Mysteries Not Found in Dictionaries

My love of language has followed me around all my life. Or, perhaps I've been chasing after it. Either way, it has informed my path like nothing else. Whether written, spoken, or sung, the word itself is what gives my life direction, maybe even purpose, and a depth of meaning that is now becoming more apparent and more deeply rooted.

My love of dictionaries has played a major role in all of this - finding the right word and discovering its etymology - but this can only take us so far into meaning. There are things that cannot be found in a book; some things can only be discovered through experience and circumstance, and some things remain elusive as though the mystery itself is the meaning.

Take the red fox I saw early this morning running down the road past my house, a car following it very slowly, not wanting to harm it in any way, almost shepherding it along the road. It ran on, the car continued to follow it slowly until they were both out of sight. I wanted so badly for the fox to run into the woods, to find refuge there. Why wasn't it willing to leave the road?  Why didn't it run into the woods or the field beyond, its natural habitat?

Though I have looked at this image and its implications - the symbolic nature of it, ripe with metaphor - the whole scene has left me feeling a bit unsettled. Sometimes there are no answers, only questions. And that's okay.


"Inheritance"

At my elbow on the table
it lies open as it has done
for a good part of these thirty
years ever since my father died
and it passed into my hands
this Webster's New International
Dictionary of the English
Language of 1922
on India paper which I
was always forbidden to touch
for fear I would tear or somehow
damage its delicate pages
heavy in their binding
this color of wet sand
on which thin waves hover
when it was printed he was twenty-six
they had not been married four years
he was a country preacher
in a one-store town and I suppose
a man came to the door one day
peddling this new dictionary
on fine paper like the Bible
at an unrepeatable price
and it seemed it would represent
a distinction just to own it
confirming something about him
that he could not even name
now its cover is worn as though
it had been carried on journeys
across the mountains and deserts
of the earth but it has been here
beside me the whole time
what has frayed it like that
loosening it gnawing at it
all through these years
I know I must have used it
much more than he did but always
with care and indeed affection
turning the pages patiently
in search of meanings


~ W.S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius




Painting by Winslow Homer