1630 Nature poems

abide with me don’t ever abide gimme anytime a pile of leaf-hay across the field underneath the bright new blue tractor pulling the tedder which is the waffler or fluffer

The flowers I planted along my road Have lasted long despite winds and cold Already fiery noons begin to burn Slyly the secret of the roots And I know that of my footsteps nothing will remain But a trace a cluster a drop To recall along the paths I’ve chosen Those evening when the light sang In eyes hands hearts and goblets. I love the sweet harshness on the tongue Filling the palate with a promised saliva Knocking the mute keyboard of the teeth With raised draperies of which one might say That memory retains a fleeting trail of them Half-glimpsed we won’t know how or else The loud reminder of the single moment All gravity banished the unconscious pleasure recaptured Of being nothing but entirely animal. For our life closed on that iridescent sphere —Color taste perfume at their extreme limits—invokes Some miracle independent of its origin Produced by distilling air and earth— Like the move toward technological planets After a calculation made on the fingers of one hand— Time contained flowing—continual autumn This evening this wine that enters me to make My head light my tongue loose my cock happy.

At dawn wind out of the north, hailflecks, pebbly skates against windows. I lie thinking the drainspout’s drip comes again in the basement faucet where I am crying, a child betrayed by death’s new cardinal and the cat yawning on the porch where my grandmother found me. Risen now, I see the river full-bodied, its white wind-knotted hair swirling like hers. The polar hickory is naked as a saber recalled by a girl long gone in the gold sauce of apples. Two leaves that might be cardinals returned tumble in the hard light at the brick fence. Nothing moves in boxwood where gray soldiers lie. Among the last of them she walked, cupping apples, staining her white frock, who took a boy far back into the haze the Shenandoah hills held where family stallions might walk aimless ground littered with purpling flesh beyond the cull of seasons. Through a gate nailed with leather belts in my mind, I pass and enter the arthritic orchard tended by widows. What I gather wakes me to think how bright on the tongue was the taste kept concealed, sustained, of flesh abiding, months beneath the wintering house floors. To reach this I must go down storm-worn stones and pick my steps past the sealed boxes of family debris, nightgowns, flannels, ribbons, birthspoons, a pair of dulled skates, flowers pressed in a moldy Bible. Why is it we keep what we cannot bear to use, and can’t escape, shoving ourselves into shrunken rooms edged with old foolishness unforgiven and unforgotten? I fumble to the center and pull a yellow light down the ancient string still dependably there and stand, in my head, as she did, playfully asking where they went. I know, I know, I say back there in the dust where I’ve come again to look through tiny windows into skirts of boxwood, a morning that sends me alive among gray soldiers at the house roots. I see also blue preserving jars full of slick pulpy flesh she has put up in a juice thick as blood. Behind it all in dark eaves, baskets of apples, split pine boxes like generations steeping, undisturbed by the tick and groan of housepipes veining the overhead I leave. Oh let me see her light bring back those stallion-feeders, little red handfuls of joy! Look how long I’ve slept, learning to walk straight into a dawn-silvered web where secret spiders spin ceaseless as the seasons. Above me ice takes each room, I can hear feet pacing fretful halls, yet here I lift my face and puff back all the silk in the world. I hold every core peeled on this slab. My fingers claw the meat of family stillness, parting all the way to seeds. Oh widows of the air, fill me with your cidery, useless lying, those bladed hours you fed me the dark rotting dreams of your love.

A kind of Danish cow long thought to be extinct lumbers slowly from a fog-soaked forest. Past the statue of two men shaking hands on horseback. Into the trainyard with its newly brunette-colored coal cars. It is late, lamps light the trainyard. One of the trainmen sees the cow and has a thought like a small grey infant sinking ever so slowly in the icy harbor. The cow continues out the other side of the trainyard. The trainman shudders at the thought. The trainman’s cat Stamina crunches walnuts in her cat dish. Now, nearly thirty years later, ladies and gentlemen it is my great pleasure to introduce to you that very same cow. (The cow is led out onto the stage by a young boy dressed as a farmer.)

The time has been that these wild solitudes, Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me Oftener than now; and when the ills of life Had chafed my spirit—when the unsteady pulse Beat with strange flutterings—I would wander forth And seek the woods. The sunshine on my path Was to me a friend. The swelling hills, The quiet dells retiring far between, With gentle invitation to explore Their windings, were a calm society That talked with me and soothed me. Then the chant Of birds, and chime of brooks, and soft caress Of the fresh sylvan air, made me forget The thoughts that broke my peace, and I began To gather simples by the fountain’s brink, And lose myself in day-dreams. While I stood In Nature’s loneliness, I was with one With whom I early grew familiar, one Who never had a frown for me, whose voice Never rebuked me for the hours I stole From cares I loved not, but of which the world Deems highest, to converse with her. When shrieked The bleak November winds, and smote the woods, And the brown fields were herbless, and the shades, That met above the merry rivulet, Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still; they seemed Like old companions in adversity. Still there was beauty in my walks; the brook, Bordered with sparkling frost-work, was as gay As with its fringe of summer flowers. Afar, The village with its spires, the path of streams And dim receding valleys, hid before By interposing trees, lay visible Through the bare grove, and my familiar haunts Seemed new to me. Nor was I slow to come Among them, when the clouds, from their still skirts, Had shaken down on earth the feathery snow, And all was white. The pure keen air abroad, Albeit it breathed no scent of herb, nor heard Love-call of bird nor merry hum of bee, Was not the air of death. Bright mosses crept Over the spotted trunks, and the close buds, That lay along the boughs, instinct with life, Patient, and waiting the soft breath of Spring, Feared not the piercing spirit of the North. The snow-bird twittered on the beechen bough, And ’neath the hemlock, whose thick branches bent Beneath its bright cold burden, and kept dry A circle, on the earth, of withered leaves, The partridge found a shelter. Through the snow The rabbit sprang away. The lighter track Of fox, and the raccoon’s broad path, were there, Crossing each other. From his hollow tree The squirrel was abroad, gathering the nuts Just fallen, that asked the winter cold and sway Of winter blast, to shake them from their hold. But Winter has yet brighter scenes—he boasts Splendors beyond what gorgeous Summer knows; Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods All flushed with many hues. Come when the rains Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice, While the slant of sun of February pours Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach! The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps, And the broad arching portals of the grove Welcome thy entering. Look! the massy trunks Are cased in pure crystal; each light spray, Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven, Is studded with its trembling water-drops, That glimmer with an amethystine light. But round the parent-stem the long low boughs Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide The glassy floor. Oh! you might deem the spot The spacious cavern of some virgin mine, Deep in the womb of earth—where the gems grow, And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud With amethyst and topaz—and the place Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night, And fades not in the glory of the sun;— Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts And crossing arches; and fantastic aisles Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye; Thou seest no cavern roof; no palace vault; There the blue sky and the white drifting cloud Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose, And fixed, with all their branching jets, in air, And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light; Light without shade. But all shall pass away With the next sun. From numberless vast trunks Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve Shall close o’er the brown woods as it was wont. And it is pleasant, when the noisy streams Are just set free, and milder suns melt off The plashy snow, save only the firm drift In the deep glen or the close shade of pines— ’Tis pleasant to behold the wreaths of smoke Roll up among the maples of the hill, Where the shrill sound of youthful voices wakes The shriller echo, as the clear pure lymph, That from the wounded trees, in twinkling drops, Falls, mid the golden brightness of the morn, Is gathered in with brimming pails, and oft, Wielded by sturdy hands, the stroke of axe Makes the woods ring. Along the quiet air, Come and float calmly off the soft light clouds, Such as you see in summer, and the winds Scarce stir the branches. Lodged in sunny cleft, Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at— Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty, for the time Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar. And ere it comes, the encountering winds shall oft Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen earth Shall fall their volleyed stores, rounded like hail And white like snow, and the loud North again Shall buffet the vexed forest in his rage.

How valuable it is in these short days, threading through empty maple branches, the lacy-needled sugar pines. Its glint off sheets of ice tells the story of Death’s brightness, her bitter cold. We can make do with so little, just the hint of warmth, the slanted light. The way we stand there, soaking in it, mittened fingers reaching. And how carefully we gather what we can to offer later, in darkness, one body to another.

Near Butte, Montana

All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed! A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.

I was cold and leaned against the big oak tree as if it were my mother wearing a rough apron of bark, her upraised arms warning of danger. Through those boughs and leaves I saw dark patches of sky. I thought a brooding witch waited to catch me up from under branches and take me, careening on her broom, to her home in the jaundiced moon. I looked to the roof of mom and dad's house and wondered if the paisley couch patterns would change during the day. My brother peeked from a window and waved. When the bus came, I pawed away from the trunk, fumbled, and took my first step toward not returning.

It burns up all the grass too, and breaks the stones, so tremendous is its noxious influence. — Pliny the Elder, “Natural History” On a blood- or honey-colored moon at midnight & no 60-watt abuzz. With Sirius ascendant. From a dunghill’s punk egg hatched By toad or serpent. From cold gland & pillaged crib, from ruined sluice, Bible comics & potshots at swallows. From the Ring of Fire, the Zipper, The Nighthawk with her victims taloned upside down. From pistis to gnosis To the midway where they draw a bead on cardboard sheikhs. From no harvest. From no temperate father. From years borne down tainted water & all we failed to mark in frequencies cranked up, from How laughing we cast our own forfeit. O well — It’s cinch your boots up now, it’s shoulder to the wheel, it’s soldier on To lay coins on the fang marks & stand already spent, Condemned for what we wrongly thought exhaustion. Comes now the bright arrival, comes the pageant rain of ashes: The seal torn & tablets fixed but still impossible to read.