Teaching What Happens \ Day Faces, Night Face

Alan: When I first met Nancy, over 40 years ago, she was known for doing things like taking her pocket knife and cutting the heads off of very ripe roadkill dogs, then tying them under the school bus for some budding young naturalist to take home to boil down for the skull.  Thus the following, which my friend, the poet Keith Emmons, helped me make better.

Teaching What Happens

Someone had to do it, she said.

Pick up dead things.

Teach children what happens;

after the stench

the beauty of bone.

People assumed she liked it

seeing the rolled bags and the knife.

One child said later

it was the animals spoke to us through the knife.

With their skins and teeth,

their feathers, their hair,

their claws of hair and horns of hair

they danced at the roadside

and fell, their hair in grass,

their eyes domes of cloud.

They were taken back without ornament.

Yet it had to be done, she felt.

It seemed it was through her

they learned to speak.

Nancy: The life around us may be amusing or may be unsettling.  But oh the early dawn face of the bat, clinging to the window screen, is so unlike ours.

Day Faces, Night Face

                                          .

Peering out of a thicket of knees and elbows,

mantis turns her head, revealing a face so alien

I would be unable to imagine it, so alien

it surprises me again and again.

                                         ..

Sometimes toad backs himself into the ground

until he is all face, chin resting on long

fingers, eyes deeply gold, unblinking, and I

feel myself observed, I, would would be observer.

                                        ...

Nose, tongue, eye, ear, vibrissae, cat chases

squirrel, dog chases cat, their faces curve as

if laughing, and I laugh too, to see how like

they are to some half-hidden inner self.

                                     ..........

Ah, bat, you on the other side of my window

screen, yours is the night face.  We may love

the bat, our friend the bat, for his sharp

teeth and convenient appetites, but I would rather

see a fox look back at me from a mirror.  Bat,

now, before dawn finds you, slip out of mind,

slip back into the dark shelter of the eaves.

Small Potatoes \ Dusk, New Moon

Alan: Each year’s garden starts in hope, ends in melancholy.  There’s always something that flourishes, but it’s hard not to mourn the failures.

Small Potatoes

Some years there are only

small potatoes.

Something about the seed,

too much rain early

or too little late.

Each April's planting

goes underground

with a little more effort

and ache.  Still, we weed

our few rows: Carolas,

Onaways, maybe Red Norlands,

and, in October, dig.

Small potatoes again

this year.  I stare

at the little piles

of white and yellow,

no reds at all, sort

out those big enough

to get a peeler on,

gather the others up,

as if collecting tiny hopes,

carry them to the compost,

give them to the mice and worms.

Nancy: Gray dusk steals the color, stills the cove, gathers around me, waiting in silence.

Dusk, New Moon

A woman carries water.

On the far shore of the bay

a raven calls once,

breaking the silence left by the thrush.

The hill slope fades;

the flowers go out, one by one,

meadowsweet,

the roses, goldenrod.

Gray the doorstep,

the meadow, gray

the spruce,

the bay.

A woman waits.

Her doorstep is a gray stone

in a gray sea,

where nothing moves, there are no ripples.

Then into the cove of night

swim the stars.

How We Die Here \ Recycled Childhood

Alan:  The drownings of two young women this past summer (lines 2 and 3), which darkened a usually beautiful time of year, spilled for me into memories of so many other local deaths we can’t shake off, an ever-extendable list.

How We Die Here

Death by pulp truck.

Death by driving off the end of the road in the fog

where it becomes a boat ramp into the frigid bay.

Death by chainsaw.

Death by the forked tree that twists as it falls

or that snaps as it falls

and you a mile from help.

Death in the embrace of a tree at 2 a.m.,

the sharp curve catching you unawares.

Death by snowmobile missing the curve,

by ATV, motorcycle, pickup truck missing the curve.

Death by black ice.

Death by deer or bear stepping out on the road at dawn.

Death particularly by moose: nothing reflective, not even the eyes,

and the body on its stalks crushing you as it falls.

Death by the drag catching far below as you run against the tide,

the stern suddenly under, no time for the survival suit.

Death by the tide creeping round and behind you

as you dig for a few more clams at last light.

Death by honey-pot, quick-mud grabbing as you cross the flats alone.

Death by logs coming off the truck as it rounds the sharp curve,

or by logs backing off onto you as it starts up at the light:

death by unsecured load.

Death by the tractor tipping you off and falling on the too-steep cross-slope,

or by the auger that un-jams suddenly, your arm still in it, the PTO engaged.

Death by wood chipper.

Death by the known assailant, the spouse or ex-spouse

or ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend.

Death by your father in the murder-suicide that includes the kids.

Death by gun, alone in the woods out back, or in the next room

while the family gathers for Christmas dinner.

Death by the friend, the drinking buddy, the crazy out-of-nowhere argument.

Death by wearing white mittens when you go to check gunshots

near the back yard in deer season.

Death by sitting on a stump listening to the radio at the edge of the woods,

your uncle hunting.

Death by falling through the ice, your snowmobile still running

as you crawl toward the hole your friends just made

on the lake you thought you knew so well.

And death too common to think about: by cigarettes, by alcohol,

by drug overdose, by overweight, by wearing out in Winter, by cancer.

Ah yes.  We must not forget.

Death by cancer.

                                   Death by cancer.

                                                                    Death by cancer.

                                                                                                   Death by cancer.

Pulp truck: a truck used for hauling pulpwood or whole logs, often overloaded

ATV: all-terrain vehicle (“4-wheeler”)

Honey-pot: a hollow in the tidal substrate, covered and hidden by soft mud

PTO: power take-off; a device that transfers power from a tractor to other equipment

Nancy:  Growing up in the Depression, my first “grown up” underwear was made of a flour sack; our handkerchiefs were scraps of worn pillow cases which had been sheets; and my winter quilt was made of men’s jackets and trousers.  Very few girls failed to learn to sew a hem stitch, and I applied a lot of rickrack to hide the worn edges of my skirts.  Bacon fat became soap, and no jar went to waste.  In no way did we feel deprived by all this creative re-use.

Recycled Childhood

Now there’s a word for it,

a campaign, a commission, but hey,

we lived it; our soap

was grease (what we hadn’t eaten)

and lye, and I helped, wrapping

the new-cut bars in old bread wrappers

and carrying them to the attic to age.

We saved jars, put jelly in any old jar,

baked in coffee cans.  Granny put her black salve

in milk white glass pots that our neighbor

threw out.  Black salve!

Thick black salve spread with a match on a scrap

torn from a paper bag is what

a cold-cream jar means to me.

Black glassy cinders paved our drives,

our table scraps fed roses, sugar sacks

dried dishes.  My Mama would be amazed

at this sudden new trend – I wish she could see herself

leading us, in her turned hem, toward the future.

Riding The Mastodon \ Equinocturne

Nancy: The sad inevitability of things coming to an end, the slow irreversible fall.  In the end we want it to fall, slipping on our own icy tears.

Riding The Mastodon

The mastodon, dying, walks on

will not fall

bleeds icicles

weeps dust

walks on inertia

puts its feet down in the desert,

headed north.

I want it to fall.

I’m afraid, riding the mastodon,

it’s dead, I know it’s dead;

the sun is setting far to the south

and the cold aches in my bones

and the tears I weep for the mastodon

ring on the hard ground.

But the mastodon, dying, walks on.

Unheeding

it puts its feet down on the thin ice.

Alan: Disturbed sleep, equinoctial gales – the world turns once again towards the dark.

Equinocturne

This night,

a wind comes up and whistles in the rigging of our dreams.

This night,

a storm rises and scatters the fishing fleet of our dreams –

so many small boats lost, and such drownings!

There are calms, too, this night, and momentary lulls,

when we know that the moon, hiding its swollen belly,

rides away free.

This night is endless as the sea.

There are times when all we can do is cling.

At last, light – and we discover ourselves grounded

at the feet of tossing spruces, gesticulating pines.

Crows surround us.  Ravens eye our eyes.

All unbalanced.  All overturned.

The sun hides his grin in an ashamed mouth

and casts milk across the face of the sky.

Hauling ourselves free from the wreckage of this night,

we collapse into the goldenrods

and sleep.

Raven \ At Ingonish

Nancy: And still Raven goes down the bay, sun or storm, our constant companion.

Raven

Raven flew in one side of my head,

black in the white silence.  Raven

flew into the landscape behind my eyes,

and shook his electric feathers.

He flew in one side of my head

and he flew out again, on his own business.

Nothing to him that his wings write black weather,

and that the silence closes behind him

with the sound of thunder.

Nothing to Raven, gone down the bay,

that the thunder flies on, bearing his name.

Alan: From a long-ago trip to Nova Scotia.  Its exuberant language owes a debt to David Kresh, a wonderful poet who died too soon.

At Ingonish

At Ingonish the sea

fingers a fiddler’s choice on the cliffs

and the lake

frets a banjo breakdown on the longnecked barrachois.

Some law here keeps the salt stone from the fresh.

The cormorant and kingfisher wheel, ungeared, unmeshed,

round the hubs of bream and brash,

their world’s end at these rocks,

the jack pine, dune grass sharper than a fence.

Edge Of Night \ Homage To Stanley Kunitz

Nancy: There and gone.  The bats slipped into the spaces behind the shingles and lived invisible days.  Our lives crossed here, at dusk and dawn.

Edge Of Night

a bat slices the air

slivers the pale light into

smaller and smaller pieces

dusty with scales

     bat

plays the blade of itself

in calligraphy

mantras of flight

ribbons of air, shards of mystery

     nearer and nearer

arcs away and back and suddenly

no match for dawn

slides the soft steel of itself

silently, just here, invisible

     above my head

Alan: I loved reading The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects On A Century In The Garden (Stanley Kunitz with Genine Lentine, W.W. Norton & Co, 2007).  It’s a beautiful little book: a final flower from a marvelous poet and gardener.

Homage To Stanley Kunitz

1.     gardening:

        guarding

          our

          earth

                dharma

2.     writing:

            righting

      our

     world

              dharma

3.     a poem:

        an

   open

           named

             om

For Those Passing \ To The Kansas Board Of Education

Nancy: How cold and refreshing the water was, how special the flavor of well water – as though the tin cup added its own zest.  A cup still has a place in the back of our kitchen drawer and another is tied to our pump handle.  When I was still one of those “folks from away,” this homely thought was a bond between me and the old-timers.

For Those Passing

We always kept a tin cup

by the well, or a dipper;

and stopped too

and pumped and rinsed and drank

at other’s wells.

Sometimes the water ran,

clear, from a pipe at the roadside,

a scythed bank, a cup tied with a string.

Horses drank at the overflow.

Even today,

I like the sweet taste of natural courtesy,

the cup, hung on a fence staple

by the well,

water enough for all.

Alan: In 1999, Kansas deleted the teaching of evolution from the state’s science curriculum.  Despite that, life proceeds according to the reality-based principle, as it always has.

To The Kansas Board Of Education

                                                            on its Consideration of the Future of the Teaching of the Theory of Evolution

Our kind arose, we’re told,

from voles and shrews

or more primitive scurriers yet,

ascending, get by get,

through lemurs, monkeys, apes

(or some such hairy jakes)

until a light flicked on

behind the brow of brawn.

Ergo: Mozart.  The Bomb.

An older story line

insists that every kind

dropped fully formed

from God’s all-pregnant Brain,

which makes us each the same

except that some have heard

of Jesus and the Word

while others nibble grain.

Observing shrews and voles,

I think they’re unamused

and will simply carry on

despite the recent polls

which derogate their long

and lustrous line

to lower rungs.

Nor do they care a whisker

if God or God’s big sister

thought of them first.

As long as seed-heads burst

and meal-mates throng

they’ll do what must be done

long after we’re gone

to dust and dung.