; these flashes from life of decades ago, this collage

of people now gone and places still here;

these many cards posted in Annisquam more than 100 years ago

and delivered this day to you in Gloucester;

these many cards, this gift to me – and now,

my gift to you.

Marty Luster

 We finally remembered to take a picture with the sticka!

Here we are at the restaurant Polidor in Paris, where Owen Wilson’s character met Hemingway in the movie Midnight in Paris and where the real Hemingway ate.

Salut!

 The Sargent House Museum.