July 8th

The calendar is a mirror
holding two faces.

I mistakenly fixed my gaze
upon the end of her road,
the moment she slipped into the dark,
instead of the morning
she first saw the sun.

Let me place us both
back at the beginning,
where the cycle of the year
turns on the same July date.

I was born
one hundred thirty-nine years
after Maria White Lowell
emerged into the light.

That date belongs
to our origin,
a summer threshold
where her life sparked into being
and, so many years later,
mine followed.

She was a woman
who burned with poetic fire,
crafting lines
that held the poise of her time.

I am a man
of the high country,
a dweller
of the mountain hills
and deep, shadowed hollers.

We meet upon this meridian.

It is a day for celebration,
a singular timing
that aligns us
across the deep expanse of history.

She walked in eras
of different custom.

I walk
where the mist rises
to the high ridges
of my home.

We both possess
the urge
to set life into words.

She was a pioneer of verse.

I am the inheritor
of that same July vibration.

My words now trace
the contours
of the terrain I know,
keeping the tradition
of the poet alive
in these wild, vertical places.

I carry this birthday forward,
a date that proves
time remains a loop,
connecting her early promise
to my own ongoing journey
under the same constant sun.

Author's Note

Maria White Lowell was an American poet born on July 8, 1829. I was born on July 8, one hundred thirty-nine years later. Although our lives unfolded in different centuries, the calendar marks the same beginning for us both.

Maria White Lowell died on October 27, 1853, at the age of thirty-two. During her brief life, she wrote poetry celebrated for its emotional depth, spiritual grace, and love of the natural world.

Included here is one of her poems, "The Morning-Glory," written in memory of her young daughter. It remains one of her most moving and enduring works, reflecting both profound grief and abiding hope.

The Morning-Glory

We wreathed about our darling's head
  The morning-glory bright;
Her little face looked out beneath
  So full of life and light,
So lit as with a sunrise,
  That we could only say,
"She is the morning-glory true,
  And her poor types are they."

So always from that happy time
  We called her by their name,
And very fitting did it seem,--
  For sure as morning came,
Behind her cradle bars she smiled
  To catch the first faint ray,
As from the trellis smiles the flower
  And opens to the day.

But not so beautiful they rear
  Their airy cups of blue,
As turned her sweet eyes to the light,
  Brimmed with sleep's tender dew;
And not so close their tendrils fine
  Round their supports are thrown,
As those dear arms whose outstretched plea
  Clasped all hearts to her own.

We used to think how she had come,
  Even as comes the flower,
The last and perfect added gift
  To crown Love's morning hour;
And how in her was imaged forth
  The love we could not say,
As on the little dewdrops round
  Shines back the heart of day.

We never could have thought, O God,
  That she must wither up,
Almost before a day was flown,
  Like the morning-glory's cup;
We never thought to see her droop
  Her fair and noble head,
Till she lay stretched before our eyes,
  Wilted, and cold, and dead!

The morning-glory's blossoming
  Will soon be coming round,--
We see their rows of heart-shaped leaves
  Upspringing from the ground;
The tender things the winter killed
  Renew again their birth,
But the glory of our morning
  Has passed away from earth.

Earth! in vain our aching eyes
  Stretch over thy green plain!
Too harsh thy dews, too gross thine air,
  Her spirit to sustain;
But up in groves of Paradise
  Full surely we shall see
Our morning-glory beautiful
  Twine round our dear Lord's knee.