Her balm the in-between,
The interstitialsAnd somewhere out in the
Great Plains and the divide,
Great opening spaces, in
The small meadows she created
I find her
Her balm the in-between,
The interstitialsSpent all day in the big outside
Mowing into the glory of the clover
Fretting about apple trees’ vigor,
Though they’re old,
Making sure in my reveries
I kept respectful distance from the
Pond’s banks
No tilting in too far, and
Surprise of
Wiping tears away
Weeping
For the kindness, the
Constancy, and
Understanding;
I had to shade my eyes now and then
From a lowering sun, the
Chords of knowing blinding
Into the precious new again, that
Some things never change.
Coming in
To cook up all that
Emotional
Psychic
Visceral
Logical
Incoming,
I turn to dinner
Yesterday my friend gave me a bounty of
Butternut squash soup,
She said, he doesn’t like it
And if I had to guess
I bet it comes from
The church ladies; an
Excellent base
And then the riot:
Mine here, in no order—
Two evenings’ soups
Beets and pesto
Cream, some honey and
Black beans
Paprika, and some cheese
And snips of basil, parsleys from
my kitchen garden,
My way of finding
Balance
They’re all so safe
The safe ones
In my age and yearning
I cleave to trusting
Why not, anyway?
It’s exhausting, otherwise.
It means, I know, that the
Fringes and dressings of the circle
Get smaller,
Defining the warp and weave
Design and pattern
Of my life
Whereby the task was always,
Unfolding, whether I would ever
See it or not,
To live the best way I’m
Wired, clinging to honesty
Admitting love and its mystery
In the ground that seasons shift
In the tactile of my time.
Rising from the Heat
And desperate for those skies
That bring the solstice
I make to make welcome
Beloved friends.
Sister,
I just saw her, in mist
Diaphanous
Lavender and blue
Miasma in the library
As I breathe in a cooling
Air, but still,
Only if I’m
Still, symphony with
Bullfrogs and I can see
The Dipper
From the patio.
Years ago I saw her and told you about
Her, you said,
Diaphanous and
Blue, and I believe that’s when you
Put up the mezuzah; it’s
Come down but tucked into
This place
With her.
And then
My sister, you blessed all the
Doorways.
In the time of Suffer
Sanctuary
Salvation
Every blade of grass,
Bloom, every
Slide as I sog into
Unrelenting mud
Every
Color,
Wild and everywhere
And all the smells so glorious
I watch for bunnies
Hop toads, blown branches
Too thick for mower chop
Coherence
I am in the garden, it’s all garden, I am mowing, I am cutting the pasture high; I am outside, on the porches, on the patio, planting pots, shoveling away winter detritus on the patio; I am walking to the barn and walking back to the barn gardens, I am at the pond. I am walking in the middle of the road at night. Night vision. Burgundy Farm, Capon Bridge. The children were little.
There was a small hastily-painted sign above a screen door at camp, pointing to a nest tucked away: “Carolina wren nesting, 🪹 don’t disturb her.” The sign didn’t have to say, so come in another way.
Today I was sweeping off the front porch again. It’s a formal porch. No one ever comes to the front door. At Christmas we hang a large Maine wreath, with a spot on it, on the front door. Every spring, I hang baskets on the front porch. I move concrete urns with old ferns out there. It takes a beating from the elements, though it is a deep beautiful in the snow, which shapes itself into onto and around the porch and its Greek columns. But it is not an unoccupied or unused front porch, and we know the life out there. Fucking squirrels chew thru everything everywhere they can. I sweep up piles of insulation, hubs pounds away at the holes in the porch ceiling & calls in the posse when he can’t reach. The little bastards get in through the cornices as well.
Each corner, on the outside columns’ pediments, contains a small built environment, nests. Every year they’re there. It’s quiet in the front; mommas are vigilant but not alarmed; soon the fledglings are fine. By the time I hang baskets all is sorted out. This season, though, the rain, incessant rain, constant, deluge, unrelenting, and wind, not thunderstorm wind, but derecho wind. The fucking weasels got the hens 6 weeks ago.
I digress, but it’s all related.
Yesterday when I went to sweep off the front porch, amid the squirrels’ rampage I’ve barely kept up with, I noticed a tiny feathery just gossamer ghostly creature, the nest blown down probably the night before when some fearsome straight line winds came upon us as once in awhile in terrible storm they will, and I think barely, barely hatched. I knelt a bit and whispered to it. It was a something, it had had a beating heart.
Tonight. I swept. Wept. The wisp of the bird was bigger. My knees wanted to crumple. And as I propped my head against the hand clutching the broom, just aside atop my eye, a movement. Another wee speck of life. The smallest moving bird leg I’ve ever seen or will ever see again. A nanosecond of movement in a puff of lightest grey. What do I do? Grateful I was not vigorous in my sweeping.
Would the Burgundy campers bury them? Would they cry for them? Oh life.
The birds are sorting themselves out, they’ve
Random conversations, and
We, some of us, discuss
Hummingbird territories
They revisit, we observe
Decide to come back
And today I learned a vixen can always take
Her kits to another den, in emergency, as if
Here, under the barn is
Not right and I flashed on some
Knots, gnarled,
Some kind of architecture indigenous in a
Way I cannot know in
My alleé, old evergreens and roots and
Tangles, and I recall
I see the
Dens
Beyond that bolt
About a vixen, though
I remember how
I’ve seen
From my bedroom in winter,
For a few winters in my past
Lumbering literally belly
Swollen to her birthing
In snow up over her knees
To that den under ancient planks
In the main barn
The determined mother
Flash of red against white snow
As she’d skirt close and under the barn
To where she’d always gone.
We spill out of winter and fight the rain
It’s spring, complaining into summer
Our pace picks up
And it is
About the great commune
Of territory.
He tells me about that
Water vein
As we plosh the staggering
Water table
Bemoaning amid deep humid
Bounteous green
That vein, I believe that
Runs into Boardman Creek,
Which will grow I suspect
Nurture and rot things elsewhere
Beyond an old dwarf cherry tree
And watery, faltering passage thru
The arbor vitae hedge
On its course down to the bridge
Whoever in wild dreams
Could rail about the water
But here I do
While geology moves
In her rhythms
I remember an untended
Pear and a
Hawthorne in the pasture that
I leave
Still and high, the bursting
Ground there
For the wilder things.
Bullfrogs are fine, I note,
Brushing aside anxious drift.
I need to go in now
I feel like fiddling with dinner.