Christmas Gifts \ Waiting It Out

Alan: Here’s what happens when you mash an old carol through the sieve of incident.

Christmas Gifts

The fleur-de-lis

tracks of the grouse

betray a certain nobility

and superciliousness that,

here in the USA,

we associate, I have to say,

with the French.

Yet this bird that the locals

call "partridge," or more accurately

"pah-tridge" (though it has never

to my knowledge appeared

in our pear tree but rather

frequents the ornamental crab

in the turn-around

(in the snow at the base of which

I notice its footprints

just before dusk

this short afternoon)

where, the time I flushed it,

not knowing it was there

(the time I told you about

when it shot off and

flew straight and at full

speed into our gazebo

screen, bulging it, tearing it

from the molding, and then,

like a wounded plane,

banked and came in

low and wobbling

on a last strafing run

right at me,

so I dropped

as if in sudden prayer

to my knees)

it scattered the calling birds),

looks nothing at all

like a French hen.

Nancy: The long isolation of storm.  Whatever you need, you must find here.

Waiting It Out

In the night, or just before dawn,

fog blew in, heavy.

Heavy hoarfrost on the trees.

At ten it began to snow.

Somewhere, the goshawk waits it out,

but the raven sings.

Garok!  Garok!  across the field

and into the spruce.

We wait.  Day.  Night.

Another day.

The tide may be in, or out,

under the ice, who can tell?

There may be a lane

        fence scratches the snow

        a barn roof.

It’s so easy, after a mile of this,

to be surprised by color,

by rose hips and a squirrel,

or three alder leaves.

After a mile, and no mail,

it’s already dusk.

The alder twig, in a brass pot,

looks Japanese,

and the leaves match the pot,

but your drawing is black and white.

You put away your pencil, and light the lamps.

Another night.

Snow, still.

Closing the cabin door,

I can hear the lighthouse out on the head:

gaaarok

(pause)

gaaarok

just waiting it out.

Solstice \ December Gifts

Alan:  Sometimes, in the season of shortest days, the weather can seem animate, refractory, even predatory.

Solstice

The year backs up:

dog refuses

collar horse

resists halter –

welter of contrary

winds, weird

weathers.

Geese explode

from the bay:

water kicks

like bullets.

In the alders,

a white rock

jumps: hare,

exposed by snow-melt,

caught naked.

Earth’s axis

teeters,

uncertain.

The wind

makes a sound

like a beast

in a cave

moving closer,

closer.

Nancy: Long dark nights and gray days – we want the early dawns and long twilights of summer.

December Gifts

The tide in the high marsh,

the low sun, slow to stand over the ridge,

the sea smoke .  .  .

I went out wanting the year to turn,

and turned myself instead, turned back

to today, glad to have received

water, light, frost blooming on dry stems.

Gray \ The Bay Between The Islands

Alan: Winter hones things to a sharp edge, or dulls them to a blur, sometimes both at once.  Adrift in a drifting landscape, we anchor ourselves with words.

Gray

Gray – the snow sees to that.

A bay and some woods linger darkly

in a space of sky, fields, blurred with snow

fallen and falling, falling and fallen.

Faint gray warmth under white, as of pale paper

or pale, thinned-out ink.

A figure stands somewhere in a space called “field,”

bootprints a doubled line of shadow filling with white.

Two shapes emerge from trees to one side.

They could be dogs running,

blurs of larger and smaller, darker and lighter gray.

Looking downslope toward water or gray mud:

bands or belts of trees leading the eye out

into indefinite gray space.

Beyond, hints of pale wooded horizons

stacked, one behind another, showing

gray filtered through gray filtered through white.

The figure stands in a space called “field”

while gray shapes detach themselves from gray woods

behind and to one side.

Someone perhaps is waiting for two dogs to join him,

or for the snow to lighten, to erase his tracks,

or is just waiting.

It is unclear when he will move.

He is gray, and small,

and he is standing very still

in a space called “now.”

Nancy: Brash ice rustles on the shores, a lace edging on a bay transformed knife sharp and steel hard.

The Bay Between The Islands

Not wine and not water,

not silver, not glass,

not a mirror of the sky,

no, this morning

the bay is shardy, slivery,

edgy, as sharp as aa,

Hawaiian lava, as disorderly

as earthquake rubble, cold fire

in the sun, splintered obsidian,

and it is processing with

cymbals and drums, brash.

Shhhhh, say the islands, old

grandmother islands,

shhhhh, say their shawls

and their dark skirts,

shu shu shhhhh.

To My Father's Ghost \ December Rain

Alan: My father’s poems sit in files, folders, binders, a few issues of small magazines, several self-published books.  But the source of his poems remained a mystery to him; I think he would have given up the poems to know their source.

To My Father’s Ghost

Where do the poems come from in the night?

Like tiny fish, nibbling our dreams with soft lips.

Like something found in the bottom of the basket

that we unfold, and are changed forever.

Like sudden anger at the madness of street signs

and dead birds.

Even in full light, they come cowled in a little midnight

of rain and buffeting wind.

As meaningless as the shape breath takes, 

this cold morning. As essential.

If I had known the answer sooner.

Even in the perfect faux daylight.

Nancy:  Rains like this are rare, and take us by surprise.  We may hear “heavy rain” or “coastal flooding” but until we see road washouts, flooded villages, the winter woodpiles and summer cabins floating down to the sea, they’re just words.

December Rain

One inch raises the smelt brook.

Two inches floods the meadow.

Four inches tears at the beaver dam.

Five and the stones shudder

at Bad Little Falls.

And yet it comes, six, seven,

down the Piscataquis, the Penobscot,

from Meddybemps to the Cathance.

Spruce tumbles, loosed from the forest,

over the falls; it rides the Machias.

Eight, nine.

What it wants it takes.

It makes us islands, makes us tiny,

our works fragile, our bays rough and roiling,

clear Cobscook, blue Passamaquoddy.

The falls make their own thunder today,

their own tower of cloud.

Beaver gnawed, a log, end over end

falling

tossing in the wild Machias toward the sea.

That Fierce Energy \ Woodpile, Thanksgiving Day

Nancy:  Trees fall, pastures fill in with young forest, but the landscape grows full and complex with stores, names, memories.

That Fierce Energy

The thickets were almost pasture

          when time ran out.

He spared nothing, tractor, tree,

          live rock; he fought alders, weather;

          he chainsawed his neighbors with a rough tongue;

          he bit off more than he could chew; he

          helped; bitched; preached.

Right from the beginning I believe he did see

          pasture, thick with sheep; smoke

          rising from stone chimneys;

          all his kingdom sound and green; painted;

          mended; whole and harmonious.

We saw more, and less:

The house unfinished; the jumble of bulldozed stumps

          and man-high weeds; the causes and crusades;

          a raw and chafed look on land and friend.

No one ever really goes, in a small town.

          Ten rough acres full of popple and spruce

          and rotting stumps will be “Buck’s sheep pasture”

          forever.  I watched him sweat wife and kids and stone

          all one summer: those chimneys are his.

Marriages dissolve, but the neighborhood is history,

          indissoluble.  We all own a piece, now, of

          that fierce energy.  No matter how the land goes,

          we’re the owners of record of Buck’s dream.

Alan: Our first winter here, we ordered our firewood late, in tree lengths.  The logger misunderstood our directions and dropped it off a half mile up the lane, where we sweated to get a cord or two chain-sawed and brought down to the house by the pickup load.  Before we could split it, an ice storm encased it all in a half inch of glass.  We spend winter days mopping up the meltwater from wood brought in green to thaw beside the stove for tomorrow, and mornings mopping up creosote that dripped out of the stovepipe through the cold night past.

Now we measure wealth in wood cut, split and piled a couple of years ahead, ready to go in the shed when seasoned.

Woodpile, Thanksgiving Day

Tunk...

              tunk...

piling the firewood.

                            tik-tak

     tunk

the white-hearted maple pink-hearted birch.

                                         tik,

tak,

throwing the cold junks higher than my reach:

             tumulus    cumulous

promising warmth.

                            Tik... 

                                                      tik...

not for this winter, no –    not for next winter, no –

               too pink too white too green!

Tik, 

                             tunkety

               tunkit

two winters from now.

Will you still be here?     Will I still be here?

                Tak

                               tunk

                                             tik

“yes” says the firewood whatever the future holds.

“Junk”: a piece of indeterminate size; also a verb, as in “Got your firewood junked up yet?”

“That Fierce Energy” first appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal.

Orange \ Deer Season

Nancy: It only took one woman, dead in her own backyard because her white mittens triggered carelessness, to make trips to the well or the woodpile feel less casual, more tense.

Orange

Not the maple, not the sumac,

not the old gold faded hackmatack,

no, orange men, at the field edge, the roadside,

drifting between the trees,

garishly, fluorescently, aggressively orange.

Taking the dog for a walk,

I put on my coat, my hat, reach for the orange –

flimsy plastic vest – think “no”,

think of the woman in the white mittens,

think “yes”.

The dog, so small, couldn’t look like a deer?

Couldn’t, but I take an orange bandana

and fasten it around his neck.

He doesn’t care, he goes out, happy,

white flag of a tail flying.

Not a deer, I think, not a deer,

again, over and over, not a deer.

Alan: The four-legged hunters are out there, watching the deer, watching the two-legged hunters too.

Deer Season

All night, the coyotes howl, shredding our sleep.

The dog barks back, ten pounds of courage

behind an eighth inch of glass.

We rise to hard white frost

and talk of strangers at the head of the driveway,

itchy for deer.

  I walk out

to truck tracks, the slots of a doe and lamb,

to scat with fur and bone in it,

the dog silent at the end of his lead, dancing

warily, warily.

These Gifts Of Moose \ Monk In A Vat

Nancy: Alive they surprise us, arouse the dogs, astonish with their size and otherness.  Packaged they may mean winter meat, a badge of prowess, even a lucky roadkill – or generosity.  I understand and yet feel puzzled.

These Gifts Of Moose

The smell in the thicket

barnlike

oddly domestic

Loose limbed

long strides

unhurried

between the cabin and the grass

We measure with our hands

prints

down to the edge of the tide;

across the bay

the alders shake and close

But this, too

a knock a gift a thankyou

a quick shy handshake

Moose? this, these packages?

Moose?

Alan: And who would the monk be, if he could choose?  

Monk In A Vat

Mornings like this,

I would be a monk

abiding in an old whiskey vat

settled deep in the redwoods

of northern California,

spending days heavy with moisture

muffling all sound of people, machines

in samadhi, attending to mist

dripping from shingled eaves,

watching through the half-round doorway

the small local animals,

their careful routines.

(Warmed by a wrapped ember,

he sits in full lotus, or rises stiffly

to stroll among the immense furred boles,

face impassive as bark, robes mottled as lichens,

recollecting the day’s visitors, a writer and photographer

who will make of his life and his dwelling

something so wished-for, so acute

in the pages of some glossy

it will seem like the tree of heaven itself

to at least one being

gulping coffee, a bite before work

on a morning like this.)

Village 04652 \ Buffleheads

Nancy:  Like so many other coastal villages it rises uphill above the bay.  Only the water sets it apart.  The Narrows, a race of tidal change, always in motion as Cobscook Bay fills and empties.

Village 04652

The tides surge through the narrows.

Hill shingled with buildings, canneries

smokehouse, shops

salt scoured, storm gapped

– steeple

Every six hours the tides turn.

Hill crowned with steeple

pickets and green

rising through, rising past

driftwood and fog

Seals follow the water, the fish.

Lunch on the landing

draggers swing on their moorings

fog shreds and re-forms

conquers shingle and steeple and gull

One seal pauses, stares at me, dives.

The tides surge through the narrows.

Alan:  Some days the northwest wind churns the bay and the ducks huddle along the lea shore or, on our side, in the calm backwaters at the saltmarsh edge.

Buffleheads

Ducks lift

from gray water

spooked

by my approach

except one, near,

turned, facing the

oncoming chop.

Wounded?,  I think.

It is the season.

Swimming here,

blown almost on shore,

watching the flock

disappear against

the distant trees,

watching me.

I turn to go,

embarrassed

to add stress

to her stress,

then see

fluttering this way

the black and white

of the male

above the waves.

He drops beside her,

settles, turns

upwind: two now

moving as one,

maintaining

a discrete distance

from each other,

from the shore,

from me.

Wounded?

or just tame

with the aplomb

of her kind?

And what brought him,

anyway?  Would we

call it, in ourselves,

"concern," even "worry,”

even "love"?

Apple Tree \ The Demise Of The Halloween Pumpkins

Nancy:  Hard to say how old it was, its heart so hollowed out, but a cloud of pink/white in May.  One night a ground burst (mini-tornado) twisted and tore the heavy trunk.

Apple Tree

Trees fall.  Uncounted trees fall,

but they are like men not in my sight or lineage,

and this tree was my friend.  This tree was the link

that promised me continuity beyond fire and abandonment,

and domesticated my dooryard; a friend, this tree.

The wind has taken it.  This wind would remake

the wilderness; it seems to blow foe, foe, always foe,

never friend, testing me.  Now the wind says that my house

will not stand, forever, by this tree.

But the grouse have not heard the slow word of death.

They come at dusk, fill the branches, and I watch

a miracle; they are fed; apple blossoms become grouse

and fly into the night, transformed and transforming,

bearing away into the air, against the wind,

everywhere, this tree.

Alan:  This is the time of year when the coyotes howl closest and a mere porcupine grunting out of sight in the woods seems a portent.

The Demise Of The Halloween Pumpkins

After a decent interval of days

when we’re sure the ghouls have crawled back in their holes,

hauling their sacks of trouble out of the night,

we take the Halloween pumpkins

and cut off their faces.

(Disembodied, staring from the garbage,

these surrogate expressions of ourselves,

our little jokes about mystery and fear.)

We quarter and slice the skulls, pare the mold away

and whittle the rind down to the veined and glowing flesh.

Meaty chunks in the pan,

steamed up for soup or pie or bread,

pumpkins make sturdy meals to fend off the bully cold.

Good food, hearty, these autumn sacrifices,

heads that were trying to say something

we did not wish to hear.

“Apple Tree” first appeared in Cafe Review.

The Bear Hunters \ Burning The Barren Ground

Alan: As a non-hunter, it took me awhile to notice that hunting, around here, is an essentially social act.

The Bear Hunters

The man in the bear suit

lies at full stretch beside the road

on his side, with his nose in weeds,

one hand twisted under,

his broad feet splayed

while the man in plaid flannel

bends and prepares to insert

and twist the tag

and start to cut open

the belly.

Other men, a handful, stand around

aimlessly, wanting to be part of

the scene, to not have business

elsewhere,

an inconsequential back road

taking on, for a few minutes

through their attentiveness and witness

an air of drama or at the least

tableau.

Pickup trucks, six or seven,

line the gravel, two with drivers still

at the wheels

as if watching

a drive-in movie.

There is something almost pinched

about their eagerness

as if they feel a gnawing

in the gut.

Only the man at work

and the bear, who has an expression

of something that has not yet got used

to being dead,

look unhungry.

There are traditions

in which it is said that hunters

return in their next lives

as what they have killed, when,

not remembering exactly,

but having a sort of fading image

of what they were before,

they are drawn, curious, or careless,

to the very places of danger

and the men who now hunt them,

and so are killed, in a sense,

at their own hands or, as good as,

hands like those they once had.

Whether or not this is true

there is, on the faces of the men at the roadside,

something enough like a bear’s insatiable hard stare

that it might be possible to think

they could almost be wondering

when the one who has now commenced skinning

will finish,

pull on the thick black pelt

and take off running

into the woods.

Nancy: Hundreds and hundreds of acres of rolling, stony uplands left by the glacier and now covered with Maine blueberries.  It all gets burned every other year.

Burning The Barren Ground

Yesterday,

fire running everywhere

men whipping it on, their magic

out in the Phoenix gardens

fire all day

veins of fire running out in the dusk

dying between the stones

What if the women made magic?

Never told anyone?

Today, raining

the fields all sard and onyx after the burn

wet, shining

too early yet for a rising

just stony black fields

naked red stems

silver veins of rain

“Burning The Barren Ground” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.