I’M NOT AFRAID OF BATS
The denizens of the night drop
from their black house on the chimney.
Nothing to fear. They will not tangle
in my hair. And yet, there’s something—
isn’t there?—the flutter and swoop,
haunted belfries, tales of the undead,
those fearsome faces, not human,
no matter what Roethke said.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE HOUSESITTER
If the door has blown closed, open it.
You do not need a key.
Feed the birds.
There is seed in the blue jar.
Pick the apples, eat the cherries.
Make wine from the grapes.
Do not eat the yellow pears
for they are bitter.
The garden is full
of deep green weeds.
Cook them in oil.
They will make you strong.
When dew shines on the leaves
go out and wet your feet.
The copper basin holds rainwater
to wash your hair.
Milk the goats
at sunrise and sunset.
Drink what you like
and make the cheese.
The dogs will kiss
you awake.
The cats will sing
you to sleep.
They will tell you
what they wish to eat.
They will tell you
what to dream.
At midnight,
the owls will come.
The great gray owl
will speak. Listen.
TIME IS A STRANGE THING
At times I get up in the middle of the night and stop all the clocks, all of them.
~Hugo von Hofmannsthal, from Die Rosenkavalier
She stops the clocks
to hear the silence
defined by their tick and chime.
One must not fear the time.
She stops the needle,
and feels the space beyond
that only the compass knows.
That’s the place she goes.
May 17, 2017
Here is the last of the Sheldon Museum poems. This is a “found” poem made up of entries from the diary of Mrs. Fisher, a Vermont poet who lived from 1853-1937. I’ve been reading and blogging her diaries for years. Most of the diaries are in the archive at the Sheldon.
THE DIARIES OF ELLA WARNER FISHER
Mop, mend, make pies, bathe the children.
A burden to be unequally yoked.
Dig up a lily and plant it in the yard.
Every day subject to the same blight.
A beautiful day, long to be remembered.
Gertrude has mumps. Mop and mend.
Henry cleans harness in the kitchen.
All attend service but Helen and Grace.
War bread, two meatless meals.
Anna & Henrietta go to the woods for flowers.
Tuttle takes down the stove.
Mend the stockings. Make mince pies.
Henry carries Grace to her school.
Terrible fighting in France.
Gingham comes for Henrietta.
Ruth and I kill and dress two hens.
Dreaming among my poems.
Letters from Ashton and Helen.
Sick headache. Go down street.
Anna receives a silver spoon.
A hateful wind blowing.
My boy, my poor boy!
They of the few, the tried and true.
Benjamin and Tuttle bring the body home.
Rain. The white washing piled in chairs,
stark as so many ghosts.
Here’s another of the Sheldon Museum poems, this one about a portrait of an extraordinarily handsome man that hangs upstairs in the Sheldon’s office space. There are a few letters of his in the archives, too. He died fairly young, in Paris. One woman who viewed the portrait was heard to say, “He could only have been shot by a jealous husband.”
PORTRAIT OF DAVID NICHOLS, ARTIST UNKNOWN
What is the use of a person’s living if he can’t enjoy himself?
None! say I–and if one can’t enjoy themselves
when they are in the bloom of life,
when can they?
~D. N. in a letter to Dugald Stewart, Dec. 28, 1841
Did I meet your ghost in Paris–
slim shadow brushing by that night
on the street in Montmartre?
I like the way you look at me
after all these years.
That rose that fell
from the balcony in Pigalle
and landed at my feet–did it drop
from your long fantomatique
fingers? Maybe it was your esprit
murmuring compliments
in terrible French as I sunned
in a green chair in the Tuileries.
Your breath on my neck while I lingered
in the café drinking red wine
and watching the moon . . .
I want to run my hands through your hair,
trace the shape of your long nose.
Was it your spectre I glimpsed, waving
an immaculate handkerchief
from the Arc de Triomphe?
I’m glad you died
in Paris. Vermont was too small
for your élégance, exubérance,
“real Yankee” though you claimed to be.
It was “utterly impossible to raise a dance”
here in winter, and I cannot imagine
you in Vermont, in winter, not dancing.
There’s something about the gleam
in your eye and–oh, I don’t know–
your Mona Lisa smile.
This is another of the poems that I wrote for an exhibit at the Henry Sheldon Museum. And here’s a link to an article about the exhibit.
NOTES CONCERNING THE PETRIFIED INDIAN BOY
Henry’s Accession Book. . indicates Leland gave it to museum for safe keeping —
“It was left with him by Woodard. . .
who sold it to parties near here.”
~email from Liz Bless, Middlebury College
History is a cob-web,
a tangle of strands,
flakes and pigments, letters
and scraps stashed in
baskets and chests of drawers.
It’s a pellet of feathers and hair.
Pick it apart with a finger bone.
Here, in the file concerning
the Petrified Indian Boy, we find:
bird tracks at Turners Falls,
a rabbit hole, a dog name Boz,
George Parsons the carriage painter,
credulous crowds,
a great deal of money,
a hundred barrels of whisky,
a flight to Canada, the law,
and Mrs. Sarah Henry Cross of Brandon
who saw it at the fair.
Was it a broken-off toe, or a crack in the ankle
that revealed the truth?
Did Mr. Parsons know of the Cardiff Giant?
Why did Mr. Harwood visit Newfane?
What happened to the whiskey?
Who brought the Boy to which express office?
Who was Mr. Douglas, who
bought the image for an immense sum?
Did Mr. Brainerd, scientist and historian,
president of Middlebury College
know the local men who raised the money
and did he himself contribute?
Where did Mr. Leland get it?
Safekeeping from what?
How much did Henry Sheldon know?
In the meantime, the Boy
in his coffin in the Museum
has slept away the years,
keeping his secret silent as stone,
or plaster, or pigmented clay.
Three years ago, the Spring St. Poets wrote poems about objects in the Henry Sheldon Museum in Middlebury, Vermont. The items were then exhibited, along with the poems, and we did a reading. I wrote this one about a chunk of woodwork that Henry Sheldon had rescued, presumably from some renovation done at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.
KEEPING
~the carving from St. Stephens, found in a cupboard in the barn
One autumn day many years ago I stole
an antique book with a tan leather cover
embossed in gold. The thin pages smelt of mice.
It was in a pile of many heaped
in a corner in a muddled room
on the condemned third floor of a gothic
sandstone castle awaiting remodeling
including–and this is important–new wiring.
It was a building I loved.
When spring came, it all burned up.
Nothing remained but a stone shell and they
bulldozed that into the foundation hole
and built a garage on the spot. I wish
I had taken all the books.
Henry Sheldon would have–
and a juice glass from the dining room and
a candlestick and the pump organ and
a chunk of the chapel window woodwork
and the horsehair sofa from the library
and the doughnut jar from the kitchen and
the mantlepiece from the common room and
the shield that hung above it and the tower
bell that fell and no one ever found and
a railing from the front porch where we used
to sit in the moonlight and sing or kiss.
What is this about? —
to love places, to care about things, to care
what happens to them, to be wary of change,
to want to remember, to want everyone
to remember, to believe that history
matters, to want to keep something, keep many
things, the everyday bits:
shoes and razors and appleboxes and doorframes,
chairs and violins and cupboards and spinning wheels
and dishes and cannonballs and hacksaws and drums
and books that no one will ever read.
