If It's Possible

 

 

If It’s Possible

For One Stem to Kneel

 

 A rumble went among us, glancingly,

like a flame flickering limb to limb in a stand

too wet to catch.

                            Christian Wiman

                            In the Time of Fire

 

The rain has made the Queen

Anne’s lace to brace to her

one knee.  Her ruff is

suffered to the riverbanks & to

the pavement.  In the night

 

I heard bucket

of rain & I imagined a life

boat taking on water & the clogged

bilge & the boys sluicing it all over

the gunwales.  Probably this

water & all her attending

 

molecules have shoulder-rubbed

the pomp of the near drowned, down

the inner hulls, into the buckets,

charged with the rescued breath

spit into the wind.  Wont’ it go

 

back up int the sky & be lugged

over the small mountains?

Won’t it have changed some given

their rough revivals?  Imagine

ministering to them, imagine

 

the slim distance between God’s

baptizer’s hand on the back

of the head and the clasped grip

of the penitent, plunging them

under to the count no one has ever

 

agreed on but for the waiting

of some sign in the raining

sky, in the crowd of flowers ecstatic

on the bank, their grip of ligaments

closing over the sopped wing

 

of the bee giving up, giving into

the struggle.

 

Influence, Or

 

Influence, Or 

Something Like It

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples 

widening out from an original center. 

                                                Seamus Heaney

Pinned & welded to the thin metal pole,

the birdbath’s bowl holds only enough rain-

or hose water for our few wrens & robins &

song sparrows.  On days it's dry: a caravan 

of ants.  Lately, this thin scrim of pollen-water

a southeast wind ripples.  Her motley yellows, 

her blondes of a lot of hues.  Cirrus clouds

in a bowl.  At times, at just this certain spot, at just  

this time of day, the roofline’s gable, her specific New 

England pitch, is reflected in the basin’s stationed

rain.  Once a hawk watched me there & then flew

off.  I only saw it blot the water, briefly spot

 

the sky.  & once a kit of pigeons lift, beaks flick,

to dip their small noggins to their peculiar

music of coos.  Only ever briefly slack, the water's

often  rhythmed,  cautioned by all those log trucks 

hauling their bed of pulpwood to the paper

mill that ripples a sometimes windless surface.  

It’s when the distant bridge shakes, it’s when

the reverberation is both airborne

and underground undertow, you know? When

it mingles with what the makes the ground

shake: the sway of the bridge, her columns

 

of rebar and concrete plunged deep beneath

the river, how she receives & then delegates

the weight & seeming seismic waves reawakening

commitments in the shifting granite we stand on,

or the boundary walls we make that are taken

down by the constant shaking (recall what Frost

 

said about all that mending). Sometimes

the birdbath bottom is sand dry, the water being

called back the way water is called back, and so

filling the bowl to the rim again, I watch the slow 

garden hose nose the floating duff,  then saturate it

 & cause it, while I'm looking someplace else, to over-

flow into the lupines that are pulsing to seed and rooting 

deeper for next season, and the season after that.

                                                                                                s. lee

 

Late May

 

Late May

 

And lie at last by the little stream that brings

all gods to truth.

                                    Julia Randall

                                    The Bennett Spring Road

 

A morning ago snow the hold of it in the globe

of rain fat and splattering against the raised window

glass.  Stiff wind let it drift loose & lose its bearings

indeed if it had bearings at all this late in

the season.  An accident happening in the

atmosphere?  An arctic blast??  Muster of dust

in the cold rapid clouds?  (what kind of cold are clouds,

don’t you ever wonder?) But this it wasn’t enough

to do much but bring us to wonder.  & to hunker

the rumps of the songbirds in their

boxes & grasses & bits of bramble on bending

branches to dance to pause the persistent

gobs of their offspring for just one doubled

second and then one more– this chilling extravagant wind – 

it’s 32 degrees and tomorrow it will be June.  So I took myself

 

to the roadside swathe of lady’s slippers I saw two weeks

ago beneath all those stunted hemlocks.  They were still 

living after all these weeks & still hidden

in the middle of the evergreen’s peculiar camouflage. One  

steady drop of water on the skin of their pocketbook

of veins.  What remains but that I knelt in the wet

and made of them their dozens while the wrens

while the wood ducks while the mallards & song

sparrows . . . but we are golden here, right?  So golden.

Precious purse this rose gold rising from the snow

a month ago hello to all this hello to the season's last

blast of snow.

Genuflecting

 

Genuflecting

 

 

It’s not blue of course it’s not blue but it’s called blue

when it happens too soon after the last one all those

seasonal days making a headway we want to pause on

 

but what’s the cause is beyond us I think it’s tried

the explanation is given in some mathematical equation

her revolution in companion to an earth’s

 

revolution and those stints in season a skies way of saying

it is time it is tuning frequency it is giving her calculated phases

doesn’t every lady need one freak-out every so often?

 

though following her descent into the far horizon a fog

is rising like modesty like quiet applause like standing

ovations rise before and clapping first is knees cracking

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.

House, Corner Lot

 at the Olsen House,

Cushing, Maine

House, Corner Lot

 

That haiku are thought

more often than written down:

light’s eight minutes old

 

who even knows that

so much of what is being

is somewhere else

 

nailing it down means

yes, a hammer, and yes, nails,

but too a roof, or

 

rough structured framework

bracketed to the flat, firm

cement the men poured

 

last week over stones

hauled in from some pit, then dumped

strategically on

 

the bottom, made smooth

with feather delicacy

of thumb and pointer

 

up/down up/down/up

down/left to right/left right 

smooth flat then flatter

 

the joystick’s his proof

in the excavator’s cab

his precise pattern:

 

five seven and five

right?  the pattern of breathing

while a hole is being

 

made, & being made

boxy & framed & finally,

hole’s filled partially 

 

to hold those wood bones

to hold open or closed

a window, a door

 

January 19th

 

fades...
for Hazel

 

January 19^th,

 

little enough wind, &

the old bend in the bough

of the lilac is for now a brief

yoke for yesterday’s,

for today’s, hours & hours

of falling

                        snow.  & below,

 

holding to the thickest

stem, a long

tune of bell-tubes,

whose clapper is a

dainty enough

hut-roof of fluff. 

 

This is the quiet

a tired soul might walk

through, might pause

 

on her now timelessness

in it all, watching the figures

the snow closes over,

their honest geometry

a familiar though cloaked

coincidence.  No split second  

nows merging into a cacophony

of thought

 

just simply now

and the belonging

to it. & even as this snow,

caught and paused in its own

falling by its weight of

waiting, will surrender to

 

some wind and some sun,

& fall to the moss-

covered stone wall the lilac

is rooted to, it will cool

the music that winter has

set in the throats

of the dark-eyed juncos

sorting through the blown

and scattered chickweed seed

harmonied at their feet.

She sees them.  She sees them

and is relieved. 

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