The Picture Of The Moose From The Air Surrounded By Wolves \ Jay's Moose

Alan: The moose-wolf interactions on Isle Royale in Lake Superior have been studied for over  50 years, but what sticks in my mind is a black-and-white photo taken in the 1960s, all stark shadows and a story reaching its climax.

The Picture Of The Moose From The Air Surrounded By Wolves

bears no resemblance to the cage

where zoo-wolves pad down on us

or lie like movie stills slabbed on the gravel

or display wolfish affection or disgruntlement

for the student ethologists or disappear

into their concrete wolf den for pack meetings.

Nor does it much resemble

Wilt Chamberlain’s 500-wolf-muzzle king-size bed cover

or the legends of wolves waylaying shepherd girls

or the whistles of dog-cock hardhats

from up in the air, the position of advantage.

Nor does it capture the fear of the moose

standing and bleeding numbly in the snow

turning this way and that, but always slower,

always too late,

or the movement of the wolves, which is ballet,

themselves the audience.

It says: deficient moose.

Efficient wolves.  Efficient camera.

Efficient camera man.

Nancy: So much is wrapped in the white butcher paper – for the giver and for the recipient.

Jay’s Moose

sooner or later

we must eat Jay’s moose

the tang of the stalk

antlers blocking the sun

taste the anticipation

moose grows taller

richer

time slows

salt of sweat

jolt of sound

hot in the mouth

and the blood, hot

and here eat

the flavor of dew

frost

can you taste dawn

smell steel

crushed branch of fir

here on your plate

Jay’s moose

Late November: Lamoine, Maine \ The Old Woman Draws A Map Of Her World

Alan: This one could be subtitled, “Monochrome with blue dot.”

Late November: Lamoine, Maine

The yards of Lamoine

are no-yards:

planes of mown space

no longer quite grass.

November’s no-flowers

smile no smile on these gardens –

rectangles, squares tucked in,

readied for winter.

Perhaps a boat

trailered and blocked, tight

in blue tarp.  Otherwise

not even rows of split firewood

to part the close gray;

homes set just so, wan,

silent in half-light, prudent

beside modest drives.

An almost no-sun tiptoes

meekly into this no-drama,

pauses, whispering

snow... snow... 

and makes its way into clouds.

Nancy: Difficult to explain why I’ve been writing on my shirt...

The Old Woman Draws A Map Of Her World

Stone and green.

All the shores, so different.

Canyon wren and hermit thrush.

She ponders Palestrina and mariachi

and decides on the octopus

flashing colors on a coral shore.

Rivers and fish, fossils in the cliffs

or weathered out on the beaches.

As she has always done, she labels

the trees with their names, and the

flowers.  Here and there she leaves empty

spaces; her world is still growing.

Growing, elephant tree, manzanita

hackmatack,

Amanita, growing old, growing tired

pipsissewa.  Tired.  Niagara Falls

Bridal Veil falls, she shakes herself

awake.

Empty space, footprints, mink and bear

room to grow

the pen

the pen

          a blue-black pool

where it rests

          so tired

On Finishing "The 20th Century In Poetry" \ The Poetry Reading

Alan: I actually loved this anthology (Michael Hulse and Simon Rae, eds., Pegasus Books, 2011), which tells the story of the century through the works of its (English-language) poets.  But by the end both I and the poems (the last section titled, tellingly, “Endgames”) felt exhausted, limited, even jaded, and I wondered, is it possible still for poets to speak the language of magic and transformation?  To shake, if not shape, the culture?

On Finishing The 20th Century In Poetry

She is now, to be frank, a kept woman,

subject to pouts, occasional rages,

wheedling, whimsical, but on the whole

exquisite and, as we desire,

refined.  Visited by a few,

we could call her “prostitute”

or, more charitably, mistress of several.

She longs to be freed from these

brocaded rooms, beyond comfortable,

touched with opulence even –

longs not to be forever waiting

on those who provide this

almost luxury,

remembers how, when young,

she went howling through the winter woods

and could bring hail to the crops

and cause the rivers to flood,

and made all the people follow,

hoping, hoping to be chosen...

Nancy: Culture shock?  The “American Savage” sits in on a poetry reading in London, 1978.

The Poetry Reading

I sat  very still.

I sat still as a comet’s tail, a conscious contagion.

I sat still as an axe seething to bite wood.

I sat still as a glacier giving birth.

I was quiet.

I was quiet as water at the lip of the stone.

I was quiet as a stooping hawk.

I was quiet as a tooth on flesh.

I said nothing, and for the first time

I heard my own sounds,

my voice, guttural as a bear, how it grew from roots

of stone and made its way through the night shadows.

I heard my words crashing against ledges,

falling thunderstruck like pines,

splintering the room and smoldering in the corners.

One by one the poets read their own truths

into the dim room, while I sat very still.

They unrolled their worn land in my mind,

drifted with the ashes of dead fires.  It was quiet.

Quiet.

Quiet.  I wanted to seize their poems in my teeth

and shake them alive;

I wanted to open a window.

I wanted to go home with my wild words,

home to my own wide wild land.

At The Center \ The Old Woman Says "Then!"

Alan: Sometimes, all one can do is witness...

At The Center

Night of no moon, thick clouds,

and so much rain!

Dark as a bear’s den.  Dawn

shambles out at last, pauses, and sits

heavily, as if to say, “no farther.”

November.

You move to the sofa, trying to find

sleep and the easing of pain.

Songs of Kuan Yin on the iPod,

gentle breathing from a higher realm:

in the kitchen, where I tidy the dishes,

almost subliminal between sudden

paroxysms of rain hammering the roof,

wind chimes all clanging at once,

leaves smacking the windows:

so many musics vibrating together

and at their center,

surrounded by so much

caring surrounded by so much uncaring,

so much pain.

Nancy: Have you ever preferred your Then to your Now?

The Old Woman Says "Then!"

Last week the northeaster blew

color out of the saltmarsh and left

bladder wrack on the lane.  Today

the snow whitens the garden and

leaves the late flowers drained.

The old woman says "no, not yet,

too soon."     She will not say "Now."

She growls.  Bearlike, the old woman

snuffles her way.  She sweeps away snow

with her paws.  She rolls away stones.

She feels criss cross with the world.

"No, not yet, too soon.  No, not yet,

too soon."

The poor old woman goes this way

and that, this way and that   .   .   .

growling,

searching for the path to Then.