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.
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.—
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.
14
life
vigil
tune
mute
Life goes on. Really.
We keep vigil together .
It is possible to be friends
on a screen. David
mutes to tune. Kathy C’s
computer is down
but she’s here, there,
and we know she is,
making art. Kathy H
met Wanda
in a parking lot
and reports that,
as we suspected,
she is three-dimensional.
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 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 #12
patience silent ricochet hibernate Have patience, my friends. There is no need to run, to roar, to ricochet from hard place to rock. Practice being silent instead. Sit still, hibernate your mind. Go stand in the snow. Listen to the stars.
OPEN STUDIO POEM #11 zoom sure pattern How hard to see the pattern: new friends who zoom past for an hour. How tall are they? Do they wear shoes? And who were they before— before I knew them in this peculiar way, both tentative and sure.
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.
