Who is looking out the window?
Who is hearing the catbird
composing a song
among the apple blossoms?
Blue iris in the garden.
On the window sill,
blue iris in a glass vase.
Yellow from the rising sun
slides down yellow trees
and illuminates the grass.
Who is drinking black coffee
from a warm black cup
while watching the falling rain?
Who is asking the question?
Blessed are you, Source of the Universe
Who wanders in exile.
Blessed are you alone and afraid.
Blessed are you in every sparrow, coyote,
slaughtered pig and chicken.
Blessed are you despised and rejected,
accused of your impotence.
Blessed are you, cursed of the Universe
Who shows us the way.
Broken Ground of Being,
Blessed are you.
Nineteen shot and still
they come. Thirty-five
carried across the river–
no noticeable difference
in number.
Chipmunks.
More than an angel
could count.
Holes.
Tender seedlings ripped
and tossed aside.
Tell me again
about the oneness
of all beings,
about angels
who hover over
every living thing,
uncountable.
But don’t forget:
even devils
may appear benign.
Note: I did not shoot or transport them. Two neighbors did that with the ones in their gardens. I know better.
May 2012
Woke in a drizzly haze
and saw his futile twinkle
on the screen by the bed:
Here I am, here I am, here I am,
blinking green-yellow long after
his star-kin had crawled under leaves.
I got up, caught him in my hands.
Walking to the door with the light
flashing between my fingers,
I was the old woman in an older tale,
holding the fairyking tight:
I will not let you go till you show me
the gold, build me the castle, open for me
the door to eternal joy.
But I let him go without conditions
and alone he flew pleading
above the long wet grass.
Published in The Kept Writer, Oct., 2002
I wrote this in 1957, when I was eight. My mother included it in a letter to a friend. Her comment: ”Mary handed it to me and said, ‘Here’s a corny poem I wrote!’” The spelling is as it was.
A bird does fly
up in the sky.
The sun does shine
Like a diamond ring.
What sings a song
Like a bird in the sky?
Why do the flowers
Never die?
The song of the bird
Is the sweetest by far.
The sky is bluer
Then the bluest car.
The wonders of Nator never fail.
The clouds are whiter
Than a wedding gown veil.
“Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and his many accomplishments,
owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”
~Author Unknown
Can you make a planet?
Stars so light till death,
the explosion of metal,
gravity.
Oxygen is breath.
Can you make it?
Transform decay into
food?
Beneath your feet
the soil, weathered
stone, the humus,
worms,
and grasses.
There are flowers,
can you make them?
Trees?
Can you make fish?
Twist lizards into birds,
hoofed mammals into
whales?
Or
can you let them
be? Can you keep,
O you who cannot
make?
Fingers, opposable
thumbs. Larynx.
Can you make a
single eye,
womb, ear, spleen?
Make a mind.
Be still, and make
a heart.
1. The Fisherman and his Wife
The way you can walk is fantasy.
The name you can speak is make-believe.
Whatever makes you think
you can know what’s real?
To find it, you must have no wishes,
but every one knows
that wishing makes dreams come true.
The Fisherman’s Wife wanted to be God,
and even what she was was taken away.
The magical fish still waits
in the deepest trench of the sea.
2. Snow White: The Wicked Queen
Wishing to be fairest, she made ugliness,
for beauty, she made poison.
Without ugliness, no beauty,
without violence, nothing gentle.
Without the dwarves, no one is tall.
Without the Queen, there is no tale.
There was nothing she could do but refuse,
and refusing, she came to nothing.
5. The Sweet Porridge
Heaven and Earth don’t care about you.
They act like a pot filling the world with porridge.
Even if you can make it stop,
you’ll never eat your way through.
8. Godfather Death
Death is like water:
treating all alike,
settling in the lowest places.
To resist is useless:
every candle comes to its end.
In the end all stone is sand,
all sand is stone.
Art the Accidental Apostrophe.
Beauty the Broken Being.
Creation the Crisis
Defining the Death,
Elegizing the Entropy.
Fantastic the Fear.
Gentle the Grief.
Hidden the Hunger,
Ignorant the Instance.
Juxtapose the Joyous.
Kiss the Killer.
Love the Listener.
Music the Monstrous Miracle.
Never the Needful,
Only the Occasional.
Portion the Present,
Question the Querulous,
Restore the Ridiculous,
Syncopate the Synchronous!
Terrible the Telling
Under the Umbrella.
Verify the Verse:
Wish the Words,
Exercise the Excellent.
Yesterday You Yelled Yes!
but later,
there will be
nothing but Z.
This is best done out loud, with a chorus. I wrote it for the Beltane gathering in the Waterworks forest.
We are the Humans, we sing for the soil:
Heart of bedrock, stardust, volcano,
ocean and river, the grinding of glacier,
weather and fire, bone, leaf and shell.
We’re Humans from Humus, Earthlings from Earth,
and we sing for the soil, yes, we sing for the soil.
A city of beings lives under our feet:
earthworm and nematode, microbe and mole,
amphibian, beetle, fungus and vole.
We’re Humans from Humus, Earthlings from Earth,
and we sing for the soil, yes, we sing for the soil.
We stand here as Humans–from Humus we’ve come:
water and mineral, microbe and air.
The soil is our mother, our sister, our teacher,
she feeds us, she holds us, she carries us in.
We’re Humans from Humus, Earthlings from Earth,
and we sing for the soil, yes, we sing for the soil.
We are the Earthlings, we grow from the ground,
this ground made of stardust, of water, of death.
May we keep our feet rooted and keep our hands deep
in the Earth that gives our young planet her name.
We’re Humans from Humus, Earthlings from Earth,
and we sing for the soil, yes, we sing for the soil.
Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save–
they just stand there shining.
~Anne Lamott
1.
The ferry from Digby to St. John
moved through fog so thick
that all the metaphors applied.
When we slid into the midnight harbor,
no sound but the deep horn and the bells,
nothing visible beyond the circle of our selves
but a blurred path of light.
2.
Solitary, tall and white it stands.
All night, and every stormy day
it flashes one clear message:
Keep away, keep away, keep away.
LIKE BUGS AND WEEDS
It grows, multiplies in the dark of its own accord
like bugs: aphids appear out of nowhere
on sunflower leaves and orange milkweed.
Thousands of golden squash bug eggs,
their horrible nymphs. Fat potato bugs.
Darting cucumber beetles, iridescent clouds
of clattering Japanese beetles–
foreign invaders of roses and beans.
Or like weeds: Virginia creeper
creeping up the guy wires, smothering the dogwood.
Golden parsnip with its burning juice–
the dreadful Midas Touch. Endless annoyance
of sorrel in the onion rows. The clutter
in my house happens in just that way:
shelves teeming with books I will not read, or read again,
parasite dresses clinging to closet poles,
pictures creeping up the walls.
Vases I don’t remember loom from greasy shelves,
newspapers, magazines infest the coffee table.
Weird unwelcome teacups reproduce in corner cupboards
and fluttery notebooks lurk in every drawer.
Mary F. C. Pratt
published in Blue Unicorn Oct., 2006
By the 1990’s, Mrs. Wilkinson was the only person on this side of the bridge who believed in fairies anymore. The people across the river, in the hills, have never stopped believing. The houses over there are far apart, and the roads through the woods are lonely.
~A History of West Wilton, Vermont
GRAM
Gram came down to live with us after Mother died.
Mother fell down the stairs and hit her head, Gram said,
but I was really little, so I don’t remember.
Anyway, Gram came from up there, the other side of the river.
Folks are different up there, they live different,
don’t visit much. It’s like they’re on their own.
We were always poor, but Gram made the best of everything:
drapes out of sheets, dresses out of drapes,
dinner from whatever was at hand–squirrel sometimes.
She was a real good shot.
When my sister cried for a dressing table
Gram made her one out of an old carton,
covered it with some magazine pictures she saved
and stuck on a coffee can lid for a mirror.
They said she was a pretty woman
when she was young, but when she got old
she had squinty eyes from looking at the fairies.
Some people have that kind of vision, like cats.
Owls. They can see in the dark.
Gram was real good at games.
She made a game out of being quiet
those times Daddy was sleeping it off,
and she taught us I Spy, to pass the time afternoons
we had to sit outside the hotel, waiting for him.
But then there was the accident
the summer I turned fourteen.
They put her in jail.
Once when I went to see her there,
she told me the Queen had come,
tried to get her out,
but the bars were iron
so she couldn’t pass.
THE FAIRIES
Their land is bigger than you’d suppose.
Like the sea it disappears into the sky,
above the trees, one smudgy line.
First time I went there, the Queen took me,
wanted me to marry her youngest.
I wouldn’t.
He was handsome enough, but
there was something
not quite right about him:
the way he smiled, maybe the way
his nails grew long and blue-tipped
instead of white and pink.
Some people think it’s those big ones
who cause the troubles.
But it’s the little ones, imps, I call them.
They’ll sour the milk and stale up the bread,
leave footprints all over a fresh-iced cake
just for the fun of it.
Now and then I find in my dresser drawers
the handkerchiefs all rearranged. Once
an embroidered one folded like a bedroll.
And then there’s changelings.
Happens all the time.
There’s at least three in this town I know of.
I’ve seen those babies they took
when I’ve been over in their land–
they don’t remember their mothers,
but sometimes, early mornings,
they get a longing look.
They’re mostly happy;
fairies take good care of them.
Back here the mothers
say “Trouble. This baby
is high-strung trouble.”
They wouldn’t believe me if I told.
But those big ones now, on their horses so white
it looks like the moon is out even when it isn’t,
they go about their own business.
‘Course they can be dangerous if you don’t watch out,
but so is anything worthwhile.
As long as you use your head, they’ll do you no harm.
Used to be, folks didn’t talk about them,
or they called them other names.
But if they’re fairies, why not say so?
Truth is truth, and it will out, like they say.
It hasn’t done me any harm I can tell of.
It had been a great many human years since there were Believers, and they were exceedingly rare in what they call “The New World.”
~The Royal Chronicles, MCVII. 5973A
THE PLACE
There is deep water running underneath,
and far beneath the blue clay
the stone body of a great fish,
and deeper still the shards
of a fallen star.
Their bones come from that,
but only a few of them understand.
MFCP
This is a continuation of the Mrs. Wilkinson series.
IN THE GARDEN
These here are bluebells.
The fairies ring them at night.
I can hear them when there’s no wind.
And here’s daisies, of course.
They come up volunteer, and I let them be.
I like the peonies because they stay put.
Gram came down and planted them
after Mother married Daddy.
She wanted her to have something pretty.
They’ve been here longer than me,
and likely they’ll be here after I’m gone,
but who can say for sure?
Strange things happen.
Those black hollyhocks there,
no one ever planted them.
I keep digging them up
and back they come.
I think it’s Gram,
trying to tell me something,
but I can’t make out what.
Not many humans,
even in the older days,
had her gift.
She could see in the dark,
see through shadows.
She knew the difference
between moonlight
and substance, between
the husk and what lay without,
or within.
Her one daughter was all bound
to seemings, the human form
of that sad affliction she married.
Almira might have healed him
but she had no time.
Once he had done the murder
there was nothing she could do.
She did well with the children.
Martha was ordinary,
but Evelyn–
Evelyn soon will comprehend.
They see our feet below
the drapes of cloth, the stripes
of purple, green, yellow.
They watch our careful steps.
The red-tongued dragon dips
and dances down the street.
They see our human feet.
Outside the air grows warm.
We follow in parade
inside the glittering worm,
this mask that hands have made.
Under the dragon’s shade,
dancing the dragon’s path,
we breathe our human breath.
“O, the dragon,” they say,
those people standing by,
but we are far away,
here in another sky;
we’ve risen in the air
above temporal things,
aloft on dragon wings.
Inside we are a world
untroubled by the rest.
Over our heads we hold
the dragon, manifest
its benediction. Blessed–
and blessing all–we rise
seeing through dragon eyes.
Three years ago, I was IN a Chinese Dragon in a Fourth of July Parade. This poem, in Rhyme Royal, is about that experience.
Mary F. C. Pratt , July 4, 2007
THE ACCIDENT
Gram couldn’t sleep one night.
Said she never could when the moon was full
or when it was new, like it was that time.
So she was just lying there wakeful,
and she heard the hens start to make a racket.
There’d been ‘coons around,
and there’s minks sometimes, so close by the river.
So Gram got up and got her gun
and went out the front door real quiet
and sneaked around back. She saw a bear
standing on his hind legs, coming up towards the house.
‘Course, like I say, Gram could see in the dark.
So she took aim and shot.
When we heard, my sister and me
came running out in our nightdresses,
and there was Gram, standing with the gun in her hand,
and Daddy lying dead on the ground.
THE HUMANS
Most of them don’t know
the size of things:
everything is bigger and smaller
than they suppose.
We watch them come and go
while they stay where they are.
The difference is all time
in a shape they cannot see.
If we live long among them
we grow small and tedious.
If they live long among us,
they grow transparent and slow.
The effervescent effluvium
spinning along a willow road
under the greenish moon of morrows.
How does the tramscar fall, or fly?
Or does the winged serpent
under window sill windings
actually sing its old barroom song again
while the last nightingale
plaintively chirrups nonsense
from the rusty leaves?
This is what comes out
when the pen moves of its own accord:
a kind of gibbering like chipmunks
in the woodpile dusty and scolding
the dogs that run and caper,
the pigs that fish for rodents
with hooks of bone and dew.
I put one of my poems on the silly website “I Write Like” and the answer came back “James Joyce.” This is one I wrote years ago, having just dug my way through “Ulysses.”
Before the separations
all was a garden
that grew of itself,
every flower awake.
There are places, still.
Almira knew and Evelyn knows.
There are very few
who can see each silver petal,
pollen grains, the throbbing veins
in every feathered leaf.
Some lawyer tried to make out that Gram was crazy,
but she wouldn’t let him.
Said she wasn’t any crazier than anybody.
She told the judge and jury it was a shape-shift,
said that even though Daddy was from this side
he had that trouble.
His great-grandmother was a Martin, after all.
Martins were always shifty.
Likely that’s why they took so easy to drink, she said.
It’s hard, knowing you could change,
one minute a man, next a fox or a rabbit or who-knows-what-all.
Daddy came out a bear.
She’d been suspecting.
There’d been a bear about sometimes, winters, she said,
when everyone knows they’re supposed to be up in the hills asleep.
She would have shot anyway, she told them,
even if she knew it was him.
They can be more dangerous even.
It was because she said that, they sent her to jail.
She hated being cooped up and all,
only took her a couple years to die.
My sister and me managed pretty well,
and there weren’t any family around,
so they let us stay on in the house.
I’ve been here ever since.
Married Arthur when I was seventeen,
and he farmed a bit with me when he wasn’t logging,
but he didn’t last too long.
Stepped on a nail and got blood poisoning.
Never had time to have a baby,
and never wanted another man, after Arthur.
My sister left here right after Gram died,
went out west and never came back.
I hear she’s dead now, too.
I’ve kept things up pretty well, I’d say, like Gram did.
Still have hens, the flowers, and pumpkins and beans and that.
I spend all summer out in the yard.
I don’t like winter so much.
The house feels cramped then,
what with the imps and all,
but I keep busy, keep things tidy.
Gram would have wanted it that way.
There is a new book out about Irena Sendler and the students who brought her story back into the light: Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project, by Jack Mayer. The research done by Jack and his wife Chip inspired this suite of poems:
RIGHTEOUS GENTILE
This must never be forgotten: life goes on.
Irena Sendler has been named a Righteous Gentile:
she rescued 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto.
Names were written on slips of paper, buried in a jar under an appletree.
Irena Sendler has been named a Righteous Gentile:
elaborate false identifications, map of the sewers, every city wall.
Names were written on slips of paper, buried in a jar under an appletree.
Because this will soon be over I will give my child to you.
Elaborate false identifications, map of the sewers, every city wall;
babies were wrapped as packages, carried away on the trolley–
because this will be over soon I will give my child to you–
parceled child cried out in Yiddish; driver evacuated the trolley to save.
Babies were wrapped as packages, carried away on the trolley;
older children remembered: parents, the terror, all that was lost.
Parceled child cried out in Yiddish; driver evacuated the trolley to save:
ordinary people, their terrible decisions, hidden lives, their shame.
Older children remembered: parents, the terror, all that was lost;
babies adopted, baptized, alive, brittle family names vanished away.
Ordinary people, their terrible decisions, hidden lives, their shame.
Man hiding children shot his neighbors who came to say they knew.
Babies adopted, baptized, alive, brittle family names vanished away–
because I might be killed I will let my baby go–
Man hiding children shot his neighbors who came to say they knew.
This must never be forgotten: life goes on.
APPLE TREE
I was a twig of apple
torn from my tree–
it bled.
Trimmed and grafted
I was fed
foreign sap like bitter water.
In spring, the bees.
My petals fell
but I did not die.
In autumn
I wonder why
other branches
bear yellow fruit
while mine,
on every swollen fingertip,
is red as blood.
THE PARTING
They took me in: kind.
I took their name; Their Jesus-
mark in the center of my forehead.
They gave me future; I took it
in both my hands: hiding, silence,
all of it, the price.
No picture of my parents.
I cannot now remember
their faces. But the parting:
my mother did not cry.
Go, she said, just go.
My father would not release
my hand. We’ll bring him back
the woman said, over and over:
I promise. We’ll bring him
back. When this is over
I promise we’ll bring him back.
DREAM
Darkness around me,
a dream of sound:
rustle of paper
tick-tick-tick-tick
voices muffled
as though through ash
weeping far away
When I cry out I am alive, afraid
in a tongue I do not know,
a lurch and rumble,
swift silence,
quick steps.
I move rocking
above the ground.
THE TROLLEY
Yes, I knew what they were up to but
I didn’t much care:
my life barren enough
in the gray of this city,
the damned trolley,
every day the stinking crowd.
Fewer people–maybe not
a bad idea, in the long run.
But it was a baby voice
like my daughter’s
just learning to speak.
I don’t know what she said
but I knew she was scared.
I didn’t think–just did
what any decent father would do.
SHOOTING
So often on the steps or streets
we spoke: How is his wife? His child
with measles, or the price of bread.
They would help me, I thought,
if I were in need, and I, them.
But at my door that morning,
softly saying they knew,
and those children still asleep:
so frightened, so small,
by now their parents–
well, who can imagine,
and who wants to believe–? The gun
I’d kept in the cupboard close, in case.
What else could I have done?
MY TIME
Now is my time
(or now the time is mine).
There are children in my city
(although I live outside).
Danger, danger,
and what will the powers do
and what will I do
and what am I doing
in my time?
What am I doing
with my time?
MFCP–This was published in HABURAH NEWSLETTER, in Middlebury, Vermont, February, 2006
She left me this ring.
It’s emerald, see?
The Queen gave it to her
one time when she was there.
I was a little scared of it
to tell the truth,
but when I told the Queen,
she said I should wear it on a chain
instead of on my finger.
There’s likely no power left in it,
but why ask for trouble?
So I don’t. I just keep it here,
and now and again
I take it out and look at it.
It reminds me of Gram,
and the times I’ve been up in their land,
all the pretty things I’ve seen.
I haven’t been there for a long time,
but I guess someday they’ll come get me and I’ll stay.
Anyway, that’s what I hope.
I’ve got nobody here now,
and I like it there pretty well.
Here:
glass dragons on strings
eggs in ancient patterns like things on the walls of caves
bracelets of beads, leather and bone
golden bowls like Midas-touched baths
castles and apples on boxes and stools
amphibians with golden crowns and sapphire eyes
silken scarves twisting blue as the sea
You have come to this hall
as you suppose, to purchase beauty:
take it home in a paper bag
to put in a cupboard or hang on a wall.
But things here shift and hatch and grow,
peck out of their crackled wax-dyed shells.
Some things will never belong
Look:
this retired art teacher in a long orange dress
has painted appletrees on boxes,
cottages and castles on chairs.
Her shoes are silver slippers
the color of her curling hair.
She drinks water from a blue bottle
as two whistling peasants pick ripe apples for the Queen.
Here all around you
dolls with curious eyes peer out
from behind their maker’s skirts,
velvet frogs croak silently while above
a giantess binds dragonflies with gossamer thread.
And all along the pathways, echoing between the trees,
voices fall and rise, accompanied
by high thin whistles of small clay beasts and birds.
Here
where the potter sits
bowls and teapots sprout like weeds.
His brown eyes vanish when he smiles at you.
Earth is under his nails
and in the patterns of his hands;
as he turns the wheel
the universe expands.
MFCP, July 19, 2006
EVERGLADES
TRAVEL
I didn’t much want to go,
not caring for adventure,
what to expect,
imagining
alligator attack,
drowning in deep water,
some vicious consciousness,
so far away from home.
The long train ride,
whistles in my sleep,
tug away from every thing I knew.
TEN THOUSAND ISLANDS
Because it’s tidal,
easy out toward the islands:
piles of shells in the shallows.
Mangrove roots red and tangled
dripping shells,
dripping mandrake-shapes,
wading seedlings gathering shells,
shell-sand grinding the canoe.
Sand crabs, mysterious digs
and arguments.
The strangeness of these fish.
Bromeliads arranged and mosses,
deep green shades, mosquitoes
between the trees.
All between the gumbo limbo
and mahogany, all along
Calusa paths.
Thick water silence,
green-gray shell-made clay,
islands the mangroves made,
Calusa made.
Hours of slow shell-grinding,
drip of water from oar,
drip from mangrove thick leaf, tangled root.
Then easy in,
the shallow tide slip gray-green.
PLUMAGE
To have without acquisition:
The new hat, but not on the head,
only the eye seduced with plumage.
Great Egret dressed in lace and masked in green,
Green Heron wing, Little Blue Heron blue,
Purple Gallinule: purple feathers, bill red and lavender.
Guy Bradley gave his life,
shot in the back on the shell-shored island.
Plumes worth more than gold.
Now they stand unconcerned, preening,
across the water among the trees.
Not enough water, the long grass river
not long enough,
but enough for now.
EL LAGARTO
Terrible Lizard among us,
slowstep by step,
heavy lids the somnolent disguise.
There! a gentle drift, clear water;
there! the muscled tail winding snakewise
while each wading bird
steps delicately aside.
Its appalling ignorance,
the warm wet brightness of its home.
ANHINGA TRAIL: LIFE LIST
Underwater birdsnake anhingas brown, black,
sliding up, the speared fish tossed and caught,
white puffs of nestlings fed in the limey trees,
spreading tail, the arching display of black and white.
Little white little blue heron blotched with blue
in the molt, one glossy ibis, ordinary cormorant
eyes sapphire and obsidian, the orange of its bill.
Great blue heron. Woodstork. White ibis.
Egret, egret, golden-shoed egret.
MARGERY STONEMAN DOUGLAS
Margery Stoneman Douglas
did not go slogging,
did not count the woodstorks,
homely as she, as endangered.
In her airy house she wrote the history, letters;
in palaces of power the old woman raised her voice:
Boo louder! Can’t you boo louder?
and so what is left is left.
Her stork-face and unflattering hat,
comprehension of necessary salvation,
typing fingers dripping green water,
blue plumes, white plumes,
mahogany, bromeliad,
Mikasukis, Cow Creeks.
Everglades whispering
River of Grass, River of Grass,
the name she gave.
YEAR WITHOUT
I stopped asking.
Things happen anyway,
we stay or go:
never what I think.
And yet,
there is a kind of love,
a river slow as Everglades
moving through sawgrass,
flood sometimes,
sometimes dry.
Not deep, but wide,
and most days enough
to float the canoe.
NOVA SCOTIA VESPERS
Five days.
Already I’ve forgotten
how to pray.
Nose full of dust and salt,
ears full of silence,
boats, birds.
The sea is grey crayon lines on the sky.
Yesterday when I was looking, a right whale
leapt all out of the water,
a plume of foam
with dolphins dancing high around.
I have eaten too many fish
drunk too much wine
watched too many hours in the sun
no words
LATE FERRY
Breaking out of deep sea fog
in moist full moonlight
buoys rocking bells
We’re all coming ashore.
Who of all these passengers
gets to make love tonight?
Lean brown lovers kiss on the deck
their smooth hair blows together.
A fat grey man and his shabby wife
eat potato chips in the snack bar,
their feet touch under the table.
When he brings her coffee she smiles,
with one rough finger strokes his hand.
We just returned from a trip to Nova Scotia. I wrote these poems in 1998, and here they are, in honor of that trip.
THE SHAPE-SHIFT
After he killed Almira’s daughter
he couldn’t control the changing.
It had always been hard for him–
his granny didn’t live to teach him–
and the drinking didn’t help.
We did what we could,
but he was blind as a bear.
THE PRISON
The prison was terrible for Almira.
Not even I could pass the iron bars,
but a mouse-fetch from her house
brought her my ring
so she was able to go free.
There will come a space
when Evelyn will turn.
She’ll touch a yellow bird,
or watch a squirrel crack a seed.
Or maybe the sight of a single blossom,
or the thought on one clear night
that even the stars will die.
She’ll put the ring on her finger
and we’ll come.
And she’ll keep her house
and tend her garden
and everything will change,
the way it’s always been.
Several years ago, I wrote little pieces for The Five Town News, a lovely local monthly. Here’s one of them:
The black and white cat is stretched full-length on the bare wooden floor, immobile. The old dog’s tongue is lolling out of her mouth and she pants non-stop. I can’t get her to walk with me, even in the relative coolness of the early morning. Clothes don’t dry in the soggy, motionless air. The only place in the house where there is relief is the basement, and that is too full of mold and junk to be comfortable. It no longer matters if I close up the house before the sun heats the air; the nights aren’t any cooler than the days anyway. Hot, hazy, and humid: Vermont at its worst.
When I was a child, we spent those long muggy days in an ancient, gnarled crabapple tree that grew in the field that surrounded our house: The Crabapple Tree. Each member of our neighborhood girl gang had a branch that was her own, and we sat on our branches for hours, reading comic books and “American Girl” magazines, talking about boys, pretending that we didn’t hear our mothers calling us home for lunch.
We invented scores of secret clubs and stories: we were woods fairies and Robin Hood and his Merry Men, we traveled West endlessly in the old wagon–”The Buckboard”–that a neighborhood father had set out in the backyard. We were wise and provident Native Americans gathering black-thorn berries and chokecherries and hard wormy green apples for the winter ahead. Once we packed chokecherries into bottles that we had collected from the roadside ditches, and filled them with water from The Brook. This homebrew was confiscated by our mothers, who explained to us that we didn’t know who had drunk from the bottles, and that The Brook was actually runoff from the ditches, and that some berries were poisonous. But what did mothers know then about water or fruit or providing for the winter? We didn’t tell them about rolling wild raspberries in dried leaves from The Willow Tree and eating them–soft sweet and seedy in crunchy, smokey shells. We didn’t tell them about trying to make bread from Wheat–the thin grass that grew everywhere in The Field, and that resolutely refused to grow seeds.
They knew about the corn-grinding. My father had brought us a great treasure–a cracked wooden bowl reject from Kennedy Brothers’ factory in Vergennes–and when the sweet corn began to ripen, we stole into the field and picked the ears and husked them and tried to make meal out of the pulpy yellow kernels.
When it was very, very hot sometimes a a kindly adult would invite us to come over and “run through the sprinkler,” and we did, shrieking and splashing. Our mothers tried, most often in vain, to catch us before we left the wet and grassy prints of our bare feet up the back stairs and through the slamming screen door and down the hall to the bathroom. (Does anyone still have a slamming screen door with a spring in the middle? And how in the world does one close a door like that without slamming it?)
We picked wildflowers all the hot summer days, and made crowns of vetch and clover, and told our fortunes with buttercups and daisies; and in the quiet breathless twilights we played Kick-the-can and Statues and Giant Steps. Sometimes we’d go for rides at sunset, and Dad would stop for creemees and drive home the long way while we made the tall cool cones last until we reached our street.
Those summers were endless: long ribbons of time stretching from school to school, Real Life, hours and hours of non-productive activity, dreaming and puttering and hanging around. Was the heat less then? Was summer easier? Was life better? Of course it was, yes, of course. We were children. It was our business to do nothing. We grumbled about our few chores while our parents went to work and cooked our meals and washed our clothes. We lay on our backs in the dappled shade of the maple trees and looked for pictures in the clouds while our parents paid bills and bought groceries.
But my husband’s summers were not like mine. He lived on a farm, and hot summer days meant working from before sunrise until after sundown. He remembers his city cousins who came to visit, clean children who he says were “not allowed to sweat,” and who could never understand why my husband and his brothers didn’t have time to play. He remembers drowsing on the tractor in the relentless sun; he remembers rushing to get the hay in before the rain. But he also remembers stacking the hay bales carefully to make tunnels and rooms in which to hide later and read, with a candle. The difference between town kids and farm kids is most evident in their memories of summer.
And now, we’re the grown-ups with no time, it seems, to watch clouds or build hay houses. We get up early and go to work and come home to do our household chores. We fight the heat with fans and air conditioned cars. If we don’t take care, we forget that there is still good life in the heat. But if we do take care, there are times to treasure: walking the dog (bribed with dog biscuits and promises of squirrels) in the early hazy sunrise while the scarlet tanager burrs away in the top of the big pine; eating popsicles on the neighbor’s screened porch while the swallows teach their young to catch mosquitoes; waking in the still, steamy night to let the cat out and seeing the huge orange moon caught in the branches of an oak tree. Vermont at its worst is still a fine place to be.
August, 1994
by Tchaikovsky
choreography by Isadora Duncan
Here is a call to bear arms, a freedom
to rage. Here three women in orange veils
slam their fists in the air, pound their bare feet
on the bare floor. Their glossy pony tails
lash wild behind them. The two young dancers–
sharp soft animals so sure of their youth–
are ready to leap somewhere else, to prance
off the stage, searching for another truth,
The one old dancer in between–her brave
body, arched blue-rooted feet, every line
and finger-flick–holds us all here, alive
in this hard world, this changing flesh, this time.
She knows the discipline of being free.
She comprehends: there’s nowhere else to be.
~for Patty Smith
Once there were women with baby carriages;
men in bright uniforms,
their black boots and swords.
Once, yellow dogs roamed the streets;
you could see around the doorways
feral cats napping in the sun.
White washing hung from the lines between houses.
People were cooking chickens or baking bread.
Now and again, a red balloon
some child had let go
drifted above the towers and the trees.
Where once there was music,
there are no echoes left.
In this darkness that was bound to come,
you cannot see your broken hands.
Perhaps, when it is finished,
you will find again that house
with the mock orange tree under the window
or the school with the broken stairs.
Perhaps you will meet your mother
all in blue with ribbons in her hair,
or a dim version of your little self
rolling a hoop or dressing a shabby doll,
or the lover whose jacket smelled of lemons.
But now there is nothing
but the whisperings of white-clad strangers,
and everywhere a cold scent of snow
streams from the open doors.
This was a runner-up for the 2007 Ellen La Forge Poetry Prize
I did not like the paintings
of Mary Cassatt:
female licking an envelope flap,
two females drinking tea.
Seductive children: the slip
sliding off a shoulder,
a mother absently fondling
or turned away.
I did not like Mary Cassatt–
this cool objectifier–
until I looked anew and saw
in painting after painting
the expressions in the eyes,
those women and children bored
and beautifully dressed,
reading or drinking cups of tea,
staring into into space,
focused so softly
on nothing at all.
This post is in honor of the amazing Ansel Adams exhibit we saw at the Shelburne Museum yesterday–which is where I also learned to love Cassatt.
Let there be always one more
dust kitten under the sofa,
a few crumbs in the drawer,
a sock with no mate,
a little piece of garbage in the drain.
Once a year,
let there be
no more sugar, or postage stamps.
Now and then, let no one remember
where the hammer last was seen.
Let there be snow in April
and roses in October.
Let the field mice
stuff the air filters
and garden boots
with seed.
Let there be loose
ends:
names that don’t connect,
definitions that don’t work.
Let the data base be always shifting,
one address or zip code incorrect.
Let the check book sometimes
unbalance
by a substantial sum.
And may there be
crossword puzzles in which
irremediable errors were made,
theorems and sudokus
unsolvable,
pieces of God
that make no sense,
philosophies that fail
to account for one critical matter
(music, sunrise, death. . .).
May the physicists never find–
what is it called?–
that theory
that explains everything.
Let the right words slide
sideways
when the dreaming ends,
let some tunes be not quite hummable.
Let there be always
one song
that keeps
slipping
away.
I take the same walk every morning down a town road
past fields in various stages of decay,
old barns full of junk,
a tilting silo, its rusty hoops barely holding the grey slats together.
I pass long white driveways leading to new houses
built in old woodlots or sugarbushes or pastures.
Now and then something catches me up:
a mother otter swimming circles in a pond
whistling to her capering brood,
a long milksnake basking on the blacktop,
two jade frogs crouching in a ditch–
they squeak and plop into the water when I pass,
leaving hollows in the soft mud like the imprints of fists.
One morning, it was a piece of blue
set in the wall of a barn–
the color of cold winter skies–
blue like the best stained glass,
offerings to Our Lady.
The Virgin Mary’s Jewel Box–
Henry Adams’ name for the cathedral at Chartres–
was filled to the vaulting with gems;
the darkest corners made beautiful
because that was the way She wanted it.
It was what She liked.
For a heartbeat I believed that someone
had set such a window high in the old wooden wall,
the barn a cathedral!
So, passing on a hot day, one could slip into
that deep blue shade scented with cows and hay,
sit a minute in the stillness, ask a question,
leave a scrap of something–
a fistful of red clover, a pigeon feather–
to seal a promise, keep a vow.
But it was plastic, after all,
a blue tarp stapled there
to keep out the wind and rain.
Once in a magazine, I read about
the restoration of the windows at Chartres.
People were complaining, missing the patina of dirt
that made the glass look like slides on a dark screen
instead of jewels letting in the light.
Penwood Review, 2008
It was a green unmellow morning
with the dew drying honey on the grass
and the sky eyeblue through air like ice
and the leaves clawclinging to the trees
when I saw Autumn
with the morning wind in his dew honey hair
and the light of the iceblue sky in his eyes,
and laughing, he knelt
and dug his fingers into the earth.
I wrote this in 1971, clearly under the influence of Dylan Thomas and G.M. Hopkins.
“Enough!” they said, but we said “No!”
There were more elderberries on the bushes,
the bags we brought were not full,
so we picked and picked, stripping the thin branches
of their burden of shiny blueblack fruit,
while our husbands leaned against the car and talked of life.
Our sons remind us every year
that two flats of strawberries are enough,
that two buckets of blueberries are enough,
and we never listen. How could we listen
with the fruit singing its scent over those fields?
Now there are apples. All of them.
We pick until our fingers are swollen,
until we see apples in our dreams:
enormous pink spheres hanging
from the misty trees of that primeval orchard,
apples like the breasts of God.
Our barns are full, our freezers are full,
our shelves are full, our attics are full,
our basements are full, and it is not yet
enough. From somewhere down inside
the grandmothers are poking at us:
Pick them, they hiss, pick everything you can.
Winter is on the way. You never know; you can never
have enough. And we will never have enough,
not until all the apple trees of Earth are bare
and all the hoarding places of Earth are filled.
Not until all the bellies are filled
and the children dance laughing
down the clean-picked rows.
A large woman in a pink vest
and a red straw hat said
I said that’s no way to treat your mother,
I said, even though it’s none of my business,
I said, but still. And she apologized to Bob and I,
and I said that’s okay, but I said I wish
you’d think before you talk, I said.
And a grandmother enthusiastically explained
When we get home we’ll read
Blueberries for Sal and this time
you’ll really appreciate it, except
that here there are no bears.
And the child said No bears?
And she said Oh, not really.
Ah, but there are bears. Right here.
They move through the berries, disguised,
picking and stuffing, whatever they like.
There is one across from you, for example,
you’re looking toward her right now
in the very next row. She is picking,
all absorbed, it would it seem, by the fruit.
But Daddy saw footprints. . .
You kids get over here. . .
What dear? No, I’m not finished yet. . . .
I’m too hot. I’m going back to the shade. . .
Last time I saw you, you couldn’t climb the bus steps. . .
We don’t have time today because you need a haircut. . .
And I said, the next time you come, I said. . .
And solemn, my eyes on my work,
I picked and picked, the blue bucket
tied around my waist, both paws
busy between the leaves, taking in
quarts and quarts of the stuff,
determined to gather every little bit
before the winter hush.
I have spent time among trees:
their cambium pulling juices from air, from stone,
roots of my planting deep in the Earth,
life packed into ripening skin,
strong fingers like twigs
dripping fruit.
Untidy trees faded from green,
fall webworm like cobs in the corners
festoon the baring branches;
the floor is a tangle of seedpod,
brown stalk, berry, fluff.
Starlings, swallows string along wires
above shaggy lawns, gardens gone to seed.
Pumpkins ripen on softening vines,
apples bend the branches low.
Orion, day hunter of summer, teeters
crooked over the horizon in the late dark,
moving in for the long winter ramble,
and brown leaves like skittering squirrels
litter the long road home.
1999
I still sleep, soundly some nights,
or lie wakeful watching the moon
spread patterns on the bedroom floor.
The coffee I make when I rise
is still black and deep;
I sit early at my desk
and hear the owls call
from tall pines across the way.
And people I love–
here, or there,
letters on the table,
voices on the phone.
Haven’t you always been,
underneath, afraid?
Nothing, life or dying,
is ever forever secure.
We hear the planes
making their scheduled rounds.
Our brothers are imprisoned,
sisters veiled.
Every morning I walk the dog,
and every morning her paws
make their lobed and pointed prints
in mud, or snow.
This was a September 11 poem I wrote in 2002, questioning whether “everything” Has it?
for the Spring Street Poets
We did not bring poems on papers.
We brought instead little crystal bowls,
arranged them in patterns around our feet.
Leaning down, we poured
olive oil into the bowls,
added fragrances drop by drop.
After Karla had poured her oil,
we said Stop.
The smell of green
is enough.
I wrote this in 1998. It was a real dream I had after my first reading with The Spring St. Poets.
There is no solution. The great minds struggling
have never found one satisfactory. Meanwhile,
the air is filled with war. The sweet dove
has gone to ground again. Revolution,
disease, burning desert, melting ice.
In the music store, asking for Rutter’s Requiem,
I watched the clerk writing, his left hand cocked
around the pen, his bitten cuticles,
his brown sweater, homemade,
one stitch pulled out at the right shoulder.
I made a sweater once, for my son,
handspun, undyed. Some woman in the town
he lives in now, perhaps while they wait
in line at a grocery store, might notice
slubs, uneven ribbing at the neck,
and wonder if his mother made it.
She did, you know. Some mother made
all of it: sweaters, sheep, the Rutter cello solo,
soloist, pen and cuticles, dove,
desert, air, all those minds.
Make something yourself.
Wind a ball from a skein, cast on.
Follow the pattern.
Do the best you can.
See how it all comes out.
This was written in 2003, shortly after the war started.
In honor of my mother, who died on Wednesday morning
Mother here
now and here
name us.
Here make your wild and messy household
your chaotic piles of branches and bones
with the grass always springing up between
and always the unseen bird calling from high in a tree
and rain falling somewhere and snow falling
and rivers meandering and earth shaking
and small wet joyful creatures jumping
and everywhere darkness and dust and stars.
Fill us with the fire of your desiring.
Teach us to yearn for what you yearn for.
Make us ache and burn and shine and split.
Let us leave the air dazzling wherever we pass.
And feed us:
hold us in your wide lap,
against your soft breast.
Rock us and sing us into life.
And give us another chance.
Teach us to walk barefooted and easy.
Teach us to go to ground singing.
Teach us to open our hands.
When we come to the rim of the volcano
or slide out onto a skim of ice
or step onto a thin branch
push us over, crack us under, let us fall,
and catch us, laughing, in your wide welcoming arms.
Amen.
This appeared in the anthology, Women’s Uncommon Prayers, Morehouse Barlow
I sat on the bookcase and gave tea to the women who interrupted the poem.
I had to ask a curly-haired girl to brace the piano stool, so I could jump down.
She turned into my son as he was twenty-eight years ago;
when he went to open my parents’ bedroom door, I followed.
I had to ask a curly-haired girl to brace the piano stool, so I could jump down.
Jacques Cousteau was standing there next to me, his elbows resting on the rail.
When he went to open my parents’ bedroom door, I followed;
there was a strange woman in their bed, pale, dressed in Victorian blue
Jacques Cousteau was standing there next to me, his elbows resting on the rail.
He said he’d throw cold water on me when it was time for me to go.
There was a strange woman in the bed, pale, dressed in Victorian blue;
it took a hell of a time to wake her. He told me I could sleep here, she whispered,
he said he’d throw cold water on me when it was time for me to go.
Cautiously I climbed down to the gravel entry of the inevitable gift shop.
It took a hell of a time. He told me I could sleep here.
Then there were stairs–the creepy kind, with no railings or edges.
Cautiously I climbed down to the gravel entry of the inevitable gift shop.
I took a bottle and a brush from the dresser, began to paint my son’s little face.
Then there were stairs–the creepy kind, with no railings or edges.
I leaned on the fence, looked up at the grassy ski lift where the stairs had been;
I took a bottle and a brush from the dresser, began to paint my son’s little face,
my son as he was twenty-eight years ago.
I leaned on the fence, looked up at the grassy ski lift where the stairs had been,
then sat on the bookcase and gave tea to the women who interrupted this poem.
Across the ditch, under the trees,
a new chainlink fence, broken stones repaired.
The legible epitaphs:
Franklin S., onley son of Daniel and Atlanta Chipman
died March 2, 1831 AE 2 years and 2 months,
and yours, Atlanta, wife of Daniel Chipman,
died Oct. 27, 1842, age 33 years.
No trees when you walked
this mountain’s stony side:
the forest gone to timber and graze.
You walked among stone and scrub,
the thin green grass.
Vulture, coyote, had not come north,
wolf and rattlesnake had gone.
But raven and hawk searched your pastures;
diptheria, smallpox, scarlet fever, tetanus,
the summer milk sickness, winter hunger hunted you.
.
October when you died
you saw the sun rise as I see it now:
silver through silver across the valley,
Lincoln Mountain through her silver veils.
And at night, brighter than I will ever see,
the stars, thin coin silver moon.
But no orange maple,
brown oak, yellow popple,
deep green white pine.
Not yet along this old town road
old sheep fence grown deep
into these old, old trees.
1.
You always made me tea.
The love and sorrow of your life
tangible in your kitchen
as sunlight through the windows:
your husband dead, your son,
barn crumbled, pastures overgrown.
You carried the tray yourself.
Slow, but I always get there.
At the table you poured Earl Grey
from the green pot into thin cups,
gave me homemade cake, a linen napkin.
Outside, daffodils and appletrees,
irises, roses, blew wild in tangled beds.
What’s the worst thing that can happen to me,
here, alone in this house? I’ll die?
Your elegant French gesture of dismissal,
the amusement in your eyes.
2.
One day I said had no time for tea
but you would not let me go:
Nonsense! No time!
We stood by the sink,
nibbled date cookies from a tin.
More; they’re so good.
I’ve been saving them for you.
Have more.
The first stroke carried you back
to the house by the lake
where you spent seventy summers.
You laughed from the hospital bed,
your eyes open to the sky.
Waves shimmered through your ceiling.
Can you smell the water?
Can you hear the gulls?
When that last boat came to carry you away
you shrugged and smiled again.
Home or abroad, it doesn’t really matter.
There’s goodness everywhere I go.
3.
The day you died, I was picking apples,
snapping them easy off the trees.
Above the orchard, two ravens
and a red-tailed hawk spiraled
in a kettle of rising air
and I heard your voice.
Acceptance, you said, remember.
Remember, to every thing a season.
When the harvest was over
I drove to your house alone.
Someone had raked the leaves from your garden,
piled pumpkins on the wide stone step.
Under the rippled clouds
a ragged scatter of snow geese
so high I could barely hear their call.
4.
You’d had a sheepdog years ago
who woke you one November night.
Your husband got up to open the door,
saw the heavy falling snow.
That dog went up the hill to find the sheep.
We didn’t even know it was snowing.
She put them all in the barn,
came in, lay down like nothing had happened
Why can’t people be like that?
Pay attention to things?
I don’t leave my friends,
I told you, but I did.
Somehow, with all the miles between,
I could not find a time.
We sat one afternoon
in your cooky-scented kitchen,
looked out at the snow falling on your garden.
You began Frost’s poem about the crow
and the hemlock, and I joined in.
We laughted to know
we loved it best.
I would like one more cup of tea with you,
just one more.
I wrote this about a woman I called on for several years. She was quite remarkable. The poem won the RALPH NADING HILL PRIZE and was published in VERMONT LIFE in 2004.
You don’t sing any more, or chatter.
Weather doesn’t matter.
It is important to keep the apple bag straps flat,
most important to lift with your thighs.
What does pain matter?
Hands the color of uncured ham,
ass cold in the wet jeans,
feet cold with water from frosted grass
seeping through cheap cracked boots.
You keep trying to think about war
and Wall Street, troubles of your friends.
You keep trying to pray.
All you can pray is apple, apple, apple;
all you can think is one at a time, one more.
Twiggy remains of goldfinch nests
are bound with trellis twine.
Leaves fall into your bag.
Snowgeese blow away
on the first sharp north wind.
You don’t pick for money
or pleasure or fruit,
you pick because it’s there,
because the crop must come in.
2002
~for Meg
Have we ever done anything else?
Mouse nest in the cooler:
you lifted the mother by her tail
with her babies clinging–
never mind the traps we always set–
and carried her safe to the long grass.
Boxes sorted, stacked on the wagon.
Our usual jokes: how many times?
Don’t count, you’ll be sorry.
Once more, the tractor smell.
Then apples again: Akane, HoneyCrisp,
Keepsake, Jonagold. No MacIntosh now.
No Empire, Cortland. Nothing common.
Those trees with their first bad crop
of scab: unpruned, unmowed,
their last year with roots, with leaves.
The backside of the orchard,
where the house will be.
The old ache across the shoulders,
tall ladder clanging every time
you lift it, every time you change.
Burst of goldfinches, first snowgeese,
sunlight on the raven’s wing.
I wrote this in 2004, the last year I worked at the orchard.
–to light a candle is to cast a shadow
–Ursula K. LeGuin
Hallowe’en came and went, its parodies of terror
grinning from windows and wandering the streets.
Once, all restless souls sought offerings or explanation.
And what is the answer to that most dreadful
question of all? As the sun came loose
from the mountains, a woman of dark grass
sprang up below me, her soles touching mine,
a halo of dew around her head–
icon of darkness, reversal of flesh,
shade of animated clay.
Every saint drags a ghost, and demons
spring from the hands of god.
On a front step a boy in pajamas stood puffing frost
and slapping dirt from his sneakers
while an old yellow dog rolled on a dry bone,
stood and considered, rolled again.
The day I went to meet a man with chickens
I put my bra on backwards:
easy to do, since it was a sports model.
It took me an hour to figure out
why I felt so weird,
but by then I was on my way
to meet the man with chickens.
Language is interesting:
did the man have chickens,
or did I? Let’s try using commas–
I went to meet a man, with chickens–
and rearrangements:
With chickens, I went to meet a man.
I went, with chickens, to meet a man.
I went to meet, with chickens, a man.
I went to, with chickens, meet a man.
But all those sentences don’t apply.
He had the chickens.
I went to meet a with-chickens-man.
He had dead chickens.
I was going to buy them.
Little did the man know he was meeting
a woman in a backwards bra.
I wrote this piece of drivel a couple of years ago, and post it today because I’m going to meet the same man, who will sell me several of his free-range, organic chickens.
We went walking, maybe on your bones;
the keepers of the relics will not tell.
July: two weeks for the news to come
and you named the place:
your future hope declared.
Foundations, breastworks of gray stone,
the star-shaped fort.
Oval spring at the cliff base, cold green water.
Autumn: sticky mud, limestone,
stumps and long yellow sedges.
Wind across bare ground.
Winter: no shoes.
Smallpox, no cure.
Holding down the fort,
building a bridge across the frozen lake–
twenty-one cribs of stone–
to Ticonderoga across the narrows
where in summer again–the glorious Fourth–
your comrades woke to see British cannon on Sugar Hill,
their futility.
Flight to Hubbardton, Bennington.
Delay the nail that won the war,
or so we like to think.
We mark the broken walls,
weeds and sedges overgrown,
limestone forest returned.
We went walking on your bones;
no marker but the curving cedar arms,
no blessing but the falling snow.
2005
Playing with matches.
Building fires in improper places.
Playing with guns.
Getting off cars before they stop.
Throwing things like banana peels in the street.
Being too interested to watch for open manholes.
Reckless roller skating in the street.
Teasing dogs, or trying to catch strange ones.
Leaving scalding water where a child may fall into it.
Leaving rags or linoleum with upturned edges.
Leaving objects on stairs and in hallways.
Trying the “medicines” in the closet.
Playing with electric wires or lights.
Playing around railroad tracks and bridges.
Other examples will occur to you.
Found in The Girl Scout Handbook, 1931
Down, down below leaf and blade
blade and twig, water, stone
stone and mantle in the dark
dark so dark light turns alone
light that turns the strength of suns
through your body be the light
stuff from stars, quickening slowed
word and love make light and fire
daughter and son of earth and stone
blade and twig, water and star
and air, the breath, the wind, the word
stuff of stars shine through your skin
your hair the sun, the stars your bone
moon your daughter pulling water
life of fire, blood of stone
I wrote this for a friend on her Crone Birthday.
With thanks to Sylvia Chapin, who was there.
It rained and rained.
They were wringing out their tails,
they were wringing out their ears.
The Pumpkin Princess in the float next to the Mayor
looked like a Drowned Rat, smiling.
Those with wings had to take them off
in order to fit into raincoats.
Will it be like this?
The final gathering of the Saints
beyond the river of fire?
Will we all stand dripping
and shining in the fading dark,
blinking as the light comes close
and the great laughter draws us in?
Published in Sojourners, Sept-Oct 1998
Snow geese in autumn, their white transience
across the fields of stubbled yellow corn:
below their wings, the sun’s first radiance
casts long shadows on earth’s impermanence.
Tonight the fields will fill with snow. Skyborne
snow geese in autumn, their white transience
recalls the simplest life’s significance.
There are no angels here this chilling morn–
below their wings, the sun’s first radiance–
no gods, no demons, no omniscience–
only the white geese, black against the dawn.
Snow geese in autumn, their white transience,
their great migration one obedience
to one instinct. Why this? Shadows withdraw
below their wings, the sun’s first radiance.
Snow, shadows, death, or life’s ebullience–
questions, terrors, pain, beauty must be borne:
snow geese in autumn, their white transience,
below their wings, the sun’s first radiance.
In honor of the flock we saw a couple of days ago.
Our tribe walks in shoes: our floors are cold, our roads are full of stones.
In winter we cut down trees and plant them in warm bright rooms.
In spring we gather to talk about gravel and common ground.
Summer we play music, wave banners, make fountains of scintillating fire
In winter we cut down trees and plant them in warm bright rooms.
In autumn our children throw eggs, beg like demons in the streets.
In summer we play music, wave banners, make fountains of scintillating fire
We eat corn, potatoes, fresh tomatoes, meats cooked on coals.
In autumn our children throw eggs, beg like demons in the streets.
Our young ones have customs of their own devising which we do not understand.
We eat corn, potatoes, fresh tomatoes, meats cooked on coals.
We light candles to count the years of our lives.
Our young ones have customs of their own devising which we do not understand.
We carry our babies in little chairs; gather our children to teach them our lore.
We light candles to count the years of our lives.
We wait until the weather changes which we know it will because it always has.
We carry our babies in little chairs; gather our children to teach them our lore.
We marry for love. We bury our dead in green fields under stones.
We wait until the weather changes which we know it will because it always has.
We do not tell strangers how we feel because there is nothing they can do.
We marry for love. We bury our dead in green fields under stones.
In spring we gather to talk about gravel and our common ground.
We do not tell strangers how we feel because there is nothing they can do.
Our floors are cold, our roads are full of stones, and so we walk in shoes.
I wrote this about my fellow introverted New Englanders. It’s in the pantoum form, which is really fun to play with.
Has the town you live in a free swimming pool?
Can you step out after school and have a couple of hours
on a well kept tennis court?
Is there a good golf course reasonably near,
with convenient trolley service?
Are there plenty of playgrounds,
so that children are off the streets?
If none of these things are to be found,
wouldn’t you like to have them?
It is the business of the state to see
that all public buildings have a certain amount
of light and air to the cubic foot.
It is the business of the state to see that only
a certain number of hours a day
should constitute a day’s work.
It is the business of the state
to see that food and water
can be brought into the community.
It is the business of the state to prevent
spitting in public places;
to prevent the use of common
drinking utensils, towels, etc.;
to insist on the isolation
of contagious diseases.
The state should offer free clinics
where citizens can find out
what is the matter with them.
Do you see what a wonderful power
an intelligent woman can be in the community she lives in?
Women are naturally interested in all that happens to children.
For instance, if the desks in the public schools
are not of the right height and shape,
the children are bound to suffer in their health and hygiene.
Remember that Public Health is simply good housekeeping.
Found in the Girl Scout Handbook, 1931
for Judith, Katherine, Kira, Amanda and the Gang. . .
Purple cabbage leaves edged in green.
Local onions flaking in their bags.
The last local lettuce wet dripping
down our arms. The smell of Suzanne’s herbs.
Apples from Shoreham and Waltham:
boxes taped with names:
Jonagold, Keepsake, Honeycrisp.
Carrots and potatoes from Golden Russett and Lewis Creek,
Eric and Julie’s Pumpkins and squashes in their piles,
and the local Japanese melons with just a little give.
Winter comes! Remember, remember.
Gather it up, save it all away! Resist
slatted boxes of beans from the fields of Florida–
cherry tomatoes from sterile rows as far as the eye can see,
peppers of brown river water and murky air,
apples from Africa, berries from Brazil,
oranges, oranges, oranges, oranges,
displaced papayas with their fish-eye frog-egg seeds.
I hardly noticed the shift of attention:
when women in aprons intrigued me more
than girls in white dresses.
Look at Aunt Eller, in Oklahoma,
skirt hiked over a red petticoat,
slipping a green French garter up her long leg–
all sense and grace beside calf-eyed Laurey.
And in The Music Man, Mrs. Paroo
flirted easy with Harold Hill,
shook her elegant finger at young Marion
singing simpy dreams of what love should be.
Rosie Brice, too, who taught Fanny everything,
including the difference between love and help.
High school, onstage, in my maroon Paroo dress,
I craved a twinkling stardom of my own.
All that time unconscious, senseless;
but how could I have known?
I need no stars in the sharp light of afternoon.
Now I would not exchange
this confident gaze, experienced smile,
for fluttering eyelids, a rosebud mouth;
Any man worth the trouble knows the difference.
Sadder but wiser, that’s the key.
Now I know the Music Man
would run away with me.
In honor of High School Musical season!
At last, in a gift shop, a restroom
with a toilet that wasn’t overflowing
with someone else’s crap.
But the lock in the stall didn’t work,
and while I was sitting there,
a little girl came in.
Right behind her, a teacher:
commanding woman,
skin not the color of mine.
I leave this one unlocked,
she said, regal,
so I can go through to help the children.
In the gift shop I selected perfume,
checked out the bright silk scarves.
A man I thought I knew from somewhere
hovered in the background, impatient.
I told him to go to hell.
There had been so many toilets before,
in so many dreams, always filthy and full.
So many nights I rounded up lost kids,
struggled up steep stairs.
Always I had to pee.
No one ever seemed to care.
But now, at last, in this dream at least
I’m there: at last, in this dream
there is a tidy place for me.
Smudges of mustard and mayo
in the bottoms of grubby jars,
blood-stained shelves,
elderly milk, uncovered meatloaf,
fish that should have been cooked last week.
What used to be a cucumber in the drawer under a bag of
what might once have been parsnips.
Another: tidy Tupperwear, taut plastic wrap,
each quarter cup of creamed corn or cottage cheese
ready for a casserole,
eggs and butter in their labeled boxes,
crispers of lettuce and celery
crisp and current,
all the labels facing.
More intimate than underwear,
your refrigerator’s contents
reveal who you are.
Underwear tells only your taste
in fabric, whether you are sexy
or sensible, extravagant or cheap,
but your fridge tells all.
Look here: stuff that isn’t even food:
camera film, caulking compound–
a fur hat. Frog bones. Bait?
Or here: one bottle of milk,
two cartons half-full of take-out,
a quarter of a pizza with extra cheese.
~a post-Thanksgiving meditation
This bathroom was not only spotless,
but private, with a lock on the door.
And instead of toilet paper wound around the roll
green silk, and pink silk roses the size of cabbages,
all too beautiful to flush.
Whose woods these were, I think I know,
their House is down beneath me, though–
and yet, they see me stopping here
to watch the streets fill up with snow.
They know, and do not think it queer
I stop without a forest near
between the street and frozen lake
the darkest evening of this year.
They turn, I feel their cold bones shake;
they whisper of the old mistake;
the only other sound’s the sweep
of easy wind and downy flake.
The ground’s alive and dark and deep
and there were promises to keep
but will we learn before we sleep?
Oh, will we learn before we sleep?
With apologies. . .
You’d think we were waiting for bad news.
A red-haired woman in Raggedy Ann leggings
holds on her lap an enormous hoop;
she is quilting on black satin: golden stars, a silver moon.
The village celebrity, solemn and tweedy, aware of his beard,
discreetly refolds The New York Times.
A woman even older than I sits still with her eyes closed,
plastic shopping bags around her feet.
Maybe she is listening to the music.
How far do you think we could get,
all of us together, if we had
a pickup truck and a sandwich or two?
The town crier in his cowboy suit
and yellow hardhat stomps in, announcing
The world is all f***ed up and it pisses me off.
The tire man says Yes, yes, isn’t that so,
and brings him coffee from the back room.
Somewhere up in the Continental Divide
a trucker pulls over to chain up.
In Houston someone makes a tiny correction
to the orbit of a tiny moon.
Tonight while we are sleeping
it will slip unnoticed
across our hoop of autumn sky.
Published in the Quatrain chapbook: Each Unique Moon
A majorly failed poem turned out much better “translated.” The original names are in parentheses beside their translations.
My past Batorandorasseru (Bertrand Russell) stride through the night
Rational thought, intellectual property argument.
Right, the baby Uiriamubureiku (William Blake) story:
Welcome to heaven and hell, is married to another point of view.
Library shelves, wood, old dream is to expand the old order –
Stone table, whispered rumors about the birth of a child’s learning.
Mother did not.
Standing here, I learned to see the belt of the world.
This child needs his mother; the case, I have hope.
The next day, I went a fair way: I woke up.
Children protest over cow push dust;
women “in the beam of my intellectual life,
she Shatsusukotti, (Scotty) cotton candy, the accused,”
It is said that eating the product.
Paper cup, she was elected from a man sucked on a lemon.
Two women in filthy pants, high boots,
two tired women, up all night with lambs.
Now they’re sitting close on a brown sofa
eating toast and peanut butter with their dogs.
Their socks are drying, TV’s on, ashtrays are full.
Two women accustomed to work and work,
their love for one another under the surface
like pink skin under a deep greasy burry crimp of fleece.
The angel comes knocking on their door; he hears
“Come in, door’s open, come on in.”
He steps around cats, pats the sleepy dogs.
He pours himself a huge mug of strong coffee,
sits on the dog-haired hassock, says his piece.
“Yeah,” they say, “A Savior. Great. Glad to hear it.
Just what we need.”
He does not need to tell them
“Do not be afraid.”
This one must against all hope be saved.
Strong and anxious,
bundling at night,
fleeing to another place.
Herod is always there: beware.
Death by design;
and powerless mothers weep
when little ones are not.
Scraps, ideas, bits of goodness,
tiny flickers dancing in dreams at dawn–
gone.
But remember–
the one removed
a desert landscape away–
worth all the rest.
Do your weeping,
and let the others go.
1.
Oh, decisions!
Annunciation, for example–
a pleated pink gown
or rose colored silk with suns?
The gold dalmatic bordered with red?
Embroidered cope with rainbow wings?
Everyone accessorizes
with a lily, or a cross-tipped staff.
It’s tradition.
For hanging out with the Madonna
and Child, we find that maroon
is sweet against the grotto moss.
Our cherubs don’t dress at all;
often the youngest go unbodied.
If it’s a day to Assume the Virgin–
nothing is more stunning
than red or green velvet over pale tunics,
the wings just edged with gold.
White is the only thing for Last Judgement,
and it’s attractive at a Resurrection, too.
But never, ever, a cassock and surplice.
Even with the tippet.
Especially with the tippet.
What’s the point of processing
if you’re not going to be in the show?
Cassock-albs? Please.
They’re so–efficient.
But then there are the glorious choirs:
We’d never get there on time if
one of the archangels wasn’t assigned
to decide about the stoles–lengths, colors,
if they slip into the cincture knots
in priest or deacon style.
On hot nights we like
to wear a light linen alb,
always with amice.
Full-dress orchestra’s divine:
tight sleeves, embroidery,
those haloes with the central flame–
The orchestra’s all about us,
the only thing that ever is.
2.
When Michael is called upon to cast out the devil
any style of armor works,
but when he must accompany a new-freed soul
on the long journey to Heaven,
I find the breastplate, gauntlets and boots alarming.
Wear something soft and comforting,
is what I think God should say.
Put on an apron, like a Grandmother.
It’s scary enough for them, being dead,
so please remove the flashy halo
and for Heaven’s sake, furl your pointy wings.
3.
I used to be an angel,
a herald, the one who stood outside the tomb
on Easter morning with good news.
I wore a white robe on that occasion,
over my cassock-alb.
Sometimes I got to sing.
At Christmas, I got to tell the flock–
gathered in their pews
surrounded by poinsettias–
“I bring you good tidings
of great joy.” I wore
the same whiteness then.
There was red for fire and blood,
purple for royalty,
green for the daily round.
Now I wear jeans.
My vestments are in the attic:
tippet with its rusty shield,
Anglican cassock, handmade surplice,
the bright and simple stoles.
I never had a dalmatic:
and what would become of it now?
The soil holds resurrection.
I no longer assume a thing.
On clear nights I go outside
to hear the singing, faint among the stars.
Child of God
conceived of me alone–
no blood but mine–
tonight I give birth to you again.
Your insistent little body
slips wet between my thighs
after another night, precarious,
on the lip of the abyss.
I give you life
when your time is come;
I feed you and warm you
till you are satisfied.
This time you are born
among animals, angels,
a star hanging over my head
like the only lantern in the world.
OXEN
We stand solid,
breathing mist, chewing cud,
unmoving, unafraid.
Unconsenting
we gave up generation,
the wildness of muscle and horn.
We’ve pulled the plow, the load,
known the whip, the goad,
commands to back and turn.
And here, in this cave, behind this inn,
we saw the birth of God
and shared our manger.
Here we witnessed miracle
and in remembrance,
Christmas Eve, we speak.
Now listen:
The manger is inside you, in the dark.
In you we stand patient and slow.
In you the baby god is born again.
You do not want to touch us,
our lice and filth,
greasy hands that smell
of excrement and wool,
clothes like fleeces
all burry and stained.
But still, beneath your showered skin,
we crouch around the fire.
Listen! something is awake.
Look! the glitter of watching eyes.
And all around in their heaving piles
the sheep doze secure as sheep may be.
Remember: we were the first to know.
They came to us–those singers in the sky.
Remember–Heaven chose the vigilant
to hear the that infant’s cry.
I’m having trouble with the entrance of my anima.
~Bruce D.
Blue is a big distance, the others are not.
Make a circle from from to now.
The difference from but to blue is your big jump.
You’re a little high on nothing.
Your snuggle up is there’s nothing but.
Getting from blue to there’s a problem.
You go and come back by the next blue.
It makes a circle.
~found at a couple of chorus practices
JOSEPH
I don’t know what to do.
I only know my work—
the cradle, the beam, the yoke.
And so I will do my work–
roll our things into a bundle for the road,
mend the saddle, make a walking stick.
I must trust whatever it is,
this god in her.
It’s not what I thought of God–
all thunder and law–
this is a lover—of my wife,
this coming child.
Look at them:
pitiful the weakness
of their little arms and legs,
those minds that scatter
and waver and blow.
So much like
the flowers they walk among,
stem and leaf,
their shadows flickering
swift across the ground.
It’s news they need–
those fragile ones caught in there,
and I–if this can be called an I,
so high around them,
so fresh from the wide clear spaces–
here in my breathless voice
I sing that very news:
In you is born!
And Gloria! And Peace!
All yours! It’s all in you!
Their plodding feet,
pain around the heart,
flesh that could melt
at one touch of my fiery wing.
Our function largely symbolic:
one at the foot of the manger,
woolly and cute,
one draped over a shepherd’s shoulder,
as in stained glass of the sentimental sort.
When hurt or lost or hungry or afraid
we cry, like you.
In our midst the holy baby
holds out his precocious arms
and we don’t know, don’t care,
our only novelty the sheltering cave,
a mouthful of scented preposterous hay.
birches bent in arches filigreed like churches
oak and popple pop and crackle
ash and maple split in time
spruce and hemlock hold together closing like umbrellas
and over all the sharp clear smell of fresh cut pine.
January 8-13, 1998
The future predictive invocable
calls forth something for which I hope,
but roundabout, so unrecognized:
when my son will have had a child.
The past remedial imperative
fixes old things on command:
he will not have been drunk
on my sixteenth birthday.
And now, especially,
there is the continuative declarative imperfect:
I have been being myself all this time.
I have been being this changing woman,
this irrevocable unremedial woman.
Morning Star, Nova, portent of grace–
I point the way and you follow.
I am the bright stability at your very core.
In the long beam of my light
you are climbing the spiral stair
stretched from Eve’s heel
to the tips of your fingers
spread in endless surprise.
That one is crumpled like a scrap of paper
she thought she didn’t want,
but changed her mind, and salvaged,
smoothed out as well as she could.
His is small and bouncy,
no one can catch it–
it’s slippery, elusive–
a transparent glitter-filled superball.
That one is thin, lean, hard, strong,
a wing bone.
It moves swift, deliberate,
no time, no flesh, to waste.
This one: an empty flower pot
stained with moss.
This one: a formal garden
with no weeds, nothing out of place.
Here is one large and welcoming,
wide, soft, slow: a sofa soul that holds
between the plushy cushions
secrets, like lint and scattered change.
I found this in Longmans’ English Grammar, published in 1916 and given me for Christmas:
The shepherd is in the field;
his sister is in the cottage.
The queen was in the parlor;
the king was in his counting house.
The lad has gone to his home.
The citizens fled into the country.
The fisherman is at sea.
A policeman was walking up the street.
The workman was digging in his garden.
The girls were sent to school.
The old man was waiting at the station for his son.
The child fell over the cliff.
Telescope and crystal ball are ours,
all that’s inexplicable:
why and where, how
and who.
Exotic personae,
the deep shamanic voices
in your strangest dreams–
we are coming, always coming
with our treasure:
scent of Heaven,
bitter resin, root of the Mother’s name,
jeweled casket of unshaped gold.
Another one from Longmans’ English Grammar:
Tom is fond of walking.
That man teaches
writing. Next summer we shall learn
swimming. My brother
will teach me rowing. Sailing
is not always
safe.
Reading is interesting.
Forgetting is easier than learning.
Hearing and obeying are
different. We took a brisk
walk. I am sorry
for the loss of the knife.
He was found
guilty of murder.
You have done me
a great service.
His accusation
caused her much
uneasiness.
I can stand the stupidity of Kelly Welly
and the way Mark can’t see through her ploys.
I can deal with Mark’s inability
to comprehend that all guys
with sideburns and all women
with beefy arms are up to no good,
but add to that the tedium of Backstage
at Lost Forest, Dad’s armchair pronouncements,
Rusty’s interminable gap-toothed grin,
and dogs smart enough to solve anything
but how to get home. And then,
there’s the perspective.
I never know
from one panel to the next how big
Mark’s head will be, or how long
his legs. My bras range from 32A
to 40DD. The house shrinks
and expands with alarming irregularity.
Don’t even mention
the word balloons: talking beavers,
tattle-tale squirrels, the spying geese.
So now that Mark has left again
on his most recent “assignment,”
I’m packing a little bag,
taking the credit card and catching
a plane for New York.
I’ve got a job lined up
at an ad agency. I’ve already contacted a lawyer,
so I know I’ll get at least half
the royalties. I’ll find a cute
apartment, get some decent clothes
and some furniture made of something
other than knotty pine. Who knows–
maybe I’ll start my own strip.
Who knows? Maybe someday
some porcupine will tell Mark
that I’m gone.
http://www.seattlepi.com/fun/comic.asp?feature_id=Mark_Trail
Please check one:
___This is the Archetype of Poetry: heavy and shining,
it fills ours hearts with song
it sets us yearning for the green hills of Heaven
it makes us want to love every one, every thing we see
it is giving us the courage to do what we can to change the world
it is much too good for our paltry publication. We will get back to you when we’re worthy.
___This is a fine poem.
Clearly you have the vision, you have the gift,
and yet we have no room for it in our current publishing schedule.
Sorry.
___This has potential.
Keep up the good work.
Keep sending us things.
Thank you.
___Perhaps you should try another kind of writing:
Greeting Cards?
Manuals for Toaster Ovens?
Good luck.
___We don’t publish stuff like this.
Please remove our name from your mailing list.
___Who in the world told you you could write?
Your work sucks.
Get a job; get a life.
I wrote this years ago. Don’t ask me why.
Forgive the dancer.
While the Pakistanis and Indians are testing bombs underground
she is tying on her long skirt,
lacing her shoes,
pinning up her hair.
While a little boy shoots up a cafeteria full of kids in Oregon
she is stretching out her legs,
bending her back,
arching her feet.
While three white men in Texas drag a black man behind their truck
she is tuning her heart and her breath
to the heart of the music,
the breath of the drum.
As bitter rain burns through the trees
she leaps into the light,
opens her pliant arms to all the wonder in the world.
Old events, but the point is the same.
Snow banked over the steps
of the summer theater,
its bells silent as bats.
Hydrangeas draped
with white lights
and soft brittle flowers.
Stars follow their cold roads
above the clouds.
I cannot stop the snow.
Lights from the windows
pattern the outdoor trees
with the ghosts of owls.
Enough, maybe:
the owl in the tree,
her sleeping face in the morning,
the red tip of her yellow beak.
Enough, bitter green tea
in the perfect blue cup.
Time passes.
Reality of the absence,
indication that the presence mattered.
There is no conjuring
will summon it again.
Enough, the January lettuce
sprouting in the cellar, under the lights.
Enough?
Faces of friends and strangers
over their coffee cups
in the corner café.
Once in a dream,
a baby told me it needed to be changed,
but I looked for food,
never asking its hunger.
Once Augustine wrote of the god-shaped
missing piece, the restlessness.
They tell me it is enough
for me to open the door.
But the door is open,
or there is no door.
Enough, then,
dough rising in the bowl,
scent of soup on the stove.
Enough, the love
webbing like wild vines
from each beginning of time.
Always light poured through
at the top of the broken stairs
and there was music.
Night after night she struggled
and slipped and crossed chasms
on bridges made of twigs.
One night she awoke
to discover she had arrived:
A cold stone church
where a company of actors
practiced a miserable play
while ballerinas in heavy
black shoes pounded
down the yellow aisle.
A red-lipped nurse in clown-
white shattered through a stained glass window
pushing a laughing skeleton on a gurney.
A thin gray man dipped
a broom in a font of glue and pasted
himself to the Eastern wall where
he hung and cried.
She wanted to go home
to her quiet old world
where the gods were still.
She wanted to leave now,
and could not
find her way.
(Who knows where poems come from?)
Son, thou art ever with me,
and all that I have is thine.
~Luke 15:31
Every day he got up before cockcrow
to milk the cows and clean the gutters.
He cut and stacked and hauled,
came into the house every evening
sticky with sweat
and fell asleep right after supper.
His face was always sunburned,
his hands were rough and scored with cuts.
The work was his, and the worry:
the price of milk and grain,
drought or fields too wet to mow.
And the beauty was his as well:
warblers trilling in the hedges,
soft tongues of calves,
the scent of ripening corn.
Raspberries, blackberries,
early apples, sour and green.
Then that brother came home
and there was the party.
A little calf killed,
the beer drunk up,
litter all over the lawn,
and for what?
To celebrate the return
of a wastrel they were better
off without. And his father,
bewildered and happy,
standing in the kitchen explaining.
I know he’s no good.
I know he’ll be off again.
But all he’ll ever get is a party.
Let him enjoy it,
and later, when they’ve all gone
downtown to the bars,
you and I will have a single malt
out on the porch
and watch the stars.
She has been weeping.
He is eating a muffin slowly.
Her right hand flutters helpless
in the air above the table.
There is an empty paper bag before him.
There is a small brown stain on her blouse.
He finishes the muffin
and wipes his hands on his thighs.
She takes a sip of coffee
from her yellow paper cup.
He turns to her,
opens his mouth to speak.
She says, clearly enough
for me to hear:
No. Never. No.
This was published in the very last issue of Hazmat Review. I assume it wasn’t the cause.
The moon in a mackerel sky
suggested spring snow that would not come;
and in the frozen orchard a deer lay dying,
her belly swollen with fawn unborn.
In the road, blood, a piece of headlamp, hair.
Francis came to shoot her
since she could not die.
Not a man to preach to the birds,
this Francis plows winter roads,
cleans the ditches of gravel and trash,
gave his niece money for a honeymoon in Vegas.
He parked his gray pickup in the drive,
walked between bare apple trees,
between winter prunings, with his gun.
I think that each soul looks like a jewel
resting in God’s great dark hand.
I think the deer is red, a garnet;
Francis a diamond, carbon compressed.
I think from his place that saint
calls down the crows, the hungry coyotes,
each to its consecrated task.
Published in Writers’ Journal, May/June 2004
Let’s stop reading about God.
We will never understand Him.
~Hafiz
Come up from those depths
where Prince Axel’s wonder-fish
opens its mouth to illuminate the way;
where the long-nosed chimera
with its venomous spine swims, searching.
Climb out of that claustrophobic vessel,
heavy iron bubble.
Time to leave the blacksmokers,
abandon the tube worms and Pompeii worms,
wriggle away from the hot chemosynthetic womb,
the rapturous, smothering dark.
Instead, snorkel along the surface,
flicker in clear aqua light
with porpoises and flying fish,
clownfish, look-down fish, angels,
the corals in their colors.
Tumble with the humpback,
skim through the right whale’s heartshaped blow.
Try to live
if only for a little,
above that cauldron of cold,
all slippery buttery clay and globigerina ooze,*
scavenge and iron wreck.
With the gentle manatees
cruise the warm estuaries,
vibrissaed noses like floating coconuts
all in the shallows
of thick wet green.
* also radiolarian ooze and pteropod ooze. The “slippery buttery” description comes from “The Abyss” by Prentice K. Stout in a Rhode Island Sea Grant Fact Sheet.
WINTER IN VERMONT
Snowshoes on the porch,
Dripping eaves and icicles–
Snowtime in Vermont.
Freezing feet and hands,
Backaches from the shoveling,
Cold time in Vermont.
Three a.m. snowplows that wake up the doggies
And cause them to bark until dawn,
Roof rakes the break in the twenty-inch blizzard
While gutters snap off in the endless
Sticky falling snow,
Gravel, salt and frozen pipes.
Winter in Vermont.
Oh, to hell with
Winter in Vermont.
is touch. Their bodies remember
sitting back to back outside the hut,
grinding maize or pounding taro.
They waited in the forest, close,
breathing together, waiting for quarry.
They remember stepping across
the ditch between their thatched houses
to gossip, to argue or embrace.
Once they spoke while hanging laundry
or mending nets or minding babies
or scything grain or boiling sap
or making shoes or spinning thread
or pounding nails or setting rivets.
Separated
by settlement or war, they yearned across oceans
or prairies and sent their yearning
in long quivers of ink. Their fingers
traced the letters: Oh my dear,
my heart, how long. . .Now
disembodied
they send their words,
flickering images to tornaway tribes.
Now the air carries in bits
their sketchy sentences, their loneliness,
tears that no communication
without skin or breath can mend.
The words “separated” and “disembodied” are supposed to be way over in the right margin, but I can’t get it formatted that way. Sorry.
She’s silly, I’m silly, we’re all silly
–David Weinstock
1.
What’s the use?
There was an old woman called Nothing-at-all,
Who lived in a dwelling exceedingly small;
A man stretched his mouth to its utmost extent,
And down at one gulp house and old woman went.
I know of a woman who has spent ten years designing her dream house: 8000 square feet for two people. Six bathrooms, three dressing rooms with handmade cherry cabinets, a heated attic floor. She called the contractor once at midnight, worried that the soffit was not the right color against the imported English roof. He told her to have a glass of wine and call him in the morning. Her friends think she will die when the house is finished because then she will have nothing to do.
2.
What time is it?
There was an old woman and nothing she had,
And so this old woman was said to be mad.
She’d nothing to eat, she’d nothing to wear,
She’d nothing to lose, she’d nothing to fear,
She’d nothing to ask, and nothing to give,
And when she did die, she’d nothing to leave.
A man in our town just returned from a trip to Tanzania, where he spent some time in a Masai village. He told about watching a woman there sweeping leaves from her red clay dooryard with a little broom made of twigs. She was wearing many earrings, one made from a film canister. “That’s where,” he told us, “she keeps her snuff.”
(Cleaning out my stash of weird “poems” I came upon this. Whatever it is.)
. . .all artworks are comparable. . . .
~Henry John Pratt
In each, the central figure is alone,
unless, of course, one counts the “little horse”
as one might arguably do. One might also argue that God is
present in the LaTour, although God is not
specifically represented symbolically.
Indeed, if one believes that it is the case that God is
present, it follows that God is also
present to Frost’s speaker.
Frost’s last line, repeated, is a momento mori,
as is the Magdalene’s gaze into the mirror
while she sits with her fingers on the skull
and on her own face. In both the painting and the poem,
the theme of the contemplation of death
is enhanced by darkness:
the Magdalene lit only by the single candle,
the woods only by the dim light remaining on a winter evening
after the sun has set, which in the North is not much.
The LaTour does not present us with the possibility
of moving more deeply into the scene: the Magdalene
sits still, amazed, frozen in one moment,
surrounded by darkness; the painted background
is a close, flat, brown wall. Frost, however, beckons us
beyond, into a darkness that we, with him,
can see between the falling snowflakes.
Like the speaker, we are tempted to go further in.
CRANKY
Step on a hairball first thing
and nobody ever hangs up the towels.
Nothing is right: the tea pot
dribbles, mouse poop
in the toaster.
Two chin hairs.
Dirty glasses
and why does the yellow cat
scatter litter?
If they aren’t pokey,
they’re tailgating
and why do they idle
at the ends of their driveways
with their cars full of kids
too lazy to stand for the bus?
The pencil sharpener chews one side
and that damned dog keeps barking
one two three
one two three
one two three
Freezer burn,
leaky molasses
and the piano’s out of tune.
Somebody forgot
to buy milk
and it wasn’t me.
What’s with the ATM
and the guy with coupons
in the Express lane?
Can’t anybody count?
There’s nothing to read around here
but dusty thrillers
and old Flying magazines
and now even the moon
is crowded out with clouds.
Keeping Lent?
Why would I want to keep it?
I’d rather toss it out,
put it in a box for the rummage sale,
give it to the Deserving Poor.
I certainly don’t need it:
it doesn’t fit any more,
and besides,
I never liked the color.
I wrote this in 1999. Things have changed since then. I’ve always liked purple.
Why were there none that fit?
She could have worn running shoes
with the pink prom dress–very avant garde–
but she did so want to impress–
not the poet she was going with
because he was just a friend–
but the other girls. Girls?
Women in a warren of rooms,
gowned and veiled.
They were remote and polite,
crowded together in those rooms
surrounded by shoes.
She was annoyed when one of their fathers
followed her into the street
and tried to kiss her.
She pushed him away
and walked fast, back to the rooms
where she tried to find the right shoes–
Chinese shoes, ballet slippers,
garden clogs, highheeled pumps–
There was nothing in the rooms
but the quiet women
and piles and racks of shoes,
black shoes, every size but hers.
Martha chopped the onions,
wiped her eyes and hands on a soft linen napkin.
She arranged olives on a plate,
stoned a basketful of dates,
kneaded the small loaves.
set them to rise by the fire.
The light slanting through the open door
cast intricate shadows on the wall.
She could hear the old raven
by the midden, calling to her brood,
human voices, indistinct,
chickens scratching in the dust.
Martha poured green oil from a jug
into a flask of paler green.
The wine cups were polished
the washing water clean,
fragrant with crushed mint and thyme.
And Mary sat at the Lord’s feet, twisting
her hands together and tapping
her foot on the floor and wrinkling
her forehead and making her mouth a frown and
she asked and asked and interrupted:
But what? And then? So that? If not?
And seeing Martha at her work,
she pleaded, Dost thou not
care that my sister hath left me
to ask alone? Bid her
therefore that she help me.
And Jesus, who saw Mary’s distraction,
said Martha hath chosen that good part,
which shall not be taken away.
They spit, my mother said.
I was three and longed to see
that, so I spit first, and it spat.
He hums, my neighbor said,
so the day I found him loose
I shook a can of seed
to lure him home.
He followed, and he hummed.
Now he is dead.
My mother is dead, now,
and that llama at the zoo.
What is said sometimes comes true.
In caves and museums she’s pregnant,
or sitting with a baby hanging from her breast.
Or she’s a giant on a throne,
piles of fruit stacked on her huge thighs.
In shops, among crystals and beads, she’s young:
long-hair, small waist, bare feet.
She wears flowing gowns, flowers in her hair.
By her side a wolf, or a lioness,
over her shoulder a crescent moon.
Even if she’s old, her gray hair flows like water,
she’s slim as a broom, the hands that hold
the cornstalk are smooth and elegant.
She’s always clean.
She doesn’t look like Meg or me.
We wore old sneakers,
baggy jeans that had seen better days,
our sons’ outgrown t-shirts,
baseball caps over our graying hair.
While Rob drove the tractor through the orchard
digging holes in the clay with his long screw,
we followed, planting the slips of trees,
their orange roots wet and coiled, their little buds
ready to break open green.
We kicked dirt into the holes, stamped out
air bubbles, hoed, stamped again.
Our rough hands in their grubby gloves
braced the purple sticks, unlikely babies,
while we circled them, stamping,
in the light spring rain.
~Written in 1999 when I was working in an orchard.
Here’s a found poem I put together from a recent Facebook thing. People grabbed the nearest book (no cheating), turned to page 57, line 5, and posted it as their status.
Their proposal is based on on a radical
redefinition of the four food groups as
fruits, grains, vegetables, and
legumes, consisting of beans,
peanut butter, and soybeans.
Forsooth, our customers could now eat
in safety. Infirmity doth still
neglect all office whereto our health is bound.
The “fruit” of the labor
of honeybees is produced inside
a remarkable structure that is the product
of perfect social cooperation.
That night they spent hours at a time
out on the dance floor,
Raul lifting out of the languor of his ways,
eyebrows raised high, a cigarette
dangling from his mouth, and Lydia
shaking her hips and laughing, her pretty
face jubilant, as she and Raul danced,
in love, basking in the remaining
glories of their youth.
We ate often at Basel’s, a favorite Greek restaurant,
and loved going to the movies at the Lincoln.
The next few hours passed in a whirl of activity:
I then hurried to my tree,
gathered up the hemlock boughs on my bed,
rushed back and threw them over the carcass.
I feel that I have a heart,
and that there is a great deal of good in me.
Paul was at Pop’s.
Thor’s boys, Lem and Stem,
were stupid, all right,
but Danny didn’t think they got
their stupidity from their drowther mother.
She blew out the match, and gazed at me
in a sort of wondering way.
And the heatwave kept coming.
But elements with 5 and 8 neutrons
and protons are extremely unstable
and hence cannot act as a “bridge”
to create elements that have a greater number
of protons and neutrons. The statuette
was discovered during the final days
of the 1990 season at Ashkelon, within
a pottery vessel shaped like a miniature
religious shrine. They must know
that this is not a mere pretext,
but a grievous affliction and so they will learn
that there is no evading the will of God.
It’s Poetry Month. Here’s a poem I wrote when I was in sixth grade.
If I were spring,
I’d make flowers bloom.
If I were summer,
I’d make sweet rain.
In autumn I’d rest,
In winter I’d blow,
In spring I would
Start it all over again!
Yes, in spring I’d make the
Flowers grow,
And soft, sweet breezes
To gently blow.
I’d make the birds
Sing soft, sweet notes,
And fairies sail
In soft green boats.
And then in summer
I’d make it rain,
Over the mountain,
Over the plain.
When rain was done,
And sun out did peek,
It never would rain
For a seven day week.
Then in the autumn
I’d take my rest,
Pick colored leaves
Off of trees I like best.
I’d lazily paint them
Before I take them off
And I’d blow them around
With a big lazy cough.
In winter I’d shear
all my fluffity sheep,
And all of my white
Dainty grain I would reap,
And blow it all down
To the earth far below
And plant another garden,
For more wheat to grow.
So if I were spring,
I’d make flowers bloom,
In the summer
I’d make sweet rain.
In autumn I’d rest
In winter I’d blow
In spring I would
Start it all over again!
A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned,
but we do be afraid of the sea,
and we do only be drowned now and again.
~John M. Synge
I, on the other hand,
am afraid of the sky.
It’s so far away, so full
of things I can’t comprehend:
storm clouds, stars, swift
falcons with pointed wings.
And it is possible to drown
up there, lungs filled
with cold unbreathable air.
L’ivresse des grandes profondeurs
Cousteau called the one,
the deadly calm,
ecstasy of danger.
But I fear the other above all things:
Rapture of the Height–
giddiness of falling,
arms spread wide, the freedom
of a long descent to bedrock,
the aboriginal clay.
Blow out the candle and see
the darkness decrease:
red berries on the yew
outside the window, growing
as the sun rises,
the yellow grape vine
framing the frosted flowers,
gray dogwood crimson, white and green.
Blow out the candle
and the darkness decreases:
what you don’t know,
the smallness of your self,
the wideness of the world,
all the colors of this morning,
the brilliant point
of the morning star,
the lamps in other windows.
Outside your tiny circle
the darkness decreases.
Step outside: so many now,
standing on our doorsteps,
waiting for sunrise, waiting.
(An autumn poem, but given the world right now, here it is.)
It was published in Passager, 2006
Their little bones litter the world;
their flesh fills the bellies of foxes and owls.
They are Nature’s Fast Food.
My cats eat them on the cellar steps.
My dog digs their nests from the tall grass.
They are a pestilence: they leave
droppings in the drawers,
seeds hidden in the mitten basket,
shredded insulation in the basement,
their musky stench wherever they go.
We lie awake and hear them scrabbling in the dark.
Killing these people is hard.
They have hands like my own in miniature,
so fragile a baby could pinch one away.
Their eyes, shining up from the depths of a birdseed bag
plead But we were hungry, and you have so much.
They speak to one another between the walls
so high that we cannot hear.
They make their livings from the leavings of our lives.
I am setting another trap tonight.
O please let there be a Master Mouse,
a gargantuan Platonic Mouse scampering through the ether,
a joyful and Forgiving Mouse,
its emanations sprouting up like mushrooms from mycelium,
so numerous they don’t mind their little deaths.
In the presence of such a Mouse I too shall scamper,
squeak out my delight in the general delicacy of things.
Why would a grown woman dress like the Black Knight
in armor and a feathered helm,
squeaking, clomping through a ballroom
as if it were a battlefield?
Or why a black-scaled mermaid–
fishbody and no feet?
How can a mermaid dance?
Slithering, flopping across the deck,
ungracefully hauling along.
Encumbrance, is that what we want?
We have enough, it would seem,
what with dishes and calendars,
lovers and babies and all.
Burkas and veils, feet broken and bound,
all this stuff of oppression we deplore, and yet
we let them dress us–to dance!–
in mummy wrappings
as if we were dead,
or metallic foil
like salmon
ready for the grill–
Is that what we are?
Our lives are so tight,
squeezed between certainty
and what we think we shall be.
Too many dirty sidewalks, hall carpets,
too many dirty kitchen floors
to tread our ordinary days.
Let us dance, at least, in long scarves,
Isadora-style,
soft hangings of silk and foam,
or in our skins alone.
Let us be loosed, if only in fantasy–
no bones or stays–
our bare feet free
to tripple along the world’s moonlit,
flowerstrewn unpaved floors.
(Written in 2001, after a trip to the City.)
And power consumption, layout, and in our world,
in the second half of the waste, have a lot to get a budget soon.
We are please contact me.
Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.
Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.
Please refer to the slightly different nature.
We have given our hearts away, a vicious bounty!
The heart of the sea, one year she announced Monday 12:59 min.
The wind was howling all the time to gather the flowers to sleep here–
Therefore, please do not go to all the songs.
Great God! However, the traditional belief, I’m rather pagan suckled it!
So, I Lee, comfortable, you are his life.
I need to continue the program in desperately needed form.
Puroteusubijon has risen from the sea;
Smile, hear old Triton blow his horn
The Muse must be in Miami,
drinking sweet tough coffee in a Cuban café,
laughing when a rat scurries across the sidewalk,
listening to the brown-legged mothers scold.
She must be spending afternoons walking
where the água meets the blanca,
watching one porpoise cruising,
one small airplane dragging its ad,
one plump woman airing her tits in the sun.
Evenings she goes to the Italian Restaurant
where three waiters in tight black pants
attend to her.
They offer soft ripe cheeses and red wine,
lightly brush her shoulder when they pass,
tell her the tiramisu was made just for her.
When they bring the bill, they touch
her sunburned hand, sigh when she rises to go.
They promise her
they’ll count the moments till she comes again.
ELLEN LAFORGE/GROLIER POETRY PRIZE RUNNER UP, 2007
Found in Manners and Social Usages, by Mrs. John Sherwood (author of “A Transplanted Rose”), 1884
Nothing is prettier than an owl sitting on a ivy vine.
The owl, indeed, plays a very conspicuous part
at the modern dinner table.
His power of looking wise and being foolish
fits him for modern society.
He enters it as a pepper-caster,
a pickle-holder (in china).
A pun is made on his name.
He is a favorite in jewelry.
The own is having his day,
having had the night always to himself.
In 1897 the bicycle has become a favorite item
and the little wheels are made to revolve
and chase the favored hours with flying feet
down the table, bearing a very good copy
of a rider who bends over decidedly too much.
The squirrel, the dog,
“the frog that would a-wooing go,”
the white duck, the pig and the mouse
are all represented in china or
in their native skins.
Bears with ragged staffs,
cats playing on the Jews-harp,
elephants full of choicest confectionery,
lions and tigers with chocolate insides
play their part as favors
and even the marked face and long hair
of a poet,
the last holding within its ample cranium
caraway-seeds
instead of brains.
found in Home Life in Colonial Days, by Alice Morse Earle
An old author says:–
“How all must regret to hear
some Persons, even of quality
say, ‘pray cut that Chicken or Hen,’ or
‘Halve that Plover’; not considering
how indiscreetly they talk,
when the proper Terms are,
‘break that Goose,’ ‘
thrust that Chicken,’
‘spoil that Hen,’
‘pierce that Plover.’
If they are so much out in common
Things, how much more would they be
with Herons, Cranes, and Peacocks.”
It must have required good judgment
and constant watchfulness never to say
“spoil that Hen,” when it was a chicken;
or else be thought hopelessly ill-bred.
~found in Mind! Vol. 109, Supplement, January 2000
How well do you know your philosophers?
Do the dense prose of Kant,
the wit of Russell, Hume’s urbane smile,
Schopenhauer’s bile and Peacocke’s airy grace
all set little bells ringing in your addled head?
Test your powers by trying to identify the authors
of the following extracts, ripped unscrupulously
from their contexts.
Presented with the human form
we entertain immediately a multitude
of however tentative expectations.
Swinging the bat unfortunately
would involve smashing the cow’s head.
But I wouldn’t get fun from doing that;
the pleasure comes from exercising my muscles,
swinging well, and so on. It’s unfortunate
that as a side effect (not a means)
of my doing this, the animal’s skull gets smashed.
To be sure, I could forego swinging the bat,
and instead bend down and touch my toes
or do some other exercise.
As already remarked, the interest (if any)
of the concluding section of the chapter
does not depend on the unrestricted validity of K.
It is enough if K holds a priori
of classes of propositions
for which L is also a prioi.
The buffalo looks on insolently,
his soul like the sand,
yet more like the thicket,
but most like the swamp.
Whereas there is a view of the mole,
and no front view is a view of a mole
between the shoulder blades.
Such a mole does not stamp the front view
as may approaching death
or a load of troubles,
and so there is no impression of it.
I suppose that sooner or later the physicists
will complete the catalogue they’ve been compiling
of the ultimate and irreducible properties of things.
It is a commonplace that modern science
has given us a disenchanted conception
of the natural world.
Physicalism is the wrong answer
to an essentially trivial question.
The delightful way the various parts of a human body
differ in temperature.
But had the Polynesian culture enjoyed the blessing
of analytical philosophy it is all to clear
that the question of the meaning of taboo
could have been resolved in a number of ways.
The first reply with all answers correct
will win a holiday for two
in the Dept. of Philosophy,
University of Hawaii.
Yesterday we identified some of the way forward — Wolfowitz
Then my responsibility is to name a convening authority.
So I have already named the convening authority.
The convening authority will be Rear Admiral James McGarrah.
And that’s M-C–G-A-R-R-A-H.
He’s a rear admiral.
He is a reservist.
and he will be heading up our office,
the office I talked to the last time,
the ORDEC (ph) office,
the office that deals with the annual review process.
He will be the officer heading that office.
he in turn will be naming people next week;
naming people for the tribunal,
naming people for the recorder,
naming the personal representatives.
So those individuals will be named beginning early next week.
That decision will be made by the tribunal.
So again, three people in a tribunal, they will make that decision.
That decision will then go to the convening authority.
The convening authority, Admiral McGarrah,
will then be able to accept the decision
or send it back for further deliberations. . .
So this process will be very similar in some ways to the ARB (ph).
That is, it will be a fair process;
we’ll look at all the data dealing with their classification
as an enemy combatant;
it will be a neutral board.
So it will be a thoughtful exercise to make sure it is fair.
We will look at all the data available regarding their classification.
And the standard, again, will be reasonableness.
It will be what would a reasonable person conclude.
~found in correspondence from the Department of Defense
Chicago was the first expression
of American thought as a unity;
one must start there.
The first astonishment became greater every day.
Since Noah’s Ark, no such Babel
of loose and joined,
vague and ill-defined,
unrelated thoughts and half-thoughts
had ever ruffled the surface of the Lakes.
Was the American made
to seem at home in it?
Honestly, he had the air
of enjoying it as though
it were all his own.
He acted as though he had passed
his life in landscape gardening
and architectural decoration.
Perhaps he could not do it again;
the next time he would want
to do it himself
and would show his own faults;
but for the moment he seemed
to have leaped from Corinth and Syracuse
and Venice, over the heads of London
and New York, to impose
classical standards on plastic Chicago.
Artists and architects talked
as though they worked only
for themselves,
as though art
was a stage decoration,
a diamond shirt-stud,
a paper collar.
all trader’s taste smelt of bric-a-brac.
One sat down to ponder.
Here was a rupture in historical sequence–
was it real, or only apparent?
One’s universe hung on the answer
for if the rupture was real
and the new American world
could take this conscious twist,
one’s personal friends would come in
as winners in the great American
chariot-race for fame.
The ocean steamer ran
the surest line of triangulation
into the future
because it was the nearest
of man’s products to a unity.
Railroads taught less
because they seemed already finished.
Explosives taught most
but needed a tribe to explain.
The dynamo taught least
because it had barely reached infancy
and if its progress was to be constant
it would result in infinite costly energy
within a generation.
One lingered long
among the dynamos
for they were new,
and they gave to history
a new phase.
Men of science would never understand
the ignorance and naïveté of the historian
who, when he came suddenly
on a new power
asked what it was:
did it pull or push?
Was it a screw or thrust?
Did it flow or vibrate?
Was it a wire or a mathematical line?
And a score of such questions
to which he expected answers
and was astonished to get none.
Did he himself know
what he meant?
Certainly not!
If he had known
his education
would have been complete
at once.
Chicago asked in 1893
for the first time
whether the American people
knew where they were driving.
Adams answered, for one,
that he did not know
but would try to find out.
They might still be drifting
unconsciously
to some point in space
and that, possibly,
if relations enough could be observed,
that point might be fixed.
I have spent years remembering our names.
Now it is time to forget,
to hear our songs,
see our footprints,
know the names we have for ourselves:
He Sits Above Singing
She Walks On Pointed Feet
He Speaks When Others Pass
She Rustles
She Makes Gold Around Her Seed
She Moves Too Fast, Learns Slow
A piece of a long Dadaist poem called “New Catechism.” Questions are real catechism questions and the responses were bits written on slips of paper and drawn at random from a hat.
What is sin?
A gravedigger waiting in his red truck, playing the radio, drinking coffee from a paper cup.
How does sin have power over us?
It drops a mysterious map over someone’s garden gate, listens for an odd bird song far away. It loves the frost, despite itself.
What is redemption?
Redemption is a rabbit so still the dog missed him though she turned her head like radar, round and round.
How did God prepare us for redemption?
With Percé Rock, Chartres, St. Peter’s and the like. Birds, windows, the color of the stones, an old woman smelling of cologne stopping to pick a pebble from the shore.
What is meant by the Messiah?
A lady in high-heeled slings and shorts which display to advantage her rippled midlife thighs.
Who do we believe is the Messiah?
A drift of pale feathers, a torn and bloody wing.
I cannot count the times
I have knitted and ripped this pattern.
Always something amiss:
I purled in the front of the stitch
or forgot to increase at each end
or cabled in the back
or counted wrong
and here I am again:
snarl of bright purple plies
separated and ragged
from overwork, tangle
that in my frustration I did
not rewind as I ripped. Every good
knitter is a good ripper, my teacher
told me, but there comes a time
when the only thing to do
is cut away the frayed and grubby
mess and admit that it was wrong
from the beginning: gauge too tight,
bad color, unbecoming shape, the design
too complex for anything I know.
So friends, when you come together
to wait upon God, come orderly
in fear of God;
the first that enters
into the place of your meeting,
be not careless,
nor wander up and down,
either in body or mind,
but innocently
sit down in some place,
and turn in thy mind
to the light,
and wait upon God singly,
as if none were present
but the Lord.
Then the next comes in,
let them in simplicity of heart
sit down and turn
in the same light,
and wait in the Spirit;
and so all the rest coming in,
in the fear of the Lord,
sit down in the pure stillness
and silence of all flesh.
and wait in the light.
~A. R. Barclay, Letters &c of Early Friends (London, 1841)
found in Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fischer
Orion is hunting woodcocks by the light of the moon.
He’s heading under for the summer;
soon he’ll rise at dawn, then at noon.
He’ll stalk only daytime prey, for awhile:
the hot sidewalk pigeons, sparrows,
dogs panting on steaming lawns.
The woodcock peents his pitiful twilight call,
nods his heavy head, whistles his wings,
chirps and spirals, falls like a shooting star.
Somewhere on the meadow edge his lady watches.
Once while he was dancing in the sky
I slogged through soggy mosquito ground
to see him bobbing in the last light, close enough to touch.
Tonight I sat with poets in a bookstore.
Together we chased our quarry around the rim,
tuned our hearts for all to hear.
One black-eyed boy took a fistful of poems from his wallet,
twittered his longing for a golden girl.
We old poets know our places in the quadrille,
but the floor slips away beneath our feet,
the orchestra shifts like seasons,
the music will never repeat.
Even in the silences between
there are voices in the street, under the lamps.
We can never know where the fire will descend;
when, precisely, the stars will come to ground.
This was a runner-up for the Grolier Poetry Prize (now the Ellen LaForge Prize) in 2001. It’s interesting to me how the word “twitter” has changed since then.
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
~Carl Jung
Scraps from every quilt I’ve made,
linoleum blocks, pillows that don’t match
anything but each other
which someday I’ll recover.
Tight ice skates, mildewed ski boots,
The winter sleeping bag
that he promised
would keep me warm.
The print of a scarecrow in a brown coat
that hung above the piano
till I couldn’t stand it any more
even though my father made the frame.
Mother’s Marine Corps scrapbook.
Textbooks from before the Flood
arguing the case for Continental Drift,
books filled with proofs
for the goodness of God.
Bone china cups and saucers
wrapped in paper and piled in a pail.
Two soup tureens,
a dye pot, a spinning wheel,
dishes I saved
for the kids who bought better ones.
Bearfeet slippers with no soles,
high school notes and sweatshirts,
a blue stuffed animal of unknown species.
A model of the plant Hoth
built of styrofoam and blue rubber gloves.
A broken plastic fireman’s hat.
Cowboy guns.
Campfire girl beads,
a wedding gown,
an opera costume,
a Canadian flight suit,
a green wig, a paper skeleton,
my father-in-law’s last bathrobe.
Tante Lillian’s missals and the portrait
of Jesus’ Sacred Heart I forgot
to put into her coffin.
A Jerry Garcia clock.
A broken lamp
given me as a parting gift
by a terrible boss.
Mother Hölle’s coiling
up thin threads of whirling
rain. Tick, I hear her reel
click. Deer on tiptoe carve a twisty
path to the curving
creek where swallows gyre
at hatching flies encircling
boys who cast and spool
at trout turning
through water’s whorl.
In the spinning
sky, silk dragons entwine,
their tails entangle
in the wind.
There are too many loops here like in bad knitting,
little small burbles of ribbon or thread
that get caught on things–hooks and cleets and rings
and other protuberances. Too many holes–
whatever’s outside can seep in, or leak out.
We sink; we dribble away. The mooring
is tied with a slipknot and the wind is up.
Who knows where we’ll find ourselves in the morning?
There are too many superfluous words here
that are redundant and unnecessary, too much
terrible repetition. There are too many
deplorable adjectives (though clearly hardly any adverbs)
instead of the perfect punchy clear and trouncing
verbs and what’s more it’s all happening here
on this very page, right now, even as we speak
and not in some remote and clouded but highly
metaphorical past or even better in some speculative
and probable or improbable conditional future
or even worse in the dreadful kind of imperfect
ship we all find ourselves in since we keep
sailing on and writing poems like this one that simply is
not at all tidy tight correct and perfectly seaworthy.
for Peter Davison
Published in The Burlington Poetry Journal, 2010
~in honor of the royal wedding, sort of~
He didn’t succumb
to Sleeping Beauty,
that languisher awaiting awakening.
Or to Cinderella–
self-righteousness waiting to happen–
but of course, since it was his business,
she didn’t tell him that.
She did tell him
that he would likely not
enjoy the kind of mother-in-law
who’d imprison her daughter in a rock
or sell her for a salad.
When he left on his quest,
like all good mothers,
she held her breath.
For years.
She worried
about trees grown from goat guts,
lurking dragons, glass mountains;
she had nightmares
about the secret names of dwarves
and stupid princesses with sensitive skin.
But he returned with a woman
who had slipped in between the pages,
who could read between the lines.
For a dowry she brought big feet and inky fingers,
songs about birds, stories about rabbits,
a laugh that could shatter stone.
(More of the Dadaist Cathechism)
What are the Ten Commandments?
A candle, a mirror, a little spring.
What do we learn from these commandments?
Never pass up a chance to ride a carousel, and when you do, be sure to turn and look behind. All the horses with their open red mouths are running at you, bearing wild children with wonder on their faces.
What is our duty to God?
I
Stay open, stay unsure like the fox who never knows from where the rabbit will spring–or better, like the rabbit.
II
Find room for the bits and pieces—perhaps an abandoned car to store things in. Perhaps stacks of weather-gray apple crates found in the empty barn in an orchard that has gone wild.
III
Be like a dog waiting in a car.
IV
Shut off consciousness, be unaware of the pass of time. Wait and breathe, smell, look around, don’t be anxious, don’t worry or even think.
What is our duty to our neighbors?
V
Sail into your mooring one night when the moon is dark and only stars break through the sky and the harbor is absolutely still and the lake black as a perfect stone.
VI
Cosy up to God, toss Him sticks, take Him for a walk, go to His school plays. Become incarnate.
VII
Juxtapose odd things, then clear a space so one can see the connection.
VIII
Bring the stray cat home, place the dying frog in the brook, take the toad from the snake. Give everything a chance, just a chance.
IX
Dance along the plateau of longing.
X
Give your life for the one poem you have not written, the one locked up under the fear of death.
What is the purpose of the Ten Commandments?
To be the sign by the road where the house used to be.
Since we do not fully obey them, are they useful at all?
They are a fence just high enough to keep you out, but not too high to climb if you have strong arms and rubber-soled shoes and don’t mind tearing your trousers.
(More of the Dada Cathechism.)
What is the New Covenant?
The Periodicity of Oceanic Oscillations and Implications for Recreational Opportunities.
What did the Messiah promise in the New Covenant?
Hypothesis, hypnosis, fixation: the breathless anticipation of Whales, a yellow lab eating cherries off a tree, a baby on the side of the road.
What response did Christ require?
A cheap yellow graduation dress bought in a discount store that smells of formadehyde.
What are the commandments taught by Christ?
Keep bottles of water in the basement against the storm. In your bag, a flashlight and aspirin so Death will not catch you empty handed.
What is the Summary of the Law?
A comforting dream of blooming orchards and castles with gardens full of roses and singing bees that never sting.
What is the New Commandment?
A narrow bench with odd legs upon which to set displays of geraniums in silver bowls.
Where may we find what Christians believe about Christ?
Only through osier forests like those where the little ones come riding.
What are the creeds?
Mothers with swollen bellies, climbing up through the branches, above the flood, to wait for the time.
How many creeds does this Church use in its worship?
This Church uses two creeds: An Airport in Canada with Nothing Good to Read and No Money for Coffee and A Stink Bug Laying Eggs on a Sheet on the Clothesline.
What is the Apostles’Creed?
A small child crouched in a summer meadow, weeping because the world has turned sideways and no one will tell her the truth.
What is the Nicene Creed?
A child riding a toy motorcycle as he waits for the ferry to Digby.
What, then, is the Athanasian Creed?
Synchronicities—flocks of birds, people clapping, leaving parties, a whole grand sisterhood.
What is the Trinity?
Easter communion bread stuck in my throat. My grandmother’s tears. “Breath of the People, blow down the walls, O breath of the people, blow!”
From the Dadaist Catechism
So this is what happens:
raw flesh in the new-mown field,
brown breast feathers scattered,
one twisted red foot aside in the stubble,
two ripped wings spread wide
beside the shattered eggs,
vultures waiting for me to go.
This is what I thought you’d give me:
the simple softness of your nest,
some easy safety.
Hide us under the shadow of your wings:
so often I’ve prayed
without thinking what happens,
the price you pay.
So blithely I’d recited that,
and gone my way.
This is the Light surrounding the smallness of the engendering explosion,
shining behind the sun, darkening the stars,
flashing in the lingering raindrop on the unfolding
olive leaf carried swift through the clearing sky,
glancing from the stone knife trembling
over the heart of the bound and plighted child,
pulling and driving the fretting dancing
slaves through the desert and the sea.
This is the night of trumpets sounding in the high places,
in the low places, waking the Earth between,
every creature rising up, winging down
through the old darkness singing
one word, one word, one word.
The flaming sword is broken,
the tree of life spills her fruit into our open hands;
the life is poured out on the ground,
smeared on the door for ever.
The Watcher’s work is done.
This is the night Grandfather Adam rises
from his grave beneath the place of skulls,
he dances with Grandmother Eve in their garden.
We are remade with new breath and the dust of stars.
We dance together, all together
the dance of the bees and the flame.
This is the Light beckoning
from the doorway of the stable in the rock,
blazing fast and fierce through the gray places of all created time,
spilling red and warm from the cup He holds between His trembling hands,
dazzling and glittering around the tomb’s heavy seal
in the deepest night of Earth,
burning passageways in the dark:
one path for every soul.
A shorter version of this poem was published in the now-defunct magazine “The Other Side.” It had been published in “The Living Church” earlier, but the editor of that did not even notify me of its publication–and would not give permission for republication without being credited. “The Other Side” editor considered that a justice issue–so she published it again. I’m still grateful to her. Interestingly enough, “The Other Side” is one of only two places I’ve been published that actually paid me. The other was another radical Christian magazine. Justice for poets!!!!
TIMES
1.
Anytime you need an extra hour
remember you can do it;
no one will care.
Tell your boss, the teachers at your school,
dentist–whomever–TIME CHANGE!
It depends, as Einstein said,
and hours are anyway makebelieve.
Even sunrise and sunset
are most precarious,
depending as they do on balance,
the fine rim of universal turn.
2.
For the days to be long,
for time to pass slow,
there must be markers of excitement, but
why would I want a comet to fall,
anything but this
graceful swing around the sun,
this easy similarity of days?
3.
How the Magical Thinking works:
You notice that all is ordinary,
and you’re thankful.
You’re asking for trouble;
now things will fall apart.
This is no mere superstition.
4.
It doesn’t matter what you think.
Troubles come whether you will or not.
It’s how evolution happens:
adaptation to stress,
the tiny advantage in your genes.
I have stopped handing mine along;
trouble is no longer my necesssity.
But the times don’t listen;
still the auspicious hours arrive,
still they pass.
5.
Listen, time passes.
Listen? Touch it–the texture
like tight wound wool,
rows of pattern knit in color,
yarn around the fingers,
needle click.
Smell it pass–
the coffee brewed again,
yeast to bread to toast.
Can you taste it–
time–flavored like wrinkled apples,
new maple syrup,
the cherry lollipops you coveted
way back, when you were a kid.
6.
Hindus have a Day of Paint.
Children learn early to paint themselves first,
with water color, before someone else does it
in color that will remain till the skin wears away.
7.
Though we might not suspect it,
we are never groundless, here.
We have all the dust of time
solid beneath our feet.
The robin is not chirping cheerily of cheeriness,
nor is the chestnut-sided warbler pleased to meet you.
The black-throated green warbler
does not croon of murmuring trees.
The song sparrow is not inviting you
to put on the kettle for tea.
No.
Each tiny indignant property-rights advocate
sitting in his tree or straddling his fence
is hollering loud and clearly:
POSTED. NO TRESPASSING. KEEP OUT.
Out of here, quickly.
Flee, flee, or I’ll shoot you.
These are my trees.
If you know what’s good for you, you’ll skeedaddle.
The red-eyed vireo says it plain:
Here I am; where are you?
This is mine; go away.
What are we by nature?
Mountains, stars, hands—nothing but the little strings that hold it all together.
What does it mean to be created in the image of God?
Magpie nests of cheap sparkling spangles, sequins, paste, lamé, rhinestones, glass marbles glinting in scintillating light.
Why then do we live apart from God and out of harmony with creation?
We are a man waiting to be shot standing on the edge of a shallow grave, removing his shoes, arranging them toe-to-toe, rolling his socks neatly and tucking them inside.
Why do we not use our freedom as we should?
We are barred owls, fluffy and innocent in the daytime, like stuffed toys drowsing, but at night silent terrors, killing whatever small and twittering creatures we can find.
What help is there for us?
Little brown birds guarding their nests in the undergrowth. Cows scratching on a rock at dawn.
How did God first help us?
By propellers, fore and aft, and an inclined plane shuttled to and fro by the centrifugal force of a doodad.
(The last response, concerning propellers–which should have the accent on the first syllable–is a little riff my Irish grandfather used to say when asked by one of his children, “What does it do, Dad?”)
is to be the Queen.
Since I first saw Elizabeth:
solemn, beautiful, with that crown,
the robe, the golden orb.
When I am queen,
I’ll wear them always, all day long.
The crown is heavy, my mother explained.
It won’t be for me.
And you’re not a princess, my mother explained.
Oh, but I’ll marry the prince!
And when Diana did, I felt betrayed,
though I was grown and settled
with a little house, a family, a little job all my own,
and though my grown-up self could never fancy Charles.
Fifty years later I saw my purloined things–
the orb bigger than I’d remembered, robe more magnificent.
The crown was exactly right–
and the scepter, the emerald in the sword–
A conveyor belt moved me along through that ancient room
as if I were merely a breathless tourist;
I could not touch those things
that still in my three year old soul
I believe should have come to me.
It was not the power–never that–
but the trappings:
palaces and Cinderella’s coach
to ride in whenever I said the word,
the golden throne,
hangings and dresses of velvet and silk,
all that splendor about my head.
They told me wishing was silly–
what does a child know?–
but they were always wrong.
That robe, the orb,
substantiate my deepest desire:
my jewels, my aboriginal crown.
~another one for the Royal Wedding~
What do we learn about God as creator from the revelation to Israel?
That someone will finally comprehend what the Dark Energy does and come up with a plan to thwart it.
What does this mean?
It’s means God is like a shipwrecked sailor, washed ashore on a green island where a lady found him and warmed him between her thighs.
What does this mean about our place in the universe?
It means we’re like three women fishing: an old grandmother, a mom in green shorts, a buxom young redhead who lost her float.
What does this mean about human life?
It means that it’s like the undersides of boats at a marina—boats put up for winter, cracked keels, chipped paint, crud, flies and spiders in the sails. Chained and padlocked ladders, stolen oars.
How was this revelation handed down to us?
Through a branch of balsam caught like a fishbone in a lilac bush. Babies dressed like Christmas dolls. Mushrooms like seashells.
~from the Dadaist Catechism
What is meant by a covenant with God?
The rainbow tails of heifers on a hill, baby rabbits pulsing under a thin silver veil of mother fur.
What is the Old Covenant?
A girl selling wildflowers at Farmer’s Market who left in tears because she didn’t know she had to call ahead.
What did God promise?
That there will always be music.
What response did God require from the chosen people?
That they see the Earth like a cat does, slice between themselves and the fog.
Where is this Old Covenant to be found?
On the seashore–ocean’s midden—or Earth’s—where hooves of white horse waves come pounding.
Where in the Old Covenant is God’s will for us shown most clearly?
In powerlines, roadsounds, devouring mansions. Haybales against Snake Mountain, Mount Abraham unobstructed, wild geese in the windy sky.
~from the Dadaist Catechism
THE HOLY SPIRIT
Who is the Holy Spirit?
An old man with tatooed ankles, sitting in a wheelchair with a huge box on his lap.
How is the Holy Spirit revealed in the Old Covenant?
As something that happened after the flood, the Babel tower with its scattered speech.
How is the Holy Spirit revealed in the New Covenant?
As a man with cufflinks reading the Post. A waitress who has a friend with a waterbed store and a knowledge of museums. A woman with a pile of papers who smiled at me when I ordered grits for the first time in my life.
How do we recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives?
When we slip easily into any persona: proclaim through the mouth-hole, peer at the shifting blur before our eyes.
How do we recognize the truths taught by the Holy Spirit?
By writing a poem every morning before breakfast, keeping the gas tank at least half full, and being sure to give the cats second supper every night.
~Dadaist Catechism
Robins.
Song Sparrow.
Oriole.
Towhee.
What are the Holy Scriptures?
A dragon holding us. Just outside our skin she surrounds, her scales hover: the body of Earth within her. The underside of her skin today is blue.
What is the Old Testament?
A trochee rhythm with refrain.
What is the New Testament?
The bow in the sky. The key. A singularity. All the power faded into light.
What is the Apocrypha?
Nebulizers, crayons, O2 tubing, forearm splints, ace wraps, butterfly wraps.
Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God?
Because we need a new umbrella.
How do we understand the meaning of the Bible?
As a house with windows like cats’ eyes.
What is the Church?
Red stones made from the bodies of roadkilled red efts.
How is the Church described in the Bible?
As a little bachelorette in a red boa with a banana saying “This is like, totally embarrassing.”
How is the Church described in the Creeds?
The Rock of Salvation Refuge Temple Apostolic Church.
Why is the Church described as one?
Because it is a chorus of small children in their Sunday Best earnestly singing a Hungarian folksong to an audience of uncles, grandmothers, symphony orchestra clarinetists, and working cowgirls from Montana.
Why is the Church described as holy?
Because of an early cold morning Christmassy feeling, coziness of house and the warmth of candle and coffee.
Why is the Church described as catholic?
Because it proclaims gullies made by glacial water, a cluster of hickory nuts, like jingle bells.
Why is the Church described as apostolic?
Because it is like ducks brooding the eggs of swans. Because the silver apples of the moon are real.
What is the mission of the Church?
To wriggle out of their grasp, to give the handkerchief away, to drop the bracelet in a pond.
How does the church pursue its mission?
Like a poet on hold.
Through whom does the church carry out its mission?
Through a woman in a cave, with fire and food. Through bears.
What do we mean when we say that Jesus is the only Son of God?
We mean that Jesus is one of the Dream Masters or some poems no one wants to hear.
What is the nature of God revealed in Jesus?
God is a caterpillar shrugging oblivious across the leaf-littered road. A flock of chickadees, their hesitancy and cold feet.
What do we mean when we say that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and became incarnate from the Virgin Mary?
Drainages. Deep branches of water trees.
Why did he take our human nature?
So that we might be the sound of dry leaves blowing across the cement floor in a parking garage.
What is the great importance of Jesus’ suffering and death?
Earthworms crawl onto the broken town road where they will be picked at by robins or flattened by schoolbuses or gravel trucks.
What is the significance of Jesus’ resurrection?
Tails of deer look like white birds flying through the trees.
What do we mean when we say that he descended to the dead?
He became a mystic needing form, needing regulation, needling organization–not a circle anymore, but a galaxy: spiral, open.
What do we mean when we say that he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father?
We mean that he took our human nature into heaven as if it were a tiny Cindrella in a pumpkin picking seeds from her hair with a white-gloved hand, resting her glass-slippered foot on the velvet footrest in the seed cavity.
How can we share in his victory over sin, suffering, and death?
By being very careful to keep everything very very clean, especially the carpets in the cars, the telephone receivers and the hairbrushes.
Who are the ministers of the Church?
Thin green fish, transparent but for their dull black eyes, who swim their lives away between the tentacles of a giant squid. A willing ballerina with a broken shoe. A group of angry citizens bearing signs protesting the right of witches to sing canticles after dark
What is the ministry of the laity?
Not to go on pilgrimages. Their bodies will do it for them—they are traveling all the time.
What is the ministry of a bishop?
To stare at a wall until it grows eyes and stares back, or at least until the cat intervenes.
What is the ministry of a priest or presbyter?
Not to be introspective. Introspection makes no sense. It’s boring and tedious. No more can be mined from that bony hollow.
What is the ministry of a deacon?
To cut toenails in such a fashion that the new growth is quite flexible, almost like a kind of prehensile appendage.
What is the duty of all Christians?
To carve totem poles, build cathedrals, cross the Pole by air.
THE SACRAMENTS
What are the sacraments?
Three pairs of handknit socks and an old toothbrush.
What is grace?
A cold kitchen smelling of turnips.
What are the two great sacraments of the Gospel?
The prickle of skin on the neck and winter lightning with hail the size of hibiscus blossoms.
HOLY BAPTISM
What is Holy Baptism?
Incomplete collections of stickers of the States, English coins from the 1950’s, varieties of organic dried fruit, baby bonnets from dusty Italian shops.
What is the outward and visible sign in Baptism?
Perhaps the woman on the Cosmopolitan cover.
What is the inward and spiritual grace in Baptism?
Gravity, that curvature of spacetime, which is like love, the only thing that keeps us from being pulled apart by forces no one yet has named, for which there is no adequate equation.
What is required of us at Baptism?
To fit into a new skin without edges or protuberances, one that looks good in any circumstance, however alarming it may be.
Why then are infants baptized?
So that they can write anonymous letters to small children, elderly widows, or members of the House of Representatives on that strange Japanese notepaper designed for adolescent girls who do not read English.
How are the promises for infants made a carried out?
By the popping of white berries that grow by the sidewalk in front of the house belonging to the old lady with hair that smells of mothballs.
When the angel with the flaming sword asks:
What have you done that is good?
What have you done that will last?
This is the answer I will give:
I walked long with my husband
on wild uphill footpaths
remembering the names of flowers.
I gave thanks on a cold blue morning
while the new-raised sun
spread my shadow
along the unmarked snow.
I kept rosemary in a white pot
in my kitchen window.
I held my sister’s hand ten days before she died
and we watched the sky turn orange one more time
and listened to a meadowlark
and did not need to speak.
I played the piano for an old man in a nursing-home:
“when the roll is called up yonder,” and he sang.
I counted shooting-stars with my son
one summer midnight
and felt the skin of dew-covered grass
pulling us in safe.
The day before a February storm,
I took in a thin silver stray cat
with eyes the color of green olives.
I sat most of an afternoon in the sun
with my old dog, and later we rolled in leaves.
I trust that these will suffice.
Published in The Witness, December 1998
Come Holy Spirit, come
like a red eft creeping out
from under wet leaves,
crossing the travelled highway
at night after rain.
Come like the brown anole comes north
unexpected in bananas or limes;
like a gecko hunting roaches on a wall.
Come like chameleon;
like iguana still as deep green death
flittering a cloven tongue.
Come like Komodo parting the ways
with your stinking breath. Come
clear the carrion from this isle.
Come Holy Spirit
come like the Dragon remembered of old
rattling and clanking on golden wings.
Seize our treasures for your twinkling hoard.
Burn away all that will burn.
published in:
The Other Side, Spring, 2003
Behold: Arts for the Church Year, Lent Easter 2006
And most recently in a book called at the Still Point, A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time, compiled by Sarah Arthur, Paraclete Press, 2011
What is prayer?
The OneThing, stark, without edges, holding all things equal within its limitless infinite arc.
What is Christian prayer?
Two women in filthy pants, high boots, two tired women, up all night with lambs.
What prayer did Christ teach us?
A solemn dance to some obscure string quartet while strewing cherries and golden popple leaves.
What are the principal kinds of prayer?
The little V of concern marked for years now on my mother’s forehead, the birder’s squint around Bea’s eyes, my sister’s endlessly surprised eyebrows.
What is adoration?
Ritual, candles, scented air, good things to eat and drink, only with everyone on a tricycle.
Why do we praise God?
Maybe for red underwear, or air the shape of a body sliding across our skin.
For what do we offer thanksgiving?
A message on the answering machine explaining that your daughter has run away with a poet and will not be home for dinner, or ever again. That pain in your hips that awakens you at 4 am. and you can’t find a comfortable position and while you’re twisting there, wakeful, all the cats come and lick your face and knead whatever part of you is trying to be still. A brown paper bag filled with false moustaches.
What is penitence?
The kind of spring morning when you wake up knowing you’ll have lots of energy and get everything done and then you step out of bed onto a fresh hairball the cat coughed up while you were having a romantic dream of William Shatner or possibly Lucille Ball.
What is prayer of oblation?
Stones so old the glacier couldn’t have brought them. Stones older than the moon.
What are intercession and petition?
Intercession is walking toward a shadow. Petition is a glorious vulture, preening its glossy feathers with a red bill tipped with white.
What is corporate worship?
One hot breath that breaks down the fine ferns and fiery plates of frost.
From the Dada Catechism
What other sacramental rites evolved in the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit?
Chasing hawks, chasing crows, hugging someone who is trying to clean shoes, looking at someone’s sister’s photographs of Greece, almost anything from California, or for that matter, from west of the Rocky Mountains.
How do they differ from the two sacraments of the Gospel?
They are not rain, unemployed kids, tourists, a bustling woman, lots of people with nothing to do.
What is Confirmation?
A old guy with a Tootsie Pop at a community movie.
What is required of those to be confirmed?
To play the saxophone on a street corner.
What is Ordination?
A wickedness deeper than Dante’s hell.
What is Holy Matrimony?
An 83-year old Grandma trapped in a mangled car, sucking moisture from her socks.
What is Reconciliation of a Penitent?
A baby gate, so the baby won’t fall out the window.
What is Unction of the Sick?
The cold air off the continent lifting warm ocean air into a Nor’easter, tracking up the coast.
Is God’s activity limited to these rites?
No: they are dry mowed grass clippings in the letters spelling MOTHER on a granite gravestone.
How are the sacraments related to our Christian hope?
By explaining once and for all whether or not the “self’ is an individual reality, a social construction, or a twitch in the dream of an adolescent god.
found in Insects Through the Seasons, by Gilbert Waldbauer
A male cecropia minutes
after escaping from his cocoon
A pair of cecropias mating
Honey bees inadvertently
pollinating mint blossoms as they forage for nectar
Vedalia beetles attacking cottony cushion scales
A newly molted dog day
cicada sitting above its nymphal skin
A male queen butterfly showering
a female’s antennae with an aphrodisiac dust
Male rhinoceros
beetles fighting over a female
Dragonflies copulating
A parasitic ichneumonid drilling
through wood to reach the sawfly
larva in which she will lay an egg
A female scarab beetle rolling a ball of dung
A worker bumble bee gathering pollen from a black-eyed Susan
A hover fly closely mimicking a yellowjacket wasp
An attacking blue
jay is startled by an io moth
A minor worker of the leaf-
cutter ant defending larger, leaf-
carrying worker from attack
A mantispid striking at a house fly
A hungry praying mantis striking at a small butterfly
A sphinx moth probing for nectar in the flower of a trumpet creeper
A nymphal dragonfly using its prehensile
lower lip to snatch a small fish
A cluster of southward-migrating monarchs resting on a branch
Weaver ants pulling two leaves together
A pileated woodpecker exposing
a large beetle grub under the bark of a tree
A white-footed
mouse chewing a hole in a polyphemus cocoon
What is the Holy Eucharist?
The way raindrops cling to evergreen needles after a slow rain, before the birds land and knock them off in tiny showers, echoes of the storm.
Why is the Eucharist called a sacrifice?
It is like fish fingers, salamander wings—anything that makes sense only within the context of a most disturbing dream.
By what other names is this service known?
The Difficulty that Arises When One Works with a Bunch of Healers. A Line of Light Moving Down the Trees.
What is the outward and visible sign in the Eucharist?
An waning moon like an angry red eye through the haze.
What is the inward and spiritual grace given in the Eucharist?
Big Jesus in a flannel shirt putting a hand over mine, laughing like he always does when I finally speak the truth.
What are the benefits which we receive in the Lord’s Supper?
The universal theme from Eden to Casablanca, grand opera to country-western: love won and foolishly, regretfully, or bravely lost.
What is required of us when we come to the Eucharist?
To ride a skateboard over piles of trashcans and pass the hat.
She built
stone walls, wattle fences,
a house as large as she needed,
as small as no orphan could find.
Her bed was sewn from leaves of palm
and stuffed with the wings of owls.
She dreamed
of broken doors,
pools of yellow glass,
treetops bright with fire
and horses with sapphire wings.
She loved
many and none too well:
apothecary,
housemaid,
an elderly master of hounds,
the bishop’s paramour,
the oldest prince,
the fisherman’s second son.
One smelled of onions,
another of Chinese herbs.
She wrote their names
on acorns and lettuce leaves
and fed them to the squirrels.
She wore
an attic’s trunk of clothes:
a linen cassock gone to rust,
motley, silk, a cape of feathers,
the neat homespun of a tidy wife.
Her shoes were red
and filled with leaves.
She lived
on walnuts, oranges,
potatoes and wild greens;
she drank beer from a hundred cellars
and wine from the skull
of a heretic hung in chains.
Her table
was set with porcelain from the East,
brass vases of lilac and nettle,
tallow candles in silver candlesticks,
Venetian glasses, gourd spoons,
fish knives carved from sailors’ bones.
She named
her children after bones:
Vomer whose father had followed the plow,
Sacrum who left her and ran away to sea.
Humerus did laugh well and long,
but Scapula became a whore.
Ulna wed a farrier; Ischium kept goats;
Patella, her darling, wove linen cloth.
Talus and his goodwife grew apples and pears
and Fibula, who could heal with herbs,
was burned for being a witch.
Her gods
required sacrifice
of cabbages and blood,
the bodies of mice and toads.
She played
a goat-horn pipe
and a seven-stringed harp.
She sang dirges to the trees
and carols to the moon.
She buried
dead robins
under willows
and kept red worms
in an iron pot.
She never
learned to dance.
When she was old,
her death
grew easy.
The crows and foxes
carried her all away.
What is the Christian hope?
Pigeons huddled on the steeple’s warm side, pigeons flying under the bridge, their wings spread like bones.
What do we mean by the coming of Christ in glory?
Habits. Coffee in the same mug. Stick in the same hand.
What do we mean by heaven and hell?
The crumbs in the bottom of the ciborium.
Why do we pray for the dead?
So that they may walk across the ash, leaving footprints.
What do we mean by the last judgement?
A plastic bag that brings back memories of lardy cake rich with currents bought from a homely old woman in a bakery in the town where Alfred the Great was born.
What do we mean by the resurrection of the body?
Short images, meetings and farewells.
What is the communion of saints?
A tiny girl with indeterminate features, a fairy person in a filmy dress, pink.
What do we mean by everlasting life?
That all day long, the snow will fall and form itself into elegant drifts, that ice will spread from the edges of the river and downstream to the estuary, forcing all the herons to take to the air.
What, then, is our assurance as Christians?
That every fairytale is real—that all the hapless heroines, gallant, obsessive princes, useless kings and brilliant witches are arising and taking over every small-time government everywhere on Earth.
Thus ends the Dadaist Catechism.
What if the world is ending now?
What if the bees
are never coming back?
Garlic mustard is invading
everywhere. I can’t begin
to pull it all.
What if the maple trees
and earthworms
move away?
What if the sky
becomes a plastic dome?
I think the wars will never end.
I live in the country.
I have to drive everywhere.
What if all the wells run dry?
I’m making compost
out of everything.
I’m trying to write this poem.
~found in rehearsals of the singing group Encanto
No humming till smite.
Notice the relationship
between your first tweet and your last tweet.
Your lay will line up with their gah.
Important that your gulegs don’t line up.
Basses having trouble with your diddle,
the three is hiding in the diddle.
Dotted suckers are one, two, three.
You move on train, and more quickly to your train.
The important thing to get on the nose is train.
Line up your all with their train.
Now the train is being rushed.
Let words be a substitute for doo-doos.
Switching from doo-doos
to serenading the moon is tricky.
When we get to serenading the moon
we can come back up.
If you’re still in your head, it’s shaky.
Green with spring is a riot–
let’s see if we can get your lonely flight feeling good.
Hold the lamb till they move to God.
Look at each other before your God.
They lay their blue eggs in nests
which have a smooth mud inner surface
making them easy to recognize.
Song thrushes are early nesters
and in a mild season the young
may have hatched and be flying
by the end of March.
They are well known for feeding on large snails
and will use a hard object, usually a stone, as an anvil
to smash them on and break their shells.
Song thrushes will also feed
on worms and other invertebrates.
Berries, particularly from ivy and holly,
are increasingly important in colder months.
Both male and female song thrushes
have a warm brown colour in the upperparts
with a pale belly neatly spotted with black.
They have a creamy-yellow wash on the breast.
They may be confused with the larger
and more common mistle thrush. The mistle thrush
has a head that sometimes looks too small for its body.
The song thrush has a melodious song
ringing out from a large bush or halfway up a tree.
The song consists of a variety of short phrases
which are repeated.
A loud rather boring song
from a bird at the very top of a tree
is likely to be a mistle thrush.
Some of the decline can be accounted for
by a series of cold winters
which have killed the young birds
but this does not explain all of the loss.
The use of slug and snail killing chemicals
has greatly increased on farmland,
in gardens and in parks, and this appears to be important.
Other changes in farming practices,
such as removal of hedges, have led to the loss
of nesting sites. Ploughing in autumn rather than spring
has reduced the number of invertebrates
available as food for breeding birds. Also worrying
is the increase in urban predators
such as magpies, crows, grey squirrels and cats.
Stop using chemicals in your garden.
Avoid at all costs using slug pellets.
Do not trim hedges between March and August.
Avoid overtidying the garden in autumn.
Keep a supply of windfall apples to put out
once the weather gets cold.
Keep a supply of fresh water available in the winter.
In order to help them in our three counties
of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire
we need to find out much more about them.
If you see a song thrush
please tell us on the attached form.
Give us as much information
about the sighting as you can.
~Found in a pamphlet by the Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust, Oxford, England
I have admired your body from afar–
as only an older woman can admire–
and here you are
the row in front of me
eating marinated beef from a plastic box,
watching the governor, two rows down.
You remove your mirrored shades.
Your green shirt
is tight across your shoulders.
Oh, has the music begun?
You finish the beef
and start on the berries.
23, 691 days recorded
On August 1, 1828, Tobias Walker of the Alewive neighborhood just west of Kennebunk, Maine, started a journal of his daily work. He wrote every day until he died.
John Waterhouse was here building cellarway for outer cellar door.
Jeremiah Lord was here finishing milk cellar and hanging doors.
Set out three fir trees at the end of the house.
Mr. Waterhouse here, raised the building
for to make dressing in, with the help of the hogs.
Moved the stove from the kitchen to the portch. (sic)
Bricked up the fireplace in the kitchen and sat up a Port stove.
Preparing the ground and getting in readiness .
Took down the old barn.
Digging for a cellar, ledgy and very hard digging,
almost discouraging.
Finished painting the barn.
Building a post and picket fence in front of the house.
His son Edwin kept the farm and the diary every day until he died. And his grandson Daniel, too, until June 27, 1893 when he wrote:
Went to the village with butter.
Got 10 bushels of corn of Edm. Warren at 5-8 cts/bushel.
Got a rake and a scyth and ——— for haying.
He closed the book, set down the pen. Daniel farmed thirty-three years more and never wrote again.
Days too much alike–
milk and stone and hay.
When all’s said and done,
they said all there was to say.
If they’re not farmers, why should they care?
and if they are, they’ll know.
Meantime, there’s stock to feed,
meantime, there’s corn to grow.
Tobias Walker’s diary excerpts taken from Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn, by Thomas C. Hubka.
~question often asked at a High School class reunions
I used to be the frog
you dissected in freshman biology. Remember?
You wired my nerves to a battery
so you could watch me twitch.
I was the lunch lady,
the largest one, who always
gave you extra topping on your jello square
because you were so thin. I was
the grumpy custodian who helped you
open your locker the morning
your dog died and you couldn’t see
through your tears. Once I
was the chubby cheerleader dummy
in the display case in the hall,
wearing a faded letter sweater and a little
blue skirt just above my pale pink knees.
Then I was that loser with braces who kept
flunking gym because I couldn’t stand
on my head or do ten chin-ups
or run a whole mile. When I
taught you physics, I liked to say
“Tangenital velocity.”
It was fun to watch you trying to hide
your embarrassed laughing with a cough.
I played the glockenspiel always
a little out of sync,
or the spit-filled trumpet,
or the clarinet that gasped and wailed. I was
Mrs. Barry, who hated Dickinson and Frost so much
I ruined them for you, almost for good.
Remember how I ridiculed you for daydreaming
during my terrible, tedious class?
But mostly I was the girl who wanted you
to ask me to the Christmas Dance,
who sat home alone that night
staring at the newspaper clipping of
you in your baggy basketball shorts,
your mouth open
as you tried to catch
the rebound that never came.
(This is a Dada one, like the one I posted awhile ago, but in this case, the questions are mine. For the answers, I copied bits and pieces from my notebooks onto strips of paper and selected them at random. I did take the liberty (poetic license) of cleaning up the grammar in several cases.)
What is the essence of what we try to call God?
An old woman in a red robe sweeping her walk at dawn.
What if all that unimaginable uncreature can do is drift through the universe, trying to pull itself back together?
Then the goldfinches will turn green in the winter, invisible in the hemlock trees, but vivid against the snow.
Is God is powerless?
Yes. Being contented means having contents.
Is there something you can do to help?
Yes. Experiment with dada but call it mama, that primal cry of “mmmmm.” Explain in haiku why dahlia bulbs must be dug up every fall in cold climates.
What if prayers are being answered all the time, even while you sleep?
Then everyone who owns a race car will be required to substitute a grocery cart with one loose and rusty wheel.
Why do so many innocent living things suffer?
Because there is a reality beyond the grasp of this dimension. What we call (so blithely) “god” is something utterly beyond our language and comprehension.
Why is there Death?
The energy of the universe slowed down has been slowed, has slowed, into this form, into these forms, into these dimensions, just for now. It does not yet appear what we shall be.
Why is Life so precious?
It’s solar rather than lunar, a river instead of a sea. It’s the shadow of Christ falling on bread and wine, because shadows are as close as we can get. For more information, enclose a stamped envelope addressed to St. Joan, at her Paris address.
Are human beings a three-dimensional projection of something multi-dimensional, yet undefined?
We are a chubby guy in high-waisted pants going into a dentist’s office with a zucchini., a policeman chasing a beach ball down a city street, a young woman trying to get a snowshovel through airport security. We are hot, steady, dimmed only by random shadows, burning the sea, lightening the moon.
Is the “I” that other people see more “real” than the one “I” know?
No. The instructions are far too complex for anyone wearing a hat on a windy day.
How can we be sure that there is a universe outside the cosmos of our own living conglomeration of cells and space?
By writing a letter to every mayor of every city with fewer than 6500 inhabitants.
Why do human beings keep trying to make religions?
Because the sun contains the moon and the river contains the ocean and the sun is the engine that drives it all.
How should we live?
By going through life with a green hat, a tin of fish food and a pocket full of jelly beans. By appreciation of scenery, the practice of good manners and the principle that there’s always plenty of time.
I was on the crest of a hill, eye-level with the tops of hemlocks,
raised my arms in the perfect dihedral,
rounded my shoulders exactly right,
curved my hands into the primaries of a rough-legged hawk.
I could have done it, that afternoon,
with the sun scattering the light into improbable blue.
I felt a vibration, a trembling up my arms.
I saw my fingers pinnate,
felt the feathers growing, prickling through my skin.
Perhaps I could have risen above the trees,
disappeared into that stunning sky–
and yet, some solid thing,
some reservation of gravity,
kept me on the ground.
Small children know:
with homemade wings in place they leap
from kitchen chairs,
flutter above the rooftops,
carry home the smiling sun, yellow moon,
the sharp pointed stars.
published in Connecticut River Review, July/August 2004
What is salvation?
Acceptance–not that this world is evil, but that it is, in all its beauty and terror, transient.
What is necessary for salvation?
Tender red-brown pollen-tipped locust fingers in pale green hoods.
What is the path to enlightenment?
The Crown Dragon from the Land of Five Colors who gives birth to birds again and again.
After the body’s needs are fulfilled, what is the universal human desire?
“Atoms and the Void” within, as well as a lot of salty water.
I have become obsessed with underpinnings:
Olga no longer makes the Daisy in my size.
They assume small women
want padding–”contour” they call it.
But contours are hot, and they itch,
and besides, I told the clerk,
I am happy with my size.
And she, who guessed my numbers by looking–
she who for forty years had seen all sizes,
had fitted corsets and prostheses,
measured without a blink over sags and scars–
said Well, you ought to be, and searched
the bins along the wall to see if there might be
one more, and there wasn’t.
She found a substitution, adequate,
but not what I’d hoped for.
She wrapped it in tissue and I paid.
What happens to prayers–
our own devices, nothing left to fit?
Discontinuites, perhaps,
and God the old woman
with her measure, her calm and kindly face.
It’s a shame, my dear,
but that’s how it goes.
Here’s something else that might suffice.
I carried my little package to the café
where I go to watch the traffic pass.
A new brick sidewalk there, wide:
tables and chairs outdoors, better than before.
They dug deep, below the level of the street.
They found old coins and a diamond ring,
but best of all, windows covered over with rubble.
All those years with nothing to see but dirt.
Amazing, what holds things up, or doesn’t,
the dark and hidden structure undergirding it all.
Problem: Lights are out.
Solution:
1. Open the nearest door and slowly recite “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet: and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off–then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
2. Chant the “Invocation to Broccoli” (in German or Greek, if at all possible).
3. Page Carol, Wellness, Grocery, Tracy, Glenn, Barbara and Mark ALL AT THE SAME TIME and see what happens.
Problem: “Clapping” sound coming from wet case.
1. Create a makeshift wand from lemongrass or burdock root and wave it over the problem area.
2. Take Glenn to lunch at the deli and explain the problem clearly and calmly while packing sesame noodles or tofu salad (your choice) into the pockets of your official yet unattractive “Coop” vest.
3. Try stuffing all the recyclable cardboard until the sink.
Problem: Water collecting on floor around case.
1. Approach the first customer you see pushing a cart containing a small baby and a bunch of bananas, and tell him/her “the sky is falling.”
2. Call Alberts and order five cases of overripe bananas.
3. Steal a hat, any hat, put it on your head, and stalk menacingly out the front door.
Problem: Labels are not feeding properly.
1.Sit down immediately, on the floor if necessary, and write a letter to your congressperson.
2. Put a “Best of Barry Manilow” CD in the machine and turn it up to the maximum setting.
3. Form a conga line with as many customers as you can grab and wend your way through the store, singing something everyone knows, such as “Happy Holidays” or “Nessun Dorma,” or possibly “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.”
Problem: Printer is not responding to commands.
1. Page “Wellness.”
2. Collect all the markers and rolls of masking tape, place them in a tote with a “FREE” sign on it. Carry the tote out into the parking lot and leave it there.
3. Gather in the cooler and sing “The Tunafish Song.”
4. Build a barricade of totes around the picnic tables in front of the store.
Problem: Temperature is above 45 or below 35 in case for more than one reading.
1. Send a fax to your mother.
2. Grab a small child and weigh it on the scale, being sure to enter the “local organic baby yellow and/or green beans from hell” PLU first.
3. Same as 1st solution for “clapping” noise.
This isn’t really a poem, of course. The “problems” are actual problems that arise in the Produce Department at the food coop where I volunteer. The solutions are just silly.
Berry fields stretched out above the meadows
that curl like water down to Lake Champlain:
acres of ridgy green leaves,
red seed-specked sweetness.
I came early to that one row among hundreds.
Alone I picked, content.
I was one yellow hat on the hill,
a solitude surrounded by thrush song and bees.
Then there she was, in her black pants,
a bright and flowery shirt,
talking too loud to her scattered companions;
there she was, squatting in the straw
between the plants I’d been saving,
the direction I was working.
It was hard to refrain from standing to accuse:
Mine, it’s mine, all mine!
The dog lifts his leg against a tire,
cats rub their jaws along the sill,
monkeys howl and hurl sticks and pits.
People throw stones at tanks,
knock down houses, burn
crops and forests all over the world.
I bent back among the berries, breathing hard,
picking only the best,
the ones I wanted for my very own.
The Danites came to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting:
and smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire.
And there was no deliverer. . . Judges 18:27-28
In the morning, a woman walked to her field,
stopped, puzzled by moving shadows,
a far rattle of sound she’d never heard.
In the crackling ruin of that night
jackals circled the city,
waiting for the flames to die.
We create gods in our image.
The god of Dan, glorious in battle,
adept with fire;
the god of Laish, quiet and unsuspecting,
no deliverer.
The one time god created itself in our image
we didn’t like it:
too messy, too common.
Bones, and a great deal of blood.
Not the sort of deliverer anyone wanted.
I walked early today down the usual road:
dark woods on my left,
cut hayfields on my right.
Against the blue bulk of mountains,
one wisp of cloud drifting up,
blowing apart in the sunrise.
1998
A golden cliff above grey water–
how Cape D’Or got its name.
Among driftwood stumps and branches washed
from God knows where, oil cans, buckets, ropes,
lobster claws, seaweeds, the carcass of a seal,
I found a new walking stick. The old one
was buried with the old dog,
a week before our son left for Colorado.
We two have since learned to travel together,
learned the rhythms of silence and talk,
when to make love, when to sleep alone.
Walking the shore before the rising tide,
shaking stones from our sandals, we met
an old woman in a blue hat.
She laughed and pointed out to sea.
“Watch out,” she said, “for every third wave.”
And she was right: the next one nearly
knocked me off my feet. I sat
beside you in that recovery room,
waiting for good news,
wanting one thing–for our walk to go on.
I remembered that old woman
waving over our heads to an old
man coming along behind us with a dog,
and you and I kept walking,
double prints along the hard wet sand.
Written at Reid’s Tourist House, Nova Scotia
August 5, 1999, revised 2011
What have the sunflowers lost?
Look at them all, heads bent down heavy,
anxiously, earnestly searching the ground.
Or maybe they hear Persephone
raped and tattered and scared
crying down there for her mother.
There’s nothing they can do.
Swallows are lined up on the wire now:
black beads on a string
Once more I’m getting fat
like I was after the baby was born
but now I don’t have that excuse.
I’ll never have that excuse again.
We drove along roads that had been closed,
gravel thick along the shoulders.
New channels carved in the river.
Back home, a catbird perched
on top of a wild apple tree
pretended to be somebody else.
This was written years ago, after the flood that took out the twin bridges in Bristol.
Some animals seemed to feel
it coming before people did.
Red ruffed lemurs began
alarm calling.
In the Great Ape House,
Iris, an orangutan,
let out a guttural holler.
The flamingos huddled
together in the water
seconds before people
felt the rumbling.
The rheas got excited.
And the hooded mergansers —
a kind of duck — dashed
for the safety of the water.
~Found in The Washington Post, August 24, 2011
My friend and fellow poet David Weinstock sent me the article. Thanks, David.
Always, while you slept,
we crept from our painted beds
and pattered
through the quiet house,
trailing the hems of our nightgowns
and annoying the watchful cats.
Now we sleep in a box in the attic,
the delicate among us
wrapped in paper.
The door is locked
and we do not have a key.
When the cold room
is lightened by the moon,
we sit on a broken cot
to read old letters we’ve mined
from Grandma’s trunk.
Sometimes we listen at the door
and hear your solemn murmurings,
but we do not comprehend
that far-off tongue.
We long for your hands and eyes,
for stories and buggy rides,
for cambric tea
on summer afternoons.
We ponder the photographs
of little girls
and the brother with his hammer.
We recall how Grandma sewed
our dresses and coats
with buttons and lace,
with careful, even seams.
Coyotes are gathering acorns
to plant in the forest. One day
there will be enough. Even now,
the ancient acorn-eating peoples
curled in their river-gravel mounds
are arising and tuning their drums.
Red squirrels are growing opposable
thumbs and tails like monkeys.
Soon they will be able
to open any door;
they will wield paintbrushes and spoons.
Soon they will be able to sing.
Bears awaken early, craving beef and beer.
Elephants are learning to dig tunnels.
Dark Matter is gathering,
incomprehensible, into a god of infinite
dimension. All the stars are opening
their pointed mouths.
Is this so strange?
Once there was a spirit
in every tree. Once
all the animals could speak.
And you, stubby primate,
believing illusions of grace,
is there anything you really understand?
Your brain extends through the soles
of your feet and beyond
the thickness of your skull.
It mingles with the shards
scattering into cosmic curves.
It’s time to get serious:
Take for example, this universe–
moving faster, heaven knows why.
Evolution goes on, outside your blindfold.
And take consciousness, that old homunculus,
that ancient soul that no one yet has found.
But they will not say, the times were dark,
But, why were their poets silent?–Brecht
1.
There are no words
for the sounds of the airplanes;
no words for the sounds of explosion.
There are no words
for steel and concrete collapse,
words for screams, for running.
There is no metaphor for horror.
There are no words at all
for innocence vanished in towers of smoke,
sweet complacency gone.
2.
Why are there children
dancing in the streets
in that other world?
Hasn’t anyone told them
that they themselves have died?
3.
I will not imagine.
I turn my will from them.
I will not put my mind
into their bodies.
4.
A girl I know out for her morning run
around a New York City block
ran from the second blast;
later opened her great sweet heart,
and comforted, and fed.
The guys at the little airport here watched TV,
figured the route from Pennsylvania to D. C.,
how even a pilot with a gun to his head
could have shut down the engine,
headed for the ground.
We wanted to be together,
reciting the names of our friends.
I called everyone I knew.
I wanted only to see the face of my child.
When I called him, he was weeping,
remembering a teacher long dead
who lied about his age to join the Navy
when they bombed Pearl Harbor.
“He was only fourteen,” my son kept saying,
“He was only fourteen.”
The clergy talked a great deal.
The philosophers were silent.
5.
The cats don’t know what’s happening.
They want their food; they want to play.
Are there people alive under the stones?
The rubbled streets, soldiered streets–
old folks remember London, Dresden, Pearl Harbor.
But this is home
where the sky is not cloudy all day.
6.
It becomes part of you. You think
I can’t live with this–this fear, rage, uncertainty.
You think I can’t,
but in a day or so, you can.
The rubble, the empty chair,
the smoke, the hole in the sky
settle into the fabric
like wild threads in a tablecloth plaid.
You get your balance.
You were made to be steady,
to walk on two feet.
7.
What can I write?
The tomatoes are ripe;
the cats are crying.
There are buildings tumbling, fires.
Fear is all around. . .
When the foundations are being destroyed. . .?
What they did then.
What they always. . .
What we always do.
Feed the cats,
pick the tomatoes–those red globes
full of water, full of life.
7.
Cornstalks descending
from the place the geese come down,
floating gentle,
golden feathers of corn leaves.
Is the world ending this time?
or was it an updraft over a corn chopper
growling through the dusty rows
carrying corn leaves lightly
to where the window opens,
the door up there to things unexpected,
miracles undreamed.
8.
The bow hangs forever.
Even when sun is shining,
even in the dark.
The bow is hanging.
No one will be hunted down.
Even evil will not be hunted down.
Even evil is safe from those arrows.
Now there is no vengeance,
since the One who owns it has forsworn.
The bow is hanging in the sky
on nails driven once for all through love itself,
and the blood is the blood of God.
Written about nine years ago–and still not really finished, but I thought I’d share the draft anyhow.
Bending under Scotland’s gales,
we learned the Princess of Wales was dead.
On the Lewis ferry, we stood silent
while the Captain threw a wreath of yellow roses
into the sea. To what angel,
this offering of petals and tears?
Pushing through peat hag and heath,
we found toppled fragments,
time buried in passages.
The mother of stones has fallen in silence,
remembering fires and feasts,
long nights in fertile fields.
The archangel on his stone tower
above the sea has not forgotten
violins burned to keep away the sin.
The fiddler wept But, O, the parting with it!
The words of the priests turned out the light,
but in the darkness every candle is an eye
and still, in that land of cold
stone churches and silent Sabbaths
in one ancient chapel we sang
with one small tribe the ancient songs.
By fallen stones in one ruined field
we found three orange carrots tied with string.
SKYHARBOR
Dimension means nothing to the senses,
and all we are left with is a troubled sense of immensity.
~Clarence Dutton, early Canyon geologist
Outside the North Rim Lodge where the telephones connect,
people strolled by with their water bottles and maps.
They bought coffee and called to their children.
A man in tight jeans and beads played a guitar and sang off key.
I sat on the curb and talked
to the people back home in Vermont:
my sister, my brother, the doctor in the ER.
To my mother one last time.
The canyon eroded behind me
while my husband cancelled the train
and called Southwest.
I sat on my pack on the pavement, while he returned the rental car.
Through the gray noise, exhaust, confusion of taxi and talk,
one pigeon bobbed, tipped between luggages and wheels,
one pink foot in front of the other, picking scraps and crumbs.
Sun rise over the Grand Canyon.
The arch of Angel’s Window.
A troubled sense of immensity.
The colors of Vishnu’s Temple.
The green thread of river a mile below my boots.
Pines touched and healed by fire.
The scent of sagebrush.
Hopi Radio news.
I watched the little pigeon dodge the river of traffic,
stepping and pecking,
until she flew away.
In memory of my mother, Ruth Corley, who died a year ago today.
From perfect tart pink-striped green crisp ripe
to red-orange candle-wax sweet grainy mush
in the time it takes to count one hundred yellow-boxed bushels.
Warming October windrush pushes drops
from the tops in a dither of yellow coin leaf,
soft squash plop sounding low below the rustle swish.
And all along the yellow-brown whispering orchard grass
a windfall river for scavenging mice,
bland-eyed rabbits, furrowing bowing deer.
By the fire-crackle applewood orange red flame
sitting still in the cider barrel applefull house
we hear them under the half-moon gleam, gleaning.
~remembering Shadow
The neighbor’s muddy burr-maned horse
cropped the short September grass
beside the rusty fence.
I offered an apple on my open palm.
She took it gently,
broke it with her yellow teeth.
Every morning that autumn
she waited for me,
plodded toward the fence,
whickered her hello.
Every morning
I gave her an apple.
My neighbor believes in God,
every marvelous and contradictory word:
Repent and be saved, Subdue the Earth,
Wives submit, and Spare the rod.
The horse is buried in the meadow.
She was old, and lame.
He shot her early in the spring,
my neighbor who knows God’s name.
Every spring she lifted
the carpet in the lounge
where the old boys
sat drinking their single-malts.
She turned the good brown soil
and planted seeds: radishes and lettuces,
and as the days grew warmer,
chard and onions, tomatoes and squash.
Still they sat, dozing,
while the warm room filled
with leaf and vine, the scents of ripening.
Every day she came and watered and hoed,
and every day they sat,
reading their papers,
talking of business, the progress
of their cold gray war.
She filled apple baskets in autumn
and left them on the roadsides
for squirrels and children and crows.
The old boys grew thinner,
more querulous. When they rose
to go to the bathroom or the bar
they were careful not to dirty their shoes.
They would not speak to her.
When winter came
she tacked the carpet back down,
swept up the last dry leaves
and followed the boys to the sea.
There, while they sat
in the sun on their private beach
building castles of golden sand,
she went to work with her tiny trowel.
I have a cheerful one,
a placid one, unremarkable,
with small pink lips but Kali
of the bloody tongue,
Kali festooned with screaming skulls
trembles here, behind this matron’s mask.
Any moment her blueblack arms
might emerge from my polyester shirt
and throttle that man sipping his tea. She
may jump onto the counter
and fling saucers and cups, split through
my skin, bite heads and crunch down bones,
break the door, smash the steps,
dance her pounding dance
down the crackling road. Meantime,
I drink coffee
through my small polite mouth hole,
hold my cup
in one beige hand.
Some days the coffee
tastes like blood.
Our shriek
could shatter
all the glasses in this town.
We already have forgotten
the importance of Heloise,
the importance of Henry III.
Can you enclose the line from Julian?
Do you remember the butterfly dog?
The key figure in the arm to arm
is buried around the Cyclades.
What was the company?
How is the stone circle?
First Christian faith,
and then people did Gautama.
Elysium is a mystery, a mystery?
St. Michael, however,
all above the rocky shore.
In the garden,
his fallen angels dispatched.
Kill us all because we call you.
If it has been provided so far,
he forgot to pay the other,
waiting quietly for their souls.
This poem never quite worked in my own words, but the Translation Party version does, I think. Mostly, I wanted to something with the weird title statistic that I read a couple of years ago.
Mother, what the gods send us, we mortals bear perforce,
although we suffer; for they are much stronger than we.
~Spoken by Callidice to the disguised Demeter
(Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns)
She never liked the letting go:
the seeds she sowed,
the Spring.
She turned aside
the river’s flow,
she hated everything
that died.
She never learned
to drop a single stone.
And so she walks the autumn
fields unhappy,
all alone.
She could see only shadows,
narrow strips of green,
the outlines of ghosts dancing
on the edges of her eyes.
Daylight was a pressure
on her lids, and darkness cool release.
Stars rustled
like wind through small trees,
and when the moon rumbled up,
she heard the awakening owls.
Now she slept all day,
and all night long she roamed the woods
or knelt on the pulsing grass,
to listen.
She could see only shadows,
narrow strips of green,
the outlines of ghosts dancing
on the edges of her eyes.
Daylight was a pressure
on her lids, and darkness cool release.
Stars rustled
like wind through small trees,
and when the moon rumbled up,
she heard the awakening owls.
Now she slept all day,
and all night long she roamed the woods
or knelt on the pulsing grass,
to listen.
Once in my youth I saw her,
feared her, fled her.
Once heard her rustling wings,
her voice behind me, summoning.
There was something she would say,
something then I would not hear,
something youth won’t contemplate
in the springing of its year.
In the stormy fields of summer,
deceived, I thought that she was gone,
all that dizzy hot green summer
on the shore of Acheron.
But all green hayfields fade to yellow.
Autumn rains erode the clay.
All the cornfields rustle yellow.
Nothing green can stay.
And as I walk the fields of stubble,
my own gray shadow blocks the sun.
I see my breath-cloud in the air
and black crows gather everywhere.
There is only one thing,
infinitely complex
in all its depths and surfaces:
the moon, the brain,
drifts of river stones,
the subtle shadings of cloud,
a chipmunk on a branch
of glossy evergreen.
With delicate tiny hands
she picks yew berries
the color and shape
of red blood cells.
Her black bead eyes, lined with white,
gleam like moonlight
on river stones.
They were in a church for a couple of weeks
and then they replaced the angels.
Only a couple of weeks
so they must have been
very holy, very light.
Hard work: on call at all hours
but beyond the concept of hour
since in Heaven there is no time.
Circadian rhythm shot to hell.
Great clothes, however, and,
though technically unnecessary,
haloes and gorgeous wings.
The fear aspect would be disconcerting–
always to manifest unexpectedly
and required to reassure:
Oh, don’t be scared.
I’m just one of God’s infinite Voices,
here to tell you something
that will forever invert your life.
So who would want it?
But then, the woman who shared this piece of news
with her companion didn’t say
if the angel replacements were pleased.
And–and this is my major concern–
what of the angels who were displaced?
Where–if there is a where–did they go?
Are they here, disguised in sweaters and jeans,
bemused at the effects of gravity?
Or are they there, speeding mysteries,
comprising the incomprehensible
energy of the Dark?
. . . PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES
BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED “LIVING.”
~Death (The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett)
Sometimes the hungry baby was left to cry.
The llama at the zoo spat,
someone stole the arrowheads.
A woman in a white dress played a harp by candlelight.
The teacher’s pet got the lead in the play.
Father pulled the sled through the lamplit park in the falling snow.
Later, he started to drink and Mother wouldn’t tell.
There were springs with fragrant crabapple bloom,
and summer crowns of daisy and vetch.
There was a Christmas when everyone had chicken pox.
There was the lover who, after long uphill walks,
after kisses in summer rain, left without saying goodbye.
There was a lover who stayed,
a sister who died,
a child who grew up and went away.
There were hands, eyes, the songs of many birds.
There was good work and disappointing work,
illness that caused pain—yet always
autumn passed with color creeping down the hills
and coyotes gathered under the window to sing
to the mice and the moon
Sometimes there was a year without
noticeable weather, flavor or song;
a moment large enough
to hold a city or a forest.
Often it had to do with being awake:
smelling every single thing,
noticing the way the light shifted,
the arm ached, the sparrow fell.
Always there was the body,
strange receptacle of lust and sleep,
where time and the highway intersected,
where infinity met friends for coffee,
where every passage
was a kind of standing still.
This sixteenth-century French cabinet
was a bequest. Originally to keep wine,
it now holds urns
of ashes awaiting internment.
And here we have our hermitess.
Her door is closed this morning
so she will not receive you.
Perhaps if you return—
No. She keeps no regular hours,
every audience is by chance.
I don’t know; no one knows precisely
how she spends those days alone. She has ink
and paper, needles and yarn, a small
black cat with white paws.
Sometimes she makes a little book,
or socks in brilliant colors that you might glimpse
between her long black skirts and her shoes—
Yes, her books are for sale in the gift shop;
sometimes she’ll sign one.
No. No socks.
No, she won’t let herself
be photographed. Or sketched.
When her door is open, she may let you in.
She may let you pet her cat, if
you are quiet and ask no questions.
Now down this corridor is the choir room
with a beautiful tapestry, very old,
of Magdelene in the Resurrection garden.
We’re very fortunate to have it in our care.
For her lumber is golden and strong;
for she gives houses and ships,
cradles and caskets and casks.
For the people share her abundant fruit.
For her bark is purple and thick
and good medicine.
For she feeds the forest:
squirrel and chipmunk,
jay, turkey, deer, woodrat and mouse,
woodpecker, pigeon, pig.
For her hollows give shelter to bee and owl.
For her roots tap deep.
For her twig tips cluster.
For her Spring candles glow yellow
and her Lammas shoots are pink.
For her green is protection from the sun.
For her leaves rattle in the autumn wind.
For her winter shape is pleasing
and her branches bear the weight of snow.
For she carries the mistletoe
and casts away the curse.
For a leaf caught in the air shelters
and an acorn on the sill protects.
For she draws the lightning
and carries its mark.
For she is knotted by the bitter gall.
For she does not bow to the storm.
For her bent boughs send up straight shoots.
for Henry
In this quiet house
electricity drips from the fixtures,
ghost of Muggs threatens to bite.
One bedroom smells of camphor,
and in the garden a Unicorn
browses among stone bloodhounds.
Can you still name some towns in New Jersey?
I gave you Thurber in the womb:
the book balanced on my belly
those long hot nights in our ninth month.
You grew to completion shaken
by my laughter at his disastrous times;
among your first words, his fables,
captions of cartoons.
Will our house one day resound with ghosts,
as here: Grandfather brandishing his sword,
the bed falling on Father,
night alarms in the twisty upstairs hall.
What of our life removed by time
will make the others laugh?
The way I shrieked and ran from moths,
the werewolf who woke you at midnight,
Dad’s “Checkerboard” pronouncement in his sleep?
Mouse parts in your bed,
that fetid moose antler,
wasps between the walls,
our dog Louise who talked to stones.
October 1, 2004
Monks chant in the garden.
Their robes glow
amongst the cabbages.
Between the shadows of the trees,
a pool, a fire, a pattern,
the echo of a drum.
The gatekeeper is gone,
or dead,
or perhaps he never was.
Photographs of ancestors,
boxes of bones
clutter the dusty hall.
In the earth-floored cellar,
an old woman
carefully turns a wheel.
A mother lights candles
in the dining room
and breaks a shiny braid of bread.
In the pantry,
priests and people polish silver
and finish up the wine.
In the pattern-tile tower
a beautiful singer
calls down the crescent moon.
Lovers entangle in a perfumed bed
while a blue-skinned god
tramples the world away.
A multitude gathers
in the bathroom, longing
to see a face in the steamy glass.
Scholars rummage
the library for books in tongues
they hardly comprehend.
Philosophers expound in the parlor,
spilling coffee, shattering arguments,
scattering crumbs.
Alone in the cleaned-up kitchen,
a plump matron
practices tai chi.
Under the stairs,
children write wishes
on paper scraps.
Occupy the World.
Start with the body.
Root your feet.
You are the same as trees,
the stuff of dust,
a universe of water,
inhabitants
no one yet can name.
Breathe this air.
It is not yours.
Passed through bromeliads,
stromatolites, tyrannosaurs–
through all the gills
and pores and lungs
of life–pass it on.
Open your hands,
marvel of primate finger,
clapping palm. Point
at what you love,
draw it close.
Pat it gently on the back.
Find your voice.
Join whales,
elephants, the yapping
dogs. In every pond
the frogs complain.
Desperate birds
are calling from
every branch.
Occupy the World.
Would you stop the seasons,
their untidy progression?
Don’t you know death
is the only perfection?
And where would you stop them?
The sleekness of youth
overworked middle age,
or frailty’s deep comprehension?
She had to go to Idaho
(or was it Illinois)
and the maps were shifty.
Her husband, her mother,
a tree frog and a rhinoceros
kept telling her the way.
Her car had flat tires
and a sewing machine
where the engine used to be.
She had to make supper
for two hundred people
with teabags and a dozen eggs.
Headless chickens and shopping carts
filled with unripe and singing squashes
roamed the supermarket.
And then, there were spiders
in the sugar canister
and spots on the tomatoes.
Not only that, her glasses didn’t work,
she ran out of ink, and every pair of shoes
gave her blisters and hammertoes.
Tall pines, a ridge of stone–
bones of Earth.
All summer our small band
wandered with our sticks,
pretending danger till
she appeared, real, (her red shawl,
her cane) and we fled. Out, out
of my woods, she always said.
So we feared
and loved the forest more.
Fifty years gone by,
a forest of my own,
their stillness my solace.
Sunset, moonrise,
slant the light alike.
I walk alone among the pines,
follow the fox, listen for owls.
Now in autumn,
I’m watching for the hazel,
its late, late yellow bloom.
The moon shines through the window like snow.
My husband sleeps on the porch in the cold
to hear coyotes and owls and wind.
I sleep in the warm room
with a cat curled small against me,
no sounds but her breath,
the moonlight falling on the roof.
I will dream of a garden where I work
in the dark with my dead father
among fallen leaves, the scent of snow.
I hear a sound like a thousand bees
and my father opens the gate
to the moon. She enters, whispering,
covering the stems and leaves with white.
. . not inexplicable, only unexplained
~Dr. Who
1.
She was already a grown-up
when she caught her mother
throwing all her dolls into the trash.
You can’t do this, she explained,
gathering up the ballerina,
the homemade Raggedy Ann,
the Gigi she’d saved her allowance to buy.
Then she found the old walking doll
(the fine gold hair, white plastic shoes,
two little front teeth, blue eyes that opened and closed),
and lost all composure.
She’s been with me since I was three, she screamed,
You can’t do this.
2.
A few years later,
having read some Russell and Hume,
she took a hammer to the walking doll.
It was just a pile of peachy plastic,
some old rubber bands,
and a weighted mechanism
to open and close the eyes.
3.
Dolls can’t talk.
Tinkerbell is dead.
The angels are, at the very least,
in a torporous state, like winter toads.
Pan, if he ever was, has fled.
4.
Fact:
Continents are sliding under,
melting down, bubbling up.
Speculation:
The fairies disappeared
into the zone of subduction.
Fact:
No two snowflakes are alike.
Speculation:
The gods that form them are as different
as the shapes we make are not the same.
Fact:
Many groups of hominids went extinct.
Maybe:
They’ve slipped through wormholes.
Alternatively, they’re here,
close as our skin,
metamorphosed into yet another layer
of what we don’t want to believe.
We’re more closely related to potatoes
than tuberculosis bacteria is to cholera.
That explains so many faces.
The curvature of spacetime
keeps us from drifting away
and yet
we act is if gravity were real,
as serious as, say, love.
5.
My father saw Santa Claus in his sleigh, with reindeer,
flying above the roofs of Newport, Vermont.
Here, still in Vermont, I can talk, in real time,
to a friend in Nagoya, Japan.
When my son was eight years old,
he saw an angel in the downstairs bathroom.
At this writing, there are seven hundred and five thousand
listings for gravity curvature spacetime on Google.
Jesus turned water into wine.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
Mohammed split the moon.
Tuberculosis bacteria
made my husband’s bladder cancer
go away.
6.
Eventually, the unexplained was everywhere:
she found it in the forests,
under park benches,
tucked between books on library shelves.
Stop it, she screamed,
but it multiplied exponentially.
When she went for her evening walk,
she heard dolls singing madrigals,
saw fairies ducking into the shrubbery.
In the garden, the angels
were stretching their bony wings,
emerging from their long muddy sleep.
And early one morning, she awakened to find
a solemn Neanderthal squatting in her kitchen,
peeling potatoes with a sharp green blade.
after a print by Ray Hudson
Snow falls in enormous
flakes, each bigger
than the invisible moon.
In twenty-seven rectangles, four trees
climb a blue hill; beyond,
the mountains rise green.
Snow falls from blue
through gray, mirrored
once, once turned over.
It has been shown that the human
brain can get used
to anything: eyeglasses that reverse
or invert the world,
nearly any loss.
It has been proven that
we do not perceive the world
as it is. That must
be so, since the moon
could never be
so small, since hills are never
so blue. It must be so
if four trees
can climb a blue hill
twenty-seven ways.
The creatures went right for it
and gunked with their excretions
the delicate folds of speech;
they clogged the rippling edges
with sludge: the stuff of
drain baskets, between the teeth
of ancient combs, what grows around
the ketchup bottle necks.
But
there is no clearing it, no
huge guttural HAAAR!
that will shake it loose, no
solvent drop or tea, no
roto-rooter delicate enough.
So
I do not speak, and when I try,
my sister says AAARG! Like my mother-
in-law! and my son
You sound like some weird
old woman who smokes
three packs a day.
I wrote this in 1990, when I had laryngitis for nearly a month. This is in honor of everyone who has the hacky cold that’s going around now.
I wrote this back in 2003, (I think) after practicing “Messiah.” The mezzo was Wendy Hoffman-Farrell, and this poem is dedicated to her.
. . . I always used to believe he would,
but lately, with life wandering out of control–
beasts, sharp edges everywhere–
I have not been so sure.
Concentrating on my part–
the crazy alto timing in “He shall purify,”
the slippery bits in “Unto us”–
I was forgetting to listen.
But then her voice.
Not like light–
not clear, star-studded, disturbing,
the dangerous sky of a wild and wakeful night–
but close and warm and dark,
the safe dark when everything that can harm is asleep,
the comforting dark when you have been gathered up
and peek out at the puzzling world
from the folds of his robes,
the happiness of his encircling arms.
The year they found her bones
my son was riding my hip.
The year they found her bones
he learned to sing, sitting on my lap:
Row, row, row your boat,
life is but a dream.
I watched him climb the chairs,
he practiced stairs. We made faces:
Can you make a happy face?
Angry? Silly? Sad?
He learned to say please and thank you,
the intricate gaze and glance.
Sentences grew long.
He found meter and rhyme,
the spine of his stamping dance.
Raising little hominids
takes time.
Juvenile, he stalked us with his friends,
spying from the edges of the lawn;
always they carried sticks.
He kept an eye on girls,
to see, he said.
what they’ll do next.
Adolescent, he found his clan;
invented lives and names.
Now, he’s a long walk away
but the mother-bond holds tight:
his low voice on the phone
every Sunday night.
I believe Lucy
held together. Our hearts shatter,
people scatter.
Our bones come apart.
I wrote this in 1998. Our son came home from a semester in England, and we met him at the airport. I hadn’t yet written my Christmas sermon. This is essentially the poetic version of the sermon that resulted. It was published in The Other Side the following year.
Drove to Boston, four hours in wet snow.
Already tired, late flight coming in,
and I’m preaching Christmas Day:
something about snowgeese, maybe,
the way they change the landscape
even after they’ve flown away–
the way God changed it once,
by making human footprints.
Half the world is here, waiting for planes.
A tall kid in a baseball hat
slouches around, looks at his watch, drinks a coke.
Passengers from France are surfacing.
The kid spots a first class woman in a suit
crisp and red as a poinsettia,
dances on his toes,
hollers, “Here Mom, over here!”
A thin woman from the back of the plane
stands still as the last tree in the lot,
touches one enameled fingertip to a shadowed eyelid,
shoulders a cheap vinyl bag.
Roaring into the crowd
–did he ride his Harley through this snow?–
a man in a motorcycle jacket
who has not forgotten her.
The lights come on all over town.
The plane from Lisbon lands,
the watchers shift and hum.
A tiny black-eyed boy breaks away,
screaming “POPPY! POPPY!”
runs through the NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL barrier
as if he’s authorized,
throws himself at an old man carrying an umbrella, a paper sack.
Poppy drops his burdens,
raises up the child.
I see ten thousand white geese.
I see starlight on the snow.
The plane from England touches down, taxies in.
The doors open.
When after all these months I see my son
I know that together we have one face,
the face of God,
of someone being born.
Before the final hymn
they’re in the kitchen, ready:
coffee in the urn, a pot of tea,
punch in the big glass bowl.
They’ve set out china saucers and cups,
the fan of napkins, Peggy’s brownies,
Martha’s lemon bars, Betty’s cake,
no little sandwiches from Joyce.
They move between the kitchen and the hall–
a perfect ritual they have devised.
They’ve wept, or their tears will keep.
They bring coffee (cream, no sugar)
to George, still stunned,
and to his son, black tea.
Elsewhere, the women lay out their dead:
embroidered pillow, rosary, salt,
all pins tucked away.
In other times, black-veiled,
they sing the ritual lament.
Once at dawn they rose to redo
a secret burial done in haste.
They fled from the tomb, afraid.
Always there with cookies or keening,
shrouds and bags of spice–
they know better than any man–
or woman below a certain age–
important things that must be done,
preliminaries to resurrection.
In memory of Marylin, one of the great ones.
~for J. Rouleau
For some reason, today I can’t format this without the stupid dots. What about this?
Sure that one day he’d live on Mars,
the boy David discarded much
of the knowledge of Earth.
Why travel with luggage
one does not need?
I, on the other hand,
sure that Earth is my home,
cannot know too many things.
I carry with me every where I go
my bags of wind, and leaves, and bones.
1999
As you grow older, and are pushed to the margin,
you begin to realize that everything is not about you,
and that is the beginning of freedom. –Germaine Greer
The text is fixed: it’s about
God, or someone’s philosophy,
the history of dead kings, perhaps,
lists of what they ruled.
But the margins are loose;
I can doodle what I like:
see the peculiar animals among the leaves,
the tiny women sickling corn.
There are flowers here, all the ones I know
from mornings in the meadows. And there,
and there, a company around the table, a chorus
singing Gilbert and Sullivan.
Just there, in a corner,
if you look carefully, you can maybe
make out the woman giving birth under a tree.
She is quite alone, and her hair is white.
Notice the baby’s white hair, too:
my little joke.
The text drones on in miniscule,
all the same, but the margins are mine:
detail of lapis, carnelian, of gold.
ATLANTA REVIEW, FALL 2006
It’s easy in elegant diction
To call it an innocent fiction
But it comes in the same category
As telling a regular terrible story.
~W. S. Gilbert, Pirates of Penzance
It was known
to the Victorians:
the elegant diction,
called innocent fiction.
But even bitter satire of duty
carried the implication
of honor and shame.
The silly Major General,
sleepless in the ruined chapel,
bemoaned the blot
on his newly purchased escutcheon,
and everyone knew the difference.
It seems now
unnecessary
for the diction
to be elegant:
any manly rhetoric
will be believed.
It seems necessary
to believe it.
Meanwhile the mendacious tale unfolds.
Meanwhile the modern majors
give new shape to topsy turveydom.
Meanwhile the bodies
are covered with oil and sand.
January, 2004
Wow! A galaxy!
~the poet, looking through a telescope at M82
First, Vision, that homunculus
before its tiny screen.
Who watches it?
Then the Soul, a vagabond
trapped in a meat machine.
What accounts for it?
Warblers, grasses, termites, cats,
stones and trembling trees–
any reason to believe
life’s simpler for them?
Mind: one mind, our mind,
hive mind—O
never mind, for none
can comprehend the ticking
of ten thousand things,
the wheel shaping
and unshaping itself
through probability’s infinity.
I left the offering prescribed:
a bone china tea cup,
my mother’s wedding ring.
The Oracle examined the cup,
turned it over to check the porcelain mark,
slipped the ring over a bony knuckle.
Now, she said,
your question.
How, I asked,
shall I live?
Another one, she said, under her breath,
and sat heavily on the battered chair.
Long she stared into the smoke
while time passed overhead like clouds.
You, she said at last,
her voice low and raw,
transform.
Gather up the dead.
Dinners, daffodils, the cats,
bags of mulch and barrows of stone:
all you need is there.
Cut your nails and comb your hair.
Hang your washing in the rain.
The only prayer is
the one you don’t understand.
Now go, she said. And live.
Thanks for the stuff.
I wandered down from the mountain
with my hands in my pockets,
humming a tune from Iolanthe.
When I turned to wave,
she was gone, but her shadow remained,
blue against the rock.
From her chair by the window,
Mother watches crows settle in the pines.
I can call them, she says.
I caw and they come.
Underneath the table,
her tiny dog snores his tiny snore.
I search through piles of papers on the desk
for notices and bills;
I make us cups of tea.
She scolds me for carrying
a stack of books she thinks too heavy.
I scold her because she bends
to pick a paperclip from the floor.
She won’t write captions
for the family photos,
her trip to Mexico after the War.
I don’t bring her copies
of my poems or tell her
I’m writing a book.
Our failures persist like rusty stains
on Grandma’s tablecloth.
Mother can say You’re doing
so well. You make me so happy
but that’s not something I know how
to hear. You did what you had to do,
I can say, but she knows
so well that I am wrong.
Caw, she says, caw.
Now come and see.
Three crows launch from the trees
and fly toward the window,
across the snowy yard.
Nowhere in the official volumes is it written
that Emily Dickinson’s best friend
was a gypsy woman.
Her name was Emerald.
Her cottage was in the forest
beyond the common of the town.
She had a small garden where she grew
raspberry, mint and balm for the teas
that she peddled door to door.
Beneath her windows bloomed
roses, lilies and lavender;
on warm summer nights
when she could not sleep
she followed their fragrances
through the heavy air. In the woods and meadows
she tended medicines–
no one could accuse her.
It was a spring midnight
when Emerald saw Emily’s face
instead of her own
reflected in a vernal pool.
She made a packet
of althea and euphrasy,
tied it with a red thread,
and set out for Emily’s house.
She knew the room
by the lighted lamp,
and tossed a pebble.
Emily was not surprised.
She came down into the garden,
wrapped in a thin blue shawl.
They sat among white lilacs then
and told their lives.
Emerald had the seeing
and Emily the words.
Together they moved the moon
across the Amherst sky.
They seldom met in winter,
but always on St. Stephen’s Night,
even if it were bitter cold.
Together they’d shelter from the wind
under a heavy blanket Emerald wove
from the wool of her old gray goat.
Always Emily gave gingerbread cut in stars,
and Emerald a muslin bag
of bearberry, cornsilk and nettle.
Emerald heard the poems
she could not read.
Emily heard the visions
that she could never see.
Each one knew the world,
the way it turned,
the space it occupied.
It was years before
the time was right–
and when it was–
Emily asked and Emerald told–
the future–deep and narrow–
clarity and sorrow–
so much to be gained
through loss.
Published in Old Hotel
LESSON ONE
Parting the Wild Horse’s Mane
in this alley in the center of town,
embarrassed, in heavy shoes
I clunk and stomp among the stones.
The White Crane Spreads Out its Wing.
The teacher is elegant in blue silk and red slippers.
I am stupid in my rolled-up jeans.
I try to Brush away the thick distractions
around my Knee; my hands tangle,
feet stumble
until I settle down to Play the Lute.
LESSON TWO
Randomly flailing, adjusting my toes,
I Drive the Monkey a little bit Away,
chatter a little less.
When I
Grasp the Bird’s Tail
and stroke her glossy feathers
almost I can believe that she will
let me settle on her back;
almost I can feel the lightness of her bones.
LESSON THREE
Oh, how I can Wave my Hands
Like Clouds, all day!
But now I must Pat High on the Horse’s Back
before the battle begins–
Kick with Right Foot,
Grab Opponent’s Ears with Both Fists,
Kick with Left Foot–
still so much to fend away.
Will I never settle down,
become a sturdy
Golden Rooster
who Stands, trimphant, on One Leg?
LESSON FOUR
Western lady moves too fast,
tries to remember what’s next.
But today she doesn’t care
if people walking past the alley stop
to smile at Fair Lady Working Shuttles,
Looking for Needle at the Sea Bottom.
These things require attention.
As I Shunt with Both Hands Fanning,
a frail barrier forms between my body
and the noise of traffic and machines.
Deflecting Downward, Parrying and Punching,
I imagine it is possible to push the unneeded aside.
I am
Acting to Close a Door wide open too long.
Crossing the Hands, I assume
Closing Position,
so much like beginning again.
My cloak is pieced from the oldest hills:
each scrap snipped
from an older quilt.
I am not soft, I am not fair.
I live in a tower with my wheel,
a mirror that tells me all.
When I shake my featherbed
the snow begins to fall.
The world goes on while I stitch and spin
or sit and knit while the tumbrels roll;
line by line the tale unfolds.
My needles click the even rows.
Flurry on Mount Abraham, sunlight on Hogback.
Broken blue clouds, edged with orange and white.
Brown plowed fields, commas of crusted snow.
Fields of amber stubble, splashed with pools of ice.
Pavement, pavement, pavement, pavement
wrinkled, cracked, pocked like an old man’s face.
Stones, roots, fallen branches, empty cans.
Salt and gravel behind the Town Garage.
Houses, barns, mailboxes, tractors, cars.
Teasel, goldenrod, burdock, cow parsnip
–brittle skeletons verge the frozen lawns.
Gray dogwood, gray dogwood, gray dogwood.
White ash, red oak, young elm, grape vine, red osier,
buckthorn, green ash, hardhack, sumac, red cedar.
On the hills and ridges, hemlock, maple, popple, pine.
Bitter wetlands, old glacial seeps–their sedges,
cattails, cattails, phragmites, loosestrife, cattails.
Two gray squirrels. Five crows.
Starlings and sparrows. Empty broken nests.
Four deer crossing from forest to field.
Jim’s two horses standing by the gate.
Luke’s black cows.
Donna’s barn half full of hay.
Joe’s silver pond–a fallen crescent moon.
. . .there is something that it is like to be a bat.
~Thomas Nagel
What is it like to be a swallow on a wire?
I gaze into the air, let go and float where insects hang.
I open my mouth to take one in.
What is it like in the earthy warmth
of a chipmunk hole, among nuts and seeds,
dirt and mold-smell clinging to my fur?
I am a wasp chewing an old fence post,
spitting out pulp to build the smothering nest
around my pampered and bloated queen,
a deer, my ears turned toward every whisper,
a porcupine shuffling through the forest, unconcerned.
Partridge–I am a great whirring, with open wings.
Horse eating wild apples and rolling in the dust.
Salamander trying to comprehend the road.
I am a bat. I am a bat. I think I am a bat.
No, Mary–imagination doesn’t count.
What is it like for a bat to be a bat,
a weasel to be itself, a whale,
the center of a swarm of bees.
Can’t you understand the limit of your mind?
Can you remember what it was like
to be a newborn human,
the undifferentiated world
sorting itself in your plastic brain?
Or do you even know what is it like to be you,
unconscious of nearly everything?
The questions in this “catechism” are from the old Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church. The answers, modified slightly to fit the grammar, were taken from little bits and pieces in notebooks and from lines of failed poems.
What is your Name?
Dead branches, feathers, bones, brown grasses gone to seed, bits of blue glass and broken shell, the clean white skull of a porcupine.
Who gave you this Name?
A brain with legs. Heads on wheels. Gonads with hands. Brains with arms. Books with mouths.
What did these Sponsors then for you?
Made a terrible dream of whales and overturned ships, shifting broken stairways, dinosaurs and demon children that no one else can see, and runaway horses and trains.
Dost thou not think that thou art bound to believe, and to do, as they have promised for thee?
Yes, verily. Everything that can possibly be done to an eye. A message in a bottle without a cork. A cabbage and a Boston fern.
Rehearse the Articles of thy Belief.
Something we thought up when we were in High School and sat in Kathy’s basement with a candle flickering and Dylan in the background.
What dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles of thy Belief?
Something that worked quite well before the verdict, before the plague, before the terror of the Inquisition.
You said that your Sponsors did promise for you, that you should keep God’s Commandments. Tell me how many there are.
As many as the cheerful, responsible eldest children who cry in the bathroom alone at midnight while running the shower so no one will hear.
Which are they?
Jump off a bridge. Stay up all night walking through the dangerous part of town. Pick a handful of random mushrooms and eat them raw to see what will happen.
What dost thou chiefly learn by these Commandments?
There is a Green Man living outside my window, pulling me away from the smoky dark building where ponderous music blares and people claim to understand.
What is thy duty towards God?
To tell endless tales of bravado. To catch an edge. Throw the reserve chute. Get stuck in the commode.
What is thy duty towards thy Neighbour?
To provide a place for the soul to land above the reservoir of tears, where light from the rising sun slides down until it illuminates the grass.
My good Child, know this; that thou art not able to do these things of thyself, nor to walk in the Commandments of God, and to serve him, without his special grace; which thou must learn at all times to call for by diligent prayer. Let me hear, therefore, if thou canst say the Lord’s Prayer.
I canst. It is the cord on which I string the fish I caught in the brown brook under the willow tree on a long summer afternoon.
What desirest thou of God in this Prayer?
The ghosts of farmers milking the ghosts of jersey cows. The weight of snow that took the barn roof.
How many Sacraments hath Christ ordained in his Church?
So many. Layers accumulated like leaves or laughs or petticoats, or kingdoms and difficult wives.
What meanest thou by this word “Sacrament”?
Cooked chicken and birdseed. A bag of orange, artifically-banana-flavored marshmallow “Circus Peanuts.” One of those red satin, heart-shaped boxes of cheap chocolates.
How many parts are there in a Sacrament?
Three: poems about when you were a tree, and I was a bird, and we were rain.
What is the outward visible sign or form in Baptism?
Dogfood kept in cans on the lowest shelf of the dangerous pantry at the top of the stairs.
What is the inward and spiritual grace?
There is more than one: There are books for cats, swans carved from bars of soap, mittens made from milkweed fluff, seven letters written to a stranger about different subjects, mailed in separate envelopes all on the same day.
What is required of persons to be baptized?
To grow into an old woman who wanted to act, sing, write, but took a job she didn’t want and did for forty years. To dither, filled with pain and the burden of her heavy love.
Why then are Infants baptized, when by reason of their tender age they cannot perform them?
Because raindrops cling to evergreen needles after a slow rain before the birds land and knock them off in tiny showers, echoes of the storm.
Why was the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper ordained?
Because the neutered male cat, too dumb to be mean, wants to play with the other male and the Queen who watches him with disdain as he gallops up and down the hallways, skidding the little rugs across the polished floors.
What is the outward part of sign of the Lord’s Supper?
A small coffiin carried into a church and filled with water. A baby is dropped in, the priest pulls her out and says “You’ve died and now you’re alive!” and everybody rings bells.
What is the inward part, or thing signified?
Apollo, by another name, vague and vacuous, one of those rich blond guys who gets everything he wants just by smiling.
What are the benefits whereof we are partakers thereby?
A day that stretches ahead like a rubber band that’s been reused and reused to hold together bundles of letters, bills, or an ancient cookbook. Three Hairy Woodpeckers chasing one another around the trunk of an ash tree. A jar of Kimchee in the back of the refrigerator.
What is required of those who come to the Lord’s Supper?
A pain in your hips that awakens you at 4 A.M. and you can’t find a comfortable position and while you’re twisting there, wakeful, all the cats come and lick your face and knead whatever part of you is trying to be still.
It has taken time,
but I have made the story mine:
how beautiful the dark,
how easy my crown.
How she would not let me be,
how she never looked
at my face.
What they don’t say is that I found
that pomegranate and ate all the seeds myself.
The thought of being up there forever
in that heat, the hard light–
the tangle of vine and blade–
and Mother.
Poor Mother.
you know the tale–
how she searched,
how she withheld
the Spring.
Not surprising.
She always withheld
when she didn’t get her way.
She insisted the world was hers–
how the worms worked,
olives, the corn.
And always she sang the same refrain:
how she had to manage
every blossom, every grain.
How the sun and sea betrayed.
I missed her for awhile, but–
and the stories don’t tell–
I love my husband.
When he came roaring
up through the earth, driving
those lusty horses, I wanted
him and when he asked me,
I said yes.
Yes.
It was one of those parties
in that library with archaic shelves
ascending to the trees.
Bertrand Russell came late,
carrying a baby
who spoke like William Blake:
There is a marriage of Heaven and Hell,
another way to see.
Scholars whispered of the child’s maternity.
Bertie found me where I stood.
This baby needs a mother;
you, I hope, will be.
I respectfully refused,
but introduced him to
Tante Wanda,
who died at ninety-three
singing “How Great Thou Art.”
She sat him in a kitchen chair
and fed him plum kuchen and coffee,
showed him blue ribbons
from the Arkansas fair,
the dolls she crocheted
to cover toilet paper rolls,
the JESUS signs she made,
a recipe for perfection salad.
Russell kissed her hand.
She took the baby right away–
it spoke again: O, what a pleasant land.
Grandma did the morning work: scrubbed the stairs, made the beds, dusted chairs, washed dishes, polished windows, hung the laundry and brought it in. She made over dresses for my mother, turned the collars of Grandpa’s shirts. She repaid her passage, put flowered china on layaway and paid a little every week from her work constructing corsets and pressing sheets. It took another year to earn enough for Bobby, the bisque baby doll she bought since she never had a boy.
If it’s clean, mended and paid for you don’t have to be ashamed.
She married a man from home whose German his family name meant “Grief.” I have a photo of him, with other men, hard and earnest in their aprons and caps, standing on the steps of the Cleveland steel works. He got slivers of metal in his hands; every night my mother picked them out. He could fight in German, Polish, Russian, but English always slipped away.
You must walk to show the world you’re glad to be alive.
Grandma bought live geese and ducks at the market and carried them home in a basket. Mother remembered those streetcar rides, the frantic squawks, how the other passengers smiled.
Grandma made duck’s blood soup, Blutwurst, Kugel with cinnamon and egg. Strudel, Apfelkuchen, Stollen; Hassenpfeffer from Mother’s pet rabbit. Christmas, there were thick slabs of Lebkuchen with tissue paper pictures pasted on.
A thin cook should be buried under the back steps so everyone can walk on her.
Grandma taught Sunday School for forty years. I have her bibles, hymnals and Luther’s Catechism, her German glass picture with the Lord’s Prayer, a primrose, butterflies, a bird.
You must never swing your legs in church. That’s giving the devil a ride.
Grandma had roses, lilies, calamus growing dense in front of the storied house. I helped her step on ants my one trip to Cleveland, the summer I was four. She took me to visit all her friends and made me play “Volga Boatman” on their upright pianos. She gave me a pink seashell and a tiny doll in a handmade red silk dress. She gave me a record she made for me about her father and the fourteen pears.
Don’t praise the children. You’ll put on the evil eye
I have a photo of Grandma picking lilacs. “That’s what she’s doing in Heaven,” Mother said. I have a photo of Grandma standing on her grave. She’s wearing a black dress and heavy shoes,her hair in a braid around her head. She’s smirking at the camera. Mother took the photo because Grandma wanted it.
Grandma sent to Poland for Grandpa’s favorite brother, Emil, who died of typhoid three months after he arrived. Grandpa never forgave her. Three months Grandpa was in the hospital, depressed, while Grandma ironed and sewed and shoveled horse manure from the streets to spread on her flowers.
Old woman had no troubles so she bought herself a pig.
When Mother was old, she told about the screaming, the aborted son and the blue days Grandma spent wrapped in her red shawl, weeping in her rocker by the stove.
Some days I can’t get out of my own way.
Among the grave-goods of Anglo-Saxon women
were keyshaped objects,
presumably symbols of domestic authority.
Our men donned leather leggings,
strapped the runetraced swords to their thighs.
They sailed away in war-bright ships
to deep-treed lands behind the sun.
We waved and wept them out of sight,
jangling our rings of iron keys.
We turned from the shore to women’s work.
We loosened the loam and scattered the seed,
cabbage, onions, beetroot and leeks.
Sweet-breathed goats grazed in the grass,
white ewes bawled to their awkward lambs.
We slaughtered and salted, churned the thick cream.
We sang at our spinning, sang at our baking,
weaving shrouds of linen and cloaks of wool.
We buried dead babies, we buried our mothers.
We watched our daughters dance in the moonlight.
Tangled with children and dogs we slept
beneath white stars in the earth-dark sky.
When we were dead they buried us all
with spindle whorls, with rings of keys.
No manly minstrel sang our songs
and no one remembers our names.
Loud colors are very risky;
and should never be attempted except in the country;
and then in an intimate crowd only.
The smoking of women,
it comes hard to be forced to admit
into a regular treatise on customs.
It is a sad mistake
from beginning to enbd.
As a question of fact,
it unfortunately also admits of none.
At Bar Harbor one summer,
the young woman who had the most attention
was one who rowed beautifully,
swam, played tennis, talked well,
and was generally charming out-of-doors;
who had not brought a ball-gown with her,
and could not be enticed to dance.
That girl knew her forte,
and kept to it
She had a scraggy neck,
and did not “light up well.”
Girls cannot find as many ways
of doing favors for men
as men for girls,
which is truly well.
A young man, if he sets about it,
can serve a girl in a thousand quiet ways.
He can call her carriage,
carry parcels, get a cab,
lend her an umbrella,
ask her to dance, take her to supper,
be nice to her mother,
and indeed to all her family,
remember some trivial wish or request.
There are cheaper methods;
There is tea at bachelor apartments,
excursions to see pictures at museums,
or processes in factories.
Found in Manners and Social Usages, by Mrs. John Sherwood (author of “A Transplanted Rose”)
1884, revised in 1897
Here is a poem about a strange character who appears in my imagination now and again.
I was conceived at the crossing
where three ways meet.
My father was a shadow
cast by the moon.
The midwife who tended my mother
gave her an iron key to keep,
and I keep it still. My mother
was small and often afraid.
She baked bread and pies
in the king’s kitchen;
we slept by the fire,
curled on the hearth.
My mother’s hair was dirty
and long, her eyes the color of cinders.
Her skin was white
and streaked with ash, her hands
were red and hard.
She taught me nothing
but weariness and pain.
I never loved her; I never
blamed her. When she died
they buried her deep in the wood
and covered her grave with stones.
Not even a sparrow sang a psalm.
Why these million names?
Who can know them all?
Why language? Why call
each passing fancy
by some random name?
Adam, commanded
by God began to
name the animals,
but what did he know?
Tiger, dingo, whale,
praying mantis, cat,
fox, octopus, gull,
robin, wolf, porpoise–
what was the purpose
of God, Linnaeus
naming and naming
and keeping their lists?
What does “child” tell you?
“Mountain,” “meat,” or “war”?
What is naming for?
I’ve been burned and hung and stoned and drowned.
Now I’m no-where seen or found–
but the prints of my twisted feet wind paths
through every woods and farm and street.
Wild birds sing my names.
My fingers redden the moon.
My time-bound children, I tell you this:
I’ve made a story of my own.
The bees are mine, the iron wheels,
the sun is mine, the grave.
Mine are the tides, the old white roads,
maggots and leaves, willows and snow.
As touch or breath melt ice and frost
my images transmute.
Every shadow has a glory,
each blossom a wide and darkened mouth.
Odd, this snowless, open winter,
strange, this easy, hazy warmth–
though I try, I can’t remember
such a winter. Has the Earth
so changed? I’m lonely for the cold;
I miss the shoveling, snowdrifts, ice,
threat of blizzard, slicked down highway,
thawing frozen hands and face.
And is this why sometimes we suffer–
why we need some tears and pain?
If we never know the winter
green Spring cannot come again.
A shy awkward boy should be trained
in dancing, fencing, boxing; he should be instructed
in music, elocution, and public speaking;
he should be sent into society,
as certainly as he should be sent to the dentist’s.
Who does not pity the trembling boy?
The color comes in spots on his face.
He sits down on the stairs and wishes he were dead.
A strange sensation is running down his back.
He is afraid to be afraid,
he is ashamed to be ashamed.
At the door of a parlor he feels himself
a drivelling idiot. He assumes a courage,
if he has it not, and dashes into a room
as he would attack a forlorn hope.
Tea-parties are eternal: they never end;
they are like the old-fashioned ideas of a future state
of torment–they grow hotter and more stifling.
As the evening advances towards eternity,
he upsets the cream-jug. He summons
all his will-power, or he would run away.
No; retreat is impossible.
One must die at the post of duty.
There is a very disagreeable feeling
in the back of his neck, and a spinning sensation
about the brain. A queer rumbling
seizes his ears. He sees the pitying eyes
of the woman to whom he is talking
turn away from his countenance.
“And this humiliation, too?” he asks of himself,
as she brings him the usual refuge of the awkward–
a portfolio of photographs to look at.
It adds much to his confusion
to see that poor little pretender, Tom Titmouse,
talking and laughing and making merry.
The grandfathers and grandmothers of Tom Titmouse
were not people of strong character;
they were a decorous race on both sides,
with no heavy intellectual burdens,
good enough people who wore well.
But does our bashful man know this?
No. He simply remembers a passage
in the “Odyssey” which Tom Titmouse
could not construe, but which the bashful man read,
to the delight of the tutor:
O gods! How beloved he is,
and how honored by all men
to whatsoever land or city he comes!
He brings much booty from Troy,
but we, having accomplished the same journey,
are returning home having empty hands!
And this messenger from Troy is Tom Titmouse!
Therefore, as you know how embarrassing
embarrassment is to everybody else,
strive not to be embarrassed.
~found in Manners and Social Usages,
by Mrs. John Sherwood (author of “A Transplanted Rose”)
1884, revised in 1897
This was an exercise. I wrote a fairy-tale sort of line for each pattern of colored paper I used, then cut the paper into squares and arranged them in a pleasing way. Then I went back and made stanzas, matching the lines with the patches. Then I tweaked the grammar. I left it for a few months, and went back and tweaked again. By that time, I’d tossed the original “quilt” so I made a new one, with colored pencil. That appears at the bottom of the piece. Strange, but fun.
First Row
1.
Early one morning, through the open window, we heard a rustle of wings.
We three stood silent, in welcome.
A single feather fell at our feet.
The yellow door opened into a garden.
Mist was rising silver on distant mountains
as the door opened and opened
to the sound of rustling wings.
We joined hands and danced through the door,
while from the tower one bird sang one clear note.
2.
The door opened to memory and hope.
Through the silence, our strong hearts beat.
Beyond memory and hope
one candle burned to keep the fear away.
Have we courage enough, and love, to tend that flame?
A freshening wind, wet as birth, swept every broken thing away
but memory and hope remained
in the strong beat of silence
behind that open door.
3.
The gray cat licked my closed eyes with his gritty tongue.
I felt joy like the first prickle of starlight.
Dogs danced and capered around my feet
and love like deep green water cooled my heart.
Last year’s leaf littered the warm soil underfoot
and joy prickled like starlight.
A silent red doe tripped down to the sea
as silver mist settled on the mountains
and the gray cat licked my eyelids.
4.
Dragon fire colored the night
while I stood still as a cornstalk in the rain,
safe in the fire’s heart. In the center of the storm
I picked three ripe pears from the golden tree.
The Crone gave me a candle, and a sword.
Moving quick as water through the meadow grass,
the fire, the dragon breath burning,
I brought her the golden pears.
One candleflame kept the fear away.
Second Row
1.
In a womb-dark, blood-dark, tomb-dark cave
I slept in dream through the moon-blue night.
Sorrow shone like moonlight
until the Maiden woke me and begged for a song.
In the cave of darkness, among hidden jewels
we laughed and wept, all night long we sang
our sorrow like blue moonlight between black branches.
I slept again, dreaming the moon
growing cold and blue outside my tomb-dark cave.
2.
I sat alone by the open window, listening
to bird song sharp as sun from the wild green wood.
Alone by the open window, listening,
I saw a flutter of feathers,
pink-tipped pines and first light, shadows stretching far,
a red bird against the sky.
I sat by the window, listening
as the bird sang sharp as the sun
clearing the mist away.
3.
A wind wet as birth, swept every broken thing away
across the path above the turquoise sea.
Outside the door no memory remained,
just fire and water, earth and sky.
One bird sang,
its music like a green river over stones.
No memory, or hope–
nothing but fire and water, the falling rain,
one candleflame.
4.
A white owl, silent as stone, flew above the path.
A red fox trotted, black against the sky.
What creature guards the threshold and how can I open the door?
A silent doe eats roses, trips down the street to the sea.
A girl tugs at my skirt, whining for a song
and dogs tangle and grumble around my feet.
Who guards the cask of treasure?
The red fox remains, black against the sky.
The owl is gone.
Third Row
1.
I follow the golden bee, her legs thick with apple dust;
down from my turret I follow, singing one song.
The orb weaver waits in her dew-laced web.
I lift my arms to the sky.
In the silence, the sound of my breath.
Warm soil underfoot, the litter of last year’s leaf.
The silent doe crosses the street to the sea
while from the turret one bird sings.
I follow the bee.
2.
In the blood-dark cave
I light my candle
to keep away the fear
like a rope around my throat.
I kindle a fire of paper.
It burns in a hot red strand,
like dragon fire.
All night long I will weep
with this one small flame to keep away the fear.
3.
Early in the morning, a rustle of wings.
I sit silent, listening.
I try to remember the Maiden’s song
that flowed like water through meadow grass,
like deep green water cooling the heart.
I build up my fire of paper and cones;
I dance, a slow circle around the flame,
sing through the smoke
a bird song sharp as the wild green wood.
4.
The white-pebbled path winds above the sea.
A green door opens low down in the tree.
I will warm the earth with fire.
Inside, hidden jewels
of womb, of blood, of tomb.
Outside, the memory
of fire, earth, cold rain.
I will open the door in the tree.
I will walk the path above the sea.
Fourth Row
1.
I am one woman in black,
as still as a cornstalk in the rain.
I carry a candle and a sword.
I’ve moved quick as water through meadow grass
while the orb weaver spun her dew-sparked web.
I’ve sung through mist and smoke–
the Maiden’s song.
I kindled a fire
and danced around the flame.
2.
First light: rose-tipped pines, blue shadows,
a doe eating roses,
green river, white flowers floating,
a golden bee.
A door will open
and dogs will dance around my feet
as shadows stretch.
The spider sits in her silver web;
white blossoms float in a river of green glass.
3.
Terror at noon, an orange flame–
dragon fire–
–terror, an orange flame.
The golden crown is mine, I claim the ring
through fire and water, earth and air.
Let the thin ghosts whisper among the trees!
I defy the terror in the center,
summon a freshening wind to sweep it all away.
Now, at the center, the fire is mine.
4.
I picked three pears from the golden tree
as the white owl flew silent as stone.
I slept deep through the blue moon light.
In early morning I opened the window
and lifted my hands to the sky.
A lone bird called
flying quick as water above the grass–
one clear note.
One by one, I ate the silver fruit.
Fifth Row
1.
Does sorrow make shadows like moonlight?
Where will you seek for comfort
in your moonlit sadness
where the white owl flies?
I will give you a candle,
and a white owl.
The moon will shine blue for you.
You will know the way,
a silver mist on mountains.
2.
Make a fire of paper and cones,
a dragon fire to brighten all the night.
Sit by the open window, listening
to the rain.
The white owl flies for you
through fire, water, earth and sky,
calls to you through the mist.
You are safe in the center of the storm.
Dream deep beneath the moon.
3.
Hear the bird song sharp as the sun.
Raise your arms to the sky
and see the green door open.
Blow out the candle, bury the sword.
Let the gray cat open your eyes.
You have a story to tell:
The green door in the tree opened wide
and we laughed and wept, we sang
like birds in a dark green wood.
4.
A red fox sheltered with us from the storm,
freed from the fear.
A gray cat licked our eyelids with her gritty tongue.
We loved like deep green water.
with dirt underfoot, and soft leaves,
joy like starlight.
Dogs capered around our feet.
Softly, like mist on mountains
the red doe tripped down to the sea.
Liz Taylor once blamed
elastic for the changes in her shape.
Denial: All must be well
as long as the underpants still fit. . .
But–Why do you think they invented elastic?
my mother asked when I first whined
about the mid-life spread,
when the underpants started to bind.
Mother Knows Best:
Life is better with a little give,
allowance for the expansion
of miseries that come to weigh us down.
-published in Huge Underpants of Gloom, 2009. (My favorite publishing credit ever.)
The stillness of this room before dawn,
faint light on red walls.
Space between words, between letters.
Spaces in the silence
for silence not my own,
the silence between stars.
Back to a beginning,
when writing was new,
when each letter mattered.
Dark matter.
Spaces between molecules.
The clean ivory margins of each page.
Jan., 2005
Sorry, I do not like the mother:
Long night of my ass and short legs.
When I try to swim, I sink.
I keep quiet and pleasant time.
I also had a copy of the father:
My anger is volcanic.
I think socialized medicine worth trying is.
I’m always a little hesitant.
Now, I stuck a few gifts:
Mommy’s insatiable curiosity about people,
loving father and vegetable world rodent.
I pick up the accent.
I’m excited to believe salvation.
You can talk to me
and easy to drink.
But I speak the language of instruction itself.
I can tell I have a story.
A failed poem that I ran through Translation Party. I miss Translation Party.
Between millrace and rapids
on a scrap of river island
in the middle of Middlebury
beavers have felled two trees.
From the foot bridge I can see
muddy tracks in snow
where the beavers hauled themselves across,
and yellow shingles shaved by yellow teeth.
There is no other sign:
no dam, no lodge, no trail.
I keep going there.
I can’t help myself.
Snowmelt stretches the river over its banks,
backwater flotsam swirls in spirals.
I am leaning on the bridge and watching,
praying my peculiar prayer:
Teach me to dare to hope.
April 9, 2001 (when there was actually melting snow)
–and do you remember the night the long rain stopped?
We woke to silence, and moonlight through the high window.
No sound but the animals breathing in their sleep–
–and the owls—
It was so hard to wait
but when the dove did not return
you worked open the swollen latch
and we pushed the ladder out.
I shooed away the chickens–
all those chickens underfoot.
You insisted on going first
even though your rheumatism was bad–
and I came down right behind you
with my knees not so much better.
Soft wet dirt, all the swamp stink,
but not a cloud in sight.
On top of the hill, that one tree
–Olive–with little leaves unfolding,
beginnings of buds where new olives would be–
The children crowded down behind.
Everything that could fly flew;
and the mice and monkeys, squirrels, possums,
horses, camels, cats and dogs.
Stones everywhere, like bones;
and bones, so many bones.
I scattered the seeds I’d saved on the slick and blackened ground.
You made a pile of stones, went back in and fetched a lamb, a calf.
The sun warmed my face–
We brought fire from the little lamp
while the bow shimmered there, hanging there–
Somehow the freedom of it–
so strange even now remembering it, believing it–
knowing that we are the ones–
the making and mending, the losing, yielding,
how it all comes out–
So soon the olives bloomed, blossoms fell,
little seeds grew up to grain.
We made wine from the grapes;
apples ripened red, so sweet,
on every clean-picked twig the nub of next year’s fruit;
in each white heart one strange and impeccable star.
March 24, 2003
The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.
~Julian of Norwich
Otter washing her paws
in the cold pond water.
Bluebird, robin, forgotten
songs come home.
Vulture and hawk
soaring the slope.
Three thin deer,
feet splayed in dry grass.
Squirrels. Rabbits.
Stones.
Snowmelt, icy
from the hills.
Logging truck grunting
far down the road,
its work, its purpose,
its heavy load.
Hello, Bloodroot. Was it hard,
shoving up through wet leaves?
And Stone, what can you tell
of your tumble under ice?
Worm, half-crushed by wheels,
where are you going now?
What is the willow
writing in the water?
What do clouds whisper
as they skid across the stars?
Sun, has anyone told you
that someday you will die?
Mud, whose eyes have you been
and whose bones?
Wind, whose body have you touched?
Whose breath will you become?
Her world was filled with goddesses then:
sheets and sheets of crayoned portraits
that summer before she started to bleed.
The wind, too,
a little brook through the meadow,
and at night Artemis and all the rest.
The old apple tree could sing.
Later, of course, it all came apart.
The gods took over, their pavements and towers,
the language she learned to get along.
She grew modest and small.
The wind was only wind.
Trees became a blur of green.
The moon stopped chasing through her dreams.
And later yet–her own fruit ripe and fallen–
Hecate overtook her at the crossing
and taught her to see how trees want
nothing more than life: nesting finches,
five-pointed stars in their immortal hair,
how broken trunks sprout from their roots,
the small brush of coppice bears blossom.
Happy Earth Day.
One clear morning
after the airplane had passed
and the trucks on the road were gone,
I called them together.
The crows in a great black pack
answered right away,
hollering down from their business
in the treetops and the sky.
Red squirrels stopped
their endless scamper
and sat still
on the stumps and fenceposts.
Coyotes and bobcats emerged from their dens
in woodpiles or stone foundations
and sat alert, their soft ears
pricked toward my call.
Bears lumbered up from deep in the forest
and peered out from the undergrowth,
a hard glitter in their eyes.
Their suspicion was not surprising,
considering their customary solitude.
Have you heard? I asked them.
It is happening.
Of course they knew.
They had been waiting
for me to notice.
I was the one
who had forgotten.
They had been working for years.
And all the while, the trees
had persisted in their silent task:
light to leaf to ground.
The little brooks, too:
resolutely filling the valleys
with the broken mountains,
the bare plowed fields.
