Two Chairs \ She And I

Alan:  Another road poem.  The chairs are gone now, and I couldn’t tell you when they vanished or even quite where they once were.

Two Chairs

            For Nancy, 8/28/96

The two chairs

at the edge of the field

which slants upward

from the highway’s rim to sky

are always there,

as the field is always there

between the dark belts of summer

woods,

a lusher green

in a world of green

beyond the blacktop

and the stripes

of the breakdown lane

and the two southbound lanes

and the median strip

which obscures the view

of the farther side.

The chairs

are glimpsed

out of the corner of the eye

while driving

or held for a few seconds

in a passenger’s swiveled

gaze:

placed

near each other

and slightly turned

as if in conversation

or holding a space

like a bookmark

between pages of a story

that is not yet finished

but has been set aside.

They always

surprise

appearing suddenly

in the endless line of trees,

in the rush of daytime traffic

or the solitary sleepy

late-night miles,

their very interruption

of the blurred vacancy of roadside

creating a presentment

that lasts long after

the woods snap closed.

Who might have put them there,

and why,

and do they come

from beyond the horizon,

when we do not see,

seating themselves,

resuming

some quiet discussion

or simply watching

for a time

the passing trucks and cars,

after a slow and

silent walk

through tall or new-mown grass?

Nancy:  A bear can certainly leave a substantial calling card after gorging on blueberries.  The dogs walked waaay around.

She And I

The bears I always name She.

She came in the night.

She came in the night, and she

tore the heavy fencing; she bent it

and ripped it from the posts.

Or she came in the day, saw me

and hustled her cub off the road.

We stared, mother and child and I

across the dogwood flowers.

And she comes in August.

She came today,

and when I went down the lane

I saw she had left me a message:

   I ate your berries

   and they were good.

Tearing Down My Cabin \ Field Work

Alan:  Growing up, “the summer place” was the one constant in a life of frequent dislocations.  All that’s gone now.

Tearing Down My Cabin

Under the trim-strip,

ruined hamlets of mud-dauber wasps –

fragile, remote as abandoned

cliff-dwellings,

and one small bat, irritably

shaken from sleep

to the humid August

afternoon,

who falls, opens

paper-bag wings

and zig-zags off

among the branches.

We tear it all down,

carry the debris

from lake-side to road,

dumped there

with forty summers’

memories, leaving only

a bird house,

knocked together

from scraps,

hung from a beech limb

long ago, in hopes

a wren might find it.

Nothing ever did.

It’s there still, suspended,

empty in shadow

at the edge of the

clearing’s emptiness.

Nancy:  Nothing there about the vest pockets full of gorp, small skulls, plant samples, nothing about the bear's footprints pressed into the mud on top of ours or the comfort of my tent at the end of the day.

Field Work

Ten meters to a side

one hundred square meters

and at each compass point

another plot

m²

with each tree taped

and all the fragile herbs

counted

listed

sampled, pressed, keyed, annotated, filed.

Climb one hundred feet.  At each new elevation

do it all again.  Measure.  Count.

Multiply that by days.

That’s how we made this forest

of pages

and you can see that it’s true

the red oaks there in the thickets

and how the steep slope saved the beech

and where the farms receded

never mind that each failure

was someone’s misfortune

and the woods crept back

until they overcame their own pioneers

and how we may all be dead

before the orchids bloom again.

It’s true

the graphs don’t lie; the maples,

given time, will reclaim the hill.

This paper forest is about change.

But in the forest of my mind

it is July forever; sweat

runs down my back,

my pack straps chafe,

the forest smells of crushed fern

and when I turn the pages,

a bird sings.

“Field Work” first appeared in East of the Light (Stone Man Press and Slow Dancer Press, 1984)

New Neighbors \ The Whale Came

Alan:  People who fall in love with a place can’t help resenting those who come after.  Each new wave sucks us further back toward where we came from.

New Neighbors

All over town, surveyors’ flags are sprouting.

Bulldozers are grinding their initials into the dust.

Saws bite, dump trucks snarl,

gravel goes down, concrete flows, contractors grin.

All over town, the maps thicken with lot lines:

old farms, cut and split like cordwood,

stacked, ready for sale,

shorefront peeled off like veneer.

All over town, people are moving in,

bringing new attitudes, new demands,

wanting new schools, new roads, new stores;

new neighbors looking a lot like the old

selves we fled from all those years ago.

Nancy:  It took time to learn how to see whales, using the sound of their breath, the escort of seabirds (that were watching for the fish driven to the surface).

The Whale Came

The whale came

and I thought it was a rock

and I said to my friends how low

the tide must be you see that rock

and they looked

and there was no rock

and they said there is no rock

not in that channel

the tide is never that low

The whale came and I thought it was spindrift

and I said have you seen

how the wind tears the waves

look high where the sky shimmers

and they said the air is still

the grasses are not moving

The whale came

and I thought it was a fisherman

and I said see how that boat rides

and they saw no boat

only a flock of gulls and they said

the sun is in your eyes and they turned

and they started to leave

But the whale CAME

and I held my friends there

and I said wait

and we waited

and when he came he was an island without end

a rock in the channel

a rainbow

and we all breathed at once, a sigh

Where there had never been a rock

we saw a rock

and in the still air we saw an exhalation

we stood a long time after he was gone

touching

waiting

“The Whale Came” first appeared in Blackberries and Dust (Stone Man Press, 1984)

On The Lake \ Moonvines

Alan:  Augusts in childhood, there were “lake days” (hot, steamy) and “mountain days” (brisk, clear).  We didn’t dignify the rainy days.

On The Lake

Sometimes, on calm days,

we'd work the canoes fast

and straight

in tight parallels, then,

raising paddles together,

watch the curved hulls

close with a strange attraction

and meet:

a light, aluminum

kiss.  "Bernoulli!" we'd cry,

"Bernoulli!" – loving the name

and what it gave life to.

Now, sometimes, I feel

the invisible, disparate

parts of me align,

accelerate, and,

unexpectedly

touch.  "Bernoulli?"

I think, "Bernoulli?"

wondering what it might take

to keep me, this time,

from slowing and drifting

back apart.

Nancy:  Downeast coastal Maine isn't much like Indiana, and my moonvines checked the "no thanks" box.

Moonvines

Under the moonvine shade, I sailed my summers.

My grandfather walked west, toward the wheat;

the freights slid through our small towns

and whistled my father away.

The women stayed.  I see them still,

aproned, sweaty, boilers of laundry,

soap, jelly, soup.  I hear them

saying, “where has she gone now?”

while I hid in the moonvines.

I went to sea fiercely in the green shade,

headed for some unknown landfall,

some future away from the dusty shores

of the Indiana afternoon.

Today I bought moonvine seeds,

to plant among the stones of this salt bay.

Goodbye, you women who taught me apple butter,

who taught me biscuits and mustard plasters,

and cried when I picked up my feet

like the men, and sailed away.  I loved you.

Goodbye.

“Moonvines” first appeared in Blackberries and Dust (Stone Man Press, 1984)

Items At The Checkout \ Hoosier Autumn

Alan:  Since this poem was written, Maine’s motto has evolved from “Vacationland” to “The Way Life Should Be,” and now – by our new Governor’s unofficial decree – “Open For Business.”  Any way you put it, the implications are a bit surreal.

Items At The Checkout

Steak.  Wine.  Cantaloupe.  Brie.

Bremen wafers.  Artichoke hearts.

Catfood.  Paper towels.  Milk.  Eggs.

Corn flakes.  Ivory soap.

The catfood etc is yours.

The steak, wine and so forth

belong to the couple behind you.

When the cashier asks, “Are these all together?”

everyone smiles.  The answer is so obvious.

The store is full of pantsuits, casual jackets,

high heels, well-groomed hair.

You don’t see anyone you know,

anyone smelling of motor oil or

having garden dirt under their nails.

There should be a separate lane for people like you,

a separate store.  Your rusty pickup

shouldn’t wait in the same lot with these

throbbing Winnebagos.  This is summer, and perhaps

you don’t really belong here,

here in Vacationland, America,

1984.

Nancy:  The depression: A time of few luxuries, but what I remember is lots of love,  time with my mother and father and simple entertainments.

Hoosier Autumn

My daddy

until he had a son

made do with me  /  my

grandpa wordless but I remember

the sound of black walnuts

we went into the woods we three

the nomad ran in our veins;

except I was a girl

we might be walking still

in Patagonia

but we turned back

and came home

our arms full of pawpaws

“Items At The Checkout” and “Hoosier Autumn” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.