Learning What It Is To Be A Woman \ Pipits

Nancy:  Think of it as “take your daughter to work day” for the ‘30s.  There was work to do and more hands – even young ones – made lighter work.  Me, Mama, Granny, Aunt Mary, Aunt Nannie: often four or five generations.  In retrospect, I’d choose it over preschool or play dates. 

Learning What It Is To Be A Woman

I learned from women.

By example, deliberately: how to

shave heavy bars of laundry soap into

translucent curls; how to scald jars;

how to stretch curtains and plant roses

and hem handkerchiefs.

I learned

by maxim and frequent admonition:

not to run so much; not to sprawl;

not to be loud; not to call attention

to myself immodestly; not to go down the

creek on a raft with the boys.

I learned

elliptically, by half-sentences and silences:

as I sat beneath a ripple of words, three

women in straight chairs shelling peas;

as I teased out the knots forming and loosing

in the murmurous green air, three generations

of women, three kitchen chairs under the trees.

And of course I went on to learn

by misadventure and disappointment;

learn from men; learn from children;

learn from unexpected doses of bitter and sweet

as they had, as they knew I would.

For a long time I thought I was moving away.

But they’ve been waiting, I’ve been catching up.

There’s a chair there for me, four women,

four generations at the center of the maze.

I still have one or two things to learn.

Alan:  For years, Memorial Day weekend meant “Bird Day,” a 24 hour just-for-fun species count ending at our house.  Our friend Marion Stocking was like the whippoorwills that we could count on being here each spring without fail, until one year they weren’t.

Pipits

In Memoriam MKS

Late May, and into June

we have, if no longer

a full dawn chorus

and its evening echo 

(too many losses in our

local avifauna for that –

the steady swirl of species

going down the drain),

at least a decent choir,

slowly diminishing each week

to high summer’s quietude,

the way your hearing thinned,

the highest pitches –

black-and-white warbler,

pine siskin – going first,

and gradually the range

of musics still emerging

from our depauperate woods

and fields becoming

half-felt buzz.

Still, each year’s visit,

you’d walk out at dusk,

pale with the exhausting day,

away from the chatter,

to cup your ear

for the Swainson’s thrush,

somewhere down the hill,

a bird of memory

you knew was there;

then, turn back

unfulfilled, pausing only

to savor the last daffodils

and the sweetest, pipits,

named for a bird we’d never

seen or heard here: small

yellow trumpets

glowing silently

in the almost dark.

Scented Garden \ I Feed You

Nancy:  That first day when I’m washing dishes and the open window says Thérèse Bugnet, yes, rose is.

Scented Garden

If you worry that

a rose is a rose

is inadequate reportage

consider how

the true message of

the rose was never

meant for you but

for some other creature

bee perhaps or some

precursor of bee

that it might

dance implications

of rose

pre-word scintillations

of rose and now those

lost volatile vocabularies

are buried under

layers of cells

rich in words coruscating

plangent susurrant

words for our tangible

solid fierce lives

Alan:  Another poem for my dead brother.  Why I use the British spelling of “airplane,” I don’t know, except that a lot of the books I read as a child, and would have read to him, were English.

I Feed You

One by one, the peas entered your mouth like aeroplanes –

they were aeroplanes, entering the hanger, not to re-appear.

It was a slow way to eat, but it worked:

the airport of your body made accepting, workaday noises.

I don't know why this matters, after forty years,

except that maybe it was then I learned

I could bamboozle your stubbornest rage

and that you had ways of forcing from me

the easy tribute of play.

And anyway, you are no longer here

to naysay: it was aeroplanes, not boats or bombs, their fat

green selves entering your body, swooping

or in a sly, circling slant; you sat on my left

on the hard bench looking out at the lake

and the sun sparkled on the water like sky,

the spoon descending again and again in the sunset,

or at least I think so.

The Poem About Eels \ Indra's Net

Nancy:  The fyke nets are out in the rivers and the young eels will be shipped away to become gourmet dinners.  Meanwhile our eel populations are declining rapidly, a sad end for such an amazing fish.

The Poem About Eels

The poem about eels knotted itself

in words like catadromous and

Sargasso, and it wandered up

obscure streams, and it grew thicker

and longer until finally I let it go.

It left with an eelish quickness.

Nothing, I used to say,

propping my pole against the porch,

nothing but eels.

Then I saw them: elvers: glassy,

transparent, almost invisible.  They

were the poem I had wanted to write.

Just so – eye, spine, quicksilver.

If only I could write in light.

If only I could write on bright high cold water.

Alan:  Indra, king of the gods, is said to have a net of infinite extent, every node of the net holding a perfectly polished jewel, each jewel reflecting every other jewel and in turn being reflected by them.

Indra’s Net

Indra cast his net upon the dark.

Fishing for suns, he was; many he caught.

Fishing for stars, fishing for moons, he was;

many on many he caught.

Indra cast his net upon the dark.

Fishing for days, he was; many he caught.

Fishing for seasons, fishing for years, he was;

many on many he caught.

Indra cast his net upon the dark.

Fishing for lives, he was; many he caught.

Fishing for minds, fishing for souls, he was;

many on many he caught.

Indra trawled the darkness long upon long,

hauling up galaxies, eons, oceans, peoples,

past and present, never and future,

nowhere and somewhere, right here and all around.

He was done.  Darkness was empty.

The things in the net were light, all light and shining.

They were strong, they swam, they were fast

and they were afraid.

They saw themselves!  They saw each other!

They reflected and held each other.

They shone forth and burned deep in each other.

It was lovely.  But they were afraid.

Indra grew sad.  His sadness went into everything

just as it came from the fear in everything.

Perhaps he had wronged, where he only meant

to gather the light so it could shine together.

Indra grew sorry.  He cut the net open.

With a rush, the light flowed out and was gone,

taking its fear and sadness with it.  It was free.

Only a little fear, a little sadness, still clung,

and a little, little light, like fishscales stuck to the net.

Indra saw this, and seeing this, hoped.

Hoping, he mended his net.  With it mended,

hope grew large.

Indra cast his net upon the dark.

“Indra’s Net” first appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal.

Shadbush In May \ Full May Moon

Nancy:  Shadbush – shadblow – sugar pear – rarely on lists of “must have” ornamentals.  But we who live with it love it.

Shadbush In May

Because every road

every hillside

every streambank

every shoreline

every dooryard

every woods’ edge

froths and foams

we talk to strangers

at the gas pumps

at the postoffice

at the cash register

at the lunch counter

did you

have you

isn’t it

up my way

out by East Stream

for a whole week

no wind

no rain

the flowers last

no one remembers anything like it

oh, we say, oh

we talk to strangers

Alan:  Every Spring it seems, for one magical night, the shadbush have the world, and the lovesick moon, all to themselves.   

Full May Moon

This night

in the old fields

in the rough fields

in the lost fields

every sugarpear tree

stands up

spreads its arms wide

like a child wearing a sheet,

tilts its head back,

mouths, “Oooooo...”

Tomorrow, they’ll hold baskets

of tiny pink shells, cages

demure with pale butterflies:

tomorrow – for a week.

Then they’ll green; then,

for a moment, crimson;

then, when children

in towns and villages and suburbs

roam house to house begging for sweets,

they’ll take off their clothes, slowly,

under another open-mouthed moon,

whispering, “Oooooo...”

“Shadbush In May” first appeared in Fencing Wildness (Slow Dancer Press, 1999)

If I Were Ancient And A Sage \ Game

Nancy:  Waking at night with a poem only to find in the morning that the rock has dried, the wind has blown, the poem flown.

If I Were Ancient And A Sage

I might write poems on stones

and walk away.

I might tie poems to branches

as if they were leaves.

I might write poems on paper

for children to fly like kites.

I might write poems with water

on my doorstep.

I might write poems

in wine dregs, and forget them.

The tide would swallow them.

The frost would trick them into falling.

The children would break the strings.

Wind would dry the doorstep.

Two empty cups by the fireside,

wine spilled, sages dreaming.

Or I might write a poem and give it to you.

It might be a live coal,

or paper for wrapping fish, would you know?

If it turned to a bird in your hand,

would you let it fly?

Alan:  There are those who buy a hunting license every year, whether or not they get their deer (or bear, or what-have-you).  And there are those who take what they can, when they can, fair game or not.

Game

It’s Sunday, and nothing’s in season.

Sunday, when state law still declares a day of rest

for game.

It’s the time of year bears stagger, blinking and starving,

from their dens with cubs,

when foxes, bobcats, coyotes are nursing young

and deer are desperate for green.

Two quick shots, squeezed off in the puckerbrush back over the ridge.

Two quick shots, out of sight in the woods.

Maybe that’s what the baying of dogs was, earlier.

No one’s sighting in their gun, pinging a few bottles

with two quick shots.

It’s Sunday, a good day

to kill something, and

everything’s in season.