Lately Going Home

 

 

eagle gargoyles atop the roof of the lantern room
west quoddy head
lubec, maine

 

 

 

Lately Going Home

 

home where I grew  

up home

& with her this gibbous moon

rose I happen

to just look just above the spruces

& it was two past noon & she was

getting through

enough and gauzily illumed in her

cool ash-white

naked light

she seemed pinned

against her will a wrestle

against soft blue chiaroscuro

and a being being

birthed in her mute rise she was

compromised by the absolute

of nothing not even coincidently

while the tips

of the spruce trees seemed

to be teasing her face with their feathery

bough & spiky cone she gained

& maintained

her own gray against the haze

 

& between her

& me

 

between the trees more than

half the globe

she was was abbreviated to be held to  

the old woven broken  

branches they seemed open as an empty bowl

& she could be their dome she could be

the lippy curve of a brimed chapeau

her crown alone though & flat as bats

wings

 

but not only this coincidence moon

or sighting the

solitary nest in the crown

of another spruce: two mature enough birds

their white bright head emblematic

one sitting near the edge of the nest & one feet away watching her

watch this moon

Blind Date

 

Blind Date

 

Yesterday the crow

            lifted the stiff/froze squirrel

                        her frost-fur a prism glint

this squirrel was

            headless and the crow

                        didn’t mention it, each

open to each.  Neither seemed

            timid in touching, being relieved

                        of these streaky shades of

pink: neck, tongue

            a dawn camouflage.  See these

                        briefly similar interiors: where

sound once was

housed, then unhoused.

                        Moments, only moments.

                       

Fog

 

Fog

 

All winter this electric fire

& a tree door

closed room.  In fact

 

it was last fall

October probably

if I look back that started

 

mornings of warm

in these small walls.  All

the night a cold

 

kind patient waiting.

Years ago it was smoke

going up the chimney

 

& the children would sleep

through the descension

& pressure of ice

 

that declares it is

going to stay a while.  Today,

mid-April, a coastal

 

fog inland.  Road lights

make the moisture

seem to be lifted to

 

the hood & eye, slick

on the pole.  All my life

I’ve liked morning for

 

her quiet, her tension

mannerly, gracious

as a guest.  Probably

 

also because she is soft,

those Sandburg paws

walking almost weight

 

 

 

less.  Leaf drink leisure.

Smallish drops even

teeny to the briefest

 

& relief, her endurance

of winter rewarded with

heat of her labor then

 

cooled by this thick lithe

brightness that has nothing

to do with light

 

& more to do

with what I cannot be or

write, lissome at night

 

departed by daylight.

Resurrection Sunday

Near Flood, Contoocook River
Peterborough, NH

 

Resurrection Sunday

In his darkness then an epiphany: 

such a love he must not fail.

                                Niall Williams

                                John

 

This particular river bulges with mountain

            water run-off.  It is falling

            with such velocity, it makes great

            mounds of foam that float

            & flail in the crotches of a rock

 

& the sawn-off ithyphallic

branches caught there, watching

the rise of a body gorging on snow

melt twenty miles from here,

pushed in laborious rushes

 

of contractions and rests. And

also west of here, this limb’s

mother, this limb’s sibling

saplings.  Imagine them quiet

in the sober quiet of their grove,

 

reaching up to touch their mother’s

one limbless spot.  Her pruning wound,

renamed to cicatrix. Forgiveness,

in its measure, is callus tissue, in time

the lid of an eye.  Blind by then. Or

 

outwardly sightless should I say.

Inside, beneath the cambium,

a nob of love is forming, late

twin of the limb that by now may be just

the right size at just the right time

 

to be sunk by the mud & crush of others

like it, & beaver pups touch it

like a talisman before their swim

out and against it all.

 

lazarus satruday

 

 

lazarus saturday

 

 

 

the weight of winter

made an evaporation

by one blade of grass

Herd

 

Herd

 

On another day a field

or two over from here

eight or so more so it’s not easy

to tell since winter is

 

yet & will be for weeks

more (but the snow has been

called back by the lengthening

presence of the sun

 

and all the run off that comes

with it) and all that is

dun all that is blonde

and blonde’s kin is this herd’s

 

safe place beneath

the bare trees stationed

at the base of the hill.  A horde

of acorn was all season

 

below the snow, and now

the deer are mostly noses

& slow considerate ruminates.

Some are soon

 

to lamb close to this spate

of oak & maple density.

Their months ago surrender

to rut has proofed.  Soon: loosed.

Fishing Winter

 

 Fishing Winter

 

Maybe in winter promises are

auraed with warnings: a promise

 

of snow, a promise of sun

but the temps well below zero.

 

The folks who take on such a,

well, I don’t know what to call it,

 

gift-giver, bluff-caller, that this

weather is, have been made

 

to earn these cautions.  Their eider

downs & various animals of wool. 

 

Their fists in their mittens.  Like this

sea in front of her

 

house, all steeped in vapor.  &

the boats, they all seem to be

 

cloaked in smoke, the ice is palling

the chain-made scallop drag.  In it all

 

a lost scallop shell, its meat

long hauled off by a gull or some other

 

wintering-over shore bird

that gropes & toes the rockweed &

 

tideline, this shell, nearly invisible, is

half now of itself.  Valveless.  What was just

 

being said about promises? or are they

warnings?  The boats are going

 

out today.  The sternman breaks the ice

with his mallet.  The captain smokes

 

& blows his coffee cold.  Somewhere,

though not here, not yet, a sun.

 

The sun.  What else can burn enough

to burn off the sea’s smolder,

 

the slabs of frozen water falling

back with a splash?  And who hears it,

 

soft and swallowed, on the face of it,

invisible ocean still making the boat

 

rock and rub up its mooring like that

half-feral cat in the kitchen at her leg? 

 

That merganser, maybe.  Lone and poking

below the water, drowning some

 

and rising some, in the sea that is

winter thick. Thick with smoke of risk.

 

With gamble.  Come on!  Set your stake! I

dare you to

 

come out.

I dare you.