1630 Nature poems

On hot days we would see them leaving the hive in swarms. June and I would watch them weave their way through the sugarberry trees toward the pond where they would stop to take a drink, then buzz their way back, plump and full of water, to drop it on the backs of the fanning bees. If you listened you could hear them, their tiny wings beating in unison as they cooled down the hive. My brother caught one once, its bulbous body bursting with water, beating itself against the smooth glass wall of the canning jar. He lit a match, dropped it in, but nothing happened. The match went out and the bee swam through the mix of sulfur and smoke until my brother let it out. It flew straight back to the hive. Later, we skinny-dipped in the pond, the three of us, the August sun melting the world around us as if it were wax. In the cool of the evening, we walked home, pond water still dripping from our skin, glistening and twinkling like starlight.

Spout of a leaf, listen out for the screams of your relentless audience: the applause of a waterfall in the distance, a hurricane looting a Miami shopping mall. How careful you are with the rain-cradling curve of your back. Near your forest, all are ready to swim and happy to drown in me: this lake of fire that moats the edges. From my mouth, they come to peel the flames and drink their slick throats into the most silent of ashes.

(To William and Flora Johnstone) Wheesht, wheesht, Joyce, and let me hear Nae Anna Livvy’s lilt, But Wauchope, Esk, and Ewes again, Each wi’ its ain rhythms till’t.

The Body as Nature, History All motivations intermingle as the core of history, the internal becomes external... all as parts of the body. — maurice merleau-ponty i.               the positing of space, corporeal history medium of my body

for New Orleans and the people of the Gulf Coast water water water wind water across the land shape of a torn heart new orleans waves come louisiana the waves come alabama wind calls alabama and the roofs blow across red clouds inside the divine spiral there is a voice inside the voice there is light water wind fire smoke the bodies float and rise kind flames bow down and move across the skies never seen blackish red bluish bruised water rises houses fall the child the elders the mothers underwater who will live who will rise the windows fill with the howling where is the transfusion where is the lamp who who in the wet night jagged in the oil waves come the lakes loosen their sultry shape it is the shape of a lost hand a wing broken casinos in biloxi become carnations across the sands and the woman in the wheelchair descends her last breath a rose in the razor rain uptown on mansion hill even the million dollar house bows in the negative shade someone is afloat a family dissolves the nation disappears neighborhoods fade across lost streets the police dressed in newspapers flutter toward nothingness moons who goes there under our floors filtered wooden stars towels and glass gasoline coffins the skin of trees and jalopy tires fish bebop dead from the zoo the dogs half drag ward number nine miss Symphony Spikes and mrs. Hardy Johnson the new plankton new algae of the nameless stroll in the dark ask the next question about kindness then there is a bus a taxi a hearse a helicopter a rescue team a tiny tribe of nine year olds separating the waters the oils and ashes hear the song of splinters and blood tree sap machine oil and old jazz trumpeters z's and x's raffia skirts and jujube hats and a father man holds the hand of his lover saying take care of the children let me go now let me stumble stumble nowhere drink this earth liquor going in petals stadiums and looters celebrities cameras cases more water cases again and again a new land edge emerges a new people emerges where race and class and death and life and water and tears and loss and life and death destruction and life and tears compassion and loss and a fire stolen bus rumbles toward you all directions wherever you are alive still

Ae weet forenicht i’ the yow-trummle I saw yon antrin thing, A watergaw wi’ its chitterin’ licht Ayont the on-ding; An’ I thocht o’ the last wild look ye gied Afore ye deed! There was nae reek i’ the laverock’s hoose That nicht—an’ nane i’ mine; But I hae thocht o’ that foolish licht Ever sin’ syne; An’ I think that mebbe at last I ken What your look meant then.

From a microlight, the Owens River, cut and siphoned to an aqueduct: a corridor through banks of trees, into scuffed desert dunes, mountains scaling to the right, to the left dry veins in the valley, saline and pink, the water channeled slowly through scatch grass, under dirt tracks and fences, twenty miles, thirty — black line turning silver in midday sun, dipping beneath the roar of Route 395 into the shade of the alkaline hills. It zigzags past farms, arcs around quarries, swipes the bar code of a glinting new town, the alien discs of pivot irrigation growing sunflowers, roses, and corn. Then follows the highway, just after Big Pine, rejoins the river north of Fish Springs, is diverted again, south of the reservoir — And does water care, if it’s river or aqueduct? Its vessel curved concrete, but the same constant flow, gunneling south, hugging the contours of eastern Sierra, past Independence, the airport, the golf course, along the right hand of Owens’ dry lake bed, red swirling dust clouds kept down by sprinklers. From up in the air the twin Haiwee Reservoir is knuckle and knee joint where the line disappears — becomes pipeline and conduit under the desert, punching for groundwater, surfacing riveted over Mojave, two hundred miles on from its native cradle, gray zombie spring tracing through forest to Santa Clarita, the treatment plant: the last reserve and loud cascades above the lights and life of Los Angeles.

1 One man held the huge pig down and the other stuck an ice pick into the jugular, which is when we started to pay attention. The blood rose ten feet with force while the sow swam on its back as if to cut its own neck. Its fatty back smacked the slippery cement while the assassins shuffled to keep their balance, and the bloody fountain rose and fell back and rose less and less high, until the red plume reentered the pig at the neck, and the belly collapsed and the pig face went dull. 2 I knew the pig was the butcher’s, whose game lived mainly behind our garage. Sometimes turkeys, always roosters and sheep. Once the windmill turned two days without stopping. The butcher would walk in his apron straight for the victim. The others would scratch and babble and get in the way. Then the butcher would lead the animal to the back door of his shop, stopping to kill it on a stump. It was always evening, after closing. The sea breeze would be rising, cloaking the hour in brine. 3 The pig we saw slaughtered was more than twice anything shut up in the patch we trespassed to make havoc. Since the butcher was Italian, not Jewish, that would be his pig. Like the barber who carried a cigar box of bets to the stationery store, like the Greek who made sweets and hid Greek illegals, immigrant “submarines,” the butcher had a business, his business, by which he took from our hands the cleaver and serrated knife for the guts, and gave us back in butcher paper and outer layers of brown wrapping our lives for their cries. 4 Hung up to drain, the great pig, hacked into portions, looked like a puzzle we could put together in the freezer to make a picture of a pig of course, a map, clothes or other things when we looked.

When it snows, he stands at the back door or wanders around the house to each window in turn and watches the weather like a lover. O farm boy, I waited years for you to look at me that way. Now we’re old enough to stop waiting for random looks or touches or words, so I find myself watching you watching the weather, and we wait together to discover whatever the sky might bring.

Often the slightest gesture is most telling, As when he reaches tenderly in passing To pluck the yellow leaf from the dark fall Of her hair, or even the absence of all gesture: The way she doesn’t need to turn to know Who, in this gathering of friends, has touched her. It was as if he dreamed some private garden. Perhaps he woke from it, mid-reach, to find His hand too near her hair in this crowded yard, And maybe even now she’s shuttering in (She’s even better than you or I at that) A storm of worry and recrimination— Did anyone notice? how could he do that here!— By seamlessly continuing to tell you About her trip to see her favorite Vermeer This morning in the Delft show at the Met: “So now they say she isn’t weighing pearls Or gold or anything—it’s just the light Gleaming off empty scales.” So much is hard To know for sure. If I confronted her, She’d say it was just a leaf—who could afford To disagree? Could we? Now she’s explaining How the girl faces a mirror we can’t see into And how behind her hangs a gloomy painting Of the Last Judgment: “Over her head God Floats in a cloud,” she says, “like a thought balloon.” But you don’t hear. You’re watching me. I nod.