Saliences

Nothing like a visit to rugged Pescadero Beach to be reminded of the contrast between the permanent and the ephemeral... concerns of Ammons in this great poem: "where not a single single thing endures, the overall reassures." 

Saliences

A.R. Ammons

Consistencies rise

and ride

the mind down

hard routes

        walled

with no outlet and so

to open a variable geography,

        proliferate

possibility, here

is this dune fest

        releasing

mind feeding out,

gathering clusters,

fields of order in disorder,

where choice

can make beginnings,

        turns,

        reversals,

where straight line

and air-hard thought

can meet

unarranged disorder,

        dissolve

before the one event that

creates present time

in the multi-variable

        scope :

a variable of wind

among the dunes,

making variables

of position and direction and sound

of every reed leaf

and bloom,

running streams of sand,

winding, rising, at a depression

falling out into deltas,

weathering shells with blast,

striking hiss into clumps of grass,

against bayberry leaves,

     lifting

the spider from footing to footing

hard across the dry even crust

toward the surf :

wind, a variable, soft wind, hard

steady wind, wind

shaped and kept in the

bent of trees,

the prevailing dipping seaward

of reeds,

the kept and erased sandcrab trails :

wind, the variable to the gull's flight,

how and where he drops the clam

and the way he heads in, running to loft :

wind, from the sea, high surf

and cool weather;

from the land, a lessened breakage

and the land's heat :

wind alone as a variable,

as a factor in millions of events,

leaves no two moments

on the dunes the same :

     keep

free to these events,

bend to these

changing weathers :

multiple as sand, events of sense

alter old dunes

of mind,

release new channels of flow,

free materials

to new forms :

ind alone as a variable

rakes this neck of dunes

out of calculation's reach :

come out of the hard

routes and ruts,

pour over the walls

of previous assessments : turn to

the open,

the unexpected, to new saliences of feature.

*

The reassurance is

that through change

continuities sinuously work,

cause and effect

        without alarm,

gradual shadings out or in,

motions that full

        with time

do not surprise, no

abrupt leap or burst : possibility,

with meaningful development

of circumstance :

when I went back to the dunes today,

        saliences,

congruent to memory,

spread firmingly across my sight :

the narrow white path

rose and dropped over

grassy rises toward the sea :

sheets of reeds,

tasseling now near fall,

filled the hollows

with shapes of ponds or lakes :

bayberry, darker, made wandering

chains of clumps, sometimes pouring

into heads, like stopped water :

        much seemed

constant, to be looked

forward to, expected :

from the top of a dune rise,

look of ocean salience : in

        the hollow,

where a runlet

        makes in

at full tide and fills a bowl,

extravagance of pink periwinkle

along the grassy edge,

and a blue, bunchy weed, deep blue,

deep into the mind the dark blue

        constant :

minnows left high in the tide-deserted pocket,

        fiddler crabs

bringing up gray pellets of drying sand,

disappearing from air's faster events

at any close approach :

certain things and habits

        recognizable as

having lasted through the night :

though what change in

a day’s doing!

desertions of swallows

        that yesterday

ravaged air, bush, reed, attention

in gatherings wide as this neck of dunes :

now, not a sound

or shadow, no trace of memory, no remnant

        Explanation :

summations of permanence!

where not a single single thing endures,

the overall reassures, 

deaths and flights,

shifts and sudden assaults claiming

limited orders,

the separate particles : 

earth brings to grief

much in an hour that sang, leaped, swirled, 

yet keeps a round

        quiet turning,

beyond loss or gain,

beyond concern for the separate reach.