MATTER: A Pantoum

MATTER: A Pantoum

What gods do is make and let the pieces fall.

Billions of clocks on billions of beaches

turning as our hands move however they

move or our four legs or six or eight.

 

Billions of eyes in billions of deserts

move through their times or none and 

we move our two legs or four or six or eight and

our hearts and chloroplasts, mycelium,

 

our many eyes or none.

Our structures crystalize, the plates

and hearts and chloroplasts and mycelium

subduct and bump as we rise and fall.

 

The structure of our crystals, how the plates 

and all we do is an echo of clapping hands as we

subduct and bump and rise and fall.

With voices, silences, wavings of branches

 

we echo with our hands 

and twigs and whatever anemones use

for voices: silences? wavings of branches?

We’re all made of one matter.

 

Twigs and anemones

turn while our hands move however they

move because we’re all the matter

and making matter and falling is what we do.

ORIENTAR

ORIENTAR

I want to go to Orientar 

where the meadows glow purple

with frankincense flowers.

I want to watch children

laughing and singing, 

collecting the gold that falls

from the sky. No one goes hungry

in Orientar, for the orchards

of myrrh bear fruit all the year.

The kings and the queens

of Orientar are kindly and wise

and they follow their stars.

DISAPPOINTED

 

DISAPPOINTED

You were good all year.

You kept the rules, even

the ones you made up:

Always say “please’ to the dog.

Don’t eat chocolate on Tuesdays.

(new stanza)

You’ve learned all the magic words:

not only please  and thank you kindly,

Hocus Pocus and Abracadabra,

but the secret ones, the ones

you’d never dare write down.

new stanza

You know the gestures:

The morning bows 

the evening pirouettes

and everything else

in between.

(new stanza)

You believe there are enough

ponies to go around,

and more. They tell you that

 all the time. Abundance,

they tell you.

(new stanza)

So every year, you write

the letter, asking. 

It’s all you want,

you say. You’re not

greedy. And you’ve made

(new stanza)

space—a little barn,

a fenced-in pasture.

You can afford grain and hay

and apples and sugar

and vet bills.

(new stanza)

But every year,

when you wake

on that morning

and look outside

there is no pony.

(new stanza)

Only the sun rising.

Only your breath

clouding the window.

Only your beating heart.

Only the trees against the snow.

 

 

 

I paid wordpress some more money so I could format poetry properly, and I cannot do it. Sorry about the “new stanza” business, but stanzas are important. I’m asking for a refund!

OPEN STUDIO POEM #13: FOR THE LAST DAY OF 2020

OPEN STUDIO POEM #13

bobble

bauble

clarity

celebration

POEM FOR THE LAST DAY OF 2020

With smiles and nods, thumbs up

and applauses, with bright baubles 

 

of technologies—our new necessities—

we’ve bobbled through this hardest time. 

 

We have more courage than we knew,

our loves are stronger than we thought.

 

Now, let us begin a celebration, now, 

as we tiptoe toward the clarity of light 

 

at the far side of this dark passageway.

We are beginning to know 

 

how tender we are; beginning

to know how gentle we can be.

With thanks to Wanda, Kathy H, David and Kathy C for their words.

MAGI GOING HOME

MAGI, GOING HOME
 

 

 Go home another way, 
 it told us in a dream. 
 Another way?
 

 What would an angel 
 know about ways? 
 We had to sell the camels 
 

 and the slaves. Another way 
 meant bad roads, no roads. 
 We were not accustomed 
 

 to walk, but walk we did 
 till we bought a donkey. 
 It was old and lame.
 

 We rode in turns. We were not 
 accustomed to taking turns, 
 nor to buying food ourselves. 
 

 Now and then we begged,
 and more than once 
 we slept in stables, in the straw—
 

 the only lodgings we could find 
 after we were robbed of everything. 
 But that’s another tale. 

Metaphor

METAPHOR
 Last night, a theater company 
 zoomed a Hanukkah play 
 written by a woman I met
 in a zoomed playwrights’ group.
 My friend Kathy spends her evenings
 taping the alto parts of Christmas anthems.
 My husband’s coffee group zooms.
 We see the grandchildren once a week
 running around in their backyard
 or sitting at their art table,
 or practicing reading and singing.
 

 This morning, I drove to town.
 Stopped a minute for two runners
 on opposite sides of the road. 
 (Something that used to irritate me.)
 Masked women, still running together.
 

 I went to Old People’s Hour 
 at the food coöp: silent shoppers,
 all those kids stocking shelves.
 

 I listened to my Christmas playlist 
 on the drive home: Revels,
 Paul Winter, the Polish carols
 from my Warsaw cousins. 
 All jolly till “Lulajże Jezuniu,”
 a lullaby the homesick Chopin
 quoted in Scherzo No. 1.
 I had to pull over to cry.
 

 We’re so sad.
 And so brave.
 

 Yesterday my new friend Sherry told me 
 she saw a single blade of grass
 rising up through a cow pat in a field.  
 Not a poetic image like, say,
 a young oak sprouting in leaf mould.
 But still. 
 Can you think of a better metaphor?
 Perhaps something even less polite.  
 They spread manure on fields.
 Cowshit gets on your boots.
 Whatever you call it, it’s full of seeds.
 It’s food for seeds.
 For seeds.

OPEN STUDIO POEM #10

OPEN STUDIO POEM #10
 

 riff-raff
 heart
 glue
 synchronicity
 

 

 SYNCHRONICITY
 

 I dream of unmasked riff-raff.
 Anxiety is collaging my heart:
 scraps torn from memory,
 the flattened faces of my friends,
 a quarter of my granddaughter’s life.
 Will I ever have glue enough
 to paste it together?
 

 Emergency.
 Emergence.
 Emerge.
 Resurge.

OPEN STUDIO POEM #9

OPEN STUDIO POEM #9


coats
coax
helm
ochre
 

 

 

 A captain stands at the helm
 in his ochre coat,
 coaxing the wind
 into the sails.
 

 The artist in her rusty coat
 coaxes the ochre
 from the leaves.
 Her easel is the helm
 of a ship sailing
 into the winter sky.
 

 His coat of arms:
 a purple coat 
 on an ochre field,
 crowned with a silver helm.
 

 too many suit coats,
 too much ochre light,
 too many vying for the helm,
 too many trying to coax 
 a resolution from the deep

CAMP FIRE WOMEN

CAMP FIRE WOMEN

My friend Julie is a Fire Keeper.

Sometimes all night she watches,

holds the flame at the center

of the world. It is her sacred way.

 

And mine? To search the forest,

to gather the wood: This for kindling,

this for tinder, this for cleansing,

this for a long and steady burn.


			

	
	



				
					


	

		
Open Studio Poem #7


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		





OPEN STUDIO POEM #7


words:  legs   along   fire


 


We go along and along,


our legs aching, shoulders


sore from the burdens


we bear. So many, so


heavy. But the year will


end, this terrible year


will end. It will. We will


build fires on the beaches,


fires on the hilltops,


fires in the deserts,


fires in our own backyards.


We will throw our burdens 


in the fires, throw them down,


throw them down in the fires,


open our arms,


embrace our friends 


We will remember 


how it feels to laugh.


We will remember.


We will. We will.
			

	
	



				
					


	

		
TIGHTROPE


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
TIGHT ROPE


My ancestors did this, so I can.


I’ve practiced for this all my life—


to be suspended between cliff edges


above a chasm filled with rapids and rocks.


Without a net.


I’ve done the high wire a zillion times. 


It makes no difference


whether there’s a chasm or a sawdust floor. 


The far edge is in sight.


Breathe. 


My thin-slippered feet


move along the cable.


Cloud shadows, a bird shadow.


One foot in front of the other.


Eyes ahead, toward the edge—


where someone is bending


picking at the cable with a little knife


and no one is there to stop him.


Will it hold? Will it hold?


I can not take time to be afraid.


My ancestors did this, so I can.


Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.


One step, one step, one step

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
CONGRUITY


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
CONGRUITY


My neck always hurts in October. All


my life. This year, also my right knee and


my left thumb. Do I mumble now or is


his hearing worse and worse? Things to expect


at my age. Some things I don’t mind so much


and the world being what it is, I don’t


expect to feel happiness too often.


This year, not a single black-and-yellow


garden spider, and I saw only two


mosquitoes all summer long. I look for


congruities all the time and wonder


if this is another. I remember 


with some amusement reading all those things


about becoming a crone. Written by


women who weren’t, whose knees didn’t hurt. Who


had spiders in their gardens and lovers


who listened, enthralled, to their every word.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
REPORT: OCTOBER 20, 2020


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
REPORT:  OCTOBER 20, 2020


Dark clouds over Buck Mountain. 


It will rain.


More sugar-maple leaves on the ground than on the trees. 


The oaks and popples are turning.


Soybean fields amber, hay fields cut and green. 


Luke’s old milking shed is falling apart. 


It’s just a storage shed now,


with the old SURGE and AG JOURNAL signs rusting on the wall 


and the little lightning rods standing bravely on the roof. 


Last year, a young man took the bend in the road too fast


and the laws of physics being what they are,


he glanced off a telephone pole and ran into the shed. 


And died. One of the dead


elms has fallen. Now it’s raining, 


and taking pity on the dog, I turn. 


Sumac is mostly red along the east side of the road.


If it were colder, I’d swear it was snowing in the mountains. 


Jim’s VETERANS AGAINST TRUMP flag is up on his porch.


At the far end of her pasture, his old horse Molly crops the grass. 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
RECASTING


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		







By nature I am vigilant.


These days, I watch everyone with extra care:


the clerks in the coöp, the pharmacy, the feedstore


where we buy food for the dog and cats and birds,


 


my friends. Oh, I trust my friends, but—


the friends of my friends? 


Where have they been?


How can they do me harm?


 


This morning, walking the dog


on the sidewalk in town, pulling


my mask up whenever I saw someone coming


 a block away, I found myself tired


 


of myself. We’re all just trying to get by,


doing what we can, what we think is right.


And what malevolence do I carry,


what contagion is concealed behind my mask?
			

	
	



				
					


	

		
ON MY WAY


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		






ON MY WAY


It was all so familiar—the icy road, the falling snow.
The tricycle was bigger than it used to be, less
embarrassing for an adult to ride. It took awhile
to get across the city street, awhile to see
a safe crossing under the glaze of snow.
The other side was fine, and I was on my way.


Home at last, but boxes all over the table.
I opened them one by one, each filled
with plastic things: flutophones,
cheap bath toys, disposable cups and spoons. 
Or tin automatons: monkeys playing drums, 
jumping mice, walking quacking ducks.


Box after box until the house was full.
When I awakened, I laughed at it all.
Not a nightmare, a description.
How full I am, these days, of things
I do not want or need. And how far
must I ride my little trike, in this storm.




			

	
	



				
					


	

		
DONA QUIXOTE


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

DONA QUIXOTE





Listen to Sancho, Mistress.





These are only windmills.





This is an inn, that is a basin,





what you have is a computer





glitch, a mis-behaving phone,





a broken coffee grinder,





an inconvenience. 















Look at the world as it is,





not as it never was.





Knights were brutal and mean.





Subsistance farming was hungry and hard.





The Enlightenment was a flash in the pan.





Father never knew best. 





No country has ever been great.















If you want a romantic occupation





dangerous enough even for you,





stay home and write poems.





Maybe someone will read them





and write more.





As our creator says, turning poet





is a catching and an uncurable disease.

			

	
	



				
					


				
					


	

		
words: Open Studio Poem #3


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
Open Studio Poem #3:  USE THE WHOLE PAGE


The point is growth toward beginning.


Start again—nothing flat or square—


this time learn to move in three


dimensions—cubic, spherical. Can you


write like a dancer? Paint


like an actor? Draw like—


a potter? Remember knitting—


how to turn a heel, shape


a sleeve from a strand.


DO THAT WITH WORDS.


USE THE WHOLE PAGE.


FILL IT WITH SHAPE AND


COLOR AND SOUND AND FLAVOR—


BITTER GREENS AND HOT PEPPERS


AND LEMON ZEST.  WRITE 


BIG AND ROUND.


USE THE WHOLE PAGE

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: Open Studio Poem #4


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
OPEN STUDIO POEM #4


final   granite  light  synchronize


Rilke said, “No feeling is final.”


Not even granite is permanent—


it crumbles and weathers into parts.


And isn’t it a fine thing


that nothing stays the same?


Time is after all unsynchronized space,


shifting into shapes that cannot last.


Therefore, do not fret.


Keep your touch light,


or maybe don’t touch at all. 


Simply breathe.

			

	
	



				
					


				
					


	

		
words: Three Bold Attempts


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

WORDS:  THREE BOLD ATTEMPTS


cricket   illustrate  tone   pearl    snap    quilt

THE GAME

Last summer, I studied cricket.
Not the insects in August, 
their crispy vibrations
adding tone to the fading garden,
but the sport. I like the langauge. 


Let me illustrate:
Overs (six balls per), Stumps
and Maidens and Leg Before Wicket.
Innings, not as in baseball,
is both singular and plural.
That’s tea. That’s drinks. 
Declaring before All Out.
Sixes and fours and centuries. 
Ducks and Golden Ducks. 
Silly mid-on. Test (the best)
and ODI. Howzzat? 


I followed the World Cup 
in the Guardian online.
They did OBO coverage. 
England won, to their surprise.


I want to see a game someday, 
a whole five-day test. 
I want to hear the snap of leather on willow. 
I’ll bring a quilted vest and a thermos.
I’ll wear a ridiculous hat, and pearls.
I’ll wait for an umpire to Offer the Light,






Met Stars Live in Concert: Lise Davidsen


The summer palace in Oslo.
The Queen in residence,
a conversation on the terrace. 
No birds, no crickets singing.
The dining room in the palace:
candles in the windows, 
late sun through the windows,
green leaves outside the windows. 
Paintings on the walls—illustrations of green.
No furniture but the black piano.
The pianist wore striped socks. 
The soprano wore a green gown, 
no diamonds, no pearls.
A silent audience on screens.
No applause.
The studio in New York. Monitors and clocks.
Christine Goerke’s sad and gracious tone: 
A difficult time for singers and thank you.
The program a carefully stitched quilt:
Wagner and Norway’s Grieg, and Strauss,
the snap of Kalman’s “Heia, Heia!” 
The peace of Ronald’s “O Lovely night.”




Zuihitsu for the end of a terrible summer


1.
Crickets drone away in the dark. I used to love them. This year, I find their rasping cricks most annoying.


2.
Last night I watched a moon like a yellow pearl  poke through a torn quilt of cloud and leaf.


3.
My voice has taken on a querulous tone. I can’t help it. I am possessed by a tired and hot and hungry and frustrated three-year-old child. 


4.
The purple snap beans I grew do not snap. They are blotchy and stringy and not particularly flavorful. The purple blossoms, however, are lovely, and hummingbirds feed from them, so growing them was not a total waste of water and space.


5.
The tone of this zuihitsu illustrates the way I have felt about this summer. A few times only, I have glimpsed something lovely, far away, and still.







			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: Not a Mast Year


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

pit   sew   break   fan   milky   frail


NOT A MAST YEAR--theme and variations


This is not a mast year.
I toss peach pits to the one frail squirrel
who comes to our yard. 


Am I the only one
who is not making masks?
I’ve never liked to sew—


a break with family tradition.
Degenerate daughter
of a great house.


At least the Milky Way
is a constant, fanning out
from the great starry swan.




pantoum

This is not a mast year.
I toss peach pits to the one frail squirrel
who comes to our yard.
Am I the only one


tossing peach pits, the only one 
who is not making masks?
Am I the only one
who doesn’t like to sew,


who is not making masks?
A break with the family tradition—
I’ve never liked to sew.
Degenerate daughter—


(a break in the family tradition)
of a great house.
I am the inconstant daughter.
At least the Milky Way,


great path through the heavens,
is a constant, fanning out
like spilled milk
from the great starry swan.


We need a constant: that hungry squirrel
who comes to our yard
under the sign of Cygnus.
This is not a mast year.


sestina

The one squirrel in the yard is frail.
She’ll eat anything—peach and plum pits.
It’s not a mast year, it’s a broken
one. I’ll feed the squirrel, but I will not sew.
At night, Cygnus brightens in the Milky
Way, his stars spread out in a simple fan.


I once had a sandalwood fan—
sweet scented frame, frail
silk the color of milky
tea. It didn’t last—a child pitted
against something so fine, sewn
together with invisible thread, easy to break.  


The squirrel keeps breaking
the suet feeder, opening it like a fan.
I don’t begrudge her. She is so
hungry for acorns, frail-
winged maple seeds, cherry pits,
even the tiny seeds of the milk-


weed. She breaks the stems, milky
sap sticking bitter to her paws. I break
stale bread for her, save pits
from fruit, scatter them in a fan
across the lawn. The grass too is frail,
each blade a fine strand of thread sewn


over the cracked soil. A summer so
dry the heavens complain. The Milky
Way trembles with heat. A frail
moon shines through the broken
trees. Not a breath of wind fans
the simmering ground, pitted


with dust. This is the pits.
It sucks, like having to sew
aprons in junior high. Fans
of rebellion, unite! Milk
your courage untl it breaks!
I’m so tired of feeling frail.








or the alternate last verse, which I kinda like!
with dust. This is the pits.
It sucks, like having to sew
aprons in junior high. Fans
of rebellion, unite! Milk
the bastards till they break!
Let’s stop being so fucking frail.







			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: WHAT WE CARRY


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
tough   sleeve   bag    wave    half    fire


l.


WHAT WE CARRY


 


Each of us carries a bag, a tough bag, 


filled with the weight of our times and years.


 


Each of us is half-dead these days. We wave


to one another across the firewall.


 


We wave, and blink our eyes. For each is still 


alive, one sleeve rolled up, scrubbing along


 


however we can, lugging our bags, 


bearing our bit of the impossible load.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: SIX TREASURED THINGS: A ZUIHITSU


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
rigid   draw    meadow   peer     lemon       cap


(another one with those words)


 


 


SIX TREASURED THINGS:  A ZUIHITSU


1. A rigid plastic lawn chair, one of four that my parents kept on the deck of their condominium. I keep it on the front step from spring till snow.  I sit there at sunrise and sunset, watching the yellow light flicker like sparks between the leaves.


2.  The white linen cap I bought in Traverse City in a shop that sold hats and, unexpectedly, wine-making supplies. A young friend told me that when I wear it, I remind him of Yoko Ono. I wear it often.


3. Our backyard. It was forest, then meadow, then lawn, and it is now growing up again into forest. We’ve reserved a patch of grass around the house, and bits for vegetables and flowers, but what was barren lawn is filling up with grasses and goldenrod, bramble and sumac, gray dogwood and pine and oak. Five years ago, I planted one solemn young chestnut tree as an act of defiance.


4.The drawing of a cat we had for a few months. Her name was Nanette, and she was tri-colored, and very small. The old woman who gave her to us could not keep her. “There’s something wrong with her,” she told us, and there was. In the drawing, Nanette is curled, sleeping, in a chair that once was in the living room and is now in the kitchen. The drawing was made by an artist friend who stayed with us for a summer—along with her husband and three children—in the room that once was our guest room, and is now the study where I write.


5. The lemons I always have by me. Here is a new maxim I try to live by: When in doubt, add lemon. To vegetables, to pastas, to soda water, to soup. The scent of lemon revives me and a lick of lemon opens my senses to all the good in the world that remains. 


6. Ursula Le Guin wrote “There was nothing she could do, but there was always the next thing to be done.” I treasure a company of peers—poets, artists, women who keep doing the next thing, and the next thing, and the next.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words:  SESTINA FOR THE SUMMER OF 2020


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
 


cap   rigid   lemon   peer   draw   meadow


 


SESTINA FOR THE SUMMER OF 2020


Like a drawing  by Van Gogh,


I stand rigid in the meadow. I wear my white cap. 


I peel a lemon, and peer at the trees.


I wear my white cap


though the brim is too rigid


for me to bend against the lemon-


brightness of the sun. I stand alone, peer


into the middle distance like a drawing


by Van Gogh of a woman in a meadow.


 


It is August, and the earth is dry. The meadow   


crackles with brown grasses capped  


with seeds. The summer draws 


to a close. Have we yet let go our rigid 


sense of what is real? My peers 


cannot guess. News sours me, like lemon.


 


When I was young, I wore lemon


cologne. I lay in this meadow 


beside a man—my peerless


lover—who wore a Greek fishing cap.


But our bones have gone rigid


with the years. We have drawn


 


living water so long. Now we draw


water grown bitter, like lemon


rind, and brackish, from a rigid


bottle. A butterfly wavers over the meadow


searching for one plant to cap 


with one pale egg. I peer


 


at her with shaded eyes, my only peer


now in this tight-drawn


season, this heated season, capped


with grasses the color of dried lemon  


peel. Under my feet, the meadow 


soil is hard, cracked, rigid


 


with the hard rigidity


of this rainless summer, a peerless


summer of an anxiety that a meadow


cannot know. The trees live on, drawing


their life from deeper water. The lemon


sun beats and beats on my white cap. 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: SIX WORDS, SIX STANZAS


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
joy    exhaust    chorus    toll    appear     trunk


 


SIX WORDS, SIX STANZAS


 


The steamer trunk might have been my grandfather’s, 


but I don’t remember seeing it in


his dark little room that smelled like old clocks.


 


If I sit for a long time in this chair


the right words will appear. Like magic.


Despite the evidence, I still believe


 


that. Believing in anything now takes


a toll. There doesn’t seem to be a god,


for instance, who gives a shit about us.


 


It’s August. The dawn chorus is over


for the year. Sometimes, one dusty robin


lands on the lawn and hops around. The worms


 


have burrowed down under. Everyone is


exhausted by the heat, the drought, the plague,


waiting and waiting for some kind of relief.


 


My grandfather had a small life, and yet


he made himself a bit of joy. Magic tricks.


Walks. Old friends. Keeping all those clocks ticking.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: Open Studio Poem #2


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
with thanks to Kathy, David, Kathy, and Wanda


 


lazy


looking glass


friend


pluck


OPEN STUDIO POEM 2


Too lazy today to pay attention


to the face in the looking glass—


mirror, mirror on the wall—


Does it matter what we look like?


I’m learning lately to be


my own friend. The kind


of friend I need. A friend


with pluck. Spunk. The kind


of nerve it takes to ignore


the face and see


what’s on the other side.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words:  Is it too late to invent America?


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
sand


braid


task


invent


rife


mauve


 


 


Is it too late to invent America?


1.


While the sky outside turned mauve, 


Kushner’s Belize said, “I hate America. . . .


You come to room 1013 over at the hospital. . 


I’ll show you America. 


Terminal, crazy and mean.” 


In a city rife with AIDS, 


every day he did his tasks.


Compassion isn’t what you think.


 


2.


Nobody knows what Jesus wrote


in the sand, but the men dropped their stones


and crept away, one by one. 


No one is without sin


and it’s a commonplace to hate in others


our own grimmest angels.


I hate people who aren’t compassionate.


 


3.


America has never been great


and we’ve never had a decent metaphor.


From the beginning, the pot didn’t hold us all—


why should we stew and amalgamate? 


How about a braid—not of hair, but of water—


slow river moving over a delta, 


living streams carrying their histories,


interlacing,  winding toward one sea.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: Open Studio Poem #1


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
For the past few weeks, I have been the only poet in an online open studio. Instead of knitting last time, I decided to ask each of the other artists for a word, and I wrote this poem while they did their arts.


 


fuchsia


malleable


daffodil


liberty


 


The unpruned fuchsia in its faded pot


is a mess of sticks, spotty leaves, a few stunted buds.


It is not a malleable plant; 


it’s fussy about water and light.


Not like the daffodils. Every spring—


flood or freeze or April snow—


they push up through thickets of grasses


and edge the lawn with yellow and white.


I expect there is some liberty


in taking what is given, staying deep,


blooming from the settled bulb.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
THE TRICKSTER IS STILL AROUND


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
THE TRICKSTER IS STILL AROUND


Not Loki or Enki,


not Coyote who stole fire


or Wakjunkaga who made


himself some women’s parts 


and gave birth to three sons. 


 


This one carries his tiny penis


in a jumbo jet. His wives


and daughters are plastic dolls,


his sons the undead.


He eats honor, shits coal.


His houses are built of bones.


 


Make no mistake:


somewhere under our nice


we want to be like him—


possess without limit,


rule without shame.


 


He shows us, uncovers us.


Unless we change our lives,


he will never go away.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words:  OBSERVATIONS ON A HOT SUMMER MORNING


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
raven


flimsy


brush


live


set 


crane


worry


 


 


OBSERVATIONS ON A HOT SUMMER MORNING


I recognize my friends by the worry behind their masks.


In town, the biggest crane we’ve ever seen


looms like something in a surreal movie set. 


 


Early this morning, I walked past a meadow


overgrown with weeds, the hopeless sticks of elm.


Raven flew close, brushed me with the shadow of her wing.


 


What does it mean to live these complicated days?


Have all days been this way, and ourselves


too caught up in flimsy occupation to notice?

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words  VARIATIONS: FOUR WORDS, THREE STANZAS


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
bear


grace


raven


point(ed)


VARIATIONS: FOUR WORDS, THREE STANZAS


1.


The raven has been flying to and fro 


over the earth. She has returned.


I think it will rain again. 


 


Do you know the meaning of grace?


The word you say before you eat;


the way a dancer walks in her pointed shoes.


 


The bear has been seen again.


We say “the bear” as if there were only one


running through the woods between our houses.


 


2.


It’s enough to make me believe


in Satan’s test of Job.


How much more can they bear?


 


The talking raven will not be silent.


Over and over she says 


“What’s the point? What’s the point?’


 


Like Hecate preceding and following Persephone,


grace precedes and follows us.


The question remains, “When?”


 


3.


Once I found a raven grazed by a car.


I set her in the grass, covered her with leaves.


The next day, in the same place, 


 


a raven circled me three times. 


The acknowledgement was almost more 


than I could bear. And I’ve wondered


 


since if the point was not gratitude but


taunt. “You cached me in the grass,


foul human, but see! I live.” 


 


4.


A raven pair tumbles over the yard


and the dog will not stop barking.


A bear climbs the fence and the dog is silent.


 


Raven is a trickster.


Bear is a god.


Is there a difference.


 


Walk the shore to the farthest point,


the place where sand turns to stone.


There is no limit to grace.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
SEASONAL AFFECTIVE


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
 


SEASONAL AFFECTIVE


It always happens when there is too much 


light, too much pollen, too much 


of everything. 


The birds sing me awake. 


The leaves are closing in. 


I get tired. 


I can’t digest. 


 


All my life.


While my sisters played on the porch


I hid in the meadow.


While my friends splashed in the pool, 


I climbed the outcrop to be alone.


While my colleagues ate eggs and muffins, 


I sat on a green bench by the river 


to pull myself together. 


 


And now, this terrible year, 


when there are no parties to avoid or dread, 


I’m weighted down by the heat, by the sun. 


Like a bear, I could be in a cleft in the rocks, 


asleep until snow, 


until mornings are quiet and dark again. 


Until there is nothing to eat but roots and bread.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
WITHOUT EVENT—A ZUIHITSU AGAIN


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
WITHOUT EVENT—A ZUIHITSU AGAIN


~with thanks to Ray for showing me the form


1.


Our son sent a photo of our grandson at his pre-school graduation ceremony.  He’s sitting in the backseat of the car wearing a cardboard hat with “2020” painted on in glitter. He looks so happy and proud. I’ve heard there are juniors at the High School here who want to do a drive-in graduation next year, because it is so much more “personal.”


2


I have seen—has the world seen?—the photo of a black grandfather carrying a wounded white racist to safety. ‘I’m protecting our kids,” he said. Take up your cross and follow me.


3.


I don’t have Big Girl Underpants—mine are all the same—so this morning I put on my Big Girl Lipstick and brushed my hair behind my ears and took the dog for a walk again.


4.


In the late 1880s, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem in honor of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez. This is how it ends: 


. . . . . .while there went/ Those years and years by of world without event/ That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door. 


5.


The prayer beads I carry in the pocket of my jeans are mostly wooden relics of my old Camp Fire Girl days. Four onyx beads. Two pewter suns salvaged from broken earrings. A tiny diary key. And an onyx cross, maybe half an inch long.


6.


Ever since that first Gulf War I’ve had doubts about intercessory prayer. What about all those people who don’t get prayed for except in a generic way (Dear God, bless all the people in the world.)?  I pray in a generic way these days. May all beings be free from suffering. At least that reminds me that I’m not alone, which may be the whole point. 


7.


As I walked this morning, I noticed a tiger swallow-tail fluttering along the roadside, parallel to my path. She seemed to be looking for flowers, which are fairly scarce along that shady stretch. She ignored a patch of spindly buttercups, landed finally on a plant I didn’t recognize, and began feeding on what I would hardly call flowers, just nubs of pale greenish white, hanging in clusters at the ends of the leaves.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
Because I have to write something


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
ANOTHER ZUIHITSU because I have to write something


1.


It’s as if someone is deliberately making things so bad that nobody can stand it. Almost enough to make me believe in the Beast, the AntiChrist, or something like that.


2.


We hoard dark roasted coffee beans in little brown bags in the freezer. I think I have enough now.


3.


I’ve been trying not to look at the news every hour, but I can’t help it. It’s the only way I can participate, living here, in this little green bowl. 


4.


Chipmunks live under the front steps. They scurry out to get food, scurry back in for fear of hawks and weasels and our dog. But they’re never safe from weasels.


5.


A very satisfying conputer game: drag random clusters of jewels into rows and columns on a board laid out in squares. When I place a cluster, I hear a lovely “click.” When I complete a row or column, I hear a very satisfying “ping.” I can’t stop playing this game even though it makes my neck sore.


6.


I had to get coffee beans out of the freezer last night. They were so hard that I couldn’t grind them till this morning. I know that some people don’t like to freeze beans, and some people say one should grind the beans right before brewing, but I don’t care.


7.


I have painted a piece of cardboard with a color called “Tea Room”—one of those small samples of paint available for a dollar at the paint store. When the paint was dry, I drew square tiles with a black marker and installed it in the cardboard box castle we made to illustrate fairy tales for the grandchildren.


8.


The Great Crested Flycatcher sits on a high perch to hunt for insects. If she misses an insect on her first pass, she pursues it in the air. Unless her nestlings object, she offers the whole insect, wings and all. If they do object, she pummels the insect until the offending wings break off.


9.


Many twigs, new-leafed, blew off the trees last night in the wind. When I walked the dog down the driveway early this morniung, I picked them up—at least, most of them—and tossed them back among the trees so they wouldn’t have to dry and turn to dust on the driveway stones.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
BIBLE STUDY


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
BIBLE STUDY


The people were tired 


of being held down,


tired of the collusion 


between the occupying power


and the religious power 


too prudent—or too timid—


to stand with them and declare


enough is enough.


 


They’d heard him bless 


the poor, the hungry,


the mourners, the persecuted.


They’d heard him curse 


the rich, the sated,


the scoffers, the praised.


So when he rode into town 


on a borrowed donkey,


the common people–


the ordinary people–called out


Blessing and Peace and Glory! and


Save us, please. Save us!


 


The powers were alarmed


and tried to silence the people.


And what did he reply?


Turn then, if you would,


to Luke 19: 40-41


and read what he said.


And read what happened next.


 


 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words:  ZUIHITSU for a day when there should be no words


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
soil


flight


farther


tingle


 


ZUIHITSU for a day when there should be no words


1


After the scanty rainfall yesterday (or was it the day before?), I planted beans. Six rows of black beans. I crawled along on my hands and knees to set them in the furrows and cover them with soil. As I patted the soil in place, I left my handprints to show that I’d been there.


2.


On our morning walk, the dog and I noticed a red-tailed hawk watching us from a power line. As we approached, she took flight and landed in a dead elm tree beside the newly cut hayfield on the other side of the road.


3.


Most days, I walk a bit farther than four miles. Today I was cold and wanted to get home to start the laundry. When the washing is all in the machine, perhaps I’ll vacuum the rug. That seems about all I can manage these days:  walks and housework.


4.


Tomorrow—no—the next day—tomorrow is Tuesday—my husband and I will sit in my study and wait for the computer tingle that signals our son’s weekly call. It will be good to see the children. The three-year old tries to touch us through the screen. She has skin like a bisque doll, and enormous blue eyes. There are so many things she will never have to know.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
STORYTIME


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
 


STORYTIME


 


If you don’t have fairy tales, how do you live?


The Miller’s Youngest Son answers the riddles.


The Serving Girl rises from the Cinders 


to marry the Prince. If you give a cup 


of cold water to the woman at the well 


you will receive a jeweled reward. If you don’t,


you will spit serpents for the rest of your life.


If the odds are against you, you will win— 


the youngest, the fool, the poorest, outcast, 


the least likely to succeed. Isn’t it


what you want to believe, you, who like me


are all those things and more?  If you finish


the witch’s tasks and don’t ask for  answers,


she will give you all the light you need.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: SAME STORY


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
orange


happiness


shallow


line


SAME STORY


I’ve known the story since second grade,


that terrible year. The teacher checking


our fingernails and handkerchiefs,


teaching nothing but tedium. Gray


and marcelled, as chained as I 


to that small-town school.


The stench of hot-lunch goulash.


White bread spread thick with margarine.


The shallow patch of backlot gravel


where we tried to play. 


 


Reading was my happiness.


Sometimes I was allowed 


to sit on the windowsill with a book.


And where would I have found


such a thing in that barren place?


I can still see the drawing clearly—


the line of the girl’s dress,


the dragon’s orange flame.


And the prince—not St. George, I think—


but it was the same tale—


the monster demanding sacrifice, 


the unexpected release. 


 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words:  zuihitsu–lists


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
fragment


fill


hollow


bristle


zuihitsu:  lists


 1.  Five beautiful things:  Yarn for a blanket. A gallon of maple syrup.  Ruthie’s blue eyes. The white-throated sparrow’s song. A fragment of a poem written on an old bookmark.


2.  Four unusual things: A hairbrush with broken bristles. A tulip bent by the snow. A rabbit hiding under the sandbox. The tube of tomato paste moved to the vegetable bin.


3.  Three things to do:  Plant three ramps in the woods. Fill the watering can. Write a note to David.


4.  Four unpleasant things:  A hollow feeling. The smell of gasoline. A sore thumb. Horsetails in the garden.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: Zuihitsu for the 51st Day


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
Zuihitsu for the 51st Day


1.  I have never paced when I am in distress. I stand, rooted, staring, generally out the kitchen window at whatever birds I can notice eating the suet that we hang in little wire baskets from the canopy supports on the deck. This morning, I saw a pair of white-throated sparrows and a pair of catbirds and a pair of cardinals and a single male downy woodpecker.


2.  The route of my morning walk is flat for awhile, then slopes gently downhill to a worn-out barn on the brink of a gully.  Jim keeps old-fashioned electric Christmas candles in the barn windows. The road then slants uphill until on the left there is an unpaved side road going farther up past an old hillfarm cemetery before connecting back to a main road. My road flattens out again to a swamp where grackles and red-winged black birds and swamp sparrows are nesting now.


3.  Our granddaughter extended her hand toward the web camera to show us a book. She recited Robert Lewis Stevenson’s “The Swing Song” for me. My mother, for whom she is named, taught it to me when I was three, and our son taught it to our grandchildren.


4. I wish I could come up with an idea for a big project:  a play, or a series of poems. I simply don’t have enough energy to extend myself much beyond the usual “poem a day,” and even those are getting sillier.


5.  Nettles are creeping down the driveway from the little patch I planted ten years ago so I could harvest them for tea. I don’t harvest them. I’m trying to pull them up by the roots so they won’t take over the whole place. “Remember . . /the nettles that methodically overgrow /the abandoned homes of exiles.” (Adam Zagajewski, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanaugh)


6.  I told our grandson I heard a towhee this morning. Our son asked him if he remembered what they say. “Drink your tee hee hee hee,” he answered, smiling his slanty little smile.


7.  My husband is extending his trip out into the world today—not just the usual route to the grocery store and home again, but a side trip to the pharmacy to get medicine for the cat’s hair loss and more milk thistle and vitamin D for us. He brought two pairs of gloves. 


8.  Linda emailed a poem to me, “the one she’s been waiting for,” she said. Nadine Anne Hura wrote it, “for Papatuanuku, Mother Earth.” She calls on the Mother to “Breathe easy and settle,” and tells her “We’ll stop, we’ll cease/We’ll slow down and stay home”  It would be a change of pace—hell, it would be a change of everything these days to have a president who shares poetry with us, or who even reads poetry. Or anything, for that matter.


9. Just after sunset, I took Julie down the driveway as usual. It was clear and pleasant, so I did not hurry, but strolled along at her doggy pace.  Watching her check the smells—deer? rabbits? that bear our neighbor saw?—along the way puts a fresh slant on things.


 


 


A zuihitsu is a Japanese form, consisting of loosely connected fragments written mostly in response to the writer’s surroundings. The word means “follow the brushstroke.”  For more see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pillow_Book

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: TO ARIADNE, WITH APOLOGIES


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
 


fractal


born (or borne)  or bourn, for that matter.


manipulate


stoic


TO ARIADNE, WITH APOLOGIES


Winding small and smaller


into this fractaled labyrinth—


this, and this, and oh yes


this again—I know this path,


this curve, this color.


No center, only pattern,


the bourn approached


but never reached.


If Platonic, I’d re-form


the beast, Cynic, manipulate. 


Stoic, I’d pay it no mind.


If there were a beast, 


something here not myself,


this endless ball of string.


 


 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words:  Nesting


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
NESTING


 


wall


kindle


fragile


flight


 


This morning, something— a gesture?


a word? a scrap of dream?—kindled


a yen for flight beyond   


these walls of age and time 


and choices made. But I remain, 


grounded in every sense, rooted


in a garden of my own construction.


 


A robin is building her nest


outside the window of the room


where I write, shaping the sticks


and grass with her muddy breast.


In the budding lilac, her mate sings.


If fates and jays agree, nestlings shall fledge,


fragile as imagined wings.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
April again:  Line one, 2016


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
Rearranged, and the grammar changed to protect the guilty.


 


LINE ONE, 2016


I have forgotten how to sleep. 


I don’t do things I resist. 


I do not like beets or old goat cheese.


I know what is going on below the surface.


I think I’ll save the dollhouse that my parents made.


 


It was late winter.


We drove all afternoon and into the night


as if the only reality was the car—


He told me he’d killed the coiled dragon


here in this country called US.


So many trees across the path.


 


These levers, bellows—


Tonic. Sub-dominant. Every Good Boy. 


We preferred tunes in the Crixian mode.


 


Don’t think about walking down the stairs.


It’s bad enough falling, or being chased.


All the women in our family have affairs. 


 


If you’re wise,


forget the damned button—


it’s so small.


 


You know the watering can?


It reminded me of that morning. 


It’s best to pretend it never happened.


 


Thanks a bunch, Kari.  Just what I need —to focus. 


What, precisely, is the point?


Not so much the spot of blindness


I might have been. 


 


In the beginning, I thought I’d learn


the way they forget to.


Oh, my vice, my difficulty! 


 


Goldfinches edge the lawn.


Now, I am drawn to gray, November,


the gannets, 


cold chłodnik* green with dill. 


 


Sleep, little one, sleep.


When I was a child, I could fly.


    


*you say “whod-neek”