American poet Robert Cording
from Massachusetts Audubon Chart No. 1, 1898
I’ve come to think that what we know of our lives
often has nothing to do with understanding,
but with some accidental loveliness
we put our hopes in, the excess, say,
of a thrush fluting its elongated ee — oo – lay;
or the way a flock of goldfinches
yellow the air they fly through without asking.
Robert Cording from Only So Far, CavanKerry Press, 2015
Accidental loveliness! Those two words walloped me this morning as I was cleaning out my poetry therapy bag I take with me to my poetry writing workshops at the Cedars, the drug and alcohol recovery center where I spend time each week. As so often happens I had forgotten this poem, and those two words, by American poet Robert Cording. Grateful, now, I found it. (For the complete poem scroll down.)
How much accidental loveliness I miss. Those times I am walking and the word-clutter in my mind prevents me from seeing what’s around me. Too busy trying to understand me, my world! As happened yesterday walking with friends on a coastal path overlooking Salt Spring Island in the Salish Sea offshore Vancouver Island.
My friend, Sue, a fine poet I met through Patrick Lane’s retreats, kept pointing out the sere and yellowed leaves (in some places far enough away coloured a deep ivory white) littering the ground from the groves of Arbutus trees we walked through. (Arbutus are called Madrones in the U.S.) They are such a distinctive feature of our west coast landscape. These are evergreen deciduous trees that grow new leaves each summer and then drop the old ones and shed their notable skin-like bark, a fiery copper colour this time of year.
Like snow, Sue said, pointing out the dead Arbutus leaves on a hillock of moss covered rock. How they stand out against the green they fall on. That noticing. That accidental loveliness. How from eyes so used to seeing this I had stopped seeing it. Cording and Sue remind me to wake up. be amazed – at all the accidental loveliness waiting for me everyday.
Cording, professor of English and Creative Writing at The College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, is yet another poet-gift I have received from the pages of Image Journal, the journal of Art, Faith and Mystery based out of Seattle. Cording is a poet of deep Christian faith as are so many of the writers found in Image but like the rest of the writers featured in Image there is no neon sign saying beware: Christian agenda. Instead, poems, that so often take me to the door of mystery. Invite me in. I like how these comments from the Poetry Foundation describe his poetry:
Cording writes poems that engage themes of spiritual faith, grief, and grace. Discussing his approach to writing in an interview for Holy Cross Magazine, Cording said, “It’s self-reflective about your relationship to mortality, to the world, to those fundamental questions: Who are we? Where are we going? Why are we here? That’s what started me writing—those kinds of questions.”
Now, below, Cording’s complete poem.
Massachusetts Audubon Chart No. 1, 1898
In the corner of an antique store
hanging by a nail, I bumped into
this water-stained, frayed-edge chart.
Ingenious at getting twenty-six birds —
from chimney swift to chipping sparrow,
all life-sized — on 27 x 42 inches,
Fuertes painted his stiff birds posed
in characteristic attitudes
on a convenient streamside dead tree, on reeds,
and on the wing in the background sky.
After I bought the chart and hung it
near the stairs, I found almost all twenty-six
are right here, going by
at various times outside my window.
Seeing the little golden crown on a kinglet,
or the tail-splash of red that sets off
the catbird’s silky grey, puts me in good cheer.
And there’s the sudden paradise of intimacy
when I turn my binoculars toward a house wren
nesting under the skewed lid of my propane tank.
None of this is life-changing
or halts the numbing dailiness of chores,
but since I hung this chart of birds,
I’ve come to think that what we know of our lives
often has nothing to do with understanding,
but with some accidental loveliness
we put our hopes in, the excess, say,
of a thrush fluting its elongated ee — oo – lay;
or the way a flock of goldfinches
yellow the air they fly through without asking.
Robert Cording from Only So Far, CavanKerry Press, 2015