In Thin Air: A Letter \ Young Hare With A Star On His Forehead

Alan:  Skaila Kanga (named for the harpist) was one of a kind, and yet utterly typical of her race.  The brave ones, the bold ones, never lasted.  All 9 lives at once.

In Thin Air:  A Letter

She loves this land, but sometimes the quietness goes out of me

and I’m filled with a rage to crumple it into some semblance

of comfort: topsoil, a farmhouse built by our ancestors, rising,

with elms, from the midst of good hayfields.

A wet spring, and June no better.  The corn disappears yet again

under water: we could run a brickworks better than a garden

down in that clay muck.

The cat went two nights ago.  A yowling from the thickets.

Rain came, heavy, with lightning from the south: any scraps

of her gone by now.  A friend missing; a presence rubbing

at our dreams, slipping away each dawn.

I’d like to live on an old New England farm with house cats,

barn cats, field cats, feral cats, their shapes and identities

blurring one into another like the stone walls sagging into

the ledgy bluestem fields.

... Our friends so few that they come and go in the shape of a

mere and marvelous cat ...

Nancy:  This may well be the hare that ate all the tulips, but still – today there’s enough peace for both of us.

Young Hare With a Star On His Forehead

The gods so loved the animals

that they made the pig unclean

that they made the cow holy

that they made the lamb a sacrifice

that they made the goat the bearer of guilt.

But you, small hare, they overlooked.

The hare is here again today.

Mild, so innocent of evil that

he sees Me, not a ghost, a demon

not an angelic savior.

Just one on whom the sun shines

equally, neither bowing to the other.

And so we sit

nothing but green between us.

His first June

mine one of the few left

and everywhere, the compassion

of grass

and sun.

“In Thin Air: A Letter” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.

At Straight Bay \ Poppies In The Corn

Alan:  Even in the country, the wild animals are mostly “out there.”  But every so often, their lives and ours intersect and then what should we do?

At Straight Bay

The beaver died before dark

where we had placed it in the back of the truck

in a crate with grass, water and poplar bark.

It had shivered in the sun

all afternoon, covered in a coat, where some kids

had found it.  No telling what was wrong.

“So hard to do the right

thing.  So many animals have died on my hands.”

You cried some.  It pelted rain all night.

I dug a hole the next day

near the old salt-gnarled poplar that grows

in the stiff earth at the edge of the bay.

You wrapped it up and carried

all that beaver sleekness as tenderly as a babe

down the hill, across the field to where it was buried.

Nancy:  While Papa’s vegetables and Granny’s flowers knew their places, I love the intermingled, unexpected happenstance.

Poppies In The Corn

Now that I’m older than my father,

older even than my grandmother,

I can do as I please.  It’s ok with me

that daffodils are coming up in the potatoes,

nicotiana in the corn, poppies

everywhere.

Not that the garden’s untidy.  My rows

are as straight as my father’s, my

flowers as prolific as Granny’s; if

they were disembodied spirits hovering overhead

they could hardly find fault.

No, my hands are as stained,

my beds as tidy, my bean poles as straight

as either of them could wish.  Could

they understand, those lingering ghosts,

why I coax flowers to raise their heads

where they will?  Listen:

Now that I’m older than either of you, my

loving fierce antagonists, I will bring you

together at last, in my garden; in my garden

where I can love you both best.

“At Straight Bay” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.

Snake \ Neighbors Strangers To One Another

Alan:  What was it?  Nothing like this should live here.  Seeing it once, we always looked but never found, except within us.

Snake

The snake, big as my arm,

and black, slipped

from the warm ledge

into rough grass – 

vanished.

We felt it must have ruled

this place forever,

until our thumping arrival

changed everything.

It moved, then,

into the thickets and rank weeds

of our memories,

where it emerges, rarely,

to stretch and sun,

blacker than ever,

crowned with gold,

though the actual ledge

is cool now, with a rind

of moss, in the shade

of roses and lilacs.

Nancy:  While recuperating from pneumonia, I temporarily traded my bay for a rivermarsh.

Neighbors Strangers To One Another

We know homely and intimate things about one another.

We know paint/no paint.  We know angles.  I know

that their barn is slumped away from the prevailing wind.

We both know the wide rivermarsh between us

and the ledgy tongue of spruce woods which divides it,

giving us each a false boundary.

They are – this is – the house on the other side

of the marsh.

They know, because the eye is drawn by a kind

of human gravity, when I went to bed,

my light, one star, dark.

I know, because I watched the smoke rise,

that they slept late this morning, that the kindling

was damp, that at last the fire caught.

Maybe we both keep bees.  Maybe we both

favor red hollyhocks.  Maybe we have nothing in common,

but we are important strangers to one another nonetheless.

I am – they are – the neighbors on the other side

of the marsh.

Lupines \ June, When My Crown Was Dandelions

Alan:   A binocular poem, that tries to see the land as do those whose lives depend on it and also as the Eden we all want to make for ourselves.  Which will it be?

Lupines

Farmers hated ‘em –

cow-killers, milk destroyers –

roots halfway to Hades.

Spent their lives

grubbing ‘em up,

like to bust a gut.

Other folks loved ‘em,

thrilled by candy drifts,

cooing “Maine,” “June.”

Stuck ‘em everywhere,

spread ‘em around,

like damn Miss Rumphius!

Our hippie neighbor came back

with a new girl, sullen,

silent, not good for much

we determined.  It didn’t last.

Still, she planted lilacs,

a maple the snowplow

whacks every winter,

lupines.  The lilacs

beside his long-empty shack

bloomed again this year.

The maple sprouted once more

from the ground.  The lupines,

scraped along by the plow,

sneak farther and farther

down the lane

towards our old, inherited pasture.

I can’t help it, pick a stem

for the table,

feel the ground shudder

with the quick fury

of the admonishing dead.

Nancy:  Bless mothers, librarians, writers, painters, museums, memory, and dawn.

June, When My Crown Was Dandelions

Shimmering June

      takes Botticelli's hand

      steps out

      into morning

      pearly mist

June, wreathed in

      translucence of peony

      gauzy heart of the arbor rose

That was then

      before the stars were stones

      then, when they walked with us on earth

one of the thens

      when I could take Venus by the hand

      on a June morning

when the skies were roseblossoms

And now

      roseblossoms still

     mist

     mist the pale pale pink of the shell

     Venus rising

     June takes my hand