Before Journeys \ Scythe Dance

Alan:  Here’s an old one.  The end of July, the first cool, dry air – summer starts to turn and a restlessness sets in.  Time, maybe, to think about moving on...

Before Journeys

Autumn seems here

and it’s not high summer.

They’ve slashed the cuttings,

bindweed dries in the wind.

What about the butterflies?

the garden we made for them?

Where are our friends

waiting for our return?

I take the train,

the kestrels are hungry.

Soon we will be gone.

They hunt the sidings.

The clouds play our shadows

the grasses hide nothing

the sun flaps away

on matters of his own.

Nancy: Finding a scythe in the old barn, I learned to cut the tall midsummer grass.  It felt like dancing, or ice skating.  Watching Alan swing his scythe – a newer, more elegant one – makes me sway; perhaps scything is like bike riding – you remember, your body remembers.

Scythe Dance                           

      for Alan

Step and swing

step and swing

cool morning air

the dew is on the grass

grass falling

meadow birds watching from fence posts

step and swing

stop and stone

edge the blade

turn and turn

catch the morning

the birds are calling

step and turn step and swing

the sun climbs

climbs

stop and hone

lean and breathe

birds in the drying grass

dance

the July

dance

                                July 1955,  July 2011

Et In Arcadia Ego \ One First Morning

Alan: I wrote this in memory of my uncle, Bud Butterworth, and of the many summers spent at our families’ New Hampshire lakeside camp.

Et In Arcadia Ego

After Uncle died

I felt sure I’d see him

back at the summer place

sawing up stovewood.

He always eluded me.

Still, years on,

I expect him around a corner

humming his curious baggy tunes,

a free spirit in the pine-woods.

When, nearing the end of life,

he hobbled one last time up the hill

to his old abandoned haunts –

the hut in ruins, the clearing overgrown –

did Ryokan find Ryokan

puttering among the weeds?

Nancy: I’d name the bird “knee deep” except one of the frogs already has that name!

One First Morning

If this were the first morning

if I were the first woman

if the birds had just been made

I would name them all

I would give them their proper songs

I would set one on the birch

and one under the rose bush

and the hares would come up to me

and I would name grass, and clover

and then as the sun rose

I would call the water

the schools of fish, the copepods

the seals, and birds with long legs

to walk out into the rising water

toward the fish.

Before the dew burns off in the sun

I will have it all in place,

although I have not found a song

for the long-legged fishing birds.

The Great Beasts \ So Few Pages In The Book Of You

Alan: “Satao, a bull elephant who lived in the arid plains northwest of Mombasa, had tusks so long that when he walked they nearly scraped the ground... he was one of the largest elephants in Africa. ... In February, Satao was wounded by poisoned arrows. ... Satao recovered, only to be hit again, in May.  This time the arrow pierced his left flank, and he died.  Poachers cut off his tusks, leaving his face so mutilated that it took Kenyan authorities ten days to confirm his identity.” (Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, July 7 & 14, 2014, p.31)

The Great Beasts

The last of the great beasts was an elephant.

The last of the great beasts was a whale.

The last great beast was a polar bear.

It was a brown bear.

The last of the great beasts was a rhino.

It was a shark.

An orangutan.

A gorilla.

The last of the great beasts was a timber wolf.

The last was a crocodile.

It was a giraffe.

A hippo.

It was a bison.

A tiger.

A condor.

A leopard.

A sturgeon.

The last of the great beasts was a dolphin.

The last great beast was a lion.

The last of the great beasts was a hyena.

It was a musk ox.

The last great beast was an eagle.

The last great beast was an emperor penguin.

The last great beast was a leopard seal.

An elephant seal.

It was a sea lion.

The last of the great beasts was a chimpanzee.

The last great beast was an oryx.

The last great beast was a Bactrian camel.

It was a Komodo dragon.

The last great beast was a dugong.

A manatee.

The last of the great beasts was an albatross.

It was a jaguar.

The last was a great auk.

The last great beast was a moa.

The last was a Tasmanian devil.

A passenger pigeon named Martha.

It was an Arctic curlew.

The last great beast was a dire wolf.

The last of the great beasts was an Irish elk.

The last was a mastodon.

A wooly mammoth.

It was a giant sloth.

A saber-tooth tiger.

The last great beast was a cave bear.

The last of the great beasts was a man,

standing there alone.

The last of the great beasts was greed.

It was fear.

The last great beast was delusion.

The last of the great beasts

was the first great beast.

The first great beast was Death.

Nancy: There are baby books – you know the kind, pink and blue ribbons, vital statistics – and then sometimes there are empty pages.

So Few Pages In The Book Of You

A night at the ballet.   Sunday afternoon

at the park, a sprig of lilac

and a Dayboat to Provincetown.

Seashell, small bottle of sand.

Packed bag.

We climbed on the train.

Changed in Chicago.

We didn't see the Mississippi.

Crossed in the night.  After that

the land wavered in the heat.

I was afraid of the cattle stops

and the water tanks, and I'm afraid

that I moaned to you.

Stopped eating.  Moaned.

Forgot that it was my job

to give you memories.

Empty pages.

Look, I whispered, look.

Mountains.  Clouds and somewhere

rain falling.

Outside the window the rain

left pale fading marks on the dry soil.

I wrote lightning.

The last word in the book of you.

Lightning in the mountains.

Lightning.

“The Great Beasts” is from Annals Of The Nearer Soon, a work in progress.

Just Between Me And You \ Nobody Said

Alan: Today, the “oddly private public place” would be somewhere on the internet, but in the 1970s it was physical photos in a physical landscape.

Just Between Me And You

Among bushes at the edge of town –

winking up from lank grass –

a scattering of Polaroids, flashers

in this oddly private public place –

someone’s dirty afternoon,

curtains drawn, before the mirror.

In each, the same hefty dick:

front view, side view, solo

or with supporting cast,

before, during, after, even limp

on a plate (Still Life: Banana with Plums);

blurred belly-skin, bunched hair.

I gather them up for my friend Ryokan

for a laugh.

Feeding them to his fire –

each penis blackening, curling

into acrid stench – he said,

“You know, don’t you:

these photos are of me.

These photos are of you.”

Nancy: How often I read in the newspaper, “but he’s so good with the children,” “our best volunteer,” “always there when we need him” – when, finally, somebody says.

Nobody Said

Dirty, dirty old man.

Nobody ever said.

Nobody ever said don’t go flying

that kite down by Mr. Harold’s

house.  Afterward, I never said.

Nobody said never

stop to pick lemon lilies

and then my arms full

of lilies, big man hands

under my summer shirt.

Broken.  Broken, broken, all my

flowers in the grass, broken,

my heels, my elbows, scuffed

gritty trashy old grass and

in my hand, suddenly,

an axe handle.

My Mama put down the washcloth.

Don’t talk stitches to me,

my Mama said to Mr. Harold’s

wife.  Just shut that screen door,

please, and think how lucky he is,

think how lucky he is

there wasn’t a head on that axe.

Nobody ever said otherwise.

July Mowing \ The Speckled Meadow

Alan:  Having to live elsewhere now, we know that while the old homestead waits patiently, summer doesn’t.

July Mowing

Jerry Crowther cut off his toes, mowing.

Just on one foot, and only four –

and not the big one, so that’s alright.

And Bruce Jones is riding his mower down the County Road

toward Route 1 and the school.

He’s wearing shorts and no shirt,

looking a little pink

and not so fit as when he was in the Guard.

And Neil’s mowing around the house.

Around and around.  Such a clatter and rattle!

Should I close the windows, despite the heat?

Would that even dull the noise?

No one’s mowing at home.  No one’s there.

The grass grows tall, tall, tall.

The wind lays it; it is laid where something has trampled through.

It’s headed up and wet and full of slugs and snails.

If I were there, I could scythe it.

If I were there all day every day

I could work up a sweat scything in the early morning

and stop when the sun gets high and the stems toughen.

I could sit in the shade of the crab apple

with a cold drink, with iced coffee.

I’d get you one too and we could sit there together

listening to the vireos,

watching the hummingbirds,

if you were there.

Nancy: Purple-y blue, pinky red, orange, yellow – eighty years ago that’s what I had in my crayon box.

The Speckled Meadow

July woke up with a yellow crayon

in each hand, and a big green grin.

Nothing subtle: blue sky,

blue bay, green scribbled in between,

day’s eye, hawkweed, buttercup,

and a yellow bird in the speckled meadow.