I took a drive the other morning, as I do most mornings, to Squibnocket. It was sunny and windy and cold, and my son-in-law Calder was waxing his board to go surfing with a friend, as he does (and they do) many days in all four seasons.

As I drove away toward my next usual destination (Menemsha), I registered (as usual) the array of fine houses on the high ground all around the area. For some reason, this poem, written more than a century ago by Wallace Stevens, popped into my head and refused to leave:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
 
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
 
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
 
The word “dominion” is what stuck, more than any other, conjuring up millennia of redoubts and castles where people who could afford it would enjoy unobstructed views.

I have my own “jar” in Chilmark, a house a little more than halfway up a hill, where I reside in comfortable retirement. I spend some of my time working for the Town on — among other issues — housing for people who live here (or hope to live here) year-round. You can’t be involved in that set of concerns, the pressures on the land, the human desire for more, without recognizing what seems so likely not sustainable, at least in what you might call the long run. If we “keep on” this way, the well will run dry someday, won’t it?

Another note from the “Jar” poem insinuated itself as well: “Tennessee...”

It’s a little nudge in John Prine’s song: “The lonesome friends of science say / The world will end most any day / Well, if that happens, that’s OK / I don’t live here anyway / I live down deep inside my head / Where long ago I made my bed / I get my mail in Tennessee / My wife my dog, my family...Unh hunh....”

I get my mail in 02535, and at least for the time being, I arguably “live here.” How I justify it all is an open question, along with the other one that won’t go away: “What does it take to get our attention?”

Peter Cook lives in Chilmark.