Nets to Catch the Wind

This morning I read a short poem by John Webster, “All the Flowers of the Spring.” It occupies a little space on page 79 of an anthology containing 551 pages of poetry. I wonder how often that book gets opened, or how many readers pause over his contribution before moving on.

But I paused. The poem made me smile, made me think, and sent me looking for more about the man who wrote it.

Webster begins with flowers gathering to perfume our burial. Spring is there, with all its beauty and promise, but even the flowers have only their allotted season. So do we. By the end, he has turned his attention to kings who hope their trophies will leave a living name behind. His final image is the one that stayed with me: “And weave but nets to catch the wind.”

There is a lot of work in weaving a net. I picture the patient handling of the threads, the attention to each connection, the confidence that eventually this thing you are making will hold something. Webster seems to understand the effort we put into securing a name for ourselves. We build, accumulate, accomplish, and hope some of it will keep us from disappearing.

Then the wind passes through.

Someone might point out that Webster himself has been remembered for four centuries. Here I am, after all, reading his words and writing his name. But how well known is he? A poem on page 79 of a thick anthology that relatively few people may read is a modest version of immortality. His words have survived, though I wonder whether survival looks anything like what an ambitious writer might imagine.

And then another thought occurred to me: so what?

His poem spoke to me this morning. I enjoyed it. It awakened something in my mind that might otherwise have gone unexamined. Why should that encounter need a larger audience to justify it? I cannot see that its value to me would have increased if a million other people had read it over breakfast.

I remember Coach Bryant saying, in effect, before the Iron Bowl that there were a billion people in China who had never heard of Alabama or Auburn. In a state where that game could seem to determine the emotional condition of an entire year, it was a useful reminder. The world was considerably larger than the thing occupying every inch of our attention.

I think that helped us understand how easily we make something into a bigger deal than it is. You could still prepare, compete, and care deeply about the outcome while remembering that most of humanity would go right on with its day.

I need that perspective in other parts of life, too. When I write something, teach something, or release a song, I naturally hope it reaches people. There is pleasure in knowing that work has found an audience, and disappointment when it seems to pass unnoticed. But I can let the question of how many people noticed consume the pleasure that led me to do the work in the first place. Somewhere along the way, a good experience becomes a referendum on my significance.

Webster gave me a little distance from that this morning.

I do not know how many people will read these words, or how long anything I make will remain of interest. I do know the pleasure of finding a thought expressed well, of sharing something with a student, of hearing from someone who connected with a song. Those moments are available to me now, even while the larger question of what will endure remains unanswered.

On page 79, a man I knew very little about gave me one of those moments. I closed the book with more stirring in my mind than when I opened it.

That seems like a good morning’s work for both of us.