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.