Sky Watching
Part 2. Sam McGee Before Breakfast
…Dad also loved Robert Service, and we heard all about Sam McGee and Dangerous Dan McGrew. However, Dad’s favorite book was the small volume of that enduring classic, A Hundred and One Famous Poems, which is still available. Dad’s worn copy had an embossed leathery cover and pages with uneven cut. Growing up, I pored over that book. Something special in the poetry rang deep. The words leaped off the page because I could hear them in my ear—the sound of the words, the rise and fall of the voice, the drama of the narrative.
Poetry is an auditory art form, a world of sound in language, meant for the ear and the heart. (http://www.poetryoutloud.org) It’s taken me a lifetime to realize how much that early poetry did for me. As a singer I instinctively gravitated towards Art Song, poems shaped by the composer with specific line flow and chord colors to express the meaning and emotions. Song has the ability to meld together three languages: verbal, musical, and heart.
Because I heard poetry before I saw it on the page, I caught the sound, the color, and the texture of the words. The lyrical lines, the imagery, scenes, stories, truths hidden in metaphor, made me weep for loss and for the often piercing beauty of thought and language. In such poetic moments the life of the inner spirit surfaces. We build an inner image gallery of story, language, symbols, and new realities. The rhythms resonate; the idioms become embedded in the soul. We glimpse into the heart of another, and may bond, for one brief moment, with a kindred spirit.
Of course, we kids didn’t always appreciate what we were hearing. In the mornings Dad was often first into the one and only bathroom to shower and shave. When he stepped into the shower, we could hear his voice echo with the strains:
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold…..
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee….”
As we lined up outside the bathroom door, waiting our turns, we knew Dad wouldn’t be out of there until Sam McGee woke up and said,
“Close the door…Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”