One Woman/Three Deer On Timber Cove Road \ Seal Music

Nancy:  For years I rarely missed a ballet troupe, Boston's gift to my memories.

One Woman/Three Deer On Timber Cove Road

There was a pause

   as though they didn't believe in me

   saw nothing of a predator

what held them I don't know.

When they turned

   finally, without fear, arcing away

their bounds were quicker than thought.

So, not thought then –

   some memory

   an image.

Swan Lake, or Giselle

   the white flicker of their tails

fans, handkerchiefs, feathers

   ghosts, dancing away

   through dark trunks of trees.

Alan:  I love listening to the harbor seals, like heavy-set city folk letting themselves go on a day at the beach.  Uncouth but folksy, they seem a world away from The Song of the Seals – or is that just to my effete, earth-bound ears?

Seal Music

In high summer they truck up the bays,

graalching and belching their love songs.

Who can discern the music in this glub,

fancy these zaftigs as husbands or wives?

lords?  mermaids?  One

whose days are a laying on of oars,

a lonely hauling of lines and nets;

or a saint-like vigil at the harbor’s mouth;

whose veins run more to whisky and longing

or to the endless names of God than simple salt.

The land-lover, the sober lubber,

sees and hears only the plain, indelicate seals.

Let me but catch the amour in these eructions

and I will join you in a splash, no matter how frigid the tide;

then we will belly our days together,

pressing sleek bodies into thick, eclectic staves,

sweetly and flagrantly blubbering each to each.

Sometimes In The Summer \ Nearing Blue Hill

Nancy:  I loved my thimble and my stork scissors, mastered embroidery, learned cutwork and failed lace.  But the times were changing.  In 1951, in Juarez, street peddlers offered me tablecloths, "genuine nylon made by the Indians."

Sometimes In The Summer

Sometimes in the summer

     dusk, dark

   all the hidden, sought, found

   children quiet

   screen doors

   slapped

   closed

   cicadas

my grandmother said come

and we carried the linen

   cutwork

   roses, fine rolled hems

   stitched, laid by in chests

   used, darned

into the garden,

where for years linens were spread

to whiten

   in dew

   in moonlight

   we laid them on the grass

   the paths

   between pale shapes

   of nightblooming flowers

sometimes

my grandmother smiled

on her knees

her rough hands smoothing

   linens

   breathing the flowers

Alan:  Sometimes a poem, or a conversation, seems to fall out of the air like a strange seed blown in from a distant place.

Nearing Blue Hill

You say:

Each afternoon

cloud piled the mountain,

crashed as rain.

Women

in their gardens

or chatting by the roadside

tore off banana leaves,

held them overhead,

scampered home,

laughing.

Men,

emerging from offices

in skirts and coats and ties,

hoisted identical

black umbrellas.

I say:

The Dharma

falls equally on all,

nourishing

each according to need.

You say:

On the dry side,

in the cane fields,

water buffalo stood,

lifting moist muzzles

to the distant thunder,

wondering.

“Sometimes In The Summer” first appeared in Chester H. Jones Foundation National Poetry Competition Winners (1983).

Straight Bay, After Bruegel \ Mackerel Fishermen

Alan:  “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” revisited.

Straight Bay, After Bruegel

In the foreground, a man bent, hoeing.

His neighbor has come to mow,

the tractor leaving a green wake as it dwindles into the cove in the woods,

rounds it and approaches, churring.

They want to make the old land pay,

not money, but a living.

The man dreams of corn among the rose shoots, hawkweed.

His neighbor watches for boulders in the young growth

of alder, spruce, hackmatack, hardhack.

They are intent on their work,

do not see, in the noon of half-tide,

the bare leg splash, the feathers

scatter on the bay.

Nancy: We don’t scorn the passive fish, we catch them and eat them.  But the mackerel, preceded by the leaping rush of their terrified prey, alway meant something more than a meal.

Mackerel Fishermen

When the fish are, they are.

Beating on the empty sea, we wait.

Their lives touch ours just here,

when they come scything death against our wait.

The fish are hunters.

They cut an arc of fear across the bay.

We wait the time when, taut, we share one life,

one hunt for life.

When the fish are, they are.

Til then, we wait.

“Mackerel Fishermen” first appeared in East of the Light (Stone Man Press and Slow Dancer Press, 1984)

Looking Up At Night \ A Dream The Shape Of Water

Alan:  On calm nights in late June, the air above the fields is one big firefly dance.  Why seek further?

Looking Up At Night

The jet, its wing-lights flashing steadily,

passes southwest to northeast —

the slow grumbling roar trailing after.

A firefly, blinking its more interesting language,

passes east southeast to west to north to north northwest,

rising, saying so much in silence

against the trees and sky.

Nancy: I learned about fish holes, how to build with old salt-hardened wood, how to use the tides to mend a hull, and so much more, truths and tales from a generous and improbable teacher.

A Dream The Shape Of Water

                                                       for KM

Last night he came into a dream and said remember

he was full of stories do you remember that day

at Head Harbour oh of course I remember and in the dream

we had both forgotten that now he remembers nothing

and so we laughed about the summer we built the smokehouse

about the first haddock I caught how stubborn I was

how the line cut my palm about waiting for the new moon

and hauling the boat off the shore on a high tide

with the dinghy about my big dog swimming behind

the boat in the cold water until we gave up and

hauled her aboard.  In the dream he was a man strong

in his back strong in his mind not the man

in the bed who has lost yesterday and forgotten

today so it was too soon to say in the dream, yes,

Ken, I will always remember you handing me

the oar, saying, “Pull!” you will always be there

in that now when the tide takes the weight

and we lean together, braced, and pull.

“A Dream the Shape of Water” first appeared in Urthona magazine.

The Commute \ Some Other Lies They Told Me

 Alan:  Sometimes another dimension – of memory? longing? – cuts in and scatters us like figures in a cubist painting.

The Commute

Without warning, his heart broke

open, spilling the contents of an entire

perfect summer day: the emollient air;

the paint-by-numbers dawn; the hammock

gazing odalisque-like from the shade;

the light within the shade spackling the underside of boughs

as if reflected from a pool or pond;

the cries of children playing, delightfully faint and far;

attar of roses and of new-mown lawn;

the hum of pollinators at their worthy task;

the wind-up bobolink’s robotic song;

subliminal recessional of thunder in late, cooling afternoon;

promise of fireflies jigging and winking at treetops

under a coquetish moon;

a sip of Chardonnay, a canapé, a Thou...

all this and more poured forth,

cooled, clotted, darkened, dried.

Meanwhile, eyes fixed, his mind continued on its course

from inconsequential A to insignificant B

along the straight line, l, of routine,

and as it did so, something in him

he had never thought to notice, spoke.

Nancy: Still, if you’re lost on a mountain, following the water downhill is probably a good idea.

Some Other Lies They Told Me

1. The sea is blue because the sky is blue.

except that this sky is nearly white

hardly blue but Bluets are white like this sky

is blue and steel is sometimes blue like this sea deep

polished gray not blue I see this with my own eyes

2. No two snowflakes are alike.

except when they come in flocks like sheep

and jump my fences if not alike they are certainly

of one mind and more alike than any sheep I ever saw

not one I could call by name or single out with my crook

3. Water always runs downhill.

unless you live by the sea unless you live

by the bay where water willfully runs up the little rivers

or sometimes runs from the wind where it will

carrying mummichogs and bladder wrack into the pasture

I have seen this with my own eyes.

“Some Other Lies They Told Me” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.

"Heavily Flapping Are The Bustards' Plumes" \ Humming To Myself

Alan:  I now know that our fish and game department has a project to establish wild turkeys, here where they never occurred naturally.  The title  comes from an ancient Chinese poem of frustration and complaint.

"Heavily Flapping Are The Bustards’ Plumes"

"Heavily flapping are the bustards’ plumes."

The turkey, new unwanted neighbor,

skulks at the top of the lane.

Back!  O destroyer of gardens!

Heavily, booted and wet-kneed,

I tramp the lane, checking for washouts,

every culvert choked and gurgling.

The dog – old at last – coaxed from sleep…

for this?  Still, his nose, better

than all our eyes, seeks news.

At the mailbox, we turn

the half mile back

into the rain's slant,

the turkey – I am sure of it –

leering from the alders, watching

our diminishing, soaked backsides,

sensing, in our movement

and direction, garden.

“Heavily Flapping Are The Bustards’ Plumes,” from Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo, eds. (Indiana University Press, 1975)

Nancy: Such vivid memories.  We were our own instant image makers and they remain unfaded, wrapped in sound and odor and the textures of bark and wool.

Humming To Myself

Awoke to summer.

Drank cold sweet water.  Ate fish from a slow river.

Was lost in cornfields.  Walked through trees

growing thick over limestone beds.

Whispered to old grampa, who had marched for the South.

Carried peonies to the graves, my father’s mother,

my mother’s father, my grandmother’s grandpa,

who took up his gun for the North.  Sat on a blanket

in the graveyard.  Listened to the stories.

Learned the seeds of the corn and the squash.

Learned the paw paw, the black walnut, the sycamore,

the sassafras.  Drank the tea of the sassafras.

Dug dandelion greens.  Ate dandelion greens wilted

in hot vinegar.  Saw black tongues of cloud.

Watched my father break slabs of coal.  Touched

the fern in the heart of the coal.  Learned to sing

Shall We Gather At The River.

Coughed all night.  Coughed all winter.

Made the wool patches of my winter quilt into hills

and valleys.  Made cabins in my hills and rivers

in my valleys.  Breathed steam, spicebush filling

my lungs, said it was the mist rising from my rivers.

Ate soup made from an old hen.  Ate my corncakes

with molasses.

Made a shrill noise with a willow whistle.

Watched the peonies open.  Helped spread the blankets

in the graveyard.  Helped unpack the food.

Walked on the road with the tall popple.  Watched

my cork bob on the water.  Made a small hot fire.

Cooked fish rolled in cornmeal.  Cooked them in bacon

grease.  Helped Mama shave soap.  Dipped water from

the rain barrel.  Folded sheets.

Went to my grandmother, maker of salves and plasters,

with cuts and splinters and cinders in my knees.

Was tutored in stoicism.  Was given a handful of

mignonette.  Learned to can tomatoes.  Climbed

the cherry tree with a lard pail.  Had a swing

hung in the rose arbor.  Had another swing hung

from a high high limb.  Came down from the sky and

learned to make pies.

Fell asleep waiting for the stars to fall.

Fell asleep on a blanket on the grass, with my father’s

strong voice behind me singing.  Yes,

we’ll gather at the river.  The beautiful,

the beautiful river.  The beautiful, the shining,

the silver river.

“Humming To Myself” first appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal.

Indelible \ Three Ways Of Seeing The Raven

Alan: An ordinary occasion that only found its meaning years later.

Indelible

As a kindness, we invited

the new widower to dinner, and,

in the darkening well

of silence after the meal,

asked him to demonstrate

his hobby, calligraphy.

So this slight man, who seemed less

racked by sorrow than compressed,

uncapped his pen and wrote,

passing the evening until

he could extract himself

from our solicitude.

I sometimes imagine him

still, alone in the afternoon,

practicing his uncials, italics,

majuscules and minuscules,

left to right, sheaf after sheaf,

a minor art, but sufficient,

showing that grief

is something one swims through,

stroke by elegant stroke,

the indelible blue-black

looping and curling behind:

a medium in which one can drown

and at the same time flourish.

Nancy: Ravens are complex birds, and to be chosen as a neighbor by a raven is to be surprised and amused and – given their shy nature – honored.

Three Ways Of Seeing The Raven

1. See page 22, Crow Planet, where

        the raven’s voice is a “low, toadish croak.”

2. Before snowdrops

  ice still abandoned in the marsh

two ravens

above, in the spruce

how soft

murmurs

touch on the neck

whispers

    

        later, at the nest

        careful silence

3. In May

the gardeners discuss with one another

the corn here

the beans there

above, in the spruce

the raven says yes

most conversational of neighbors

a low flow of commentary

yes to beans, yes to corn, yes to squash

good morning yes

good weather

I wait for the ripple of sound

that brief flash

when other dissolves in polyphony