Wednesday, September 21, 2011

My Island

I started this blog as a small attempt to stay connected to my island.  My heart is there, left among the live oaks, the smell of the marsh,  and the plough mud of the tidal pools.  I sometimes hear the whispers of the gullah people, in my dreams; their deep songs of life, hardship, and Jesus.  One day, soon I hope, I'll be back there.  Until then, I'll dream about my island, and write about her secrets, the people, the food, and a simple life from long ago.  We'll see where it takes me.



Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?


  Somehow my soul seems suddenly free


From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,


By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.  ~ from The Marshes of Glynn by Sidney Lanier




 


The Marshes of Glynn is one of Sidney Lanier's poems featured in "Hymns of the Marshes," an unfinished set of lyrical nature poems that describe the open salt marshes of Glynn County in coastal Georgia. The poem describes a marsh in detail, while evoking senses of patience and common decency.

A marsh near Jekyll Island


In The Marshes of Glynn Lanier is giving a religious testament. But he is doing more than evoking the mystery of God, he is speaking to his beloved country, the South, which lay devastated following the American Civil War. He feared the coming onslaught of industrialism. And he sought to comfort his southern brethren by showing them the South was still there: an expansive landscape full of beauty and richness which had always been the source of her strength and sustenance. "Look around you," he was saying. "Take courage from the land which God has given you, which has always nourished you, and which is still there, and be comforted."
~~ Wikipedia