Tonset Road
September 2024
Tonset Road is designed to be read and listened to simultaneously. The audio is a field recording.
After our daughter Fiona was born in the heat of the city’s August, a friend offered us a reprieve at her family’s beach house. Fiona, Angad and I found ourselves in a Nor’easter with few sunny days. We met rain with trips to Hole in One, Log Cabin Farm, and Nauset Beach—catching the tumult on shore. Mainly we existed inside and around the property, meeting life outside our personage—listening to the animacy of Tonset Road: bramble, pine and cove;
Heron and the lapse of empty sailboats;
Stones, acorns and swooshing grass.
The wild juxtaposed our enclosure from a prolonged storm. Tonset Road; the rushing in of parenthood. Waters white-capping overhead and within.
This intuitive give & take—our universal survival.
Something under the surface exists in one long inhale.
Tap in. Tap in. Tap in.
▹
TONSET ROAD
One triangle
cuts the blue cove.
I suppose I could end here.
Bright orange hat
covers a reflection
through the sliding door.
Black suit– holding body.
A mother’s body.
Curved, soft,
pale for September.
I thought I’d sit–
on the adirondack
over strawlike grass.
Listening to crickets–
and the hum
of a bedroom fan.
Someone walks along the shore.
His sunglasses are warmblooded
and his polo is short.
…Fairies exist.
My family is dying to know
my occupation at dinner
over bread.
Why don’t we speak
when we talk?
How do you know
when we’re not listening?
▹
Fi–your father
jokes that he wants
to return you.
Maybe it was
the cranial sacral lady
that drew out the bad
thoughts plaguing you.
that’s a word
I might try and fit
into baby’s mouth.
Stuff it thick in
fatty milk during
an afternoon feed.
Sophistication…
& feathers–
how well do you know them?
Do we speak differently
than we paint?
I remove peas
to make spit-up more safe.
Red-faced cry
with no teeth–
she’s funny when she
side smiles
then goes back
to sleep.
▹
Fiona's breath moving
her body up
then down
White cap–
gray sky.
Rain
falling
down
a
window.
I try napping too
in this large coastal storm.
The whole
house
waking.
A being–
Be–
ing.
Black & white birds
fly with & against
the wind. My toe dips
into tile from a woven hole.
I recount blessings
to not sink into despair. Listen
to folk. Sing in wind. Remember
lemon– ginger. Remember feeling
a homemade textile. Remember
laughing with K, L & M.
Remember lavender,
dahlias & the color pink.
Remember the rising sun
over water.
The rising sun over
lovely waters–
guide me
towards reflection–
why is it that we dance
like rocking chairs? & we sing
like helms? Wind creaking through
a broken window. Curse the day
you weren’t born. There isn’t
a moment you weren’t alive–
here now
all around.
Glory be–
the sun!
B e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
I am a bee–
COO!
Torment no body.
▹
I walk outside
and notice how green the grass looks.
At the water there is a beached boat.
I think that I am enough.
I work through this with a large rock.
I ask what its purpose is to me.
I see moss growing on it.
Waves wiped away the shells that clung to it.
I wonder how to create like it.
In water. With water. Of water.
I wonder.
I, Stone. Stone, I.
We belong.
I am.
▹
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the Lavelle family for your generous welcome to Tonset Road.
Thank you Holly Wren Spaulding, Kat Farrell-Davis, and the poets at Salt Lines Retreat in Maine for your ear and encouragement. To mom for guiding me to pay attention.
And to you– Angad, and little Fi–for believing in the unseen.
About the author
Colleen Elizabeth Jaggi is an artist
living in New England.
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