birthday 2009: read a good poem, see a big spider

white water. martha's vineyard, 2005.

i received a birthday card from my aunt and uncle (the aunt who i have mentioned before, who has my whole life gifted me with words--hers and others--to try to open my mind and right my soul). Along with the birthday sentiments, she sent two poems.

Actually, the first is a quote from Julius Caesar. I'm sure I was to have read this in college--maybe i did? But I'm also sure it would not have resonated then, the way it does now.


Brutus:

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

--Shakespeare. Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218-224.

how wonderful and wistful and resolute is "on such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves"?

and: do i have that in me?

***
i love the second poem too, and i thought it a wonderful twist that i received the card on the same day that i had visited dia beacon for the first time...and saw louise bourgeois' spider:

photo by florian holzherr. via diabeacon.org.

(btw, spider is just about the only bourgeois work that i liked. what am i missing?)

***
A Noiseless, Patient Spider

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory , it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand.
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

--Walt Whitman

***
a few light thoughts on el día at dia beacon to come...