BUTTERFLY EFFECT
This one from the milkweed growing against
all odds on the edge of my driveway or
one of those rescued from a predator
in Polly’s patch. Remember the story
that one might change the weather of the world?
Maybe not the movement of its wings.
Maybe just the vision: that brave orange
and black animal, fragile against a leaf,
blown across the sky, what it’s like to change
that way, and who knows who, seeing it, will change?
Last night
before the comfort of book and bed,
I stood in the yard and worshiped
the highest moon.
Soft-edged shadows spread
across the frosted grass.
The darkest month gives
the brightest night—
not an insignificant grace.
Open Studio Poem #17
disco
lickety-split
splendid
magenta
Fairies shelter behind the disco ball
hung in the portal to the kingdom of odd.
After sunset, they emerge lickety-split,
and all night they dance through the city,
their magenta wings flashing splendid
in the lights of streets, and traffic, and stars.
The other occupants of the Open Studio are out to get me, as you can see. But I know where that disco ball hangs, and I know the fairies, too.
THE HAWK
Every day I walk with the yellow dog who understands human language but can not yet speak. Every day, or nearly every day, we saw the hawk in the dead elm trees between the hay fields or on the power line. In early spring, two hawks circled the fields. In late summer, one young hawk called hunger from the elms while one adult watched from the wire. The dog was disturbed by the hawk’s wheeling or calling, and she raised the orange ridge on her back and growled and barked. And in November, when the hay in the fields was cut short and the living oaks and the dead elms stood as outlines against the sky, on a November morning when the yellow dog and I walked down the road with the mountains on the east and the hills on the west, I found the hawk on the ground, beneath the wire, not far from the elms. The hawk’s red tail was spread, the dark and speckled wings were folded, claws curled, the sharp eyes flat, the neck broken. What shall we do? I cried, and the yellow dog answered. —Carry the hawk to the row of elms and lay it down there. And weep awhile, and I will weep with you. But only for awhile, for you shall see.— So I lifted the hawk and carried it close to my heart and I walked with the dog to where the grasses and goldenrod stalks grew tall under the trees. And there I placed the hawk. And the dog said —Good—. And for awhile we wept. And that night, the hawk came to me while I slept. Her red tail was spread acorss the Earth and her wings opened east and west as far as I could see. Her great head touched the sun. And she spoke. —You see, she said, who I am. Now you see. Your eyes open to my flight, your ears open to my cry, your heart open to my life.— And with a shout the hawk rose up, then up, beyond the sun. And when I woke, the yellow dog was curled beside me and looked at me through her brown eyes, and said —Yes. That’s how it is.—
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
GladErrand 