The Middle Way

Entropy. Cartilage has vanished from between
long leg bones, and I have become
dependent; may I have some help please
with these pants, these socks, this clacking

knee brace, this burgeoning heaped skunkish
laundry full of everything that leapt from
the spoon onto my clothing, this tea welling up
somehow from my cup's brim to spread across

the tidal flat of my shaking hand and fill
the sea cave of my sleeve? Huh, and if
last night's frost has subsided enough,
perhaps even with such a day's beginning

I can hope to step into these two unmatched
clogs and shamble on, past undone chores,
gathering up my left-hand stick and my right-
hand stick, and walk the dog. There is no dog;

what he left behind lies there: that small
basaltic stupa, littered with seasonal
offerings -- lately, deadnettles that wilt
in such hurry. But I call to him anyway;

he loved these walks so, that I feel obliged,
knee brace and all, to retrace our kinhin route
each weekday Armageddon fails to materialize.
Oaks throw shade; in summer I seek them,

in winter avoid. This is a ritual. As when I sit,
as when I chant, I know, even when tongue tied,
or falling asleep, or feeling my knee brace loosen and drop
just as I stagger into the ditch to avoid a truck,

that ritual is a kind of living being, made up of
my life and also the lives of all who participate
in some way, such as: "are you going to 'walk
the dog?'" Yes. "Have you got some water and

your phone?" Yes. "Okay; if you're not back
in an hour, I'll come looking for you." I bobbled
the Heart Sutra this morning, as I always do,
but this little exchange of hearts is itself

the Middle Way. Along the road, taking tiny
steps, tinier every year, I stop
to watch a robin angling for its worm.
The little dog that isn't there

wags his universe of tail.

 -- shonin

some things will

In a garden's grave, life remains: beets 
Never pulled may be pulled now, to boil

And put back, for the flock to discover;

Greens have carried on and are taken
And dehydrated, or left for the goose to strip; 
Red highlights show missed tomatoes;
Dense thickets of dead vines give beans. 
Even the weeds, that had defeated her,
Now yield rich heads of seed for hens.
She walks about, coat-wrapped, scanning

Ground for spuds rolled out by hen feet. 
Rarely, rewardingly, a ripe winter's squash 
Awaits discovery. Gone to seed last year, 
Viable chard and kale erupt now
Even as it were March, and are welcomed.

Little remains of her apple crop,
If the early varieties are to be believed, 
Filling the cellar as they have, and
Even the kitchen cabinet, with sealed jars.

Rummaging round the orchard, she spies, 
Excusing themselves for tardiness, a 
Mighty wall of Granny Smiths. She might 
Avail herself of them, but her arms ache. 
In winter one wants rest. She turns
Now houseward. Her hands hope 
Some things will wait for Spring.

what rain is for

The last three summers, as she recalls them, 
Her heavy-clay bit of earth opened hexagonally; 
Into the depths she stared, seeing dry darkness 
So desiccated, she fancied worms and millipedes

In despair had decamped, seeking other worlds.
She poked at crevasses with her stick, finding bottom

Well deeper than twelve inches. Not knowing 
How to garden in any but a rain forest, she 
Attacked books and websites for some scheme 
The budget could be stretched for: shade cloths,

Raised beds, huge-log hugelkulturs, keyhole beds. 
All were possible, but her hands, old, worked
In fits and starts; her money allocated elsewhere. 
Now she startles, looking at her night sky, so steeped

In stars all summer, finding it black and close. 
Some drops, like bad boys' spitballs, carom off her

Face. More, and now she's happily drenched in her 
Old nightgown, dancing slow circles. Autumn proves 
Real at last. This dance is what rain is for.

see it through

One should not have an orchard and 
Not care for it; so she tries,
Even lurches from the depths of a chair

She's found at some thrift, pre-softened; from 
Her house, warm or cool as she might wish, 
Out into too much sun or too much rain; from 
Under the kind roof of a porch she'd built, 
Leaving tool after tool there to gather
Dust and webs, marks of a new will to

Neglect. Beyond the weed-bent fence, an 
Orchard of sorts awaits her care, each 
Task having skipped two years at least.

Hands grasp lopper and saw. She visits 
Apple, quince, pear, plum, cherry, clipping 
Vines, tall weeds, watersprouts, suckers; 
Even designates branches for her stove.

As the forenoon warms, she strips off 
Now her hat, next jacket, shirt and gloves,

Old skin offered to thorns, thistles,
Rough bark. Really she'd meant to hire it done, 
Children of neighbors being short on cash. 
Habit, she could call it. Habit, and the way 
Apples come best that see right sun,
Ripe enough to pay her for some pains.
Do a thing yourself to see it through.

election

She drags her rusty kneeler as way opens 
amid plants knee high, wetting her blue 
trousers in dew, as clouds decide

to open or not, as the morning star 
recedes and hides itself, with a sliver 
of new moon, in day. Poppies

have not yet awakened, nor daisies.
She kneels and kneels again, eyeing 
potato vines, chard, kale, spinach, beets

to see are they hiding pretenders beneath 
their skirts: thistle, geranium, nipplewort, 
even nascent blackberries, ash trees, an oak.

Most of all, she seeks out bindweed, a long 
vine snaking from place to place, climbing, 
smothering fruitful things. She knows

she's prejudiced, but her rationale is: 
bindweed's not for eating; raspberries are. 
Her hands elect who dies, who lives today.

too soon

 

These are not the tomatoes she wanted, 
Heirlooms such as Cherokee Purple, or 
Even Brandywines. But the clerk only
Sells what's brought in, finds labels, wands 
Each three-inch pot through as she would

A bag of chips or box of three penny nails. 
Really, the old woman muses, I should have 
Ended my day at the seedsman, but it's not

Near here -- what, twenty miles? So I've 
Opted for the discount store again, to buy 
These things that hurt my soul: hybrids.

There's this about them, they do produce 
Heavy fruits that please her folks and friends 
Easily enough, and in larger numbers. But

To her there's something in them lacking. 
Old varieties taste of the eyes of young 
Men, of weeping, of laughter, of
A child's anger at being teased, of
The confusion of having one's braid pulled. 
On the hybrids she can't say as much.
End to youth, beginning of sameness; a 
Safety that came to her too soon.

at her western window

At her western window, she's stitching.
The needle pricks her sometimes. She moves

Her hand aside to not bleed on silk.
Even as she works, her waxed thread in
Rows appearing like commas, she sees a

Western meadowlark pounce in tall grass
Ever growing, unmowed, outside. When
She stops, peering over thick lenses
To note the meadowlark has a grub, to her
Ears come, faintly, short songs of its mate.
Reaching for her scissors, she snips a tail,
Nudges it out of sight behind a stitch.

When this row is done, she'll ask her mate
If it will do. If not, she'll turn her mother's
Needle and pull thread, loop by loop 
Down to the place her mind wandered.
O meadowlark, I must look away!
Wonder does not always aid one's work.

how she knows

How she knows she is not useless yet:
Old cornstalks must be shattered right
Where they stood green, to feed worms

She knows are waiting in darkness.
Her hens wait too, for water, for feed,
Especially for deadnettles, nipplewort,

Kale and comfrey. Some hummingbirds
Now arriving check the lilac for their
Own nectar bottle that hung there
While last spring, summer and fall
Slipped past. There are wasp queens

She finds sleeping in her woodpile;
Her heart skips a beat as she sees
Each one, for she fears them, yet

Interests herself in their rest and
Safety, for the good they do her garden.

Now she mucks out her barn, for
Of her things she values rich mulch, almost
To distraction, most. But slowly;

Under beams and eaves hang cobwebs,
Sacs of eggs suspended in each, waiting
End of winter, not to be disturbed.
Lest she forget to serve all equitably,
Every bucket of soiled barn water
She carries to her trees to tip out: 
Something to stave off drought.

Yes, she's earned the right, she thinks,
Even in this so solitary place,
To call herself an asset to her friends. 

spring springs

Spring springs upon her unawares;
Perhaps she thought snow would drift
Right up to her window, as it should
In February, as in her memory
No such month escaped some white.
Going forth in a sleeveless shift

She pockets up seeds for flats,
Pulls out dank bins of soil,
Reaches for small pots, sets hope
In light. Such April ploys are
Not to be counted on, she knows --
Guessing random frosts
Still may spring upon her unawares. 

what was hers

What was hers, but is not hers just now,
Having suffered a rising tide of voles
And other rodents (she does not doubt), is
The potting shed/solarium, a domain in

Which she'd reigned, she thought, for decades.
All of it, she'd built herself. Gathering
Slats of rough hewn barn wood, windows,

Heaps of antique bricks, a long green bench,
Ever more pots and flats, bins and trowels,
Royally she'd treated herself to her heaven,
Seedlings doing as she'd have them do.

But then: disaster. Peas and beans tucked
Under skeins of soil vanished by ones and
Threes -- whole flats of corn plowed up.

Is there nothing to be done, she wonders,
Short of slaughter by nefarious means?

Not the first option. She casts about among
Old tosswares in corners and on shelves.
This rolled-up screening might do. Shears in

Hand, she measures as one measures cloth,
Ever minding the selvage, to create caps
Rodents might decline to chew.
Slipping these into place, adding to each

Just one stone per corner, using
Up the Buddha cairns she'd made
Stacked here and there round the room.
The precept honored, she waters all,

Not neglecting to sprinkle stones.  
Outcomes must be as they must be.
We find well that find we do not reign.  

it begins

It begins with mare's tails: wisps of ice

That spread, ghostly fingers from



Beyond the southwestern horizon; her 

Ears feel the chill as she is planting bulbs.

"Go inside," her chapped hands urge her,

"Inside, your steaming kettle waits."

"Not yet," she replies. In her mind's eye

She watches thousands of daffodils bloom



Where grass grew. She must plant hundreds

If her dream will breathe. Altocumulus,

Those clouds like schools of fish, arrive.

Her hands are hurting her now; cold clay



Milking moisture from gapped skin.

As she bends, shovel in one hand, 

Round brown balls of life in the other,

Each destined for a hole along her fence,

She senses wind lifting skirts of



The cottonwoods and willows. Raindrops

Are arriving now, slanting through trees,

Investing her sleeves and hair with wet.

Leaving off at last, she, crutching on her

Shovel, pivots to her tea, her fire.

that time

That time when there is yet nothing,
Her skills being at rest, synchronized
And sympathetic with soil's sleep --
Timid buds of lilac or jonquil still

Tucked within themselves -- she wonders
If she's even a subsistence woman, is
Mistaken in that as so much else, as when
Even deep snow cannot efface what

Winter erases when it is nearest spring.
Her hands stretch to packaged seeds;
Enter into bargains with their quietude.
Now? Now? Now? Now? she asks them,

Though she knows they will not move.
Here by a cold window she spreads
Envelopes on her table: peas, beets.
Radishes will be first, nearest the house.
Even now she smells them, lifted, bitten.

Is there nothing that can be done?
She asks for the hundredth time.

You'd think the mud would dry a little,
Evenings come later, mornings earlier,
The birds nest and sing, daisies open!

No. Tools rest in their ranks, sharpened,
Oiled. Clouds pass, low, lightless, sulking.
The arbor's done, fences, orchard, 
Heaps heaped. All she needs today
Is that this blank month turn a little
Nearer sun, before her plot of earth
Grazes on forgetfulness too soon.

petrichor

This time of year that room is not much visited.
Its herringbone-patterned floor of worn bricks
tilts here and there where rodents have made inroads.

Homemade flats lie heaped in corners; stacks of cells
lean sleepily together; insulation dangles;
tools hang, festooned with webs and dust. Sometimes

when the door has been set ajar, a towhee wanders in,
becomes confused at light from so many windows,
beats itself silly, then rests, is eventually found

and shown the way out. There's not much
an old lady can do but wait, watching for
earlier suns to rise, for petrichor*,

for that sudden dislocation brought on
by stepping into sunshine by a southern wall.
Then, after one jonquil blooms by way of

affirmation, she'll step in, rearrange things,
dust her work bench and stool, bring seeds,
open the soil bin, grab a pot, begin.


__________________________________

*The odor of dry earth moistened by rain.

weather is a thing

Weather is a thing, now, she tells herself,

Every day surprising -- week, month

And season. When, whether and what

To plant, or how to schedule visits with

Her friends or family, across a pass or

Even in lowlands. Storm clouds will

Roll in, blizzards, fire, a tornado. She



Is sure there's easy weather somewhere

Such times as freezing fog, wind, or



A heatwave shuts her in. She'll admit



There are good days for her yet

Here beneath her patient apple trees.

If weather is a thing, so is simplicity.

Never waste a calm day, she says:

Go see trilliums, bespeak beargrass,



Nod to daisies, curtsy to wise willows.

On such days, forget falling trees and hills,

Water rising. Love life while you can.

decembering in the orchard

All that is left is the Granny Smiths; she 
Loves that they cling to their shivered tree,
Leaves long gone. Even the hens have left off

Trusting the sky to toss them sugar, and
Have retired to their tractor, pecking
At storebought feed in its styrene bin.
The winds whistle through, rasping 

Ink-black twigs together; the apples nod and
Stub their green bellies. She

Lifts ten or so down, as if they were 
Each one of her own breasts, tenderly
Filling her small basket. In the kitchen
They will sit shyly waiting their turn:

It is the season for other foods; in 
Stoneware bowls, nuts and citrus

Talk among themselves in distant tongues.
Here her hands make outland meals,
Even finding work for lemon skins.

Granny Smiths are not much favored,
Really, by her guests; in festive mood, if an 
Apple is desired, they'll reach for waxed,
Not thinking of that one tree, struggling
Night and day to keep for them fresh joy. 
Yet she knows she cannot blame them;

Shy apples do their best in pie.
Moonlight limns the fruit she did not pick;
If some green globes remain at large tonight,
The morning light will prove, tomorrow,
Holiday for those that cannot buy.
Squirrels and towhees will know what to do.

or otherwise

Beets are a thing, she mused; all summer
Every seed she'd planted out refused
Every opportunity to sprout, but 
Those in flats thrived, just as those
Seedsmen told her they would not.

As for after they were transplanted, well!
Rare was the beet that was not found by gophers.
Even so, some were left not quite finished

As the gophers waddled away, and

Those she was grateful for. She brought in
Her greens; made wilted salad; then
In winter came across again the muddy half-moons.
Nothing is better than gifted beetroot steamed,
Gopher bitten, she told herself, or otherwise.

what to do with leaves

What to do with leaves, if one cannot leave them

Here beneath aspen, gum, maple and birch

As what they become in winter, a kind of skirt

To warm and feed fanned roots, is gather and



Toss them on a garden. She spreads hers

Over bed and path alike, with straw, with



Dead grass and weeds, barn bedding, the contents

Of kitchen bucket and tumble barrel, along



With any foliage that comes to hand, even prunings

If too small to bother with for her iron stove.

This is for worms and all their small companions

Heaving aside the earth of path and bed alike,



Leveling and loosening, making untilled tilth.

Evening comes and she stills, listening

As the city of humus thrums toward spring.

Very likely it's best to interfere not
Even this much in things, she tells herself, yet

She's always loved to tell her children: eat.

what to do about trees

What to do about trees, for she had room:
Have an orchard. But isn't that thinking
About twenty years ahead? So she went
To the tool room for her spade in November;

Took that and four apple saplings down
Onto the flat by the road, and began. Years she

Did this, working up and around the rise
Of better ground. Pears, cherries, quince

Abounded, but the plums got blight, and had to
Be started over. She was too old to harvest
Or even get shade from nut trees, they're so slow;
Uncoupling crop from objective, she anyway set
Them out, along with the rest. Last, she

Thought of mulberries. The hens could have
Really used those. Oh, well. She ordered,
Even this late in life, and planted once more,
Even as those old hens looked on amazed:
Something to offer folks not yet alive.

the rhythm of the work

The rhythm of the work is to set down

Her padded bench, a flat, and trowel at the

End of a bed and drop as if in prayer,



Reach for the trowel (bent for her old

Hand at right angles), dig, then grope for a pot.

You may see each hole is deep and wide enough

To exactly take the root ball. She carefully

Holds this in her shade, tips the damp

Mass in, packs with trowel, repeats all -- three



Or four times -- then stands. Behind her, some

Four plants glow green in any six feet of bed.



The rhythm of this work, when best, resembles

How monks or nuns in supplication glide

Easily to the floor, centered, unconcerned



With body or mind, then rise, then glide again,

Outcomes not sought, nor merit earned.

Right to the end of the bed she goes,

Kneeling to simply do with her rough hands.

just about

Just about her favorite thing is to

Unseal bright papery packets and

Set out flats of germination soil

The length of her bench, then scratch in parallel



Along each flat, with a stick, five lines for seeds.

By and by, the covered infant sprouts appear;

Or don't, in which case repeat until satisfactory.

Under her grow lights, not great ones, but good enough,

The seedlings make two leaves and then two more:



Here she makes more flats, with this time in

Each flat eighteen pots, filled with dampened

Rooting soil. A hole in each pot waits



For one tiny plant; the soil to be pressed

Around the taproot and tiny rootlets, then

Very gently watered -- from below, pouring

Over the flat's lip a tea of comfrey.

Really she overdoes it, making hundreds,

In every kind, of vegetable starts, far more

Than she can plant, but is fine with that; most

Everyone she knows will willingly give them homes.



That's her means, in old age, of making

Happen a kind of revolution. There are 

In towers far away, those who would 

Not have us eat what will not make them rich.

Go, little plants! Feed free souls free food.

 

more than luck

Padding along among roots and stobs in shade,

I take the north-slope path to see old friends:

red huckleberry and mountain hemlock 



subsisting on nurse logs amid moss; vanilla 

leaf, false Solomon's seal, sword fern, bracken,

sorrel, twinflower, wild ginger, salmonberry,



maiden-hair fern, ninebark, viney maple.

They seem well; it's steep shade and deep

mouldering duff. Enough rain has alighted



upon this slope for centuries to build tall firs,

straight cedars, twisted, hoary, wrangling maples.

Yet the riverbed below seems troubled, shrunken.



Stones I never see have suddenly shown

themselves, shouldering past dried caddis cases

and empty snail shells, standing in desiccated air.



Here no trout hide from tiring current,

awaiting mayflies. No osprey hovers above,

awaiting trout. The river has shifted from



its bed, lifted past every thirst, and gone

to fall somewhere in the world as flood.

A slug has blundered into dust in broiling



sun and is in trouble. Not one for caressing

slugs, I break two twigs for chopsticks, and move

the mollusk to, I hope, a better place.

In fellow feeling I expound to the slug
my sunstruck orchard, panting flock,
failing well and kitchen garden hard as ice.


We'll all of us start shifting soon, I tell it,

as ants shift from a burning glass. From here on

you and I will need what's more than luck.

there are rooms

There are rooms in a life that may sometimes
Have someone in them; but they are guests there.
Even when one most loves, one may find,
Really, a solitude that begins at this wall,
Ends at that wall; the rest is not entirely ours.

As years turn and suns, moons and stars
Rise up and fall like rain by every window
Even one's hands will shrivel soon enough

Right at the ends of one's arms, as hands
Of strangers. But to fret at this discovery
Of emptiness arrived at and emptiness 
Made clear by moon's dance with water,
Sun's dance with dust, by endings never sought

In even that one room that is one's own, is
Not worthy of even that we call our life.

All our guests deserve from us restraint.

Little enough we can offer them as it is;
In a short while each vacates each room,
Feeling for the light switch as each goes.
Evening comes. Do not grieve the door.

wassail

In August, but this year in July, Gravensteins:

golden fleshed, generous, kind to cook,

ciderer and ring-dryer. She tries everything,



but mostly butter: a large crockpotful

of peeled rings, quartered, lightly cloved,

cinnamoned and nutmegged will make



six pints and one short jelly jar. After

that, the old Egremont Russet, Cortland,

Honeycrisp and Jonagold come all together;



what can she do but slice them all in quarters,

toss them into her dedicated shredder,

pour pomace into a burlap bag



and hang that, with her father's pulley

and old hemp rope, to a maple branch?

Juice will run for hours, collecting



in a tub beneath; at evening she dips gold,

pouring through filter and funnel into quarts --

forty-five glass jars or more, most years.



Last, she'll think of cider (but not too much),

making in a cool jug by adding wine yeast.

In seven days or less she will sing to trees.

more than she

Rattling around in her potting shed once
she came across packets five years old;
had not heart to toss the things away.

Popping the lid from an empty parsley shaker,
she tipped the packets' contents in and stirred.
Ten flats she sowed at random with this mix,

come March, that first year; a month earlier
thereafter, as springs grew warmer. Bits of green
appeared, some here, more there. She'd prick out any



that went to a second pair of leaves, and give them

each its own square pot. What might they be?

Some Red Russian, curly or Lacinato



kale, some radishes, turnips, beets. Six kinds

of lettuce, collards, cabbage -- Dutch or red --

some spinach, also chard. Carrots, kohlrabi



and parsnips never showed, but she allowed

enough's a feast. Those that proved up
were hardened off in April, then set out

in beds on a grid, each as its turn came next
from the flat. That shaker lasted half a garden
half a decade. Nothing the catalogs

had taught was even tried. Whatever she thought
they'd said to do with seeds, well! The seeds
knew more than seedsmen, and much, much more than she.

learning to walk

It's not that she hasn't been doing this all along:
She'd walked to school as yellow lozenges, oozing screams,
fumed past her along hot asphalt. She'd splashed the creek,

anxious for a path, then built it herself, kenning
to use her father's axe without lost blood.
She'd walked from Springer Mountain north, chatting in

her offhand way with bears, a big cat and a ghost.
She'd walked the halls of academia and then the hills,
big ones, bringing seedling trees to snug up to

the raw stumps of firs machines had eaten.
She'd walked to a job for decades, block after block
of homes with eyes of black glass inching

past her tired, angry shoes. Now, late in life,
she keeps a small dog bereft by her parents'
breathing stopped. The dog has taught much:

when to stop and sniff; how to attend with one's
whole being the business of squirrels. Bound
by the leash, that necessary thing, they two as one

take in, absorb, imbibe, inhale, entaste
all the arriving and leaving of living things. 

heart of the world

She's not much for recipes. The bowl sometimes
invites her, and she oils it, cracks a duck egg 
or two, throws in a bit of stock or well water,

maple syrup and leavening, and says to it:
sit there and I'll be back with something for you.
"Something" might be a beet leaf, or an apple,

or a spray of young mint -- once it was a whole
handful of chives. Chopped and thrown in,
the whatever might vanish under oats or rye,

buckwheat flour, or crumbs from the last loaf,
and then salt -- late, so as not to insult the yeast.
Last, she may tug the spelt barrel from beneath

the counter, and dip a porcelain bowl into
the cool brown powder five -- six -- seven 
times. She stirs the makings between heaps

with a pair of chopsticks. Never quite
the same thing twice! In summer she'll oil
a crock pot and turn the lump in to bake;

in winter, a Dutch oven. In either case,
the secret is prop the lid onto a chopstick,
letting a little steam out over time.

The end is not the prettiest bread you'll ever see,
nor the best tasting, she'll admit. But slice it,
add a little butter to it still hot,

and sit, eating slowly, in a western window
as the sun goes gold, then falls. Are you not
now the grace at the red heart of the world?

the things to do

The things to do: bring an egg from her
Hens, a found apple, beet leaf, cat's-ear foliage,
Ensuring freshness even in October.

The skillet she heats, oil frisking.
Here's egg: break yolk, turn once or twice;
Insert chopped fruit and greens, with salt and pepper;
Now turn again, wait, remove from heat,
Give all to a spelt wrap. As she sits to her meal, a
Sun rises, invests her eastern window, spills in

To caress and warm six thick maple boards
Of her grandmother's table. Whatever remains to be

Done's already forgotten: the meal an emblem
Of all her morning cared to be.

the first few fires

The first few fires of autumn laid by me
Here in this stove aren't much; I acknowledge
Even the hummingbird's still caressing blooms, so I

Feeling only a brief dawn chill, build accordingly. 
In thickets of summer I range about,
Ratcheting my long-handled pruner among stout sticks,
Stealing from oak and ash, letting in a little light.
These I pile in the long room where that stove squats.

Fueling it with paper and a stack of twigs, admiring
Even the least hints of gold and vermillion therein,
We sit back, warm enough for one dark cup of tea.

For awhile; then day overtakes us, ready
In sweater and chore coat to see to hens;
Really, we shuck those soon enough, sweat on our
Ears and eyelids, summer reborn briefly in our knees.
So; until the ground grows cold that will hold our graves.

nothing can stand still

Nothing can stand still. If it were to do so
absolutely, I could not see it; if I
were to cease scanning, I could not then see;

therefore change is all. These were my thoughts
as I walked a dog, watching my year run down.
Apples were falling; I chose one to eat.

Hips blushed fiercely; I stuffed my pockets full.
Ash and maple and willow turned and turned.
Restless mice and voles risked their all

for seeds. We reached the river; a trout rose, an
osprey plunged; they met and flew as one.
An osprey will turn a trout head first in flight,

you know -- for improved aerodynamics. I
disbelieve it; surely the bird is kind.
It turns the trout to show it what's to come.

she likes red

She likes red in September: viney maple, poison oak;
Her plum trees dress well in it. Where she lives, all
Else goes brown. Except the dog roses

Leavening hedges with their hips. She stuffs these
In her pockets on every walk, then does research,
Kindling a ken of potions, liqueurs, oils.
Easily, drying comes to mind; to prep for that
She'll split each pod and rake away hard seeds,

Removing them to her freezer to stratify;
Else they might not emerge come spring. She
Digs out also myriad tiny hairs,

Irritants if retained. It's a slow business,
Not for the impatient, which well describes her;

She knows of this but means to tough it out.
Each hip's a silent mantra: she'll
Push, pull, twist, scrape, sort, and set aside
The emptied husks for drying or infusing.
Eventually the pile is done, just as light fades.
My eyes, she tells herself, are getting on,
But this I can still do. I'll make rose tea;
Evening will fill my cup of mindfulness.
Really, there's nothing more than what there is.

just-enough

The ubiquity of Queen-Anne's lace annoys her;
it's not the plant's not doing its job; her soil
is loosened and enriched; in time of human

hunger, roots, young leaves and even umbels
would have table use. But there is so much
of it; her chickens dislike the stuff, especially

in its second year, allowing their yard and moat
to fill with cohort-ranks of pungent spikes.
Her friend keeps bees and tells her they will feed

on this exclusively, bittering his honey,
bringing down its price. So he watches;
when the umbels bloom he moves his hives.

She'd like to query those who thought of Anne;
these tiny droplets in a sea of lace
Need not have been a queen's: she tells herself

her own blood has fed this thorned and rock-
embedded acre thoroughly. So, queen
of weeds, she! Or queen of just-enough.

it is quiet out there

It is quiet out there now. She
Takes her hat, stick and forage bag,

Into which she slips her pruners, then
Slides her feet into green clogs, feeling

Quite exurban-agrarian, ready to look
Under brush piles and into cottonwoods --
In every place that might consent to harbor
Even a hint of birds' music. They have flown,
The silence tells her; those that haven't died.

Out along the roadside she waves to cars,
Understanding her neighbors have to drive,
Then pockets up crabapples, berries, leaves

That now are turning away from green: cat's ear,
High mallow, chicory, plantain, sow thistle, her
Ears pricked for passing flights of geese.
Really, thinks she to herself, there ought
Even now to be more birds. There are

Not so many feral cats round here as that.
Or could it be the sprays? She supposes
War has been declared. A war on song.

terrified of them

Terrified of them she was through long

Experience being swarmed with stings,

Running, her hands over eyes and mouth,

Running to the house or jumping in the lake,

In whatever way possible to stop the punishers.

For years, she made herself their nemesis

In revenge, setting nests afire! Or in

Evenings inverting a glass bowl upside

Down over their holes to watch them starve.



Only in recent years, as her ways have slowed,

Finding in books their part in the scheme of



Things as helpers in garden and orchard,

Has she learned to move more gently

Even as they light on her cidery hands,

Milking fingers for juice, never stinging.

and now it sings

She stands in wet and likes it; drips rolling 
around the brim of her split-bamboo conical
hat to fall on thirsting clay. Here's

weather at last, there having been sun,
sun, sun, a lip-cracking and tree-splitting
dry, since the vernal equinox. Nothing

had been vernal about it, and her land
knew so. The very fir limbs sulked;
willows on creek banks browned up and died;

birds fell everlastingly silent, dropping
on needle-sharp tufts of what had been haymow
beneath their perches in rattling cedars;

fish sought pools deeper than any there were,
crowding in together, fin by fin, 
gulping and grunting, then rolling over

to bump along hot, slimed rocks and lodge
somewhere, stinking. Her crops had miniaturized,
flavorful but insufficient to pay her labor;

She'd lost heart and let vining morning glories
into her cracked farm at last. And now here
comes weather. Not enough to top off the well,

maybe, and certainly not enough to start the creek.
But here she stops, catching chill -- watching
a goldfinch settle on fence wire with a twist

of foraged thistledown. It drops the meal,
opens its beak, cranes skyward. And now it sings.

these are highlands

These are highlands, in a region of highlands, so
not especially notable. It takes a long
time to get there, though the graveled road

is short enough; park and walk -- not far,
but bring a lunch and water. Sign in; it's wilderness
according to the kiosk and its map.

Immediately you have shade. These are
Douglas fir, mountain hemlock, perhaps
some red cedar. Beneath, on both sides the trail,

a scattering of vine maple, ocean spray,
rhododendron, and, in the draws, willow.
Sometimes bear grass is in flower;

not this year. As late season turns, first
vanilla leaf, then devil's club, then red
huckleberry, then the blue, will shade through

gold to sienna to cranberry: cool nights.
Kinnickinnick under foot will be your sign
you are straying; do not lose the path.

Along the way are springs, but they are dry;
near them are holes of mountain beaver,
a town like that of prairie dogs. You will

not see them; they go abroad at night.
Admire twinflowers and trilliums, though
they are past bloom. So it is as well

with gooseberry and false Solomon's seal --
they are tired now, and long for snow.
As your path turns upon itself and climbs

rocks and trees will change to andesite
and alpine fir; soil to red dust, shrubs
to ceanothus. Now you discover that view

eyes come here to see; a mountainscape
of scree and scarp and what remains of ice,
not far away as the crows fly, yet leaning

over miles of air, blue with smoke and firs.
You may eat, and drink your water, leaving some
for your return. Wait here for me a bit

while I go to see a stone nearby
where both my parents' ashes lie at rest.

where are the potatoes

Where are the potatoes, she wondered, watching

Heat shimmer across her corn block, its leaves

Each rustling against other, turning brown.

Right here they were planted, next bed over,

Evenly spaced, in two long lines, eyes up



And covered in soft soil, mixed with compost --

Really exactly as she had done these fifty years.

Early next morning, she reached for her mason's hammer,



The experiment with the spud hook having failed, and

Heaving her old bones down onto her gardening stool

Exactly at the end of that mysterious weedy bed;



Pulled block after block of solid hexagonal clod

Over, busting up each as she went, feeling for

That coolness she knew as round starch balls

All her life she'd depended on. It's not 

That she hadn't watered and weeded, no,

Or fought those gophers well, newly arrived.

Earth could not drink for once, it seemed.

Some spuds appeared. They were even



Smaller than those from last year. Some felt

Hollow. Some were cracked. Some were

Even green with poisons though they'd grown



Well deep enough never to have seen sun.

Oh, well, she thought, I'll take what I can get;

Now we'll have barley for every other soup, with 

Dandelion to help stretch out my kale. This

Earth, she told herself, never did all,

Really even in days of rain. Barley I bought.

Ere I go forth from here as buried flesh or ash, I'll

Do as I have done: work with what is.

 

she has work to do

She has work to do, establishing
Her anchor threads, her frame threads,
Even her bridge thread and all her radii,

Hub to be ready by dawn, herself resting --
All-powerful, so far as any lacewing can
See. Seeking out the ripest berries, she 

Works not to eat drupelets, but entirely to
Offer them as bait to fruit flies and their ilk.
Right away along comes another
Killer, a ladybird beetle, seeking the berries

Too, and for the same reason. He's caught,
Offers resistance, is overwhelmed, rolled up,

Done. Whatever comes in, if protein, her
Ovum will accept. Death it is brings life. 

three deep breaths

Three deep breaths, palms together,

Here in her room, or elsewhere, she may

Rise and take. A habit she has formed,

Even as most of her ideas, ideals,

Even her so cherished findings, hard found,



Deducted, inducted, reasoned, debated, polished,

Even those most like faith, as taught her,

Even those most like science, measured, observed,

Peeled one by one: a human desert, she.



By three deep breaths, she centers somehow: how?

Reality itself a question she's no longer asking,

Eating and sleeping themselves provisional.

All she bothers to call caring is now to listen

To breath, room sounds, outside sounds, to

Her friends, their worries unpacked, their voices

Spending both hope and pain. She bows.

clearing the knotweed

Commonly, this is done with herbicide.
Leery of that, she tried a chain saw. That was
Easy enough, but made fumes and sets fire to
All the earth's air over time. Electric clippers
Ruled the roost awhile, but that, we know,
In the scheme of things is but a longer tailpipe,
Neither the labor direct nor personal. She's
Going to have to simplify further. She takes

The hand pruner with her to the patch. It means
Her time in blighted shade, bending, will be
Extended, reaching to each stem in turn,

Killing with a snip and twist, dragging four or five
Not so much weeds as small trees outward
Or upward from the dry wash, toward hot sun,
Toward the roasting garden, into the paths
Where they'll be tossed as instant mulch
Entreating the drought to respect their shade,
Entreating irrigation not to evaporate,
Dimming, in sacrifice, the roving eye of Death.

what she will do

What she will do today is walk and take in

Hand her apple staff, leaning on it

As she does now, more and yet more 

The nearer arriving to a last heart beat



She comes, and check for vegs and berries.

Here are yet more peas; she's not as

Eager for them as three days ago.



With a bit more busy-ness, she'd go

In for blanching those. Onions and

Leeks too small yet; almost out of

Lettuce; tomatoes on the other hand



Doing well, and some ready already.

Oh, she could cut kale, collards or chard



This morning like any late spring morning,

Only she's hungry for something more.

Do what she will, there are yet no pears,

Apples, zukes, potatoes, corn, or beans.

You must make with what you have.

french pink

There are two climbing roses by her gate,
one to each side, with velvet blooms, small,
but heavily scented, suitable for soaps, salves



and potpourri. They blossom out together,

several hundred, perhaps a thousand whorls

French pink, shading to cream, the haunt



of matching shy arachnids. How tall they'd grow

she doesn't know, having twined an arch of willow

whips atop her gate, to bind them to.



In her middle years, her family took this place

and named it for the stony creek, dry

in summer, rolling through between house



and garden. A storm year came; that garden up

and vanished down a river to the sea,

leaving them three dead plum trees and a rose.



She started fresh, by the house. For the rose

she chose north, a shaded wall, and while the bush

liked a hidden spring there, for drinking,



it never cared for the paucity of light. It'd

stretch its greeny fingers roofward, up

and over; send roots drilling left and right;



make awkward shoots. Shift it one more time,

she thought. Maybe both sides of a sunny gate

she'd build, with an arch. The spot she had in view



she could muse on from her kitchen window.

Again two days of digging, and with her bow saw

made one rose two. Would they take another journey?



It seemed they would, though they'd always want water;

She'd have to remember to make the hoses reach.

She wouldn't mind if the roses wouldn't mind.

she knows

She knows the weeds will win. Sometimes, at night,

Hearing them grow in her dreams, she'll wake, grasp

Even in her two hands, a phantom thistle, or



Knotweed, errant blackberry, or teasel.

Now not able to turn and sleep, she'll rise, throw

On her robe, and step out into night;

Walking the way the slim moon shows her,

She throws aside her garden gate and listens.



There might be corn and tomatoes chatting,

Having about as much to say as farmed things.

Even a whisper among the kales and chard --



Whatever such things say. Beyond are beds

Ensnarled in dock, barnyardgrass, bindweed,

Everlasting morning glory vines.

Dire straits; but there's no sound there.

She knows they're biding their time,



Watching for her sudden return, sickle

In hand, fire in eye, seed packets in mind.

Level them, they fear she means to, or

Leave roots drying in summer sun.



Well, that's tomorrow. She turns now; steps

Into her lightless house. She'll give this up

Not soon, yet knows how it must end. 

a path

Along the new trail, built by no one I knew,

acorns had fallen by thousands, more than enough

to leave creatures dazed by too much fortune.



Conkers have tumbled among them, each

experimentally chipped and then rejected

by some set of tiny teeth. Hazel nuts



were better, it seems. Should an adder pass en route

to denning, amid this rich mast, amid

this late fall of goldened leaves of ash



and beech, I might merely step aside,

unalarmed as any fattened squirrel.

Across the pasture, I remember, past



the partly shaded ferns, cowslips, bluebells,

buttercups of spring and summer, where

falling water, catkin-patterned, drowned out



the cygnet's cry in an otter's teeth (witnessed

by a kingfisher, two low-flying larks and a heron),

a willow had leaned to hide that tiny sorrow



and also shade a loafing spotted newt.

The hill behind, where bees sought nectar of a kind

from sunburnt heather, swept up to a copse of oak,



wrapped in a druid's dream of mistletoe and ivy.

There I had paused for dandelion wine.

Perhaps the trail will help some find this place.



My children, do not forget there is a world.


________________________________
*This was written in response to a report, by Robert MacFarlane, of the disappearance of certain words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary.

waiting for the rain to stop

While watching forests comb those wet bellies,

All grey and louring, of the heartless clouds,

I wondered how the heavy earth breathes

Thus more than dampened, more than drowned

In so much rain. The very snails could gasp,

Nudging toward such daylight as they might,

Grudged them by the endless drops, dropping.



Fear for my crops, standing in chill pools

Or bent, prostrated, shambled, lying left and

Right, I feel, yet not enough to go and see.



There are tree branches, if I go, ready to pull

Hair, poke eyes, and shower me to my skin,

Every direction, along each path and bed.



Running streamlets ease a darkening land

All river-bound, discovering the slightest slope,

Inland being anathema to them,

No place like home, their wide and welcoming sea.



There all streams meet, mingle, and play.

Ocean the lowest place, where rain may end in



Stillness some times, or leap about, yet bounded.

There it may stop awhile, then one day mist forth

Over the waves and shores, plains and mountains

Putting forth life and death again, a cycle.


 

praying for rain

Perhaps the seedlings were better off inside,

Really. She's never sure what's best for them,

All down the years trying peat pots, blocks,

Yanking down flats from storage, penciling markers,

Ingratiating herself with baked soils,

Now trying perlite, vermiculite, moss,

Getting out lamps and heaters, rotating flats,



Fighting intruding snails, mice and rats

Or even knotweed, and bindweed

Running its tendrils up through brick.



Right now, she wishes she hadn't hurried.

All her helpless babies in cracked clay!

If it doesn't rain tonight, she tells herself,

Never again shall I call April May.

upon slowly waking, she

rouses from a dream of fear.  Suppressing
a moan, spine filled with fluids overnight,
yes, again, and ankles still in pain. Across

the flanks of her beloved she now crawls,
stumbles round the room to find the handle
of her life, or only the door, sliding her feet along.

A floor creaks with dry rot as she steps among
the objects that reshape her: bloomers, slips,
half-slips, girdles, bras, tights, stockings.

She feels, Braille-fingered, for the small room where
all who seek may find that men or women are
only men or women; here they see themselves

before any other's eyes, and by a harsh light.
Her eye looks deeply through her from the glass;
tells her that her sorrows are contemptible. So?

She does not plan to die today, no, nor call in
sick, returning to the now cold sheets, seeking
to resolve that awful dream. Call it what you will,

habit if you like, but she carries herself into
the living room, satisfactory sight, remodeled
somehow, despite poverty: white walls

and ceiling, cleanly textured, fireplace patched,
mantel graced with oil lamps and seemly books:
here she dresses. Outside, darkness, low

clouds, and the rattling of busy downspouts.
She shrugs. Through kitchen to the cold mudroom,
listening to the change in foot-fall of her heels,

from wood to tile, to concrete, she moves on,
pace quickening. No entropy now stops her.
Gathering her bent umbrella and stained coat,

she opens a door. She walks out to the world.

polyhymnia

treads between raised beds

critical of eye, noting the way the leaves

of corn have curled upon themselves,



rattling in hardly any breeze at all.

They'd like to make believe it's Autumn now,

would they? Playing at getting past the part



where seed heads form, waving their silky hair,

and then depart, leaving the leaves bereft


of any purpose but to leave this world --


except, of course, they don't: that is the gift

of mulch. She brings the hose and couples to


its end a yellow whirligig, made to sing


the holy song of water to the leaves.

Today, green fullness. Tomorrow, living grain.

season of drought

It is so dry now, my desiccated friend

spits in the bowl of his pipe before applying

flame to its bitter balm, seeking kind of balance.



We tread on rustling mulch to study rustling leaves,

folded in desperate prayer, of what will surely be,

still, next year, an orchard and a kitchen garden



if -- large if -- the well does not run dry.

Everywhere flit wasps, sipping at beetles'

abdomens, having small aphids for dessert.



The birds have capped their singing, panting in

small shade. "Ninety, ninety, ninety-three and ninety,

ninety-seven today, and ninety yet



for all the week ahead, with this drying wind.

Don't you think things are getting out of hand?"

I ask him. He blows a little rueful smoke



but makes no answer. I anyway know from long

acquaintance his position: "there is a law,

and you and I and all these aching things



can never break it." It's that second law

of course, the one that is the silence heard

after all laughter, after songs and tears.



Soon a moon will rise, grand, red,

dressed in soot from a dozen cackling fires.

lethe

When her back began alarmingly

to creak, and all the earth receded far

below, she made herself a bench, a slat



of fir between two other slats of fir.

Her knees derided her presumption, so

she tacked a bit of carpet on, to ease



the landings when she launched them out and down,

hoping, as she did so, nothing was

missing: not the ho-mi, nor the seed



or seedlings in their flat, or soil she'd stolen

from the neighbors' molehills, baked and sifted,

nor the hose-end with its chilly hand



of brass. Any unpresent thing could send her

wandering from barn to potting shed

to kitchen counter, swearing at herself,



ending in her having yet another

cup of something, using up the morning's

bag of tea -- again. Gardening



is knowing what to do, and when, they say,

leaving out that bit about old brains

forgetting what to do about forgetting.


 

"there was a word

                                             for that -- I am forgettin' it;
forgettin' things I thought I'd never not know --
As I once understood th' way a shackle will turn

to follow th' wire rope reaching back to th' pulley,
or which way th' water will run when it falls
from th' crook of an east-leaning alder in th' rain,

or run from an alder's elbow that leans west,
when th' storm comes in, always from southwest.
Oh, th' word! A short one, I should be able to just

say it! Clevis! Yes, we called a shackle a Clevis,
I don't know why. So, John, he picked up th' Clevis
and hung it on th' drawbar of the Cat, slipped

th' loop onto it, and reached to set th' pin;
but Alley, he thought he'd heard John say "Ready,"
an' put her into gear. So. That wire rope

sang just like a bowstring, an' th' Clevis
rotated right around th' slot in th' drawbar
an' went through John like he was made of suet.

He stood there for a moment -- like me now – 
trying to remember. Fixin' in his mind
what it had been like, bein' alive."


 

cityscape with pink rose

I stop at the flower lady's cart
to see if she has roses. There are a few,
with straggling leaves. The blooms

are decent still, especially those in pink.
She interrupts her desultory lunch,
brushing crumbs from her sleeve, to slip

a long-stemmed pink from among the buds,
carries it to her work table, and deftly wraps
the stalk in a yellow paper, tying it,

gentle-fingered, with a thin red ribbon.
I watch her eyes as I buy; they are like
those in the face I love, but the spirit is closed:

she has dwelt upon disappointments.
As I turn away, I see in my mind's
eye, myself turning back to buy for her

one of her own roses. Ha! no doubt she must
throw away many; of all things, wouldn't
she be sick, by now, of flowers?

Trading, as she does, in these signs
of the happiness of others, what would be
happiness for her, here, today? I catch

her tracking me warily; now, as if to say:
is there some problem with the rose? No.
Or, rather, yes. Or no. I stand, unworded

by the mystery of unshareable joy.

carefully

As the rains return again, she notes, almost
in passing, how her strait love remains;
how darkness, wind, and sorry days of

work and worry cannot shake it. We are not
built to last; we know that. Some speak of life
as it were stark tragedy alone, a

trudging from diaper to death bed, doomed
because end it must. Others try, by seeking
comedic relief, to put such gloom aside,

assuming that to live brightly today will,
somehow, pay for the pain of barely living
later, when last years have but begun.

Her truth: somewhere between. She would,
if the gods permitted, lose herself in your eyes
every day of forever, but knowing this

will end, and relatively soon, makes her not
over-sad, nor will she lie to you now
with thoughtless laughter; rather it makes her

carefully love you, deeply as she does here,
breathing your name in, breathing it out, like prayer.

grace

They do not always sit with an easy grace,
the aging: in afternoon light, even in October,
cracks invade her clear skin,

showing in relief, and he knows dismay,
seeing her, his own once simple face
crowding itself, as when a life within

doors runs out of thought. Yet, sober
as this renders him, he will not turn away
from her to seek some easier play:

there is no win or lose, no hunt, no race,
no battle. His eyes would disrobe her,
for she is to him more than she has been,

and he would know all, even here,
as passers pass, not seeing what his eyes see;
but he will wait on her clear sign

that this is welcome, even from his gaze,
for she has known most men hold themselves dear;
known too long their avarice that she

should shape to their dreams, their ways,
their endless drawing round her of sharp lines,
their wrapping an arm carelessly round her days,

their failing, in this many years, to touch the key
moment of her heart, that movement lacking fear
when she might freely give, without design.

Placing her hand in his, she shifts and sighs;
a not unhappy sound, considering the hour
and how late, as well, this man has come to her:

five decades they have lived apart,
as though all meaning had to be deferred;
as though some god, having hated happy hearts,

had suddenly relented, offering them this prize. 

loss

Round the circle of her garden she walks, and stops
again, taking in, as one absent from her own
senses yet unwilling to forgo their gifts,

the half-dimmed light of a low, prepubescent
moon, its influence on lingering clouds,
some few stars brave enough to compete with

mercury vapor or halogen or tungsten,
and taking in also the pungent garlic border,
its enclosure of bean vines, celery, snap peas:

celebratory things, even in this half-light,
this dew of forgotten hours. Her feet,
though well shod, warn her of night, by noting

slow seep of dew round toes and heels.
Her hand, brushing wet night-blooming
jasmine, shrinks from chill. These, and trees

she has encouraged -- apple, plum, pear, cherry,
maple, ash -- seem to her reproachful,
watching, as it were, her heart begin to slip

to a life they cannot share. Beyond, in a stillness
of curtained rooms, her children,
innocent of this need, dream of loss.

new found land

Whiteness enough off that coast to last a summer,
with chunks sized to drift among swells
like lost boats rising bottoms up to glimmer,

then dropping from a coastal watcher's view
halfway from here to wherever it is sky
comes down to touch water, blue on blue,

or even larger continents of white
shot through with green, shouldering breakers
with unhurried calm, things for night

to break on, or even day. You and I,
not having seen such before, go out
to frame each other with one in a camera's eye

and watch a schooner nosing among bays
scalloped along fringes of the beast.
The little ship goes near, but turns away

over and over to run, a cur who knows how strong
the behemoth it harries, how final its mere touch.
The white rock nothing notes, but wades along,

a mindless thing, and yet it knows command: we
think of the Titanic, sleeping in her mud --
having discharged frail cargo on the sea. 

william stafford

Here was a man who was known
as an Oregon poet.

He never wasted words, either.
He wrote a poem

Every day, rain or shine, and so
he had some

rain poems and some shine poems
and if people

came to him saying, sir, give us a book
he would turn

and rummage in desk drawers
or grope

along shelves in the kitchen.
Pretty soon

there was their book, bright as
Sunday morning

but sharp, too, like bottle glass.
He'd hand

it to them carefully, carefully.
And it was

their hint. After that they'd have to
look out for themselves,

and that, I guess, was his Oregon
message.
 

 

beech lake

Spring, and spring of her life also. She walks
to water to stand behind sedges, thinking of snakes.
And snakes come. First one, lazily, tail

sculling, head high, counterclockwise along
shore, and then another. And then -- another.
All going, she notes, the same way round. Next day,

incorrigible child, she rigs a black fly rod
with stout green line tied, butt end and tip end:
a snare. Back to the sun-long lake. The snakes

continue their rounds. She casts loop, she waits.
One comes, riding high in clear water, black eye
bright. Caught, the looping, livid thing

bends the rod double almost. On close inspection
she speaks its given name: common water snake.
Proudly she touches the twisting ribbon of flesh,

but it turns to sink four quiet rows of teeth
deep in the base of her thumb. Shamefaced, she
lets the bright creature go; it swims sedately,

maddeningly counter-clockwise: nothing
has happened to change its agenda. Rod forgotten,
she sinks to her knees among sedges to watch

fishing men quietly fishing in beech-shade,
shading her eyes with her still throbbing hand.

the wall her father built

The wall her father built to muscle back
the brown flood waters of the creek still stands.
It leans away from the run and hugs the contour

of serpentine embankment, redeeming years of silt
by interlacing a thousand granite slabs
against the tide of spring and spill of storm.

He could not bear the thought of land he'd
paid for picking up to run away downstream,
ending in useless mingling with other men's dirt

deep at the foot of the continental shelf
ten miles beyond the Chattahoochee's mouth.
So he built. Each day, though tired from climbing

poles in Georgia sun for the Georgia Rail Road,
he slowly removed his cotton shirt and sank
to his knees in the creek, feeling for stones

with his bare toes, prying them out of their beds
with a five-foot iron bar. He heaved them up,
wet and substantial, on the opposite bank,

and judged them, then carried them, staggering
under the load, to their exact spot in the rising wall,
setting them down like Hammurabi's laws, never

to be revoked. The whole he stocked and faced
with wet cement his daughter carried to him,
breathless, in a pair of buckets slung

from a home-carved yoke. Wall done,
he capped it with a pointing trowel, and with
his finger wrote the child's name and the year

nineteen fifty-five, which you will find today
if you scrape back moss. The house has had
six owners since, and of these none has given thought

to who prevented their foundation washing out
with freely offered labor long ago: or perhaps
they have. There's something in a wall's

being there that speaks of someone's having lived
and looked upon the land, giving shape to time
and place. Then taking stone in hand: 

silence

At this high bridge begins silence, even
as whitecapped water beneath
runs against rock and fills the hearing

with its white roar; this is not the sound
of human trivialities, of men disrespecting
women, women turning aside

with embarrassed smiles from men,
the sound of pulling of tabs,
ripping of aluminum, assorted

purrs and rumbles of fire along the pavement,
wrapped in steel. She gathers her oldest friends,
space blanket, matchsafe, whistle, map,

cheese, bread, water bottle, and poncho,
and stuffs them in her old firefighter's vest.
This is a new place, but deduction finds

the lightly traveled path, snaking across
a landscape steeped in stillness.
The vine maples have yet no leaves,

and the moss-lined nests in their jointures
contain no eggs. There are times
when tall firs on these ridges

creak and suffer, a forest of bent masts
in a wind-smashed harbor: this is no such time.
She has been used to walking alone in forests;

has walked among peaks dawn-rosed
at sunrise, or hunkered under wuther
of rain-heavy winds, or under smother of clouds

among tree-trunks. Now, for a sudden,
she stops, puzzling her alienness. What
can be different? There are yellow violets,

trilliums, oxalis. She gathers moss and horse lettuce,
a couple of conks, and pebbles, yet connection
is missing. Her heart leaps cold in her chest,

and her pulse rattles. On an impulse she whirls
round on her track, examines
the trail behind her and a hillside of

silences. The silence is plural, but how
do you read absence? What does she not see?
Bear? Cougar? It is a feeling one has

when the sights of the rifle are trained
on the back of one's neck. Often in life
she has felt this, but only in cities

and the lifelines of cities, those rivers
of asphalt and their pageant of strangers.
She must establish herself here, she feels;

some introduction has been omitted. She searches
her vest and locates an old pipe,
a treasure remaining from another life;

it goes where she goes, though she thinks of it seldom.
There is little tobacco in the bowl, but enough,
and she chooses a bit of mountain,

a leaf of kinnikinnik, to add. Self-consciously
borrowing culture, she aims the pipe
at four points of the compass, the grey sky,

the soundless earth at her feet, then sits
fumbling with the lid of her matchsafe.
Fire lit, she sends smoke quietly aloft.

It rises uncertainly, then finds the drift
of cold air sliding downslope into evening.
Whatever seemed angry seems to her angry still,

but gives way before the smoke of offering,
and makes with her a capful of truce: she will not
be eaten today, it seems, tripped up, or smashed.

She will not name the place, "place where I broke
my leg" or "place where I lost my spirit."
In return, she must finish this hike now

and not soon return. Replacing the horse lettuce,
conks, moss, and stones, she wryly smiles
a little: if this is superstition, so let it be,

she says to herself. We do what we have to do.
The silence, which she'd thought a hieroglyph
of an unknown tongue, nods and agrees. 

hall creek canyon

When they returned from building the kay-dam
(of logs and drift pins, to make again
a place where salmon might yet spawn)

they divvied up: each hauled a pack frame
loaded with tools and sundries, twice down
the canyon to its end, then up the old fire trails

a mile and a half, ducking vine maples
all the way, to the parked trucks. A third trip
for each would end the business,

but night came on, as it generally does;
they might have come back another day, but
as the moon was full, down they went.

One folded and refolded the old tent
and packed it away, while the others sat,
taking down the old sheepherder stove,

dumping ashes, talking. She would walk ahead,
she said, and slumped off down the scoured
sandstone ledge of the dry wash, admiring,

even in near exhaustion, the old moon
drifting among the snags. She came upon
the canyon with its pools and riffles,

and, regarding the first fire trail
as too steep, trudged on to the second,
wading a beaver pond. Logs at the head,

old growth, lay jackstraw piled, and she footed
along them easily, as she had done
in dozens of such draws. A big cedar sighed,

turned lovingly in its sleep, and with
an almost inaudible click, closed over her shoe.
There was with her no axe, no lever of any kind.

She stood knee deep in black water, too far
from the landing to be heard, neatly caught.
What if her co-workers took that other trail?

She looked back as she let slip her heavy pack,
seeing no movement but the falling moon,
knowing that one alone in such a place

has, while there, no name at all.

sometimes

                            this is what you'll come to, picking about
in earth, pulling bindweed roots
like long white worms and heaping them

beside you of a morning: you will become
distant and glum, and as your wrists dry up,
caked in clay, you'll look around you, and

not your small red barn, your irises,
your bamboo patch, your oak and ash,
your three brave maples rattling in the breeze,

your small house bracketed in lilacs, breathing smoke,
your woodshed stacked roof-high,
your mint and parsley putting on new life,

your geese, your ducks, your pear trees in bright bloom
will rid you of the thought of what this is
that you are digging, bit by troweled bit.

Assuming the sun will come out, which now
it does, things won't seem quite that bad,
and yet you will walk stooped, with furrowed

brow, into the house for a late cold lunch
without words, for there are no words
to share what it was the cold ground

said to your hands just now.



or, sometimes

                                   you'll come to this, lovingly rooting
in earth, gently setting to one side
fat worms, watching them

sink from sight with shrugs of their nonexistent
shoulders. As your wrists dry up, caked
in clay, you'll look around you, and

your small red barn, your irises,
your bamboo patch, your ash and oak,
your three unfurling maples whispering in the breeze,

your white house bracketed in lilacs, breathing
smoke, your woodshed stacked with fir,
your mint and parsley putting on new life,

your pears and apples, your geese in their bright plumes
will bring to you the thought of what this is
that you are digging, bit by troweled bit.

Assuming that the clouds will come, which now
they do, you will take things as they are,
and so you simply walk, with even-tempered

gaze, toward the house for a late cold lunch:
one without words, for there are no words
to share what it was your hands

said to the green earth even now.

j.s. bach

She turned up the weeds without pity, spreading
their roots before the sun. Most of them died,
though a few tenacious grasses rolled over

when she was not looking, and sucked earth
till she found them skulking about, and banished them
to the heap with the egg shells and old tea leaves.

Returning to the scene of the massacre, she placed
a five-tined fork before her, pointed toward
the earth's core. On its step she placed her boot's

sole, and drove its teeth home, tearing living soil.
She did this many times, and in her hearing,
the dark loam whispered in protest. But what

was she to do? One must eat, and the white seeds
in their packet were waiting for the sun.
She carried a blue denim bag at her side,

zippered it open, feeling about in its depths
like the housewife at the station platform
seeking her ticket for the last train --

Seizing her prize, she held it in a soiled palm,
reading the runes of inscription:
"Date of last frost"; "zone three," "days

to maturity." How many days now to her own
maturity? Not to be thought of. Her hand
trembled. Tearing the thin paper rind,

she tipped out contents: a shirtfront
of buttons. Five seeds to a hill she counted,
pinching their graves over them: three hills.

And on to other tasks. The rainmaker
whispered over hilled earth all
the zone's days to maturity, and the date

of first frost held true. Almost forgotten in the rush
of gathering in others: beans and corn, tomatoes--
she sought them last in October, the golden

fruits of that planting. Her other crops
talk to her; the Hubbards never do. (What are they
dreaming at, over there? She brings out the knife.)

Now it is March, she remembers having gathered
the silent, sulking Hubbards. How are they faring?
A look into the pantry reveals them,

dour and uncommunicative, all
huddled like bollards on the high shelf.
She chooses one to halve on the kitchen block.

Scooping out seeds to dry and roast later,
she bakes the halves till soft, slipping off skins
per Rombauer & Becker. "Dice them,

and in a mixing bowl add butter, brown sugar,
salt, ginger, and move the lot to the mixer,
remembering to add milk." With a bowl

of silent Hubbard thus richly dressed,
she goes to the living room, asking blessing
of the gods of the steel fork and the weeds,

the rainmaker, the packet of white seeds,
booted foot and blue denim bag
and the longtime summer sun, eating,

listening to a fugue by J. S. Bach. 

lettuce in winter

The potting room was a miserable dank
shed, trash-chocked, roofed in plastic, blackberries
ingrown amid bedlam. she dragged it all into

the light, sifting for tools or nails, then
consigning the rest to dump runs. With one son,
the quiet one, she roofed the room with scraps,

tucking, there, or here, oddly-sized old windows.
To the south, a sliding door turned on its side
served for greenhouse glass. A friend's offer

of a chimney to salvage solved the question of how
to floor. With her other son, the tall one, she
rented a long-legged ladder for picking bricks

from the air, frightened at every ragged breath.
They piled them by the plant-room door, and the girl,
last child, brimful of jokes and laughter, brought

bricks to her from the pile, which she set face up
in a herringbone pattern. They swept sand and mortar
into the cracks, and danced in the sunbeams then.

Now for a bench, new-painted green for the color
of wishing, and pots of all sizes, flats too,
with a tall can for watering. She hankered for lettuce

in winter, and sowed the flats in October. After
a month, wild geese and their musical throats gone south,
she noted her seedlings spindly and sad, so taking

hammer and two-by sixes, built a quick cold frame
with the other half of the always helpful sliding
door. By the sunny south wall in the duck pen she framed it,

and dibbled the seedlings within. They liked that,
but a darkness comes on in December; after a full
day, full week, one comes home exhausted, to eat,

to sleep, not to water gardens. One thing
only has saved the lettuce: the ducks do not like
coming in for the night. She goes into the dark

to disturb them; they rush about complaining;
the madwoman hops and chuckles. She locks them away
from coyotes, and turns, as in afterthought, to visit

her seedlings. By feel she gives them water, her hands
stretching toward summer in unseen leaves.

press run

She'll choose two cans of color, exploring them
for the soft caramel of good set, putting aside
flakes of air-dried dross with her inking knife.

One, a can of orange stuff, she's been given
for imprinting brew-pub six-packs; the knife
scoops up a dollop and ferries it to the disk.

The other is your standard black; the smallest
bubble of this she'll add to the orange, and stir,
in hope of a decent brown. A heave of the flywheel

begins the inking-up: the disk turns a bit
with each revolution of the wheel, and the ink,
smashed paper-thin by rollers, spreads evenly

across its face, painting it, painting the rollers,
as her foot pumps the treadle, and her face
admires, as it always does, the view from here,

of garden dressed in straw, of mountain air
training the rainbow windsock northward,
of Jasper Mountain becoming a hill of gold

in the sunset. Gathering the furniture, reglets,
quoins, quoin key, and the new magnesium cut,
she locks the chase, fastens it to the bed, shoves

the wheel, this time with impression lever on,
and lets the cut kiss the clean tympan paper
with an image. Around this image she sets quads,

tympan bales, and bits of makeready, and prepares
the stacked sheets to be fed from the feed board
into the maw of the Chandler & Price, known

to pressmen for a hundred fifty years as the
Hand Snapper. She reaches for the radio's knob.
Rachmaninoff? Damn. Oh, well, turn

wheel, pump treadle, lean forward, lean back,
click-click, click CLACK, work-and-turn,
deliver the finished sheets to the delivery board,

admire mountain, lean forward, lean back.
Rachmaninoff gives way to Mozart's glorious
forty-first symphony, and Jasper Mountain

gives way to night, and in the black window
a woman in her fifties, leaning forward,
leaning back, critically appraising the music,

the printing, and herself, click-click, click CLACK,
sour bones and a game leg but a job well done
and the Mozart's Mozart. Four hundred sheets

later, and well into Bruch, the wheel stops,
the chase is unclamped, the disk and rollers
washed up, and rags canned. The reflected

window-crone lifts a sheet of work
to the light, examines impression and matter.
Reaching to silence Bruch, she sees the stilling

silhouette of the rainbow windsock:
it waits for dawn; for fair and lofting wind.

of country folk in august

Whenever we worked at the creekside shed
there was always something else to do
such times as we were stumped, or nails ran short,

or the sun reached round the fir and baked us down
from raftering, roofing, or the like. We leaned,
gossip-like, against the fresh framing

of the walls, sipping solar tea,
watching the edge of a cloud's long skirt
chase the neighbors' horses leisurely

across their pasture, down the camas swale
and up the other side, against the black contrast
of maple-shrouded hills. The horses liked

to amble up to our corner, stand and watch.
We couldn't cure them of the shies,
though we might try with handfuls

of our green grass, or a few choice
coaxing words. They'd check us out:
first one black blink from behind

the forehead blaze, and then another,
cocking their long heads round to see
our self-assured, predatory faces, eyes front,

gazing on them, horse-flesh accountants
by their reckoning. Their flanks
would shiver, and their forefeet stamp,

scoring the earth in a language built of weight.
Some movement would always spook them off:
a silvery chisel hefted, or water bottle sloshed,

spattering sun. They'd hammer up the swale;
Lovingly we'd watch them go, coveting
our neighbors' lands and all that lived thereon,

as country folk in August always do.
 

in the closed vale

The following is an epistola metrica composed in English in imitation of and playfully attributed to Francesco Petrarca. The appended sonnet is however genuine and translated from the Italian.)

“Petrarch here deliberately gives the impression that he is writing from Vaucluse soon after his brother Gherardo, the presumed addressee of the epistle, has joined the Carthusian order in 1343, perhaps in the winter of 1343-44. But at this time Petrarch was in Naples and then Parma. Parma is vividly mentioned in the poem, but other internal evidence strongly suggests that the letter is of later date, after 1348 at least. If the letter was written at Vaucluse, it would probably date from the period of his residence from 1351-53, after he had begun but not finished collecting his familiarum rerum libri. It is possible that Petrarch composed this letter, among others, with the intention of inserting it at a specific point in the chronology of collected letters and that it was not intended for Gherardo's eyes at all. The letter, however, is stylistically inferior to much of Petrarch's work, and he must have realized this, for it was never included in his finished work, and has only recently come to light, quite by accident. The original is in Latin, with a sonnet appended in Italian.”

in the closed vale, 

my sweet brother, the swallows are doing 
their silent work without complaint.
They are like you; wherever they are the people
are made happier, and everything becomes
much cleaner, as after April rains. It was
April, you know, when you chose to leave me here,
and all your friends, and the long nights of talking 
of glorious ancients, and of the fathers of 
sad spurned faith, and poor neglected Rome.
Even so was it April when my heart,
as you know, left me for another, never to return 
while I have life, so that every laurel
and every breeze might mock my emptiness,
and my soul hung like a green leaf before
the breath of crowds; my reputation was their toy
and their laughter blew me about upon the branch 
till I, brown and sere, fell upon the stream
and drifted here, deep in the shadows of my own
vale chiusa, my sweet brother, that is so like 
me, for its hidden spring weeps in winter 
and in summer, without end. But you
have been a comfort to me; whether here, 
nesting like a swallow in the cliff above
the east bank of the green and tumbling stream;
or far below, in the dusty-throated Babylon
on the plain: a counter to the madness
and corruption of that place, and a complement
of cheerful sufficiency in the other, always
helpful in my crazed efforts to placate
the nymphs of the vale, while honoring the muses
that always make them jealous, so that every 
meadow, every garden we built there
was swept away within the year; their fury
undiminished till complete; their victory 
leaving no sign of all that I -- that we 
had striven to plant or build to beautify
our memories of that place. And just as our gardens 
were swept away by the jealous nymphs, I feel
you too have been stolen -- by a jealous God. Please,
my sweet brother, bear with me, for I feel swollen 
with sorrows, but I mean no blasphemy! 
Does not the Father of Heaven himself say,
"I am a jealous God"? and he takes away 
the best, always, because the best is right 
for him to take. And I know that it is God
that has taken you, and not some gang of monks 
whose heaven is an inn, and whose God
is carried within the circle of their belts!
Rather, I know it is God because only the Father 
inspires the life of the silent men, whom you 
have been inspired to join with, not a rabble
of cenobitic share-alls, grubbing each
at the other's blanket under a common roof, 
breathing garlic in one another's ears
the whole night long, and begging for new wine 
or chasing women all the day, making
the name of Christ a joke to the common people,
so that when these beggars go out for alms,
a man may say to them, "What! You here again?" 
and call some poor fellow from the ditch
and give the alms to him instead, saying
"Here! In Mohammed's name, for he truly
is stronger than the Christ these fellows talk of!"
But your order, an eremetic city set
on a hill, is cleanly, faithful, quiet, and strong 
in the kindly works of our Lord. They and you
are so alike, how could it have been otherwise? 
Thus do I say, a jealous God took you,
for he could not bear this filthy world should hold
such a one another day. All
my friends are like you in this; the Lord loves 
them all too well; he takes them, one by one;
Remember Parma? It was there, you know,
by the bench I told you I'd had built,
that I, one day, was weeding among the bulbs,
near enough to the little brook to hear
its crystal song above the deeper roar
of the famous city so close by, and a darkness
came and stood upon that bridge, and I
looked up and into that darkness, as I have done 
so often at the mouth of the fountain here
(for I am not afraid of caves and darkness,
and love to walk at night, even when
there is no moon), and saw therein our friend, 
Giacomo Colonna, striding across
where that branch of the plane tree dips so closely 
to the pool, between the bench and the wall.
I greeted him, surprised, and most concerned,
for he was hurrying along, and had no company, 
and seemed as if he would not -- could not -- tarry.
He smiled, yet would not be embraced, and said 
(I will never forget his words then!),
"Don't you recall the awful storms along
the baleful crest of the high Pyrenees?
You hated them; so did I, and now
I am leaving those places forever: I am for Rome."
I wanted to go with him, but he was so stern 
it made me afraid to speak; it was clear
that he would not have me go, so I looked
closely on him, to fix his beloved features 
forever in my mind, and it was then
that I saw how pale he was, and knew that he
was dead. I have said elsewhere that this 
was in a dream, but already I am not so sure. 
Colonna died that very day, you know;
So I feel I really saw him. But you I never
see now, asleep or awake, but only remember. 
Even as I write, I remember,
and it seems as though I might shape you 
with my words. I see you as you were 
when we braved the craggy slopes so high
above this shady valley, when we were young. 
You took the straight path as it lay before you, 
up and over all obstacles,
no matter how fearsome, and never stopped till you 
had reached the appointed goal. You were then
just as you are; that is why God loves you
best! While I, wandering this way and that, 
sought to take a path that looked the easiest, 
but found to my chagrin it turned downhill.
I was lucky to reach the top at all,
but I did! I did! You cannot deny it, brother. 
And it was I who brought our precious saint,
Augustinus, with us all that way.
The clouds were lower down, with the late sun 
bright on their broad fleecy backs, and the Alps
shone so far to the south, between us and 
our father-country Italia, and the sea.
At our feet, so near it seemed a dream,
the Rhone, gleaming, in its bed of stones.
All this was first yours, but also mine,
and I brought forth Augustinus from my breast
and gave his benediction to that day:
that men wander through the world gazing 
upon the high mountain tops, the great
ocean waves and deeply springing rivers, 
and the slow-turning canopy of bright stars, 
yet never think to look upon their souls.
This you have done; but this, I fear, I fear
to do, or rather wish to do but always turn 
just as I reach the heavenly door, to seek
some easier-seeming path, some flowered way, 
and always find, as on that peak, my way 
leading down, toward some darkened place.
God be my witness, I often try to turn
there on my pleasant-seeming path, back
to the place where last I saw the door, but it
by then is gone, and nothing there I find
but a smooth expanse of bramble-covered wall. 
And now you write to me and say the things
I have so often told myself, troubled,
as you must believe, beyond the common run 
of men in sin! Brother, I have even
made a small book wherein I keep
my lapses and successes; already once 
I kept myself safe for two years
and seven months; now, it is true, the priest 
to whom I go for confession is kept busy, 
but I trust the Lord will give me strength ...

In living alone, as you know by now, there is 
much to be gained. I have here the two 
faithful servants and the dog, and visitors
come, but not too often, and the people
of the valley seem to regard me as their judge, 
but I do have, as you have seen for yourself,
a space to myself within the walls of my
small house, south windowed, and endowed with one 
extravagant thing: a good scriptorium.
Nearby are the books, my closest friends: they 
(Virgil, Cicero, Livy, and the rest,
and Augustinus, my advisor and true 
confessor) open continually their great treasures 
to me, and through me, to all the world beside. 
Do you not rise and pray in the midst of night
that all the saints may bless the wide world? 
And the scripture says, "the heartfelt prayer 
of a righteous man effecteth much." So too
you pour out the treasures of heaven on 
the earth, as I unearth and bring to light 
the gold and silver of the past! Brother,
my work is not so unlike yours...except, 
of course, that I am able to put my name 
on all my little productions! I do admit,
to you, now, dear heart, that I desire 
greatly to see my name remembered -- God 
forgive this! I see two thirsts in me: the one
to live forever in a name above
the common herd; the other, to nurse along 
the hurt that blind boy gave me, years ago
when I was least prepared to defend myself. 
Yes, I am still thirsting! Only those
who have never seen her cannot understand!
The light foliage of her hair, the dark 
contrasting brows...the all-destroying twin 
suns burning in her face, that should
have killed me long since, but Fortune
preserved me, for they have been oft averted; 
while my own eyes looked everywhere that she, 
I knew, was not, and found her in stones and winds 
and even among the roots of trees along
the storm-scoured banks of the river Sorgue.
I have sat upon the grass at midnight
and rained tears on my own breast, because 
the stars, so like her in their shining,
wheeled by beyond my reach, 
as thoughtless of my suffering as she! And it seems
to me now these two thirsts are one
in some way: that as the light-limbed goddess 
vanished, and in her place stood rooted forever 
the dreamless, unapproachable laurel tree,
Apollo might have lifted a storm-stolen 
branch with which to weave himself a crown 
for remembrance; so with me, for to console
myself that tears and smiles, and even my poems 
moved not one, though they move all others,
I might, somewhere along the Appian Way,
pluck some branch of the very tree of hate 
and, weaving it round my brows, make it 
forever after my crown of love. The Africa
will earn me this, though it is already mine,
but I have begun, my brother, to gather the scattered l
eaves that the winds of Love have brought me here
and elsewhere -- if it must be pain, then let the pain 
be famed! Famed in France and Italy, and even
as far as the shores walked by Scipio, or
the mountains beyond the sacred land where Christ 
walked along the Galilean strand.
Is this dreaming? Perhaps I have dreamed it all;
some will say: "this man invents everything 
he says has happened to him"; but, brother, 
you know I speak to you sincerely from the heart,
this heart that is not mine but another's,
for you yourself once loved truly one
who now has gone beyond you and the grave.

What is life? They, the crowd, never
ask, but I have asked, all my days,
and now I tell you what even the ancients most
desired to know, yet never found: this life
of man is a kind of dreaming, whether awake 
or sleeping. He rises in a dream, and dresses
with dreaming hands. In the field he dreams of grain, 
and at his nets he catches silver dreams.
He looks but cannot see, and hears but nothing
hears, as our blessed Lord tells us; there is 
nothing between a man and a man but words, 
and our words are all, and only, stuff of dreams.

I make myself in books, brother, because 
I want my dreams to go on living yet, 
and I know no other way. Is this so evil?
I will tell you more when I come, dear brother, 
for I desire much to see you, and
observe the true monastic rule, some days
or even weeks, if the Abbott will allow.
I close by appending a copy of the first leaf 
that drifted from my pain, back
to my door here in the wild, so that I might 
weave it in the crown that now I wear
here in the closed vale, where it is always
winter in my soul without you, dear brother. 

Apollo! If yet lives the beautiful desire
that set you aflame by the Thessalian coast, 
and if your love for the blonde tresses
amid wheeling years, has not found oblivion 

through slow ice and sharp, wicked time 
enduring while your face yet seems obscured,
protect this loved and sacred foliage
by which first you and then I were caught; 

and by the virtue of that hope of love
that kept you up despite your life of pain, 
completely clear the air of all falsehood;
we may then both see a wonder in the same way:

seated, our lady, upon the grass 
making, with her arms, her own shade.