Near Mid-January

 

3/4 panorama
MacDowell Lake, Peterborough

 Near Mid-January

 

A small thaw has wandered across the lawn,

a widening eye.  Last

fall’s blonde offerings almond-shaped

in the blink unfreezing.  All of December’s near

foot of snow is now a thin misgiving, slippery.

I don’t know enough about the weather,

 

barely more than how to weather it.  Yesterday

near to 50, & our lake is slush now.  A boy

with his skates makes his way home, fist

gripping the blades, laces like hazy,

charm lazy, baby snakes.  They sway

 

against his ski-pants and make a language

I cannot translate.  But if I were

in his skin and walking away from the

untamed lake I might be awake enough

to say wait—it’s slush today and winter’s

 

not even close yet to staying. 

God’s off galivanting, and all that’s left

on bottom is deep

sleeping in the crust of mud it has made

itself a home in.  Something here too is

 

pulled, pulled the way an echo pulls, or

the way memory, stretched back, finds that

soap bubble waiting after all

this time, glossy, paused paused

watch it doesn’t pop.

 

Remedy for Being Cold

winter clam flats,
lubec, maine

Remedy for Being Cold

 

She sits in the timestorm time’s turned into,

shinedying in her easy chair.

 

Love is there:

                                    Christian Wiman

                                    Rust

 

When the hats arrived,

and the scarves,

all the way from Ireland

the ardent nigh smell of

the lamb, of the ewe,

her fleece, and her fleece,

 

speaks with a close

aroma, though not only

that, & not aroma alone

though that is what I

noticed.  And ardent

is probably wrong,

 

too ambitious a word

but I was caught off

guard & my nostrils

stopped & the cauldron

of sheep seemed immediate

if more than three

 

thousand miles…but

I tell you I wanted to fall

back on that air of salving

emollient & be washed

not in water but in the lanolin

of mother, to be

 

embedded into the wool

before it was lifted from her

skin, all burdock & fold-clay

caked, I wanted that,

and thought if I had it

I’d never again be cold.

water over, water
paused

Tired, So Tired

 

Morning, Campobello

 

Tired, So Tired

 

And ever after rafters would speak to me

of falling

                                    Christian Wiman

                                    Black Diamond

 

Somewhere west of

here a wolf

 

moon wanes.  Snow

is bolt froze

 

to the roofs

of things: tree crown

 

empty of green

tree crown

 

needle filled green.

The hem of cloud

 

gown is coming

undone,

 

like it does, like it

always does,

 

when storms start

to blow, then

           

              blow

                        & blow

 

until they begin

to blow over.

 

We might not see

the moon again

 

this month, it might be

so heavy a sky

 

 

that the tired earth, she is

so tired, cannot lift

 

it with her waters gone

solid, like stone.

Cormorant

 

Cormorant

 

 

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

 

                        William Butler Yeats

                        He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

 

 

 

Walking in the thin crust,

the old snow covered what the wind had,

leaving it banked on the pier

post, allowed.  All the bootprints –

size man or boy, climbed the (how?)

tide rising pier ladders

without losing one moment.

Behind me the bald eagle is on the tallest

rising pine, watching probably

the gulls and torment of crows.

It all goes round, this winter

on this working pier, local

boats and boats from Nova Scotia,

 

tightened to the posts, holding

on.  But I’d like to know

how the cormorant came to be

hollow-skulled & flat as an aged

ichthys print?  Here the ink is still

black black feather, the used

broom-straw blonde of its bill

ajar against the drove over snow.

Empty eye-bone, a crow maybe

noted the dull nictitating lid

draining its gloss to the creosoted

timber decking. Wounded? Unable

to rise?  It must’ve tumbled

 

from the pier-post or cleat & lain

prostrate & maybe the tread-wide winter

tires, flattening it fish-like but

didn’t meddle and plowed right

into nature.  Summers I see

these cormorants, their wing

span wide sun drying the water from

their last dives.  Dense-boned,

they can’t rise with all that mass

of themselves, of water falling off

them & back into the sea.  This beast,

stark black feather against the white

of the snow, I notice odd lot

of blonde on its bill, on the webbing

 

between its toes, is all but gone.

A faint tallow, like wax. 

What more is there to do?

It is stiff against this pier. What more

is there to do

but walk off, & leave it froze to

its winter lot, cast against the snow,

stuck till sometime early next

spring when all the winter will melt

for good, and that same fisherman,

nonchalant in all his duties, lifts it off

the deck and tosses it to the tide

before descending

that ladder to his fishing

boat, toe hold holding, toe hold

letting go.

 

Just So

Just

So

  

Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

 

                                    Christian Wiman

                                    From a Window         

 

 

Eighteen above.  The frost

has paused on the blond

dropped curlings of the fallen

 

maple leaves.  Tell me,

please, does this thin

edge, that glistens when

 

the sun is unsuddenly

above the mountain, lift

its chin in longing, a longing

 

only a whole night of

the descension into a dark

that settles on the ground

 

like a sentinel, tailored

from the remains of

the afternoon rain,

 

or some intuited resolve,

each drop of water,

whatever her size, becomes

 

a humble letter in an alphabet

we see only

as brief pliable diamonds

 

and sundry prisms

able to rise the way spirit

levels rise when

  

the light and hand and eye

caresses them, bone-glow

to balance, prop, stabilize,

 

a breath of it inside of us

remaining, that sentinel,

just so.

Brief the Sparrows

 

Brief the Sparrows

                  for Nancy...

Somehow it is enough knowing the shadow

is visibly older than the object it blots

while soaking somehow the light right

 

above it, a noon at night, its bright being

a windless insistence tight along the line –

in this case the gable end facing south & her

 

reflection in the filled to the brim

birdbath.  Last week the remaining few

of the migrating songbirds, the species

 

of sparrow clutching the bare rose-

vine or goldenrod paused in the offering

remains of autumn.  I watched them settle

 

only to vanish into the dying grasses,

watched them rise when one line of light started

to slide from behind the bright canopy

 

of the sugar-maple yet clutching most of her

variegated fill of her yet living quilt.  Watched them,

their flight of sky casting bits of code

 

on the lawn, a dot of longing: dit-dah-dit-dit-dit-

dah-dit-dit; their equally brief, in this shadow,

--. --- --- -.. -. .. --. …. -

see, it's this specific

 

see, it’s this specific 

 

seed, with

the monarch’s need

having ceased,

with all that sap

tapped

 

having been

dipped

into and sipped

flittingly,

 

it’s this seed’s

metamorphoses

of cellulose to silk,

a floss

so insistingly soft in her

offering, having been

given this 

much volume

within her skin

 

that stops me and makes into me

 

a surrendering contemplative

 

and by that I mean: see

how the pod

can do nothing

but ultimately

cede to this

division, where her dam of milk

                        -weed skin

has, though not suddenly,

(invisibly, it seams, unseams, within, listen… 

 

 

 

…)

 

 

thrust her heft

against the quartered horn to force

her hull-throat to open

to wind’s casual oscillation

once, it's worth

the weight, 

it’s risen