TIMOTHY MUSKAT, Poet
"Capturing Beauty II:" "Correspondent Breeze"
Painter Mary Graham and poet Timothy Muskat met for the first time in the early fall of 2018 in this very gallery, and immediately found commonality—in what they had read (Wordsworth, Bachelard, Dōgen); in what they admired in nature (mountains, distances, quietude); in how they saw the world and how they wished to live in it (mainly, in solitude). But what most connected them was commitment to their respective art forms — the painter’s growing out of landscapes of shadow and light, presences and absences, the poet’s born of a universe of edged words and ensorcelling silences. Not forty-eight hours after this fortuitous beginning, painter and poet began a heady back-and-forth that continues to this day.
Timothy Muskat, 62, a former professor of English and Creative Writing, has lived for the past
twenty-three years in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire, with his wife, Carla, their two (now grown and flown) sons, Harrison and Galen, and an assortment of big brown dogs. He is the author of Murmurs from the Bogswamp’s Gloaming; Woods Outside the World; Completing the Century; and Poems I Might Have Painted, and has won numerous prizes and awards for his poetry, his essay writing, and his teaching. Tim has been climbing in the White Mountains since he was three years old, has completed eight so-called “Grids,” and recently summited regal Mt. Washington for the four-hundred-and-twenty-eighth time. |
THE WAY ACROSS
Because snow and ice
mount up on this mountain
as winter takes residence
this short stretch of trail
widens and steepens
until it’s suddenly late February
and I’m one dumb slip
from plummeting into a ravine
so maw-like the dark of it
practically pulls.
My wife wonders why I do it,
asks me every single time.
I don’t know, honestly,
other than to say
that when I make it across
for a moment everything
vanishes — want, need,
longing, urge, hunger,
every joy I’ve known
along with every sorrow.
What’s left is searing air,
and it’s enough.
Timothy Muskat
Because snow and ice
mount up on this mountain
as winter takes residence
this short stretch of trail
widens and steepens
until it’s suddenly late February
and I’m one dumb slip
from plummeting into a ravine
so maw-like the dark of it
practically pulls.
My wife wonders why I do it,
asks me every single time.
I don’t know, honestly,
other than to say
that when I make it across
for a moment everything
vanishes — want, need,
longing, urge, hunger,
every joy I’ve known
along with every sorrow.
What’s left is searing air,
and it’s enough.
Timothy Muskat