BEGINNING
The book cover shines gold
in the lamplight.
Small birds irrupted from the north
cluster around the feeders.
I’m an old woman now
and none the wiser, but
at least I can define
emotion with precision.
The landscape of exploration
looms underground.
Forty years but surely not wasted.
Are we between wars
or is there simply one war.
Was there ever only one?
OPEN STUDIO POEM #18
aplomb
solid
chrysanthemum
collage
secluded
Under snow, under solid ground,
earth knits a fabric of mycelium,
bulb, the roots of chrysanthemum
and rose. The February landscape
shapes a shifting collage
of branch and cloud,
a splash of of jay-blue.
We stay secluded, painting
our lives with aplomb.
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.—
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
GladErrand 