To end the year with my students, we studied the sonnet. I have always loved the sonnet, and at various points in my life I have written them to commemorate or christen or remember. I make no claims of being an adept poet, but I do enjoy the exercise and think I can occasionally turn a decent phrase. Here is a sonnet I wrote on the one year anniversary of the death of my grandfather. I was living in Ireland at the time, traveling from Dublin to Sligo, where I would trace the steps of my favorite poet, W.B. Yeats. I began writing when the train departed, and I put the finishing touches on it right as the train pulled into the station about three and a half hours later.

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TO SLIGO WITH PAPA

A year has flown, I’ve moved across the world

The sting of death, however, stays with me

Today my heart and soul become unfurled

By train, westbound, I sit in reverie

The life you lived is living strongly still

I see it in the passing horse and deer

I see it in the rugged, sturdy mill

I see it in the Ring of Barahir

I wish that you could see what I have done

I wish that I could tell you what I see

Of how the hills do flicker in the sun

Y que lo pudiera hacer así 

I cannot whistle it that matters most

I place my faith in God and heavn’ly host. 

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In August, it will have been three years since he passed away.

Descance en paz, Héctor.

• 

A few weeks ago, I was in La Guajira, Colombia, and I spent time at this location where the ocean meets with the river. The following reflection was born there, but it was later polished and written during my time on the River Magdalena in Mompox, Colombia.

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The Ocean is more metaphysical; the River more spiritual. 

The immense Ocean, like Platonic forms or Cantorian sets, outstretches our imagination. It goes beyond our comprehension. The Ocean is abstraction. In the Ocean lived the great gods, and in the River lived the spirits. The flowing River, like the tales of Homer or the poems of Yeats, feeds our soul and reflects our being. The River is spiritual.

The Ocean is not something we belong to, nor is it something that belongs to us. We cannot drink its water; and what we leave in it, it returns back to us. Its creatures, like the inventions of the metaphysicians, are strange to us. The River nourishes us and gives us what we need, and what we leave in it tends to rest there for ages. The River has its scars just like us, and in the River we find creatures like distant cousins that more resemble us.

As Hume taught us, man cannot stay long in the depths of metaphysical speculation before our splenetic humor requires us to step away. So too is man’s time on the Ocean always temporary. We cross it with reverence; we do not make our home there. The River, like a warm hearth, is something that lives alongside us.

The Ocean is more metaphysical; the River is more spiritual. 

And this is not to say 

that either is better or worse;

while one may be deeper than the other

both are equally profound

and we, human all too human,

must swim in both.