As Her Body Failed \ Catching Water In A Net

Alan:  My mother’s last months were hard.  Moved to the nursing unit, she showed increasing signs of dementia – “sundowning,” as we learned to call it.  Yet, even as her nights became paranoiac phantasmagorias, when day returned so did a measure of her characteristic common sense.

As Her Body Failed

As her body failed

her hearing grew sharper.

Always good, it now detected

signs of another, distressing

universe

tapping maliciously

on the panes

of our own.

She could hear her name

whispered conspiratorially

by nurses

up the hall,

but when we’d check

there’d be nobody,

or just the meds lady

bending over

clipboard and cart.

“They were there again last night,

shouting!”  “Who?”

“The inspectors,” or,

“Those union organizers.”

“They’re going to close this place.”

“They’re planning a strike.”

So much commotion

on the graveyard shift!

Wild parties erupted

in the darkness below her.

“Dancing again, and so late!”

I thought of the yawning

common-room and the

empty, muffled

midnight halls.

It was hard

to picture her in her

narrow, alarmed bed,

dreaming badly,

hardly daring to roll over,

waiting to be tossed

out on her ear

or trampled by a crisp-fronted,

turn-coat mob.

She asked me once

why no one believed her.

I mumbled something

about each subjective state

having its own world somewhere.

She told me I should take

more time off from my job.

The last time we spoke

she was downtown

with pneumonia.

I thought she might hint

of that chariot a-comin’

or the approaching pulse

of mighty wings,

but all she said was,

“I’m eating my custard,”

so I just said,

“I’ll call again soon.”

Nancy:  Twigs and branches tangled together are enough to slow the rush of tide and storm.  The water brought with it silt and seeds and a mulch of marsh grass which settled out of the quieted waters. Now what was a raw gash in the bank is a thicket of shrub and healthy  vegetation.  What a relief not to feel like the lane is teetering on the edge of disaster.

Catching Water In A Net

Every year the sea bites deeper,

and roots fail, and clay fractures,

and nothing holds until I think

of the slash, branches slender

as my wrist: intricate, complex.

And I think of the Tao,

and the way of the sea itself,

and how we pit against it walls,

which crumble, and posts that fall

on the tide: imperious, awash.

To save the road, this: philosophy,

and sweat, to haul the brush, to trust

its yielding strength

to give the sea its due:

to catch the water in a net.

Dragonfly \ Noon Song

Alan:  Roadkill comes in many sizes and shapes.  There’s always too much of it.  We should acknowledge what we destroy.

Dragonfly

The dragonfly

flew low

over the road

and dipped just 

as I hit it

going 40 miles an hour

its perfect hunter’s eye

useless

and its clean arc

cancelled.

I had just time to see

in the rearview mirror

a tiny cross

of body and wings

on the pavement

as I sped

out of its world

forever.

At the corner:

the first fireweed

in bloom.

Nancy:  Wren song and robin song, vireo, hermit thrush, and under the moon the owl – and my songs? Catch me if you can, nothing as certain as matins or evensong.

Noon Song

The vireos

sing call and response

making cathedrals

of the green wood

cool stone

rustle of cloisters

call and response

drifting away

quiet of noon

Drowse of noon

broken

now a small bird

sings its own name

here and there

in the roses

sings what it knows

roses

its own name

then again

silence

Noon song

morning song, evening

sometimes

I close my eyes

         hoping

that sometimes

distant

like a far off

leeohlay

I will hear my own song

Territory \ August: Archipelago

Alan:  Living in the country, we have all kinds of neighbors.  Some drop by for the occasional visit.   Some don’t get along.  Mostly we all accommodate, but not always.

Territory

When the bear walked off

with the open can of sardines you’d put down

just for a moment,

you didn’t stop him.

When the bear, browsing

along the shore, left tracks

like welcome mats across the mud,

I didn’t follow.

We figured the bear came with the territory.

The coyotes, too, and the fisher,

the deer, the moose.

When we arrived, they made room.

We leave them be.

One day the trapper went by in his car.

Our neighbor said a bear was stealing sheep.

A bear didn’t come with the territory,

not in his book.

It feels a lot smaller, now –

the neighborhood, the territory –

all those sheep, and no bear.

Nancy:  I've wondered whether – if I were on the ship – would my shore appear to hover?  Would I float inverted in the sky?

August: Archipelago

Islands rise

drift off

hang in the air

disappear

Lavender haze

a white ship

above it another ship

       like the islands

       inverted, paired

Cloud-mountain sky

white mountain sea

terns dive

       the sea-mountain clouds

       shiver and break

Island to headland

white ship below

white ship above

       in the air

       on the horizon

       white ship above

       white ship below

“Territory” first appeared in Living on Salt and Stone (Stone Man Press, 1984).

Red Hill At Sunset \ Dancing To John Cage

Alan:  I was raised to call my father by his first name, which seems strange only now.  He loved our summer place on Squam Lake and its view of Red Hill, with its reddish granite that glowed intensely in the setting sun.  I wrote this poem for Doug’s 80th birthday, the last summer he was able to make it up to the lake.

Red Hill At Sunset

Towards evening the August heat and haze

opens it’s single eye to supple light

Descending, mantra-like, to still each day’s

ordered pleasures.  The dark rocks re-ignite

under their gnarled roots.  So, mirrored there,

glowing, above the cove the old hill stands,

A beacon kindled by the grace of air.

Take this bright moment in your outstretched hands

Even as it passes.  Watch the fires sink

into shadows and Time’s timeless design

gray to ash.  There is nothing mind can think,

holding this image, but to see a sign

that, though all perfect days soon fade to night,

you, whom such visions touch, still clasp the light.

Nancy:  Egrets are rare visitors to our bay.  What great good luck to have bird and tide and fish intersect with our pause at the marsh.

Dancing To John Cage

A pause.  Glissando.

A sharp spear abrupt

piercing.

Silent deliberation.

Stride, half flight

wings outstretched.

Egret fishing

parsing the marsh.

Blows fall like silent kettledrums,

but fish riding the tide

swerving the shore, oblivious

hear only silence.

Pause.

Foot raised.

Nothing will happen until

this note just struck

ceases

its reverberations.

Girl Riding Bike \ The Squash Blossoms, The Cicadas, The Hare

Alan:  Sometimes perception, emotion and memory fuse, or rather come into simultaneous focus like the layered realities in M.C. Escher’s “Three Worlds.”

Girl Riding Bike

Charlotte, Maine, July 19, 2012

She swings onto the empty country road

and back out of sight.

A glimpse of summers past.

Passing, I glance right, 

see the gravel drive, scruffy hedges,

her soft lavender blur, blowing hair,

the weathered farmhouse she’s riding towards,

a sense of fields falling off the edge

and sky.

Is she happy in this moment’s aloneness?

That’s my hope.

What is it like to be made of air and warm sunshine?

To be flying over the landscape looking down,

and not be in or of it?

What is it like

not to have the earth element dragging one down 

or the water element pulling one onward

towards darkness?

We have all known this.  Still know it.

I remember for a moment,

then forget again.

Nancy: Not even a beach is permanent, the glacial till of the cliff feeds it, the sea steals it and the storms turn gentle summer slopes into steep winter berms.

The Squash Blossoms, The Cicadas, The Hare

And what are they but impermanence,

a day, a month, a year; if we attend,

we too can feel the slew of the earth in our

spines; our eyes can discriminate the finest

degrees of change; even as we walk about in 

the world our inner ears sense the slow roll

of the horizon.

I went to the beach; what I saw was the way

the moon had marked it, it was a calendar;

if I lay the beach transparent on the point

of dawn and the measure of dark it calibrates

the days and the seasons.

When I came home I carried the beach with me;

I carried it back and offered it to the hares

and the cicadas.  I just opened my hand and sat

down with them and we sat together dissolving

and reforming in the sighs and the ripples.

Variorum \ Found: Sound Sound

Nancy:  Day after day, week after week – I’ll never know how he saw us or what memories we may have revived.

Variorum

Did Thomas Hardy sit,

sit waiting, in his last years,

for poems to happen by, an old gentleman

in his study, sitting –

– My neighbor sat

at the wheel of his car, which was parked

in tall grass.  He blew the horn

at girls.

He blew the horn at girls, in salute;

at me, big bellied with my son

and pushing a stroller;

at my landlady with her print dress,

her farmer’s arms and flat chest.

Like Hardy, perhaps, he revisited us,

clothed our lusts; as his eyes failed

he may have had a thousand second chances

at the breasts and buttocks of his memories.

One day he blew the horn at the postman

and slid forward, his head on the wheel,

and we came from the houses

all around, women, came where he sat

waiting, all day, for us to pass by.

Alan:  In the 1970s, the Poetry Society of London was housed in a once elegant but by then seedy building in Earl’s Court.  In its dusty environs I was exposed to a variety of poetrys, from the rantings of Bob Cobbing to the flinty mythology of Basil Bunting’s “Briggflats.”  It was an era of “found poetry,” “sound poetry,” “concrete poetry” and who knows what else.  Combining two genres, I wrote the following: a found sound poem.  To be read aloud, andante, with a gently rocking rhythm.

Found:  Sound Sound

Bartholomew’s Gazetteer of Britain, 1977

The Sound of Shuna

the Sound of Ulva

the Sound of Vatersay

Soundwell

The Sound of Papa

the Sound of Pladda

the Sound of Raasay

South Sound

The Sound of Shiant

the Sound of Scalpay

the Sound of Islay

North Sound

The Sound of Gigha

the Sound of Barra

the Sound of Handa

Sound Gruney

The Sound of Harris

the Sound of Hoxa

the Sound of Rum

the Voe of Sound

The Sound of Monach

the Sound of Mull

the Sound of Luing

the Ness of Sound

The Sound of Eigg

the Sound of Arisaig

the Sound of Eriskay

Upper Sound

The Sound of Jura

the Sound of Kerrera

the Sound of Iona

Sound Heath

The Sound of Insh

the Sound of Bute

the Sound of Sound

the Sound of Sound

“Variorum” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.

Affirmation \ At Milerepa Center, Barnet, Vermont

Nancy:  Caught sometimes in the never/forever, I’m reminded by the world that things change.

Affirmation

If the blackberry were a bitter tangle

of thorn, or were grudging of leaf, or sullen

of flowers, I would shrug.  December.

Reason enough.  For which of us

has not had Decembers, when cold gripped us,

times of dark days, iron nights?  Then

Words like trust and love are nothing

but frost flowers, abstractions; we are

cold to the core.

But the blackberry arches green, not in denial

of December, but in affirmation of July,

and in the grace of its abundance

Crowns the meadow with flowers, and draws light

into the shadows of the trees.

Let Decembers come; they are passages

through which love and trust will come in their own time,

just as in the dark of the year

The blackberry had within it this green,

this grace of flowers, this affirmation of July.

Alan:  To offer well-wishing to the universe seems like such a hopeless act.  But then, who knows where the threads of our prayers may lead, and to what uses they may be put?

At Milarepa Center, Barnet, Vermont

Red and yellow,

blue, white, and green,

the prayer flags

move slowly

in the morning mist,

their long lines

silently belling

between farmhouse and flagpole,

pole and barn,

barn and farmhouse.

In every weather

they give blessings

to this sahā world,

and fade, fray,

releasing themselves

thread by thread

to the air.

I have seen birds’ nests

woven with fur, hair,

bits of yarn,

rug sweepings,

bright plastic grass

from last Easter’s baskets.

I would like to find, somewhere

in the thicket behind us,

the nest of the catbird

that has kept us company all week:

a secret, cupped offering:

a rainbow at the moment

it disappears.