Sydney Lea

for my daughter Erika, on the birth of Ivy Creston I found it in a box I sifted through as I cleaned my office. How clear in mind, the time you drew it nearly thirty years ago. From dawn to dark, a sort of dusk prevailed, the nightbirds up all hours. I've stumbled on signs of ruthless murder in such a day— intinction of snow and blood. I've pictured talons. Not knowing what I felt, still I have sensed, without my witness, intricate change had happened. Snow of course can offer other signs: sweep of a grouse's wing where it flushed and flew, the raptor's errant jabs mere blots to the side, no blatancy of red on the cold white cover. In any case, it was that kind of day when you held the blue-green crayon as gently as a mother might her child, your hand so small I could cry. You frowned, and carefully drew three sides of a square, and then, above, a pair of slanting lines, to roof your house. Then swatches of sky. You glanced sidelong at me: did I approve or not? I knew that this was what you meant to ask. I chuckled. Please forgive me. I stroked your cheek. Look at you now! A mother twice at once, in a home built plumb and true on a leafy street. I consider these parallelograms you drew, each with a cross inside, to form two windows, which, you said, were there for me and you, "For looking down the road." The road was made of lines as well, which—not quite parallel— ran right from the doorway off the edge of the page. I clutch you tight in mind as I did so far back down that road, your picture done for then. I pray your babies' dreams and landscapes are as clean and sweet as you seemed to me that day, a perfect figure underneath those Vs —those harmless birds, or bird-abstractions—high above the house in their lambent blue-green sky.

My objectives this morning were vague. As always I'd hike these hills— a way to keep going against the odds age deals, a way to keep body and soul together, and not so much thinking as letting things steal into mind— but I started counting from the very first step I took. I wore rank old boots, ill-laced, and patchwork pants. Around my neck hung the frayed lanyard of a whistle I use to summon our trio of dogs, who capered and yelped their pleasure at one of our walks, and more miraculous still, at having me for a master. It's true in a sense that I always count as I wander, though it's usually the beats of a tune (Thelonious's "Blue Monk" a favorite) that mark my time. These counts felt odder, better. We scattered a brood of grouse at step 91. The deerflies strafed us. At 500 a late trillium glowed by a ledge like a lotus. Right along the rain kept pounding. I was mindful of all these things but I never stopped counting. Life was good, and more. It was worthy of better response. At 1000 I thought, Enough—and counted on. Nothing was coming to mind. Nothing is coming again from my hike half the day ago with three dogs through rain but a mystic sense of well-being in quietly chanted numbers. Whatever this trance, I treasured it as a wonder not to be wrenched into meaning, as in Every second counts, as in You should count your blessings, though of those there seems no doubt.

That woman’s husband works the graveyard shift in a warehouse someplace. He’s a big man, and sleeps all day. I bet he drinks. But what do I know? Dark clouds are stealing in. Well, no they aren't. That's poetry, and bad at that. She’s a headstone color: gray hair, gray face. Her hooded sweatshirt’s dull, like a sheet of old tin. It’s as though she doesn’t look forward to much but passing away. Her eyes are gray too, though it's too easy to call them empty. Their tears might so easily—flow. Oh no. I’m fussing around for eloquence here and coming up empty. The woman and I just nod at each other as we wait by the post office window. Though I’m a rather old man now, I go on looking toward some sort of future. I’m a big man too, which may be why that woman shrinks. Or I think she does. We all like the postmistress, who’s old herself but spry, and despite her losses still cheerful and bright. Her hairdo’s new. I recall her husband, who was a person people here always called Big Mike. Some old folks claim the man could lift a barrel brimful of hard cider right over his head. I’d like to imagine some tribute to Mike. I’d write it, if that were feasible. A character, Mike. He drove a truck that he’d brush-painted pink. He lived with his wife and children and a bunch of critters and mixed-breed hunting dogs far back in the woods. In time the kids grew up and moved from here, but the family, we remember, seemed always so decent and gentle with one another. The postmistress wears that shirt she loves. It’s a pretty shirt. Now what shall I name it? Purple? Fuschia? Puce? And how might I sort them, good and evil? How portray them? Let the clouds above, the God-damned clouds, steal in. No, let them hurtle.

Our loons still scull on the pewter calm of the lake, the chick having dodged the eagle one more day. The valorous drake and hen both held it between their bodies while the raptor circled. Reprieve. And here I am, old. I stooped an hour ago to dump the pail of dace I'd trapped, then watched them scatter, the ones we hadn't hooked through their dorsals for bait. Twenty or so now swim at large— still prey, but not to us, Who are headed home in the morning. I’m poised to throw away this clutch of wilting black-eyed Susans picked wild by my wife of all these years to grace our painted metal table, where we lifted ladders of spine from fat white perch, last supper. So here I am, this aging man who wants somehow to write only one love song after another. I pause at dusk, I blink, I toss Our dim bouquet into late summer’s woods.

I remember that store, and the nasty redneck whose stink seemed a challenge to everyone in it. The scene is decades old, but I'm still confused that no one took up the challenge—including me, though I liked an occasional fight back then. The prospect of pain meant less to me once, I guess. An aneurism had just killed my brother, so the pain I'm talking about was my body's. I breathed up another pain that day. I checked the man's beat pickup; why would he want them, those skunks knee-deep in its bed? I left the lot still more confused, my sweet retriever shivering on the seat beside me. The godawful smell still clung to the dog's wet coat, and my own. There'd be no more hikes for us that morning: rain had arrived, bone-chilling. If you killed a skunk, why would you keep the thing? To kill some time, I stopped at The Jackpot View. We've always called it that. Five mountaintops bled into mists to my east in New Hampshire. The sudden squalls spilled leaves on the woods-floor's pall of nondescript hue. Now he was dead. Now my brother was dead. I can't define any God, but only this morning, I caught a whiff of road-killed skunk and thought I could speak of Him or Her or It as surely as I could tell you the slightest thing concerning the man I'm remembering now, the one who shot or trapped or clubbed those miserable reeking creatures. The smallest enigmas we ever encounter remain as hard to explain as all the epical ones. I've failed for years to fathom the death of my brother; but it's just as hard to understand why a scene in an old Vermont store should linger like dead-skunk odor, which if you've lately been tainted comes back to scent you whenever a rain blows in—or like some pains you may have thought you'd forever gotten over, but which at some odd prompting come back to haunt you.

It struck them both as strange: although each pond and lake clear to the coast was locked in ice, no open water, the imperious wind kept pushing waterfowl inland. That night a winter moon stood high and pierced the thin clouds’ vapors so the boy could contemplate their emptiness inside. Relentless, the flocks flew westward. The border collie whimpered, putting his forepaws now on one sill, now another, as if some odd creature circled the house. This lifetime later, a man, he looks back on that stay at her farm, its details clear, their meanings still vague. His grandmother called it wrong as well, that the weather should be so frigid even in such a gale. As a rule this kind of cold needed calm. He sees the fire, the dazzle of sparks when she loaded a log. What seemed most amiss was how the old woman’s house no longer felt safe that visit. He wanted and did not want to know what the dog might know. He tried to picture the menace outdoors. He longed to shape it so that he might name it. And after these many miles to now, away from the ruby glow of the metal parlor stove, from that blue-eyed collie, from the woman he so admires and loves recalling that night; after so much time, he still believes that to name a thing is to tame it, or at least to feel less bewildered. Not Death, for instance, but The deaths of Al and Virginia, his parents. Not the abstract legalism,Divorce, but The disappearance of my sweet wife Sarah, run off with that California lawyer. Not simply Alone, but I have no children. Was that the wail of geese coming down the stovepipe? If so, it would be a marvel, but he knew it wasn’t. The caterwaul from the barn was alarming, and more than it might have been had Grandma herself not startled— after which she put on her late large husband’s threaded farming coveralls outside her housedress, which rode up and made a lumpy sash. She stepped out under cloud and bird. He would not follow. Rather, he stood indoors to wait until she came stomping her boots through puddled barnyard holes like a child herself, kicking ice shards to scuttle along like beads from a broken bracelet. No matter. The world had gone wrong, violent and void at once. She said,The mare has foaled. On tiptoe, she read the mercury out the kitchen window, then told her shivering grandson,We’ll call the new colt Zero.

Why not write something for those who scratched out improbable livings here? Someone has managed to sow This broken field with stones, it appears, So someone’s scratching it still, Although that Japanese knotweed has edged The tilth. Two wasps in the child Attempt to catch sun on a rail of the bridge. The old local doctor has passed At almost a full decade past ninety. He never seemed depressed. Seventy now, if barely, I consider the field again: Someone will drag these rocks away But they’ll be back. The air smells like rain, Which is fine, the summer’s been much too dry. Nothing is left of the barn But some rusty steel straps in some nasty red osier. The stone fence still looks sound, But even there the knotweed steps over. Hadn’t I pledged an elegy To the old ones who worked here? You couldn’t claim They thrived, exactly, but maybe They likewise scented good wind full of rain, Lifted eyes above this old orchard To the cloud-darkened hills and found their support Somehow, somewhere. No matter, They kept going until they could go no more. The trees’ puckered apples have gathered A flock of birds, and as they alight, They’re full of unseasonable chatter, As if to say that all will be right. The old ones I promised a poem Must have said it too.It’ll be all right. I never knew them. They’re gone. I say it out loud,It’ll be all right. —Caledonia County, Vermont

—for Fleda It seems so different   art that moves me now From the sort of art I longed for long ago Soaring   Vatic   Agon I waited yesterday on the unsure shoulder Of a drenched back road    From my car I could behold Our highway agent Gordon Fill a rut with a spade  climb up on his grader And smooth things smooth as the top of a kitchen table There were frost heaves by the score And culverts clotted shut by April floods So it was brilliant    what Gordon did with mud On Wallace Hill      Pure mire Out there   The road goes narrow as a needle On which   you might wonder   could dance how many angels I don't care   I didn't No earthly need to summon spirits   daemons No sign of them at all    Nor would I dream one I might have once but wouldn't Nor gyre nor golem    Nor great Leviathan Nor djinn     Nor fiend    Nor signifying wind Nor Elementargeist That lingering in that lane might make me conjure I had to get somewhere and fetch my daughter To bring her home     Sweet Christ She might be standing in that mix of sleet And ugly rain    which called for Gordon's art I'm trying to be a grownup Better late than never    I suppose Or am I only jaded      I don't know It was as though I'd shown up Just to see him wield his spade and blade out there It kept me from surmising some furor divinis Why should I bother Now that I moved on    thanks be to Gordon Who signaled with his thumb for me to pass him He pulled the grader over Yes give me something useful here I said Impromptu        In my car it sounded odd To say it now sounds different I hope that Gordon watched me yesterday As I signaled back    I'd never have made my way Without a skillful agent I hope he saw me wave