Wind Delay

Soon and soon and stare and stare, the sun and warm gentle air seem forever until soon and stare, the cold and the winds move in and take over... 

Our big departure date has come and gone and we are still sitting here on the Severn River at the end of a very long pier, anxious to get underway. We're kept back by a few final preparatory details, but mostly by the western wind, which is gusting up to 35 miles an hour. 

It's probably a good thing that we didn't leave yesterday, on the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's big sojourn out into the icy Atlantic (although we may very well leave four days later, on the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's fatal rendezvous with that iceberg). 

 Luckily, we are not too big to fail or unsinkable, and there's plenty of room for all of Julep's passengers on our most luxurious of lifeboats.
  

                               

                           In the meantime, I wander the country lanes and tidal flats 

 

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees. 

 

-Adrienne Rich