Poem - Starling Spring

In the city, Spring was my least favorite of seasons
Winter kept the streets silent
Everyday rain makes people go inside and
Whether that was a metaphor
Or just a corner bar
Made little difference to me
In my own treasured world
I did not have to bear the cacophony of
Jumbled hearts
Or displaced souls
Shrieking in the night

The downpour of winter was bliss
And every stormy day
Sang as a liturgy of beautiful hours
And unbroken solitude

Today, in this small town I now call home
The sun is a harbinger of the season at hand
Outside my window, starlings are busily going about it
Building their March nests and
Singing their intricate arias to attract a mate
For hours on end the hopeful
Perch and croon
Preen and display
And to my surprise
Their cacophony
Breathes a beauty into the season
I have rarely felt as an adult

Spring, in all it's bustle, is suddenly
A different place
A lesson learned
An old friend
I can embrace
Once again

- nicolas hall 2013

Silent Running

The little wooden sled never went very fast
But that never mattered  

The first few trips down the gentle slope of the back yard
Were tedious
Cutting and packing the path that the next 4 or 5 dozen passes would follow,
Those first few leaving rusty orange runner lines in the pure white snow

Once the path was defined, I'd bring out the flags
Sixteen or so of the countries of the world
The ones that I included in my own backyard olympic event
Nordic and European
The US, Russia and Canada
Each tiny one drawn by hand, cut out
Pasted to a popsicle stick

And off I'd go
Each trip, after a running start, flowing across the yard
Down into the vacant lot
Then winding back along the sidewalk in front of the neighbors house
The last 20 feet, the sled moved just slightly faster than a crawl
And when all motion would stop,
A flag would be planted in the snow
The mark to beat
And back up for the next nation's run. . . 

These games were always played when my mother was at work
And my grandmother likely sleeping or watching the soaps

I knew, if they looked out the window and saw me,
The inevitable questions would come
"What are you doing honey?"
"Are you just going to ride that sled all day?"
"What are those little pieces of paper down there?"

My grandfather, though he would check on me out the house windows as much as anyone,
Never asked me those questions
Never interrupted the games
Never seemed confused by the 10 or 11 or 12 year old's imagination
To me, that silence always spoke volumes about what we shared
And every moment I sit and indulge my imagination today
The silence connects us
Again~

nicolas hall

Counting Days

I watch the first line come into view out of the heavy coastal fog and I count them

9

They pass and this is followed by another line

7

Moving as if attached to an invisible cable.
Moving as a rollercoaster might as it passes over undulating hills of wooden track.

12,  7 ,  15.  4

Each appears out of the gray, rolls up and down along the shore, dipping above and below the break of the waves then banks at the rise of the jetty and moves out towards the open ocean.  

I want to be closer.
I want to hold this moment

Suddenly the two longest lines of all
33
and
21

Back to back

All move along the same path and all emerge and fade into the fog covered abyss.

I have never seen so many pelicans in my life
These are surely one of the most graceful and beautiful of birds
People think of them as awkward and big because we judge everything by the same standards we defeat our own kind with.

These are magnificent aerial angels who move with the design of the sacred
They do not subscribe to, and are untouched by,  our small thoughts and limitations
To watch them is to be transformed too

But I want to be closer
I want just a minute more to commune

6, 12, 5

Later that day we walk to the bay at low tide
I am still thinking of the pelicans
I know we will see gulls, cormorants, herons and geese
And they are all magnificent
But pelicans. . .

We walk along the exposed mud flats and, around the turn of the bay, we see the sun illuminating gulls resting on the shore

And among them, as we draw closer, the Pelicans are here too
Dozens
Bathing
Sitting
Waiting

A wish answered
This day will never come again
I number it as well
One to remember

-nicolas hall

Postcards

In the postcard, the old man is stands along the edge of a rough and stony shore
It's on an inlet or a bay perhaps
A wooden fishing skiff sits at the water's edge
Weathered and worn as the man

The scene around him is vivid and raw
Stones reach to the sky, jutting from the water
Their outlines worn and shaped by the ever present forces of time

The obvious natural beauty of the scene is not the essence of the image though
To me, the draw to it is something more
The man in the postcard belongs
This land is clearly as much a part of him
And he is of it

There is so much talk in our country of seeking in a spiritual context
And it occurs to me now that perhaps what is missing is not the lack of community or of a faith
Not the lack of belonging to an organization or a lineage
But the lack of belonging to a place
To a landscape

But instead, here, people flock in droves to the same urban bone yards
And what their spirit seeks is never going to be found there
We've leveled and scorched that landscape
We've built above and through it's heart
We've left ghosts and shadows on this bloated vista
 Inhabited by empty souls
Dead weight

Our place can't be found among the hordes and the groups born of so called common interest
That is not what we are bound to connect with in this life
We have created that purpose in our mind
To stave off the constant hunger
Just as we have created so many other distractions
So many other false starts

But maybe you have felt it stirring inside of you
Along a weekend country drive
Or at the water's edge
Across a plain or a plateau
In the forest or the sea 
Just a moment perhaps, when everything you deem your life was left behind
When it all disappeared into a dream
And the place filled you
Consumed you
Recognized you
As you seemed to recognize the place
What lie did you tell your heart then?

Often, in the end, we let all our superficial needs pull to the bone yards again
How would we live without our pleasured distraction?
How would we live without our tribe and causes?
How would we live without ambitions and status?
How would we survive?

The answers is
If you truly listened
Heard the landscape
Opened to that spirit
You might actually find yourself
You might actually find that you ARE alive there
You might just. . .

One day I hope to be the old man in a postcard
In the right place
A part of the landscape somebody captures
Whatever the background
Wheteher a storm is coming
Whether it is dusk or dawn
Whether it is sea or sage
I want to look, not like an awkward visitor
Not like a stranger
I want to look
As if I too
Belonged

nicolas hall 2012

Poem and Visual Art: Theory of Flight

Featured image in my Etsy Shop : My Antarctica (link in the margin to the right)

Theory of Flight"

It's not necessary to hold tight to this so-called reality
The mystery does not always need to have answers
Science is lacking in it's charms anyway
Knowing too much is always a weight upon the soul

Once, we drew the plans for airships and
Mythic, winged creatures filled the margins of our notebooks
The red, vertical line a boundary no one dared to cross
We dreamed and doodled every possibility
We were better for that innocence
We were
Better

And now we look back at those same, red lines
Standing here on what is supposed to be the usable part of the life "page"
A page we fill with urgency and to-do lists
We fill with hellos and goodbyes
We fill with budgets and breakdowns
We've forgotten how to hold on to a dream
We've forgotten the way back
We've forgotten and we've grounded
All of these
Mythic
Impossible
Winged
Dreams~

nicolas hall 2010

Squeezing Through the Neck - Poem

Two blocks below
The bay pushes gently over stony shores
Marking cycles of time
As the fleet of fishing boats crawls in and out of their berths in a similar, constant rhythm

Five blocks above
The range of mountains rises sharply,
Standing still against time
Clouds hang there
Snatched upon the pines and pulled over the ridge,
Closing the roof around this little town

We are scattered along 12 or so odd blocks between
People pass through, squeezing through this bottleneck of a town
Pushed between the bay and the mountains
They must feel constrained with the long narrow passage
It must feel like choking on the palpable lack of motion
It must be why they never
Stop

We chose to stop here
To stay here
Settling into the midst of the neck
Between bay and mountain
Where the lack of
The less of
Doesn't choke us
Here, we swallow
And every morsel of this life
Tastes so sweet

~nicolas hall 2012

Second Skin

"You mean you don't want any of them?" my mother asks, at least semi annually.
She has taken out the shoebox of old photos and cards again.
A semi annual ritual though not one in accord with any changing of seasons or certain anniversaries.

"No, none. . . thank you." I respond
Semi annually

I have never been one for the taking of or keeping of photographs.
As long as I can remember, I never found myself wanting to look into polaroid frames of the past.
At least not ot when the image I would be looking at was myself

This is not a preference derived from avoiding shadows
I had a most wonderful childhood
The images my mother keeps are, I know, happy and light
A family history unstained
She keeps them, I have supposed, to quell her age-old fears that she was the reason I moved far away
That she was somehow a faulty mother

It's much simpler than that though
I do not want to look into those eyes staring from the box.
My eyes
At ten
At thirteen
At fifteen

I am afraid of what I might see there
I am afraid of the sign of a secret separation

While others often keep photographs as markers of their youth and pull them out, or up, to remind themselves of what once was, or what could have been, I tend to walk side by side with my past
Always keeping close to that boy
Of ten
Of thirteen
Of fifteen
He is with me in every way
As much a part of me now as then.

So close that
Sometimes I think of him as a second skin
And I know it can be so easy
To dissolve that part of ourselves into a living, time-line memory
Instead of doing away with the apparitions of adulthood
The ones which keep us stacked in the cardboard shoe boxes
Filed under "Yesterday"
While we struggle daily
Just to breathe and
To find a way home
Again

nicolas hall - 2012

Summer Shadows - Poem

To be given the task at 11 or 12
Of filling the gas tank of the old lawnmower
As the warm July sun dropped its late shadows across the oil field

Or to pull the wet leaves from a gutter catch 10 feet off the ground
Or to clean the paint brushes in an old Folgers can filled with turpentine
All under watchful, trusting and loving eyes

It's these little things I miss

The devil is in the details they say
But so then are the angels
And I hope I am as surrounded by them on my last days
As I am today

The memories we've stashed away
Between those long, heroic summer shadows
Often reach back for us
A beacon for the seasons ahead


~nicolas hall 2012 

Climate Change - Poem

Climate Change

When it rains HERE
People do not talk about climate change
Day after day it comes
And no one thinks of it as an inconvenience
No one feels that their day is lost

Day after day it falls
And I watch from my window as people
Walk
With it
Not dashing, as if to slip as many raindrops as they can
While wearing a lemon peel puss

They move easily in it
As if it were just part of them
As if they were invisible

Now I am here
Far from that place where they throw stones at the clouds
Far from that place where umbrellas reign
Far from where no one wants to go unseen for long
Those places
Are gone now
Wiped from my memory
Due to climate change

I am here now

Moving with the rain
And I'm happily
Invisible

by nicolas hall 2012

Charity - Poem

Charity

My grandmother loved to give her money to charity
The unemployed sitting in the diner
The sisters from the church
The starving overseas
And then my brother who, daily, needed "a couple bucks for gas"
So he could drive the 20 or so blocks to his favorite bar.
My mother said she was, "trying to buy her way into heaven".

The rest of her mad money would go to buy flower seeds and bulbs
And I, who wouldn't take a dollar from her without earning it,
Planted these each year
From April through September

When I moved across the country
I called her that first February to tell her
That the camellias and the daffodils and the crocuses
Were in full bloom out here already

"Boyyyyy aren't you lucky!" she said
"We'll have to wait and see if anything blooms at all here this spring."
Her tone made it seem as if that might actually be in doubt
And I, basking in the glory of my early season, suddenly realized
It was never about giving anything to charity
Or buying a ticket into heaven
Or disappearing gas

It was simply, for her
A matter of hope

~nicolas hall 2012

Welcome By Committee - Poem

"Welcome By Committee"

He thought we were tourists and
Crossing the road back towards the docks,
He called out after us

"Where are you from?"

"We live here" we said
"Oh, really?" "Well I was going to say welcome to our beautiful land!"
We thanked him anyway and continued on

We are tourists, in some ways, of course
Just living in a small coastal town for three weeks does not wash off the last 11 years of city living.
And, we certainly weren't carrying the look of a crabber or a clammer.

A little while later we were standing on the walkway of a long, narrow pier
The wind off the ocean was coursing through the bay and chilling our warm moment in the sun
A gull landed effortlessly on the pier post just down the railing from us
She pulls her wings in and stares
She probably thinks we are tourists too
But she doesn't say so
And suddenly, I was feeling
Truly welcome

~ by nicolas hall 3 / 5 / 12

Salt Air - Poem

Settling into our new coastal home and the difference in my soul is palpable. I do not know why I stayed away so long even though I can see how things have worked out over time and it was all necessary. . . . but ohhhhhh I am glad to be here once again.

nicolas


Salt Air
 On this perfectly still morning, the fog nestles down into the ridge line,
Blurring the form of the tall trees into nothing more than a jagged sketch.
A seismograph in the morning sky
Even here, in the stillness of this pale place
As in the stillness of a pale heart
There is activity

Outside the window, more activity
People are passing through
As most do here
This is not a “place to be”
And I am pleased to be in a place where this is the rule
Happy to be free of all the corners where everyone is talking about their destinations
Hurrying into their next chapter
With so much left unwritten in the one before
 
All those years ago I was dreaming of a destination too
I left a place, just like this
All in a hurry to get somewhere
To find something
To become someone
I never would become

Stepping outside the rattling door of the little bakery
I am greeted by the squall of the seagulls
All around me the fog has dipped itself down into the bay
Settling along the harbor and covering this little corner of the world
I breathe in
The salt air filling my lungs, as the essence of who I am,
Who I always have been
Appears again on the distant horizon
Like little tremors deep within
A ridge line of activity
Recorded here in my heart

nicolas hall 2012