As Her Body Failed \ Catching Water In A Net

Alan:  My mother’s last months were hard.  Moved to the nursing unit, she showed increasing signs of dementia – “sundowning,” as we learned to call it.  Yet, even as her nights became paranoiac phantasmagorias, when day returned so did a measure of her characteristic common sense.

As Her Body Failed

As her body failed

her hearing grew sharper.

Always good, it now detected

signs of another, distressing

universe

tapping maliciously

on the panes

of our own.

She could hear her name

whispered conspiratorially

by nurses

up the hall,

but when we’d check

there’d be nobody,

or just the meds lady

bending over

clipboard and cart.

“They were there again last night,

shouting!”  “Who?”

“The inspectors,” or,

“Those union organizers.”

“They’re going to close this place.”

“They’re planning a strike.”

So much commotion

on the graveyard shift!

Wild parties erupted

in the darkness below her.

“Dancing again, and so late!”

I thought of the yawning

common-room and the

empty, muffled

midnight halls.

It was hard

to picture her in her

narrow, alarmed bed,

dreaming badly,

hardly daring to roll over,

waiting to be tossed

out on her ear

or trampled by a crisp-fronted,

turn-coat mob.

She asked me once

why no one believed her.

I mumbled something

about each subjective state

having its own world somewhere.

She told me I should take

more time off from my job.

The last time we spoke

she was downtown

with pneumonia.

I thought she might hint

of that chariot a-comin’

or the approaching pulse

of mighty wings,

but all she said was,

“I’m eating my custard,”

so I just said,

“I’ll call again soon.”

Nancy:  Twigs and branches tangled together are enough to slow the rush of tide and storm.  The water brought with it silt and seeds and a mulch of marsh grass which settled out of the quieted waters. Now what was a raw gash in the bank is a thicket of shrub and healthy  vegetation.  What a relief not to feel like the lane is teetering on the edge of disaster.

Catching Water In A Net

Every year the sea bites deeper,

and roots fail, and clay fractures,

and nothing holds until I think

of the slash, branches slender

as my wrist: intricate, complex.

And I think of the Tao,

and the way of the sea itself,

and how we pit against it walls,

which crumble, and posts that fall

on the tide: imperious, awash.

To save the road, this: philosophy,

and sweat, to haul the brush, to trust

its yielding strength

to give the sea its due:

to catch the water in a net.

Dragonfly \ Noon Song

Alan:  Roadkill comes in many sizes and shapes.  There’s always too much of it.  We should acknowledge what we destroy.

Dragonfly

The dragonfly

flew low

over the road

and dipped just 

as I hit it

going 40 miles an hour

its perfect hunter’s eye

useless

and its clean arc

cancelled.

I had just time to see

in the rearview mirror

a tiny cross

of body and wings

on the pavement

as I sped

out of its world

forever.

At the corner:

the first fireweed

in bloom.

Nancy:  Wren song and robin song, vireo, hermit thrush, and under the moon the owl – and my songs? Catch me if you can, nothing as certain as matins or evensong.

Noon Song

The vireos

sing call and response

making cathedrals

of the green wood

cool stone

rustle of cloisters

call and response

drifting away

quiet of noon

Drowse of noon

broken

now a small bird

sings its own name

here and there

in the roses

sings what it knows

roses

its own name

then again

silence

Noon song

morning song, evening

sometimes

I close my eyes

         hoping

that sometimes

distant

like a far off

leeohlay

I will hear my own song

Territory \ August: Archipelago

Alan:  Living in the country, we have all kinds of neighbors.  Some drop by for the occasional visit.   Some don’t get along.  Mostly we all accommodate, but not always.

Territory

When the bear walked off

with the open can of sardines you’d put down

just for a moment,

you didn’t stop him.

When the bear, browsing

along the shore, left tracks

like welcome mats across the mud,

I didn’t follow.

We figured the bear came with the territory.

The coyotes, too, and the fisher,

the deer, the moose.

When we arrived, they made room.

We leave them be.

One day the trapper went by in his car.

Our neighbor said a bear was stealing sheep.

A bear didn’t come with the territory,

not in his book.

It feels a lot smaller, now –

the neighborhood, the territory –

all those sheep, and no bear.

Nancy:  I've wondered whether – if I were on the ship – would my shore appear to hover?  Would I float inverted in the sky?

August: Archipelago

Islands rise

drift off

hang in the air

disappear

Lavender haze

a white ship

above it another ship

       like the islands

       inverted, paired

Cloud-mountain sky

white mountain sea

terns dive

       the sea-mountain clouds

       shiver and break

Island to headland

white ship below

white ship above

       in the air

       on the horizon

       white ship above

       white ship below

“Territory” first appeared in Living on Salt and Stone (Stone Man Press, 1984).

Red Hill At Sunset \ Dancing To John Cage

Alan:  I was raised to call my father by his first name, which seems strange only now.  He loved our summer place on Squam Lake and its view of Red Hill, with its reddish granite that glowed intensely in the setting sun.  I wrote this poem for Doug’s 80th birthday, the last summer he was able to make it up to the lake.

Red Hill At Sunset

Towards evening the August heat and haze

opens it’s single eye to supple light

Descending, mantra-like, to still each day’s

ordered pleasures.  The dark rocks re-ignite

under their gnarled roots.  So, mirrored there,

glowing, above the cove the old hill stands,

A beacon kindled by the grace of air.

Take this bright moment in your outstretched hands

Even as it passes.  Watch the fires sink

into shadows and Time’s timeless design

gray to ash.  There is nothing mind can think,

holding this image, but to see a sign

that, though all perfect days soon fade to night,

you, whom such visions touch, still clasp the light.

Nancy:  Egrets are rare visitors to our bay.  What great good luck to have bird and tide and fish intersect with our pause at the marsh.

Dancing To John Cage

A pause.  Glissando.

A sharp spear abrupt

piercing.

Silent deliberation.

Stride, half flight

wings outstretched.

Egret fishing

parsing the marsh.

Blows fall like silent kettledrums,

but fish riding the tide

swerving the shore, oblivious

hear only silence.

Pause.

Foot raised.

Nothing will happen until

this note just struck

ceases

its reverberations.

Girl Riding Bike \ The Squash Blossoms, The Cicadas, The Hare

Alan:  Sometimes perception, emotion and memory fuse, or rather come into simultaneous focus like the layered realities in M.C. Escher’s “Three Worlds.”

Girl Riding Bike

Charlotte, Maine, July 19, 2012

She swings onto the empty country road

and back out of sight.

A glimpse of summers past.

Passing, I glance right, 

see the gravel drive, scruffy hedges,

her soft lavender blur, blowing hair,

the weathered farmhouse she’s riding towards,

a sense of fields falling off the edge

and sky.

Is she happy in this moment’s aloneness?

That’s my hope.

What is it like to be made of air and warm sunshine?

To be flying over the landscape looking down,

and not be in or of it?

What is it like

not to have the earth element dragging one down 

or the water element pulling one onward

towards darkness?

We have all known this.  Still know it.

I remember for a moment,

then forget again.

Nancy: Not even a beach is permanent, the glacial till of the cliff feeds it, the sea steals it and the storms turn gentle summer slopes into steep winter berms.

The Squash Blossoms, The Cicadas, The Hare

And what are they but impermanence,

a day, a month, a year; if we attend,

we too can feel the slew of the earth in our

spines; our eyes can discriminate the finest

degrees of change; even as we walk about in 

the world our inner ears sense the slow roll

of the horizon.

I went to the beach; what I saw was the way

the moon had marked it, it was a calendar;

if I lay the beach transparent on the point

of dawn and the measure of dark it calibrates

the days and the seasons.

When I came home I carried the beach with me;

I carried it back and offered it to the hares

and the cicadas.  I just opened my hand and sat

down with them and we sat together dissolving

and reforming in the sighs and the ripples.