“And it was at that age … Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,”

. . . .

Excerpt from “Poetry,” by Pablo Neruda, from “Neruda: Selected Poems”

The world drenched, morning after rain. I take a different trail in the Menemsha Hills down to the beach and am glad for the change. It’s good to walk with a stomach ache, instead of staying in the discomfort in bed. Of course I feel better, smelling the pepperbush, hearing the shush of the surf over rocks. I listen to a wonderful episode of a “Selected Shorts” podcast about faith: Selected Shorts podcast, hosted by Krista Tippett, On Being, including a short story by Aimee Bender, and Tracy K. Smith reading the Neruda poem, “Poetry,” at the end of the show. So many things to think about, especially, the idea of being “found” by poetry that Neruda describes so eloquently. Tonight there’s a full moon beaming down over the Island, and in the Bender story there is an example the Rabbi gives the doctor about how faith in God is like how we all feel that when we’re driving in a car at night that the moon we see is following us - how the moon feels like a personal experience. Except, of course, it’s not. It’s universally experienced. We came out of a viewing of the new documentary, Bedlam, tonight, at the Chilmark Community Center, a second viewing - it was shown first at Sundance, and the writer and producers and participants were there, and it’s a provocative and challenging and heart-rending, necessary movie about the mental health system failures of our society. And we drove home in the convertible, top down, and the moon was following us.