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?
TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT DISASTER 1. It’s a recipe they’ve been cooking up for ever so long. Leaf through a shiny magazine, pore over today’s headlines and tell me I’m wrong. They whipped up like a glop of imitation cream the illusion that rich means good, then spoonfeed up the iffy dream that anyone can have it all. Lesser creatures never matter birds and forests, air and water. They keep stirring fast and faster— cooking up yet more disaster. 2. Caterpillars ate every leaf on every oak and moved on to the popples and pines. They poured over one another, creatures of bristle and hunger, objects of an inner recipe that transforms leaves into frass and shed skins and cocoons of iffy goo and moths and more caterpillars. Today the oaks are showing what can be done. Every twig, sports a tiny leaf or bud. Every twig. Every single one.
BEARS 1. Now come the bears. They’re everywhere. They’re fed up with our cars, our hayfields, our guns and dogs. They’ve studied our weaknesses. They remember when we worshiped them, when they ruled our deepest dreams. They are hungry again. They have demands. 2. "Should you be worried?" the media query, their hysteria palpable through the screen. Monkey pox, Autumn surge, flood and fire, Putin’s bombs. And I answer, No. Since they are back, I have a single holy fear— Will I be eaten by a bear?
An unexpected poem.
the world, the flesh They did it to me when I was too young to resist: in my name they renounced my skin, my heart, my lungs, my sex, my brain, my little fingers. They renounced my senses, my fears, my hungers, my animal urgency. They renounced the world. The deserts and trees, mountains and seas, everyone who crawls and swims and flies: denizens of the dirt, tigers and dogs and whales. They don’t have souls the story goes, and all that matters is what isn’t. When the trout lily leaves emerged, when the bears came out of their winter dens, when the buds swelled on the maples, every spring we remembered our renunciation. How strange when the empty tomb recalls the garden and the flesh. I repent. I reclaim all I was taught, along with the devil, to renounce. Beginning with this patch of ground where rotting trunks flower out their fruits, where robins overturn the unraked leaves and acorns sprout along the edges of the unmown grass.
Sea Eagle What will I see today doing the Christmas baking and walking on the icy road with the dog and my friend who is lonely for her children? The sea eagle has been seen in Massachusetts, 5000 miles from home. What is he lonely for? And what will he see?
tunnel
make
gasp
pound
wave
turkey
blow
haze
A STORY
Our grandchildren found a baby bird
in the driveway.
What is it?
Where is its Mommy?
In this hazy time
when every little sorrow strikes a blow,
when the news pummels and pounds,
what is Daddy to do with this scrap of life
gasping in his hand?
The mouth of the dark tunnel
has narrowed again.
So many mommies, daddies,
so many lost, so much is lost,
and what sense can we make?
I used to tell myself I was a poet.
It’s a little turkey.
Let’s put it in the long grass by the brook
where sometimes we see them pass.
We’ll put some corn around for them to find.
Now wave bye-bye.
One way or another, this will resolve.
We saw them the next day
he told me. A parade.
Two hens with six poults
and a tom and a hen with one poult
scurrying between them.
The kids agreed that it all worked out fine.
We can tell ourselves stories, can’t we?
They all lived happily. . .
Can’t we tell ourselves stories like that?
PERSPECTIVE
Oak and Ash and Birch breathe their gold.
It sifts through their twigs and branches
over our cars and lawn furniture.
Oaks and ashes and birches think
life is worth continuing. They want
to make acorns and winged seeds
and tiny cones. They want to make
food for turkeys and squirrels and jays.
If they told you the Council of Trees
had decided to fill this year with abundance,
if they told you they had decided
this was a good year to cover the wounded
Earth with their love, to spread their gold;
if they told you that you, too, could participate,
wouldn’t you say Yes? And here you are!
Every sneeze, every dribble, every gasp,
they tell you, is a price you can pay.
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.
REPORT: February 2, 2021
No shadows this year, no light sharpening shapes.
Instead, tracks of a fox bounding
through belly-deep snow across the unplowed drive
into the pinewoods edged with bramble
where the rabbits hide. West wind drifts the snow.
Sun and moon rise and set behind the clouds.
OPEN STUDIO POEM #15
leaves
haven
susurration
possibility
When the days lengthen,
the cold strengthens
but the light too grows strong—
apricity on a frozen day.
Last fall the young oak kept
its leaves. It stood, susurrating
in the shadow of its mother,
collected light feeding the roots.
We live these days
in a haven of possibility.
GladErrand 