Mark Pawlak – from Quoddy Journal, 2006

Mark Pawlak

from Quoddy Journal, 2006

“Go to the pine if you want to learn about pine….”—Basho             “[Keep] a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its well-cut             sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities….”— John Ruskin,             The Elements of Drawing, 1857 July 23 Young woman enters the office of the Mollynocket Motel, seeking a room for beau and self. This in West Paris, Maine, just north of Poland and Norway, east of Sweden and Denmark, but south of Peru and Mexico. Manager seated at the desk looks up, takes her measure, notices the glitter-flecked letters blazoned across her tee-shirt:             “New…York…City,” he exclaims, emphasizing each word!             “No,” she replies. “I ain’t from there….But I been there.” July 24 Constellations of dew on window screens. Spider, suspended on invisible filaments just outside, stages a tap dance to fog horn accompaniment. Cha-cha. Cha. Cha. Cha. July 25 Slate gray bank of cloud drawn across the horizon at which scalloped edge the newly risen sun winks. July 26 Bangor Daily News: “The Brady Gang came to Maine in the fall of 1937 for the same reasons 21st century criminals venture north of Boston—seafood, foliage, and guns.” Guns? Ah, but the road sign later passed on coastal Route 1 helps to explain:             PAWN             GUNZ             GUNSHOP             AHEAD July 27 Watercolor             “I just had to jot down these fleeting things . . . a rapid notation in watercolor and             pencil: an informal daubing of contrasting colors, tones, and hues”—Henri-Edmond             Cross, American artist (1856 – 1910). Dull pewter morning sky, Oilcloth spread over harbor, tucked in at shoreline; salt and peppershaker buoys set upon it beside toy boats painted primary colors; hump-backed island at harbor’s mouth in shape of an overturned ladle. Washboard ripples fill the narrow channel between shore and the island with its comb of firs. Chicken-wire fence edges weed-wigged rocks bordering a field where sheep graze, while sparrows and starlings hop and peck among clumps of close-cropped grass peppered with droppings. Screeching gulls strafe the yard, then settle on green stained tarpaper roof of the slouching, lichen crusted chicken coop. One fidgets, tucks its wings, fixes its flinty gaze on the dory flaking paint, turned turtle. July 28 …violation of scallop rule, $250 …hand fishing sea urchin without license, $500 …negotiating worthless instrument, $150 …violation of marine worm rule, $250 …failing to kindle in prudent manner, $100 . —Machias District court cases, Bangor Daily News July 29 The sea twice daily insinuates its tongue between the muddy banks of this inlet fringed with damp grasses. July 30 Sudden wind beneath a darkening sky raises waves in orderly ranks that charge the shore. Shudders ripple through cattails rooted in a ditch; pelting rain follows, bending them double. Sky now brightening, a lone figure sporting white-hood, gray cape, yellow leggings, stalks field and shoreline assessing the carnage. July 31 Field Note: Sturnus vulgarus Little old men out of 19th century Russian novels (by Guncharov? Gogol?), wearing dark, ash-flecked greatcoats, bent at the waist, heads down, hands folded behind backs, pace the length and breadth of this yard searching for lost thoughts among grass blades, sheep droppings. August 1 Road Sign: EWESFUL ITEMS August 2 Fisherman stacking traps on the wharf, greasy haired, unshaven, grimy with sweat, stands stock-still in muck crusted waders his eyes fixed on the candy apple red painted toenails of a woman in Bermuda shorts transacting the purchase of lobsters for her dinner. August 3 No remnant of the customhouse at Customhouse Beach, but countless multicolored, sea-worn, sea-smoothed glass and pottery shards. Also one rust crusted V-6 engine block, minus pistons, rods, manifolds, et cetera— object of fascination to my teenage son experiencing nostalgia for a past he never knew. August 4 “He would frequently stop in his tracks to make slight sketches in pencil in a small book which he always carried in his pocket and then pass on, always suspicious that if he stopped too long to look in one direction the most beautiful thing of all might pass him by at his back.”—Worthington Whittredge described the American artist Sanford Robinson Gifford’s (1823 –1880) manner of working. August 5 5 AM Sacramental Landscape Old Testament night of thunder, lightning, hail, and biblical downpours. Now dawn arrives, startling as the risen Christ in Grunewald’s painting, “The Resurrection.” Shimmering golden platter rests on the white muslin spread across the bay, reflection of the dazzling Eucharistic orb now arm’s-length above the horizon. August 6 With apologies to C.D. Wright Every year the poem I most want to write, the poem that might in effect allow me to stop writing, stands at the edge of a field shrouded in mist—human apparition or tree misshapen by harsh elements. If I invite it to sit beside me on the porch, it takes a tentative step forward, pulling fog’s hem with it, then retreats. The field between us is grown up in thigh-high grasses, wildflowers, thistles, pink beach roses with yellow centers. Closer, the mown lawn is flecked with white clover florets and green blades wet with dew. A foghorn blasts at regular intervals; clanking buoy keeps time. Lupines have given way to Black-eyed Susans in the rock edged garden. Smell of strong back coffee mixes with pine scent and salt sea air, for it is always August, Maine, a simple pine box cottage with clean lines and wrap around porch, overlooking tidal marsh, sandbar, bay. No coaxing will entice the poem to inhabit its form, step across the distance, occupy the seat beside me. And if I should get up to approach it, hand extended, the poems backs away, shape-shifts, vanishes into the haze. August 7 Car with Maine plates driving coastal Route 1, sporting bumper sticker:             “Go Renovate Boston.             We Like Maine Just The Way It Is.”

 
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