October Larches \ If I Ruled The Air

Alan:  Hackmatack, tamarack, larch: after the maples, after the oaks and poplars and birches brown and fade, in the falling leaves of the hardwoods, the larches turn gold.

October Larches

Our native hackmatack, maligned and weak,

hides, as if shamed, amid the summer’s rout

of trees more honored, though it will peep out

and nod to those who, passing, stop and seek.

Larch makes a quick, hot stovewood, not much more,

unless you count those tough old bended knees

that stiffened many a hull, through many a breeze,

that hailed from town and village round these shores,

but that purpose is done, or nearly so:

today, the careless woodsman knocks it down

to offer light to trees with broader crowns

and straighter stems, or simply lets it go.

Still, I have seen it cup the waxwing’s nest,

and now, as Fall fades, it burns last, and best.

Nancy: If wishes were feathers, you'd find me riding the updrafts at the cliff at Mill Cove.

If I Ruled The Air

Like the black one,

Raven,

with his tilt and lift

with his parabolas

and pauses

with his running down

and his wheeling whirling

knifing back.

If I ruled the air

I would never say, now

Raven, sit and watch.  No.

I would call to the wind,

more!  more!

And I would call to Raven,

come!  come!

Now we can go together.

Ahhhh

if only I ruled the air.

Letting Go / X3

Alan:  Sometimes the land lies counter to our emotions.  In leaf-fall, joy; in the greening meadow, grief.

Letting Go

This same field

a few springs back

held small pools

in a cold wind

like blue eyes

full of tears.

It sparkles now, white,

or where the sun touches,

green, yellow-green,

yellow, yellow-brown,

brown. 

The alders

are dropping their leaves,

hoar-tipped,

in the still air,

with a faint chattering

that sounds

like celebration.

Who can discern

why sorrow then,

why happiness now?

Nancy:  Easier asked than answered:  where do these words come from?

X 3

Walmart

            There was my poem, pinned to the bulletin board

            at Walmart, between the bean supper and the car

            wash, an entirely appropriate juxtaposition

            for many of my poems, focused as they are on

            the weather and/or the scraggly epiphanies

            of survival in a hard place.

Wallace Stevens

            There are nights when I can’t connect with

            malicious greens and gilt umbrellas, nights

            after days when I’ve spent an entire pot of tea

            talking with neighbors about the costs of living

            simply; it’s a relief to turn Wallace Stevens

            face down on the table and step out to pee,

            splintery boards, sharply cold air, an orange

            rind of moon, nothing veiled.

Examining Room

            Weeks from now, when I’ve forgotten worry and wait

            and hurt, I’ll remember sitting on the clinic’s

            hard chair talking poetry with the nurses’ aide,

            who is shy and who keeps her voice low, but who needs

            reassurance; how can these words have such independent

            wills, she asks, where do these words come from,

            who am I, writing these words?

55 \ Uncorrected Visions

Alan: Everyone gets to write one poem for their own birthday.  Here’s mine.

55

Most awkward of numerals, these

inverted interrogatives;

their flat, displaced roofs

ripping loose in a gale.

The whole unsteady, no

foundation: the rounded base,

asymmetry threatening to tip

over, crumple,

fly apart.

Fifty-five, still alive.

Clickety-clack, no turning back.

Today I will jog

5.5 miles,

I will drive

not to exceed the speed limit.

I will count out and eat

fifty-five grains of white rice,

parceling starvation's mite.

I will examine what I own:

the double handful of years

dextrous and sinister,

elegant, stubby,

swollen, sore, denying,

affirming; those that accuse

and those that point the way.

I will consider my parents.

Once (for my sake?)

they set all questions aside,

became ecstatic

curves and lines,

symbols of an infinite,

Om and Amen: God.

Once, for me –

or the presumption of me,

it hardy matters.

Eight-five and eight-six,

You have taught me all your tricks.

Today I will not

perform handstands,

will refuse to gaze

ahead.

I will bless my mother and father,

throwing wide arms around them

from such a distance,

will make my bed in their honor,

eat some sticky rice,

fix the sink,

play with the dogs.

Nancy: Genius, or simply human frailty?

Uncorrected Visions

If, as I read, El Greco’s saints are not

elongating in holy passionate flame, but are merely

the product of defective vision, is it possible

that my lines will slowly grow short of breath,

punctuated emphysemically?  Will my reach shorten

and will the arthritic phrases venture less and less

far from the doorstep, and will I no longer write

of the bear licking its paws in the cedar swamp?

I wonder; it would be sad if the birds dropped

out of a deaf sky and anger went blunt as my

skin grew thick, and the cadence of poetry

took the creak creak of my chair into itself

until it was no more than a muted litany

of weakened failing flesh.

But wait: I like those landscapes

yearning toward the light, and I know now

how little will I have to write prosthetic poetry.

If memory cannot supply the shrill of the hawk

then let it fly silently, let it remain nameless, even,

let my infirmities speak for themselves

of what it is to be flawed.

Within these boundaries, there may be

burning saints and more strange beauties yet to see.

The Moon \ The Catch Of The Day

Alan: Why does the moon still tug so on our hearts and spirits, even now, when it has long since lost its innocence?

The Moon

The moon

is just the moon:

a lump of mud

thrown up, anciently,

stuck to our sky;

real estate

to be claimed,

tramped on;

poet's bane.

So there you are

sinking, full,

into wavering smears

and bands of mist –

shell-pink, shell-gray,

white – above

white fields

of the season's

first hard frost.

Still, despite all, shining

as you fade

and settle

into white-tinged spruces.

Still the moon.

Ah, the moon.

Nancy:  The Haddock, the Herring, the Cod . . . what happens to the fishermen when the fish are gone?

The Catch Of The Day

Nothing comes up in the nets.

The catch of the day is blame.

They carve it up at the fish plants.

They pack it in ice and ship it

abroad; they display it to the relevant

agencies; they serve it up to the

biologists.  The women dress it

with bitter words and rattle

their forks across the empty plates.

The men purse their mouths

and spit the bones of it like

poisoned darts.  When they tire

of mouthing stale blame they take

the boats out and get what they

expected; nothing comes up in the

nets.  Mumbling grumbling heartsick

confused they build fires on the

shingle and barbecue the new

catch of blame.  Nothing comes

up in the nets, no love, no new

roof, no hockey skates, no raffle

tickets, no Easter ham, none of the

old joy, when the nets come up

empty.

There’s no paint for the windburned

houses; the women clatter their

cups and saucers; the men

take their needles and knit tiny nets

just in case.

Workshop: How To Craft A Nature Poem \ In Morning Light

Alan:  I don’t suppose it was a bad workshop, really, but the title was an irritant that stimulated, if not a pearl, at least a rejoinder.  Dick and Jane and their wretched dog plagued beginning readers from the 1930s through the 1970s.  I was so bored with them that I didn’t learn to read until my mother took me in hand, half way through third grade, and showed me that books could be interesting.

Workshop: How To Craft A Nature Poem

First, find some nature.

Bring it indoors –

quickly, before it dries

or blows away

or is rained sodden.

Lay it out on the table.

Sit down.  Look.

For a full three minutes

(feel free to use a timer).

Now pull out some words,

e.g. “sticks,” “coyote,” “raven,”

“cloud.”  Shape the

sticks etc. into a container

(don’t worry if it’s rough);

fill it with dirt (everyone likes

a little dirt), some blood –

what is Nature, if not boinking

and chomping? – and top

with your present emotion.

Smooth and polish

(this may take awhile).

Notice, to your surprise,

the sunlight through the window,

just like second grade,

when Dick and Jane swam

weakly before you and Spot

would run! run!  and you

yourself wanted desperately

to run away outside

and disappear.

Nancy: There’s always a day when I realize “this is it,” as the world around me shifts; the time for bargaining is past, the time for acceptance has come.

In Morning Light

All summer too much

seemed no more than enough.  Until

last night: the stars grew suddenly

so sharp and fierce that I wanted

to hide myself, to sit under a blanket,

wailing.

This morning I see

how one vole, fat and careless,

is enough for the harrier.  I see

the hummingbird, which should be gone,

embraced in the honeysuckle, which should be gone.

I see the blind dog stretched in delight

in the trapezoid of morning sun

on the kitchen floor.

Against everything ripe and sere, the asters

are an incomprehensible purple.

One more day, I think,

one more day is enough.