Richard Shaw was born in New Jersey and has spent most of his writing life in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts, where he resides in an apple orchard on Horse Mountain, above Haydenville. A former dancer and choreographer, he maintains a private practice as a Rolfer®, balancing and making more resilient the human body. He is the author of, The Orchard House (Antrim House Books, 2019).
Leap into the Waterfall
1. Entrance / Allée
Down secret path
clambering
over glacier-tumbled stone
catching low hemlock boughs
to steady our steps
parting a swath
through wet ferns
we uncover jack-in-the-pulpit
and trout lily
blooming along the bank
bare legs brush
wild mint
releasing its scent
as the path opens
to the outcropping
where the thunder of the falls
is first heard
a long drummed
tumbling
of detonations
felt in the chest
2.
The mind embarks
in an instant
on such exhilarating journeys
like a horse
that suddenly bolts across a field
from the sound of a splash
diaphanous and fleet
our cumulus cloud mind
[no stanza break]
with its swarm of flickering lights
spreads out against the sky
one horizon to the other
expanding upward
through the stratosphere’s
deepening layers of blue
to where the firmament
mirrors us back to ourselves
like a god
3.
What shining awareness
in the watery present
which alights upon the world
like a dragonfly on a stream’s back
and in its wayfinding
moves as that stream
whitewater
splashing its brassy cymbals
over the shallows
this is the majesty of the mind
turning its attention
in the downward current
briskly sluicing
narrow chutes
slowing
to lap at the banks
of clear pools
then onward
arriving at halcyon sunlit openings
overarched by trees
the air suddenly erupting
in a cacophony of birdsong
[new stanza]
is it our presence that changes things?
lush polyphonies of
wood thrushes
wrens
phoebes
and veeries
that thrill of birds
all lifting into flight
their jubilant pandemonium
mounting
into magnificent oratorio
we pause
this moment brighter than the rest
sensing something greater
is about to happen
reach a hand to our chest
the way that we do
as if to take measure
of the heart
that armful of roses
spilling endlessly
into the world
4. The Pool
In the pool
at the fall’s base
eddies pull at our legs
we let go of the ledge
and are whirled
churning currents
buoy us
with twirling dogwood blossoms
in circles around the edge
[new stanza]
same spiraling motion
veins of bright quartz make
in repeating swirl patterns
through the black rocks above
beneath the pool’s surface
all sounds mute
while the pummel of the underfalls
seethes
effervescent bright greens
as if in response
to this abundance
of sound
and sensation
this brimming over
in the largesse of June light
we dive
to the bottom
bringing back
crystalline fistfuls of sand
5.
In the same way that spirit
becoming corporeal
chooses each of us
bodies-to-be
with the sudden recognition of moments
mind chooses the world
magnificent union!
like those grand weddings
once arranged
marrying young prince and princess
to unite neighboring kingdoms
[new stanza]
likewise we arrive
a merging of two realms
fresh hillside spring
feeding into that wide waterway
current flowing
out of the ages before
carrying us
bobbling downstream
a tossed sprig of lilac
in morning river-light
to a place where the current
hears hearts as they pass
the beckoning deep
of the channel
the river-blue eternal
hidden beyond a distant bend
as newborns
we open our eyes
and all at once
happen to ourselves
a gesture of flowing outward
any river knows
6.
Come . . . look
there are so many openings through which to see the world
its roll
vast and undulant
sunlight-perpetual
trailing skirts of rain showers
there appear to be many pools
7.
See how the world stages itself
while appearing to be all at once
how the moon is reflected
in every body of water
at the same moment
all night
or the way we imagine the sunlit world
while lying in the dark
recalling the daytime
only as bright
but dawn comes
and light reveals
the nature of things
by degrees
throws long shadows over lawns
brightens tops of trees
sifts that brilliance downward
igniting filaments in each leaf
blazes on the side of a house
shining into the room
where a young child wakes
and looking up
as through depths of water
watches a summer sky
mirror itself up above
on the surface of a lake
how that image quavers
with a breeze
and is restored again
in calm
until waking more fully
astonished to see
that it’s all just sparkling reflections
rippling across the ceiling
[new stanza]
now standing up on the bed
bouncing high
to touch
that shimmering light
forms this wonder
into a memory
8.
If only we could press to us
each sparkling phenomenon
in this fleeting array
of perceivable things
their nature is to vanish
like the stars at daybreak
while ever being
our one precious handhold
on the world
stay!
and as they never do
come back!
9. Downstream
A single leaf thrust under
in the cascade’s press
somersaults to surface
spinning clockwise
as the current unwinds
we lie on our backs
surrendering bodyweight
[no stanza break]
to sun-warmed stone
watching cloud shapes form
and dissolve
pitched between tempo
of swift cloud
and interminable stone
we form and dissolve
it’s happening again
two humans adrift
on the rounded shoulder
of a granite monolith
braced against this stream
since glacier passed through
mid-Pleistocene
10.
We slip on the vestments
of each day
and the mind erects its nomad’s tent
inside the transient present
bright things arrive
and enter through the flap
emissaries
for the sheer breadth of it all
—
at first
perhaps it was the delicate lacework
ice formed
at the edges of puddles first-frost
the way it shattered so thrillingly
from the touch of a child’s boot
[new stanza]
and other early moments
palms held outward
merging with the sensations of the world
—
later
it became Blake’s Tyger
that window light in Flemish paintings
those oceanic harmonies
in Schubert’s late piano sonatas
nocturnal melodies
twining in moonlight through kelp beds
returning deep-hued and changed
revealing the same rich textures
the insides of our lives have
if we seek them
even the river-wending sorrows
still to come
are yet-unraveled parts of that beauty
—
ultimately
it’s the early dawn in summer
which breaks the seal on indigo
then gradually lightens
through each exceptional shade
to violet
ever violet
even Giotto’s plumes of Pentecostal light
flaming over the heads of the apostles
Oh if we could see it
do not reveal the heavenly length
[no stanza break]
as intimately
nor argue grandeur
more convincingly
than dawn’s violet
—
all of these things
vessels
oyster-shell blue
to contain the blaze of the world
where at any moment
even out of the most mundane
we are flung
a leap into the waterfall
to one day arrive
at that weightlessness
of knowing
I have loved this world
11.
Similar to the way river water
blue-green under skies
up to the moment it plunges over the lip
in epiphany of falling
aerates to pure white
is the hope that one day
ahead of here lies …
we might
12. The Path Back
Towels draped
over sunburnt shoulders
we walk barefoot
back through wild mint
the waterfall’s melee
and mists
receding behind
instead of the plangent cadences
of falling water
subtle new rhythms have emerged—
distant thunder
rolling in from the west
rumbles
in the same low octave as the falls
accentuated
by the quiet counterpoint
of gravel crunching
underfoot on the path
all of this overlaid
by the faintest glimmer
at the absolute threshold
what telescopes scarcely read
starlight
just arriving
the swan song of a sun
extinguished
in distant galaxies
eons ago this afternoon
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