When Lilies Close Then Open Their Faces

When Lilies Close 

Then Open Their Face

 

 

And do I smile, such cordial light

Upon the Valley glow—

It is as a Vesuvian face

Had let it’s pleasure through—

                                                                Emily Dickinson

                                                                (F 754)

 

 Depending if the fog’s going

to burn off.  Depending

 

on if they’re water

-logged or, on the other end

 

of it, heat shocked. 

Depending on being

 

seen by no one and going

about it anyway.  Don’t you

 

like knowing though

that lilies, some of them,

 

close their throats

come after supper when

 

the dishes are done up

and there’s still

 

a bit of sitting you can

get in?  And where you can

 

watch the wild want

come up and swing

 

and sway like a Grange

dance and get on

 

to decay like it was

the only true possible way?

 

Maybe too taking in

the plot of land can make you

 

walk so slow enough

it’s an honest

to goodness 

limp to your own

 

mother’s death

bed and if it’s the proper season

 

you’ll carry some plucked 

and cut slant wise blossom

 

of some sort and you’ll’ve

slipped it just so just

 

right enough smart

for the bottle on

 

the bed-stand, bottle

you found out hoeing

 

and harrowing and planting

up the land with her

 

years and years gone on

now, you’ll see again

 

how it just popped

up out of the ground

 

just like that

just like it were

a buoy in the water

or a bobber brought

under by the mouth

and the hooked 

lip of a trout

and you took it

 

into the fist of your

grip and the both

 

of you grinned at

being such armchair

 

archaeologists.  You

must’ve felt its age

 

and wondered back

at the way men

 

came and went

in and out of the house

 

and threw down

their lives when they were

 

hollowed out, like

they were meant

 

to be buried all along

and with all their secrets

 

beneath the sod

God knows how long

 

but being delivered now

it’s been sitting all this time

 

an open mouth

a little clutch

 

of lily at its lip

and fragrant! tell me

 

can’t you pull in all that

the air and hold it

 

close, and smile

at the coming on

 

the burning off of such

an aromatic fog?

 

                                                 

 

 

Are You the Envelope or Are You the Letter?

Are You

the Envelope 

or Are You

the Letter?

 

In many and reportless places

We feel Joy…

It comes without a consternation –

Disolves – the same –

But leaves a sumptuous Desitution –

Without a Name –

                                                Emily Dickinson

 

Maybe when she writes

to him she tells him:

if you can imagine this

envelope open, doesn’t it

 

look like the roof

of my house from one gable

end or another

and whatever suits

 

you to choose you

choose North or South end

and since you’re at

imagining imagine

 

yourself standing

beneath the one weather-

side with the old lace

curtain stuffed in one

 

of the broken-out panes.

Face the clapboards, your

back to the cove.  And touch

the cedar.  Isn’t it like

 

touching me?  Worn

soft in all those raging

Nor’easters beating out

spring and autumn winds

 

and the dulled lull of all

those summer days.  

You can

see it, can’t you, before

 

I seal the roof down

and make the house into

a paper boat without

a wheelhouse or sail?  Behind

 

the dry paper marsh

are a few seasonal birds

come down to Boston.  Like

‘when will winter be done

 

with us once and

for all” or “when will the red

rush up from my geraniums

and spill over the kitchen

 

window and make it hard for me

to see out and see you

coming.  You are, right? placing

your foot right now,

 

on my lane?

                                               

Before Seeing

                                                                                entrance abandoned: her bedroom

*

Before Seeing

 

The Grave yields back her Robberies—

The Years, our pilfered Things—

Bright knots of Apparitions

Salute us, with their wings—

             Emily Dickinson

            (F 337)

 

 

And it comes to pass

that to persist is to be what’s seized

and turned out or at last left to

 

                e             vap         or            ate

 

from our naked

places – our skin or

the way we draw our palms

 

down the front

of our shorts and un

-knowingly expose

 

ourselves and innocent

of intention: but isn’t (and  this is

the moment lifted)

 

what’s seen doomed to be

-come a little burn that once

it’s frustrated up

 

from the singeing

skin is at once a betrayal and a longing

to be risen to the lips  and then shunned,

in turn

 

an abandonment and balm:

a tongue or a salve on the lips

of someone’s god

 

-send?  Is it here you’ll long

for an intimacy or virtue

and not for the least of these

 

but because eventually (won’t we?)

we’ll stop fixating on nothing

other than the moment

 

before it all happened:

the painter rubbing

his face and elbow before

 

he’s turned to that certain

window to be burned

by the image that will

 

volt a hill

a house

a barn

                                                a              crip         ple

 

into icons

into assailants

into lipstick

 

on pigs.  They’ll say that.

And all of them

will be wrong. 

 

And all of them

will be

right.

discerning tastes

discerning tastes

 

on Wyeth’s study for “Spring Fed” (1967)

                (first in watercolor then

                                tempera)

and

“Downspout” study for “Weatherside

                (1965)

                                (drybrush and watercolor)

 

 

 

  

sky water ground

                water all through-clouds  

                all through matters and avenues of stone and what once was

                stone

going over and if not over then

                                beneath and if

                                                not beneath

                some crack’s in

                and right

                and straight        on          that through

 

would you be able

to savor

                                the dispute

                                                :

                                the dry well buried            in                            the ground

                                                                        fed some,

                                                                                some,

by cedar gutters hand

-hewn hand

-hollowed and hung all along

his roofline and come down some into buckets

                                                                                   after the fall

                                                                and all those street savvy diversions

                                                                on the pitch that inches its white redolent way

                                                                                                d

                                                                                                o

                                                                                                w

                                                                                                n

 

                                                                                                d

                                                                                                o

                                                                                                w

                                                                                                n

                                                                                into the cooper strapped and strayed busheled wood or                                             terracotta clay hand

                                                                                         -made

                                                                                covered underground

                                                                                                sky fed well

                                                                                                        Or

                                                                                                          :::

                                                                                                           

                                                                                                    :

                                                            :

             :

or somewhere up

north of the hill and deep

                underneath

all of what's ever been

spilled

             *

                   *

                            *    

                                *    

                                           *   

felled

                :

                :

                :    

                    .    

                        .    .    .    .    .

and left and et to lie

for the immeasurable time of a now 

nude sycamore

and/or maybe the early coming on of late

spring hay before the rain

after it’s pitched and lifted

and on its way to being

baled and twined

and hoisted

truck-bed-loft

what eye looks

on what hand

almost thresher

caught and not

entirely a loss

but some of

a thumb a lump of

one finger

the sum coming up

dirt: the sun takes up

what it must and yes

the earth claims all

of what’s left.

And it's let like rent due

            and drawn upon being

collected even if it's all down to overdraft

at the spigot or in some wells as never

    go dry 

ground or sky.

and your tongue and my tongue

and your teeth and my teeth

and lips and  the bracing for cold for  the mineral

for the metal for the rust of the wet 

the w(het) of it

 

recovery is,

recovery is,

 

of course the chuff that comes

with it puffed up from the claw

or the tale about some narrow

scrape with the ungloved hand

but not before sand has canned

the plans – the camo curtain

of instantly solid instantly not

fog can you pull that much silt

from behind with the ribbed flip

of your backside and wave

those claws in the face of  your

adversary and make off in what

could be a companion wave what

could be the underneath of a man

and his dory and float beneath

it all fury fog silt settling all debts

in escape?  maybe float weight-

less like one of those pulling

and pushing to stay as one in one

place before everything is taken

and made to make it all the way

out of the water and walk again

like she does on those floor

-boards: knots and wringings

of cloths and wrists and thumbs

a pugilist of the cause : cookpot

or laundry or the wash of a body

on the kitchen table to watch

what drops off the recovered

and makes its own way out

of life like it always has done.

(in the Olson's blueberry fields)

(in the Olson’s blueberry fields)

  

On Wyeth’s Gull Scarecrow, 1954

  

They’ll be slung rotting on their pole

like men’s heads or women’s heads or if you like

kids heads meant to warn but something

more than the eye and really it’s this:

 

lips and tongue and how on the inside

behind the open bone they’re connected

to the channel of the nose and throat

and halfway down this throat it meets

 

a sound its never known it could

conjure but its true and whole made

of bone and skin and this is what lives

its warning its keep off keep out: what’s

 

seen is suddenly caustic it’s lit

and isn’t a simple gull he shot late spring

and strung up and let lie and fly alone

and only at the beguile and condoning

 

of the wind – listen – even in winter – maybe

especially – when the pole’s become something

entirely new or sawn through for the kitchen

stove there’ll be that one knot and notch

 

and on it a gull’s breast feather caught

like the ravishing is long past the eye and this

is what’s left.  The crop’s gone down gullets

of all the animals you imagine.  And the flocks

 

are spooked or hungered off.  And the thumb

that once run along the beak and paused

on that dot of red on the underneath

still buzzes when it hovers and then lets lie

 

the worth of summer and with something

that might look casual to a passerby

lifts the iron lid and slips it in to make it yet

another reckoning back and back into the sky.

*Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth:

A Conversation with Andrew Wyeth

by Thomas Hoving

at sea

Gratitude is the only secret that cannot reveal itself.

Emily Dickinson

at sea privacy is a narrow throat

of space: breath - depress - 

express - impress- a chest of keeps.

and the lid is hinged against

the wind of want - long shut 

and soaked in years 

of cormorant - of booby - 

guano let go in sticks - in kelp nests 

pressed with web- with crawl 

of bodies of exo-self - of alfresco

calcium - of labored ivory advertised -

of gum and jaw - all for wont

of simple thrust against

the weight of bones kept indoor - 

of gravity and atmosphere

or else the pry of some hand-

stitched grid made to mark

a rendezvous with incongruity: 

to rise - to be private - to go

to see (d) like all things alive

waiting to die to be alive

mine and yours: lips

mine and yours: lips

time comes maybe 

that you've drawn

your lips completely 

in and kept them constricted

as when you've been given  

some terminal news:

the genetic polyneuropathy's stay

is day and night or the loco-

motive's come up the hill

and split your father near

in two and completely 

from your gauze

of wounds suppose you had to 

go on living if you

knew you knew you knew

you could've done something

about it and you let 

the minute slip by inside

those lips.  and listen:

time was early on 

you'd lean in to kiss 

that what have you 

just lost and all of what's made them

red and fat and caress

-able is jaded in day in day out

pain  they've turned tooth 

and gum/chum and ache

that way and stay turned in, 

toward the one tooth or two

that's left and the tongue 

and the words done and un-

done on it as if those teeth

is a keep and will keep 

and keeping them kept 

will expect life from here

on out to ache like a sonofabitch

her confinement is

wrinklin'

as kin to the pine as water

breathing in the fog

and is bobbing

up the falling moon

who's already 

past her full

and is pulling an edge

of her rented hem 

of mist and film a borrowed

lace of cloud and soon

she'll be new

and in the very least decreased

and deceased

for the days and time

it takes to rise

again shy and shyer still

with the light 

edging off, the least common

-place face ever

the change and the station

-master's sold out

knowing there's no

predicting even with all

the formula's accuracy: 

the face seeing

a face

takes it

in as them

-selves

and makes a chemistry

that they say's stopped

in the bottle of her body:

what precaution mustered

for remaining corked

or what all prediction in

the window and her light cast

on the cruel floor and the curling

foot smudging 

into it and though there's no

warmth and though slowing

she's going

like a moody boat he's holding

in the cove

and the day's early

and earnest.  still

nothing touches her 

wound as honest

or as shy

or as unpredictable

as this moon: through

atmosphere through

hemisphere through

all sphere's glass and cracks

and spread squarely:

a constant stocking

taking no pain 

save excruciating

to put on.

Cellar Door Pull

Cellar Door Pull

It's like using the same oar

all your life.  

The oarlock wears it out

till there's not much left of it--and 

you're the one who did it.

                    Andrew Wyeth

maybe taking to her hip the way she had to near

the end the way her dis-

                                        

                                    ease curled her and burled

                                    her knuckles and knees

and made them seem

a Stradivari

                                    pegbox and scroll

                                    and pelvis an f hole under her

skin and made them

cellos and violins 

                                    fists stiff with her peculiar

                                    euphony...broke off ...maybe

she missed being

able to lift the cellar door or grip

                                    the pull to take in the whiff 

                                    of the underneath before she went down

in to get whatever was

hidden there.  To bend her knees without

                                    needing to think to grab at some deliberate

                                    clutch: the doorjamb the window

casing and how later the years were

laid into the paint by kitchen grease and wood

                    

                                    smoke and constant touching

                                    and by the time

the door stayed shut enough toward forever

it was a slit of an eye

                                    when she dragged herself by

                                    it and sometimes puffed up some kind

of dust: cat hair, chicken dander, Andy's or

Alvaro's mud coming undone from

                                    the boot tread and left off almost perfect

                                    a little castle of sand

she'd've swept if she were able to

stand and now it collects

                                    in hinges of the brass pocket-door pull

                                    in the cellar door and the scroll

a mote throughout...

            

                                

A Great Truth

A great truth is like a mountain

that one walks around, and the changes

of its contour as one moves

his position only emphasize and revivify

its majesty.

                    N. C. Wyeth

Through one muntin and one alone the grass (because

of the glass

                I suppose) is a windier

green, I mean see all the way

how through can't  you                pretend to

ease your skin and bones into

the air free of

                                  the barrier

                                                    while you're standing or

sitting or licking your lips

and the almost healed split

lets itself go again against  the knowing

point of your stiffened tongue just keep

                                                                    going 

                                with the sod coming soft on us

true as the wintered cemetery

stones over and down below this

                                                        window and what's left

of the blue or what's been

worn through: water

                        slop

                        aged

                        pink

                        rag

                                wring and wrung and all undone of her

buttons - if you draw back to that

arm coming in you might

if you're in the right frame

feel the weft and shag 

of sand that were made to make you able

to see such grit insisting

in the splinter you'd felt stuck in a week ago and just left off the skin  growing

                over the hole

or blood coming on slow like a child lowering

her chin to her throat when she knows

what she knows though she won't....and those

old buttons become a rosary sewing alone to disclose

what exactly? maybe covering up 

the one eye like she's told to go out alone

to her bed in the dark when going 

beneath such dark of a thing makes

beads come on her lip 

and when afraid she licks them from

the tip of her finger she rubs them rubs the grit a little

pock on the interior like spots inside 

                        the old glass you look through

                                    that one pane see

                                        trapped with (whose?  

whose?)

                 old air?

                    

                                                

soda, salt, sand

 

tell me, aren't you already exhaling when 

the thing's that's said to take

your breath away takes your breath

away?  Isn't what was in the lung being

pushed through your chimney: 

the flue of your throat and crown

of your mouth, the cap of your nose?

Alvaro kept the ladder against

the house if in case the brick lit

flittingly the dormant creosote greasy 

as cheese, jagged as half-rotted

teeth, imagine coming from the bottom

up, the chain banging the bucket

of sand, the pocket of damp rag

filled with salt baking soda

and to inches beside the jeopardized

shingles and trusses and if it comes

straight in without asking, though

in some backward hindsight invited

when the match's struck and when

the bellow's squeezed and poking full

open in the face maybe those bats

come to roost there.  who's not had his 

chimney up and running all summer but come

the first frost, come the crops all bedded,

come her fall on the cold mud road

walking home and no shoulder

to heave to and soon she's legitimately

ill. And her breath legitimately taken 

off as like in hod after hod of shingles 

they'll need before what? full-on winter?  wait

until spring?  situate to the kitchen 

and only two other rooms beside?  what 

of falling and keeping it secret, like creosote 

stitched stalactite thick in the brick 

and then the sucker-punch and double

over what's broken off and what's about to

bloom beyond smoke...couldn't it be 

true that what's ugly or what's about to

throw roses from the roof stuns just as

much and there's just as much force

that draws us off and on through?

?

Is it the same force as beauty seducing 

to see what's covered set free? 

Getting There, Pulling Herself, Amazing

Maybe raked maybe 

picked by hand does it make

any difference after

each mostly clean 

berry's free enough of her

stem and stray green

knuckle and an odd

leaf maybe and say they all take

on sugar at their own

pace shrug it off 

entirely or soak it in like it was

the only ever lost thing

it truly hankered

for.  Come cold butter come then

some crushed, come under

the millstone milled flour 

and come some pinch of salt

and what all unmeasured

come just eyeballed

the toss of water.  And soon

pinned and rolled in

thin enough a crust.  And soon 

what's come: the filling of those rough

and casual and familial

(because doesn't it 

depend on the level of light

in the room in your mood

doesn't it depend on

what life and breath you've got in you

that morning or afternoon

stoking the stove too

and keeping it all 

hot enough and steady

while heating gold comes on

melting in pie crust stroked on canvas

under hands a brush

a flush of crushed red then

faded into the places taken

under aprons under stations

they make you

stay in assaying the stained

entrapped ulnar the knuckled

chuff across the floor 

the push still hot from the oven

piece of pie ahead

and to the bottom 

of the stairs calling "Andy,

here's your lunch."

*Title and quote  Andrew Wyeth: A Spoken Self-

                            Portrait

                            Richard Meryman

 

Lace

up

when the wind is let in

when it is let in to lift

everything left

everything let lie, listen

the lift of lace

and crocheted wings, beaks

and bodies of birds

left placid against the glass

to take their courses back

to favored places they may

have been, being lace: hook

and fingers and thumb

the coveted cotton, pillow box

the gone bobbins, prickers

and lifters, all sundry

accouterments...listen: wind 

wants for nothing, needs

for nothing to be it but 

breathing.  Who hung them

up there in the attic, giving

them some affirmation inside

and maybe to the glancing

up eye, out?  Don't you

want to know, depending

on your romance, maybe how

they came to be made? 

Machine stages or staying

weights of bobbins

or do you want to know

who stood up in the window

to thread those cotton robins

(make them that) through

the rod and then walk back

-wards out of the room judging

their level sobriety? I wonder

if one of the things maybe

she was hankering for was

the simple walk up those stairs

one foot after the other

the scuff of her shoe on 

the tread and toe-kicked riser,

the sag and sigh of the cede

of each step, still relenting,

beneath her.  Just to see

those pieces.  Those lace

darlings come up in a breeze

if Andy'd left the lower sash

up just some, just some, stuck

probably in the pocket, but

the robins are free, like they're

just new, just relenting the nest

lifting before the last possible crash

after such a shocking, shocking 

fall, and how, if she could, she'd

press her face against them 

and let them touch her, and they

her, bird after bird.  She'd taste.

She'd awaken.  And tell no one.