Saddle Sore: Bly’s black-coated man

“The sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes on through the unattached heavens alone, the toe of the shoe pivots in the dust, the man in the black coat turns and goes away down the hill, no one sees him again, nor knows why he came or why he turned away and did not climb the hill.” — From “Snowbanks North of the House” by Robert Bly.

Unapologetically, Bly is one of my favorites, most specifically, I reckon, because of that black-coated man pivoting in the dust, who on some unspecific level, is a man with whom I identify. It’s my suspicion that as an onlooker, he doesn’t know why he turned away, either.

It’s not a religious poem, per se, but the metaphorical connection is strong. In our recent uptick of conversations about religion following the tragic deaths of Charlie Kirk, Iryna Zarutska, and others, a look inward seems appropriate.   

The tag line under my graduation picture from Aspen High School, written by a naïve 17-year-old, is “To find truth.” My favorite, well-read authors then were Herman Hesse, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Friedrich Nietzsche, with a smattering of Henry Miller and Robert W. Service.

In addition, I sometimes played the piano at the Baptist Church, was a regular member of the Aspen Community Church congregation, and when not testing my philosophy synapses, was mostly interested in football and the opposite sex.

As a literature undergraduate at the University of Northern Colorado, I once wrote a paper comparing three large religions of the world: Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist. One of my major tenets was that all three were more alike than different, which prompted an invitation from the professor to come into his office to discuss. Among other things, he cautioned that being out of the mainstream, as I appeared to be, may exclude me from certain clubs and institutions. My mind wasn’t changed, although it did make me wonder: What’s a person to do when truth runs cross-grain to tradition?

In wondering about religion, of what there seems to be a lot of talk today, one can likely go back to the earliest prehistoric deaths and graves. What to think of a person having a conversation with you one day and dead the next? Impossible to explain. Absolutely no life. Survivors put things into the grave that they certainly thought (and hoped) would be essential in the next life. On a purely intellectual level, we don’t precisely know what comes after the grave, but our religions have evolved in ways that help us alleviate the grief and loneliness that come after a loved one dies.

There is the ancient myth of the boy working in a field of maize. One day, a young man appears with green leaves coming forth from his head. He challenges the boy to a wrestling match, which the young boy wins. This goes on for several days until the visitor explains that, at the next match, the youth must kill him and bury him in the ground. Naturally, the young boy does as he’s told and, several days later, sees the beginning of a new plant, growing from the burial mound. This has always put me in the frame of mind of the resurrection and after-life of Jesus. For me, both speak to the same yearning — that death cannot be the end, that something grows from the loss.

What moves me most in that story is not just the green shoot breaking through the soil, but the insistence that life insists on itself. Every culture, it seems, plants this hope — whether it’s a maize god, or Christ walking out of the tomb, or even the quiet belief we carry when we lay flowers on a grave.

Maybe that’s why Bly’s black-coated man still haunts me. He pivots in the dust, turns away from the climb, and disappears. No one knows why. Perhaps the hill is unknowable. Or maybe the truth isn’t up there waiting like a prize — it’s here, in the turning, the wrestling, the planting, the stories we keep telling to make sense of what comes after the grave.

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net.

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net.