Cape Cod

Nature and mortality, featuring poets Wilderness Sarchild, Kathy Shorr, Fran Markover and Sandy Longley live at the Wellfleet Public Library.
9 minutes

TRANSCRIPT

The Cape Cod Canal opened July 29, 1914. It connects Cape Cod Bay and Buzzard’s Bay. It’s part of the Atlantic coast’s intracoastal waterway and saves boaters about 135 miles by not having to go all the way around the Cape when they’re trying to go up or down that part of the coast. As I said, it didn’t actually happen until 1914, but it was first considered by Myles Standish back in 1623 and later by George Washington and others.

Another historic event took place earlier this summer on Cape Cod, a reading by four Passager writers—Sandy Longley, Fran Markover, Wilderness Sarchild, and Kathy Shorr. It took place at the Wellfleet Library, attended by a terrific and appreciative audience that filled the room.

Two of the themes that came up throughout the reading were nature and proximity to dying. On this last podcast before a few weeks off, excerpts from that reading.

Wilderness Sarchild captured them both in her poem “Belonging to Sand.”

She said that one thing she’s noticed about being an older writer is that death appears more often in her poems. She said, “I guess it’s my way of coming into grace about something that isn’t that far off now that I’m 76. So far I’m healthy, but I can tell, in various ways, that my body is slowly melting.” Here’s Wilderness reading “Belonging to Sand.”

Time stops here
Terns perch on my nose
Whales breech on my tongue
Sea grass sprouts between my toes

Salt water swims in my eyes
Like the sand bleached coyote skull,
I, too, can imagine decaying out here until all that is left are white bones
and the ghost
of a satisfied sigh.

“Belonging to Sand,” Wilderness Sarchild from her book Old Women Talking.

Passager author Kathy Shorr also integrated nature and proximity to dying into her six-part poem “Resurrection.” She dedicated the poem to her friend Necee. Here are two excerpts.

 
3
Jesus walked on the water.
Nik Wallenda walked a tightrope
over Niagara Falls. Paul Bowen
walked the sand flats of Provincetown
each low tide, twice a day, nearly
30 years. He dug his clam rake
in the salty murk, plucked
18th century pale clay pipes
fishermen once clenched
between stained teeth. He found smooth
obsidian bones, the inner ears
of pilot whales, once driven ashore
and killed for their oil. My favorite?
The sculpted bits of broken porcelain
he glued together like the pieces
of a curving jigsaw puzzle –
this went on 11 years! –
till he brought it back to life:
the Chinese vase it once
had been, only three pieces
missing near the top.

6.
Who doesn’t want to live forever?
Who doesn’t want to live forever?
To be a brand new date palm,
opening our arms,
bound by the pleasures of an arid wind.

Kathy Shorr reading excerpts of her poem “Resurrection.”

Fran Markover read this next poem at the Wellfleet Library from her book Grandfather’s Mandolin. It’s about her mother: “Krazy Glue.”

She holds her broken tooth like a pearl.
I could glue it, poison myself, mourners
complimenting how I look in the casket.
We talk – where papers are, how her body
falters, bone by bone. The way her fingers
stiffen in the Rec Room when she knits
snowflakes or plays Bingo. The caller her
Grim Reaper who promises the jackpot.
We watch Antiques Roadshow, imagine
cousins repairing to the kitchen, restored
on Hepplewhite chairs. Later she naps,
one hand on her Lifeline, another on the
La-Z-Boy. Television clicker, phone, family
by her side – everything’s in place.

“Krazy Glue,” Fran Markover.

We began this episode by talking about the Cape Cod Canal. We’ll end with a poem whose first line mentions the Canal. Sandy Longley said, “Since I retired, I’ve had a number of opportunities to spend time in the solitude of the dunes here on the Cape where I could at leisure witness nature up close and personal in its peace and wildness.” From Sandy’s book Mothernest, “When a Black Bear Came to Truro.”

I like to think of him swimming the Canal
unnoticed, against the current, against
credulity, legs stronger than any freestyler,
a dark shadow in salt water and then
lumbering his maleness, his aloneness
north on 6A to Ballston Beach.
“It was a black bear, all right –
sure as you were born,” said Tommy Dyer,
a fisherman on The Little Eva.

I like to think of him, scratching his back on
pitch pines, leaving scat in his wake:
grubs, apples, seeds – steam rising like a signal,
and him mumbling, squeaking, panting –
a scent of a young sow perhaps, a scent of
Wampanoag fires, of ancient deer bones,
swales of genetic memory guiding him
back home under a purple sky – part
healer, part magician that was bear.

“When a Black Bear Came to Truro,” Sandy Longley.

We recorded the Cape Cod reading. If you’d like to watch it, go to our web site, www.passagerbooks.com, and click on “events.” Passager likes road trips, and meeting writers and readers outside of our Baltimore home is very special. If you’d like to help organize a Passager reading in your area, let us know.

To buy Wilderness, Fran, and Sandy’s books or to subscribe to or learn more about Passager and its commitment to writers over 50, go to passagerbooks.com. Passager offers a 25% discount on the books and journal issues featured here on Burning Bright. Visit our website to see what’s on sale this week.

To subscribe to or learn more about Passager and its commitment to writers over 50, go to passagerbooks.com.

The Passager staff takes a breather every August to refresh, do our own writing and reading, catch up on weeding the garden… We’ll be back in September with more editions of Burning Bright.

For Kendra, Mary, Christine, Rosanne, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.