August 2009 River Ranch Diary

gervase Cheyenne River Writings, Gervase's River Ranch Diary 14 Comments

Life here at the ranch does not always consist of ranching, and we do not isolate ourselves from the world at large.

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, an annual affair, officially begins in a few days, unofficially it has already begun. Truthfully I’d rather be somewhere else than on my motorcycle during the rally, but sometimes…….well, you know how it is….

In 1973 I bought a new R75/5 BMW, on which I added a Windjammer fairing (state of the art at the time) and some matching bags. I still have that machine, and it has seen me coast to coast as well as from the Gulf of Mexico to Quebec and the full length of the Atlantic seaboard. It still runs like a charm. Once in a while, when I’m out on the road among a swarm of Harleys, usually passing me, I remind myself a little of Forrest Gump—-outside the norm, a stranger in a strange land, and singing his own song, nevertheless beyond capture.

In those times I often think about the nine opening lines of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Woodpile.”

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day
I paused and said, ‘I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on further–and we shall see.’
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or someplace else; I was just far from home.

In the second, third, fourth, and fifth lines of this passage Frost uses the caesura, a full-stop break in the line. From the middle of the fifth line to the middle of the last line, the lines fly by so fast the reader/hiker cannot take a breath, at which time and place a realization takes place: “I was just far from home.” Now in the fifth line: “One foot went through.” It seems to me to be a literal act, the jolt of which Frost captures in the sound of “through.” He follows that with a rapidity of language in which he manipulates and controls the reader’s breathing. Whew, “I was just far from home.”

Sometimes the solitary quality of life reaches into the heart of things. The trick then is to remain comfortable with that. It is not necessarily isolation but rather aloneness. The aloneness that enters into us in moments not looked for but found is freedom, not capture; so smile and turn back to the road or the bunkhouse, or the burgers grilling and a glass of wine. You really are not far from home.

Comments 14

  10. Cheryl Warren

    Good poetry lesson. And sentiments I so relate to: strange placement; solitariness entering into the heart of things; aloneness and freedom. Thank you, Gervase.

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