Nature’s Smile

Imagine my delight this morning when the Poem-a-Day surprise was a poet from Plattsburgh, New York, a northern neighbor on Lake Champlain. It’s not every day a local poet appears in my inbox, much less a young lady composing clever verse in the earliest days of Rosslyn’s existence. An intriguing stanza from Lucretia Maria Davidson’s (1808-1825) poem, “The Smile of Innocence” offers the inspiration for a look at three snapshots I took twelve years ago today. Considered together I find a subtle harmony, a simple arrangement we can call Nature’s Smile.

And there’s a smile on Nature’s face,
When Evening spreads her shades around;
A pensive smile when twinkling stars
Are glimmering through the vast profound.

— Lucretia Maria Davidson, “The Smile of Innocence” (Source: Academy of American Poets)

In the underexposed snapshot above, I see no twinkling stars, but the moon has spawned a mini moon. An accident of light reflecting on lens or speck of dust perhaps, the “moons” pierce (but fail to illuminate) the vast profound. The evening shades — actually early morning shades — blot out virtually everything. Only a faint trace of Rosslyn’s carriage barn resists the inky darkness, but this intimate gathering of eaves, barn doors, double hung windows, and lamp posts extend a welcoming invitation. A beacon. A promise.

This second vignette offers a snowy narrative. On the one hand the formal structure of the fence, man made, delineating, defining, enclosing. On the other the memory of a trotting fox, two maybe, changing course suddenly, the tracks contributing a sort of graffiti — pleasing and unpremeditated — to the tabula rasa of our snow blanketed front lawn.

Nature’s smile writ large and spontaneous. Shadow geometry competes for attention, but it’s the less restrained pointillism of the fox prints that captures my curiosity.

I will further research the young poet to see what other poetry she left behind. My curiosity feels like a setting out, an untethering, the beginning of a voyage. Let my adventure be guided by nature’s smile!