1630 Nature poems

An eater, or swallowhole, is a reach of stream or a tidal area given to violent currents and waves that often upset and/or suck under boats and kayaks and the like as they are attempting passage. — William Kittredge The eater, my birthmother, was speaking: I can’t tell you his name.

The sun does arise, And make happy the skies. The merry bells ring To welcome the Spring. The sky-lark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around, To the bells’ cheerful sound. While our sports shall be seen On the Ecchoing Green. Old John, with white hair Does laugh away care, Sitting under the oak, Among the old folk, They laugh at our play, And soon they all say. ‘Such, such were the joys. When we all girls & boys, In our youth-time were seen, On the Ecchoing Green.’ Till the little ones weary No more can be merry The sun does descend, And our sports have an end: Round the laps of their mothers, Many sisters and brothers, Like birds in their nest, Are ready for rest; And sport no more seen, On the darkening Green.

He drew these dandelions during one of the days when the only solace was derived from the labor of getting the white stems and blurry seed heads just right. “Nobody there,” the new disease announced, with black-tie gloom, “nobody there,” after he’d succumbed. Sometimes, sleeping soundly is almost unbearable. Please take care of me, he asked, as they put his crayons with his wallet in a box by the stove. In the distance, beyond the tulips, an insect chorus droned: we beat you up; we beat you up.

The way calcium grows all by itself into bone, microscopic fraction attaches itself to fraction or clouds crystallize, or blizzards congeal into hard ice on aluminum wings, even the astronauts’ bodysuits can’t cover up the sheer strangeness of it, the extraordinary being-here or anywhere, the skin of the plane could easily peel back like an ear of corn and then what’s to be seen but who, me? the live, disintegrating, terrified Barbie Doll asks, stuffed into her jeans like a stick of butter, her neat, pointed feet dangerously stuck into sky... but still, teetering down the aisle if anyone bumps her she glares,This Is My Territory, this little packet of a hundred and twenty-two pounds more or less says Move it, Babe, one minute the cold kitchen, next minute Miami Beach, digging into the sand beside the violent- ly green sea, droplets of Almighty coconut oil under the crisp tang of salt drizzle and lick all over its bare, lusciously bronzed congregation of too too solid— No! Never in this world, the greedy molecules hiss as the plane turns inland, the woman returns to her seat past all the other anonymous collections of cells, some snoring, some fussing with their kids, one bent over a laptop, another staring straight at her for a second, with X-ray exhausted eyes peering, then swiveling away as if they’d known each other before, fellow crew members from another planet, though the woman thinks of herself only on Main Street—my my what an arrangement of chromosomes collected who knows why—up here among streaked, boiling clouds with the plane speeding through them, how unexpected it is, how far the body travels from its babyhood, locked in its charged circuits she thinks about edges, the leathery sunburned skin flaking off, in filmy shreds, sound barriers breaking away from her but here she still is for this one second fixed, eyes sticking out of the top of her face like the glint of a buried pin or the beak of a mother robin in the nest she made for herself: with earth losing its outer walls twig by twig, what is this naked fork quivering in the middle of Whose consciousness she keeps wondering, whizzing across the face of an electric cloud chamber, here all I am is falling, in the tight ship of the diminished, in hot chips of pure ignorant energy fizzing around some magnet, some lucky iron only imagination can count on, trembling, gritting her teeth on the thread of an end she can’t know, Please, Someone, materialize me in arms I can love always

from Sonnets, First Series VI Dank fens of cedar; hemlock-branches gray With trees and trail of mosses, wringing-wet; Beds of the black pitchpine in dead leaves set Whose wasted red has wasted to white away; Remnants of rain and droppings of decay, — Why hold ye so my heart, nor dimly let Through your deep leaves the light of yesterday, The faded glimmer of a sunshine set? Is it that in your darkness, shut from strife, The bread of tears becomes the bread of life? Far from the roar of day, beneath your boughs Fresh griefs beat tranquilly, and loves and vows Grow green in your gray shadows, dearer far Even than all lovely lights and roses are?

The sun that puts its spokes in every Wheel of manhandle and tree Derives its path of seashines (Sheer centrifugality) from my Regards. I send it My regards. Some yards Of lumen from the fabrika Have come unbolted from the look Of it (or likes of me), a long Unweaving or recarding I Cannot recall begun, and there Before my eyes a palm Puts lashes round the sun.

Suppose it is nothing but the hive: That there are drones and workers And queens, and nothing but storing honey — (Material things as well as culture and wisdom) — For the next generation, this generation never living, Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth, Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered, And tasting, on the way to the hive From the clover field, the delicate spoil. Suppose all this, and suppose the truth: That the nature of man is greater Than nature's need in the hive; And you must bear the burden of life, As well as the urge from your spirit's excess — Well, I say to live it out like a god Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt, Is the way to live it. If that doesn't make God proud of you, Then God is nothing but gravitation, Or sleep is the golden goal.

Whether the harborline or the east shoreline consummated it was nobody’s biz until you got there, eyelids ashimmer, content with one more dispensation from blue above. And just like we were saying, the people began to show some interest in the mud-choked harbor. It could be summer again for all anyone in our class knew. Yeah, that’s right. Bumped from our dog-perch, we’d had to roil with the last of them. It’s taken a while since I’ve been here, but I’m resolved. What, didn’t I print, little piles of notes, slopes almost Sicilian? Here is my friend: Socks for comfort (now boys) will see later. Did they come? The inner grocery had to take three sets of clips away. Speaking to him of intricate family affairs. I’m not what you think. Stay preconscious. It’s just the “flooding of the council.” No need to feel afraid.

It hangs on its stem like a plum at the edge of a darkening thicket. It’s swelling and blushing and ripe and I reach out a hand to pick it but flesh moves slow through time and evening comes on fast and just when I think my fingers might seize that sweetness at last the gentlest of breezes rises and the plum lets go of   the stem. And now it’s my fingers ripening and evening that’s reaching for them.

We walked at the edge of the sea, the dog, still young then, running ahead of us. Few people.  Gulls.  A flock of pelicans circled beyond the swells, then closed their wings and dropped head-long into the dazzle of light and sea.  You clapped your hands; the day grew brilliant. Later we sat at a small table with wine and food that tasted of the sea. A perfect day, we said to one another, so that even when the day ended and the lights of houses among the hills came on like a scattering of embers, we watched it leave without regret. That night, easing myself toward sleep, I thought how blindly we stumble ahead with such hope, a light flares briefly—Ah, Happiness! then we turn and go on our way again. But happiness, too, goes on its way, and years from where we were, I lie awake in the dark and suddenly it returns— that day by the sea, that happiness, though it is not the same happiness, not the same darkness.