XXVI

Perfect as lentils soaking, each round pebble
Bathed where the water laps, drifts against the current gently.

There juniper exudes a pungent meady scent, and the wood birds are wiser
Than their cultivated brothers. Warbler and thrush have darkly glinting eyes,
And are never startled.
They know these trees, this stream, like their own voices.

And in this heavy bearded wood there are more loamy secrets,
Where spiky pine blankets the condescending lumps of fallen trees.
There a blunderer may find himself in dreams of a peculiar kind,
When light and desire conspire to draw him deeper
Into the forest's pleroma,
And except he is a fool, he will not know it.

There moves the forest's guardian, all draped.
He is the earthy and the intoxicating spirit of this place.
In shape he frustrates any illustration, complete is he,
And any portrait makes his parts absurdity, for he is beauty.

Any eye that sees him finds its deepest fear and dearest joy,
The wanderer is rested in his soul, the hunter rankled,
The lover spoiled of any cheapening love.
Here, in this fecund stillness
Is the utter soul of worlds.

The Yard In Winter

Face down to resuscitate the earth. Breathe the frost away, smell the fertile spring awakening under warm breath. The milky bitter grass. The scalpy smell of roots, the death. The life,
And the sweet content of the ground beneath, heaving like a chest in sleep, and me upon it.
Resting, a child on its mother's breast. The heartbeat of the world beneath my cheek. And gleaming
In the skies, there is my father, and through his eyes there winks the spark of stories. There connect and intersect the paths of slaves to freedom.
Follow me north.
Did I know each nest? And now I kiss your neck, your fingers, you who whisper, Shall we say love us more? Or love us less? Which shall pain you more? I sigh into your dry and smoky skin. Your sleeves are fringed with lichen. And I am leaving you already...
For the same sky under different branches.

And I said You never change. But change the way we understand. To know You.

Hunt

Lisping on the edge of words unspoken,
And shifting from one tender foot to the other.
In the darkness, I suck condensing air with a shallow gasp.
I am hiding because I want to be found.

If I plunge my hands into the softness of your stomach, will I find you real?
Are you only a silhouette on the damp grass, testing sounds and fighting tears?

The Memory of Birds

I reached her house and saw her sitting cross-legged in the front yard, in the shade of the big maple tree. She was looking up the street, so our eyes met at the same time. She smiled, but she didn’t get up. I smiled too, not knowing what to say, and ambled across the lawn to her. There was something small and brown in her hands that quivered slightly.

I felt tall and awkward, walking up to Eliza sitting there in the grass. She didn’t say anything until I was right in front of her, and then she asked,

“Would you like to hold him?”

I grinned and said yes. She told me to sit down. Then she placed the brown fluffy thing in my hands. Geoffrey adjusted his stubby wings to regain his balance after the transfer. I wasn’t prepared to feel how light he was, how fragile, like a handful of grandfather dandelions. The queerest thing was the sensation of his body against my fingers; I could distinctly make out his breastbones beneath the down. That surprised me. There seemed to be nothing but airy fluff and a thin membrane of skin between my fingertips and his ribs. But below I felt his round belly, warm and moist. It swelled in and out. His little feet clutched at my skin in a funny way, so I laughed, and Eliza looked at me, enjoying my initiation. I felt like I should say something.

“How old is he?”

She answered that he was probably about two weeks old. She said she knew this because his eyes were fully open but he still had baby fluff.

I was always impressed by Eliza’s solemn knowledge. Maybe that was why she charmed me like no other girl I’d ever met. She was a child, but her mind was sensible and probing. I still don’t know what she saw in me; I was such an overgrown excuse for a teenager. Maybe she sensed how I saw meaning in things, the way she did.

I gazed back down at Geoffrey, who was blinking and rustling his little sheathed wings. I bent my head to inspect them. Each feather was growing out of a semi-transparent tube, made of quill material. The tips of his feathers were free and fanning out, but the roots were still tightly bound in tube-sheaths.

With my face close to Geoffrey like that, I smelled him for the first time. It was a curious, delicate smell: eggy, sweet, with a hint of urea. I didn’t find it offensive, and leant there, inhaling for a moment.

Then Eliza shifted beside me and I saw her pick up a recycled yogurt container from beside her leg. She pulled out a small worm, took it between her fingers, and methodically tore it into three bits. They wriggled and exuded guts, but she placidly laid two of the pieces on her bare knee, and leaned over to feed Geoffrey the third. I watched in silent admiration. As her hand neared Geoffrey, he lifted his head, beak open, and flapped his tiny wings, letting out a series of sharp, shrill chirps. I could feel his whole body straining up toward that bit of worm. With the writhing morsel safely in his beak, he bobbed his head and swallowed it, his eyes pressed shut.

“Don’t the parents sometimes regurgitate the food for their babies? I asked. “Would spitting on the pieces help Geoffrey digest them?” I hoped this was an intelligent question.

Eliza leaned back and squinted for a moment in thought. Then she turned to her knee and picked up a second bit of worm, saying,

“Bird saliva is different from human saliva.”

I nodded. And I watched Eliza carefully feed Geoffrey the rest of the worm. His body was warm, and my palm sweated, so his down feathers stuck to my skin. When I gave him back to Eliza my hand felt cool in the air. Eliza took him in a motherly sort of way, and I felt something like a father. Protective, and proud, and a little in awe.

As I walked home I brushed my nose, and smelled Geoffrey on my hand. 

Melodramatic Tree-Hugger, Nov. 20

The weight of a dropped nut in my hand
Reminds me of a thimble.
Embarrassed alone in the woods, wanting to cover over obscenities on trees with my bare hands.
Do the leaves know what is scored into their bark? A scar of the shame of humanity:
The desire to deface the good and holy.

There are a few trees I have befriended. One to press my hand on six days of the week. One which made a chair for me when I found it in the snow, and now shelters a cairn of stones.
But this       white       wonder
Is a tragedy worthy of the prayers of the saints...

A tangle of helpless elegance supports it from a slide down the forest's incline,
For it is a broken body, voluptuous and angled in a dozen curves and bends of almost human forms,
But fallen with its arms outstretched along the ground, beseeching travelers to muse on the passing of the  white beech of Round Pond.
Clearly, this is a friend in need of company (I will kiss you youngly while I rest my cheek and neck against the swoop of your outstretched arm).

I am a waif of melodramatic tendencies, and my raw feet will reproach me in the morning.

But for now, I only smile at myself and the yapping dog who found me.
Somehow a wooden family soothes my wounded soul, and grows my heart another ring.

Forsythia

On the almost frozen ground

The young spring up, the old fall down.

O tender, tender, tender,

Why do you bloom in November?

Why do you bloom in November?

Penned Again

Glittering like bits of blowing tinsel, the stars gathered in a patch of
midnight sky, the Pleiades one bright smudge against the darkness.
This will be a brief meeting, a one quick feeding in the lawn before being
penned again.
- Eat of the earth's richness while you can -
But my plate is too full: feed my soul.

Press my eyes closed. I will feel it is you by your fingertips.
Hold me as tight as I hold you. Tighter. Your bark is rough on my lips.

Branches design to blind me as I run,
(Run? Stumble, as inebriated as I am with the sap of stars)
Cold mud numbs my spinning feet to the point of pain.
I will not will not stop until I fly, or fall. It has begun.
I will not linger at the threshold. I will run down the aisle to your arms.

Misanthrope

Find me in the woods and I will feel your intrusion like a lovebug
In my pizza crust, a maggot in my rice.
But maybe you will be around when I am lost,
In which case,
You are welcome to flavor my sauce.

Bruised Leaves

I.

Kneaded, pounded, steamed, thumbed,
Pica for tree bark or the flesh of my arm,

The crackling of oil, the spitting of fat,
The splatter of rain on the tempered glass.

You won't mind my voice if I sing quietly,


Rosemary, laurel, lemon, thyme,

Balsam, yarrow, yew.

II.

I have blistered my arm with my own little mouth,

And left bite-marks along it in childhood.

I have nothing but skin to hold myself in,
At least leaves have release, when they blood.

You won't mind my arms if I hold you lightly,

Rosemary, laurel, lemon, thyme,

Balsam, yarrow, yew.

III.

Tie up my ankles and hang me, after,
I flower, aromatic, from attic rafters.

I've waited two years if I've waited an hour,

To rake where I'll nest, to bring lark song and laughter.

You won't mind my leaves if I love you rightly,

Rosemary, laurel, lemon, thyme,

Balsam, yarrow, yew.

The Ends

Sometimes I can trace to the ends of my hair,
To younger years, when I danced with my blanket wrapped around my back,
When I asked for stories from outside bathroom doors.

Today I read aloud from the other side of a shower curtain,
And I danced in the edges of a pond reflecting the moon,
With a shawl around my shoulders, my feet plashing softly.

The shadows of trees tell me I am old,
And the moon tells me more:
I am not wrong to love and be drawn,
Maidenly, to aspire to tender hopes.

In His Earth

The three of us slid out of Claire's car, I the only one unused to the growing plot,

The rising action, of this place.

He emerged and met us, slapped their hands, and shook mine,
and we stood in a square, talking.

Light, sweet conversation mellowed us as we faltered into words, the creamy air of the last stirring day of September awing us a little. It was almost as if our feet were planted under those old trees, by the silver car.

In time the word was spoken and we made a beginning, taking hoes in hand and two of us baring four feet to weed between the rows. We shifted irrigation hoses, spread ourselves out and cut into soft, caky earth with rectangular tools on rods.

I salvaged forgotten red onions scattered in the paths and hidden between lettuce and small greens. In tight rows, we stooped and kneaded soil with our hands. I knelt and let it saturate my knees. Vital odors permeated the air, clean in the unity of their composting growth, like sweating crowds singing praise and turning fresh. In His earth our minds turned to Him, and in both the clumps we formed we naturally talked of God.

The germ of division molded into mottled feet of clay. Metal met worm, words lilted across minds; conversations linked and un-linked as we stepped over lines. 

When the work was done, we crossed to the tents with their tables of ripened tomatoes, bright-colored crates littering the ground like lobster traps, and wagon loads of dark round watermelon and squash.

He generously offered that we carry home a harvest.

He leaned against the trailer bed edge, and cut up pink flesh into wedges, handing them around as we gathered. The thick brown earth on my hands was drying into dust. I smacked off a layer and ate, and watched the dripping juice stain my dirty hands darker where it fell. The seeds crunched and I swallowed most of them.

For most of an hour we savored food God had made, and laughed at the way we threw rinds, or fooled ourselves. When honesty caught the conversation, it came out smoothly, like breathing. Like I'd want it to be: bottled things aged carefully to perfection, but served liberally.

Good has power, and gentle can be rough and tumble, and clear blue has depth like the sky. There are new shoots even while things die. And knowledge doesn't make you wise.

As I carried my bursting paper bag back to my room, I bent and smelled the rich, sweet, varied scents of autumn's abundance, lent to me unexpectedly on a single rare Friday. I could not keep from smiling, and laughed in the shower.

Snapdragon Featherdown

One pine tree casts an astonishing shadow halfway across the lawn-mown grass - This is our backyard for four years or three and a half -
And I run in it, back and forth,
Touching the dry grooved bark each time I reached it,
Once or twice planting a kiss,
Wishing I knew how to cartwheel,
Blissful in the damp of the evening, watching serene stars slide behind certain traveling clouds.

I am frightened by the refulgence of my own heart
When it is worn thin to nothing but a vessel to hold treasures in.
I laugh and laugh at myself for laughing,
And laugh at myself for wanting to be seen laughing
By someone who might understand.

Well, we will share this vessel together. You sharing me, and me sharing You,
Breaming the bottom of our boat
So the light shows through.

Experiments in Poison

I will fold myself in grass, and you will tumble on my lap.
We will pick oats, find strange homes, make maypoles of trees.

And if, behind one wall, you find ashes and experiments in poison, I will tell you a lonely one lives there,
And we will clean house for his return.

Ask me to dance again and I will not be ashamed to be seen spinning;
My arms must learn to lift.


I do not kiss you to make to think of kissing
I kiss you to remind you of what matters more than this.

Red

Raining rhythm of piano keys
Like children's fingers on my collar bone
Like ripples in the water, where bleeding underbellies of lily pads sprout stems arching up like portals into worlds.
This is a creation where colors converge in soul speech. Where crimson sighs quietly in spreads of green. A pen cap, a candy wrapper, holly berries make me stand still, hardly, barely breathing. Spilling out at last, the one half-leaf pleads guilty for me as I pass. Where did my heart learn scarlet?
Darting from the path, I cannot hold my ribs from gasping laughter, desperate to believe vermilion asks for what I hope it asks.

Second Night at Third Home

It was strange to wake childless
Because, though she was not a child, the closest thing I can come to is that I was a mother for two months.
I was a mother for two months.
Now I wake later, wonder what I am to do, feel as if the day is a plate I fill, not a plate served me.
And so I ran campus errands, met friends, found trash and picked it up, decorated, unpacked, beautified. In continuing last spring's tale to two children, I touched delight at the thought that I was a story-weaver, and later tucked away their grandmother's words that I had made her want to stay and pluck grass with us. Later we played snow-eagles, and the foxes learned to lie and then love mushrooms. Their great-grandchildren were weaned of cunning and became the birds' friends.
My idea of resting on the rocky outcrop was foiled by mosquitos, but I added one more stone to the mound, the story, the reminder of the Man-God who brought me through water on dry ground.
The tree that I likened to Larisa had dropped its dead-limb burden, and I wondered if the limb slipped lightly down or broke the arms it lay on. She carried a broken branch, and on the day I understood, I knew that I must carry the tree.
And so now, I am free.
But I will keep my hands open, and wait for leaves.

Boerne, August 7

Lemon verbena in the bathroom, dry Saint Augustine grass outside. My feet have not felt it in six years, have not stood beneath the night sky for days.

Thirty-one days without rain.

A rugged plain, a whistling wind that blows without burning, strangely. Love rattles through dry leaves, takes moments to reach you, can be heard before it is felt.

Sweet Gulf shrimp, sopaipilla, laughing and jelly beans and a need for affirmation.

Now, all dishevely, dance on the still-warm pavement, dance beautiful, dance foolish and grin at your shadow. Laugh to the sky above, finally lie down in the driveway and drink the tipping-glass moon. Sing until you have no more to sing, and then be still.

His wings, His refuge, are warmer than you thought, can be wide open spaces behind bars. After tears come quiet and a smile of,

“You have given me hope, and hope was all I needed.”

This is the land my heart wanted to feel home in. 

A Plentid Day

A wren, under a Maxfield Parrish midnight sky,

Breathed on beatifically by the wild sea breeze,

And bathed in the glow of a half-bright, bridal moon,

Very silent, very shy.

Brown birds wear a bold face, smoke gold pipes, dwell in cedar houses.

Imagined inadequacy bleeds into reality.

Autumn and the call of wild geese are far ahead, and may not come with September. 

I have never loved summer until today.

Did I forget to follow the lavender, the rose, the two-day’s four-hundred-sixty-seven stella doras in their full-out happy, happy, love of being alive? Did I lose delight in blue? I want the eighteen sailboats in one patch of cove, the litter of visitors on the rocks, to mean as much to me as stillness and the cleanliness of all that is not human. 

You win me over, you love that I thought I had understood, that I wanted to deserve, that I feared that I could lose by being honest.

An irritatingly bad haircut. Reminds me of my pride, and so I am able to listen. I may be comfortable cold, but I decide.

Charles Wesley, Charles Wallace, the 9^th of 150 copies, thimbled cheeks, a honeyed right ear healing.

Paint, each stroke and line the longing of an unmet desire, a waiting, a patience, a pulling out of stiffened wooden drawers, and so blank paper.

But I have sweat and warm breath that fogs up the window.

I'll let violin complaints explain my spirit to a listening heaven. I still want to dance on the floor. 

The astounding turnip is imprinted with my fingertips.

I'll sweep under the table in the morning.

Ant Lions

Under the green light of the branches, where You birthed me,

Under the streaked sky’s flying engines, wings, and whines,

By the gravel’s grating crunch like ice cubes, cold and dry-

Here the sweat of my upper lip is like relief,

Like exhaust from a burning, bleeding heart that sparks

With friction, “It’s fractious”, foolish:

Pulling two ways and never brave enough

To let one side win.

Cicadas grin and cackle wickedly.

But it’s only my interpretation, because they riddle me with bullets so my irritation

Will lure out the devil, like the spittle on the pine needle aggravates the ant lion

From his hollow in the sand.

Home Poems: for the Northernists and my Father

All the Moths in My Hair Will Swarm to This Light

The broken branches of the mulberry tree still cling on their living brothers.

They will not fall until a strong wind comes;

My father will not pull them down.

Small trees I once could not climb have surpassed me.
“Son, you can carry me now.”

The tadpole is dried up with the puddle.

The sage blooms, the sage flowers in purple. The ferns converge around the rocks and northern wall. Woolly mint swallows up the strawberry bed. And I am content to watch.

Hurry home, heart. Gather up your frayed ends. Leave behind the noise of yesterday; consume the sunlight before it fades.
Who is to say this will be here tomorrow?

So close now, like your brother knocking on the wall between your rooms,

Like your Mother’s photographs looking like you, suddenly,

Like cut grass clinging to the tops of your feet.

The grass is strewn with fur.

Stop this harried grasping after life and observe:

What went before you, and what will happen after.

You are a small pear blossom. Flower now, and shrivel bravely.

Do not call fruit a burden, though it bears you down.

Carry on a conversation with the sparrow, the thrasher, the cormorant, the wren. Let the slow wisdom of the grebe seep in. Support the hearty robin, respect the hardened city pigeon.

You are not nidifugous; stay at home while there is a home to have.
And make it glad.

You returned too late for the may-apple, the child of the mandrake, the sole fruit of its two umbrella-arms.

Now wait another year. Years see changes you would not expect. Cast your crumbs upon the waters, for in many days you will find full bellies in your wake.

Loved, loved, loved, comes with every wind.

Do not forget it.

The tadpole is dried up with the puddle.

The grass is strewn with fur.

And there are thorns in the honeysuckle.

But the grass, trees, and sky combine in fireflies

And the porch light signals me to come inside.

Another Old Cliché

One thing that grows harder with time

Is believing.

Seeing only the day-to-day leaves a tannic aftertaste.

Then sorry thoughts bend their lips to my ears, asking me why am I so old?

Better save the bitter for the winter, when all the world embraces aged thoughts.

It seems somehow wrong to be weary in spring.

Leads to another life are hinting at me from the trees, the gasping fish, the headless snake.

One thing never leaves:

The empty space.

Spring leaves stick closer together

In numbers.

Safety is found in knowing you are free falling

And stretching out your arms to the air.

The First Morning

This is a place to pray.

I place “where prayer has been valid”*

Here there is an ache in the ribcage,

And against the throat, and in the pit of the stomach.

An ache of loss, and suffering, and resilience, through a battering,

Like the cold gray swells that that pound against the coast.

Even the young, greening trees are hushed into reverence in the morning,

They sway meekly, afraid to make a sound.

The threefold white of the sea and the sky and the mist in the dawning air hallows the room so early, that there is little chance of sleeping late. But I am satisfied with a rest no sleep could give.

A rain begins,

Pattering on the left-side panes,

Blending into a rhythm on the lawn.

The night is gone.

An un-met future awaits me.

The un-wet rocks are not convinced that my pleasure in them warrants my acceptance.

But there is little that cannot be worn away

By patient love.

*T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets: Little Gidding