1630 Nature poems

A crown of handmade nails, as though there were a house here once, burned, where we’ve gardened for fifteen years; the ceramic top of an ancient fuse; this spring the tiny head of a plastic doll— not much compared to what they find in England, where every now and then a coin of the Roman emperors, Severus or Constantius, works its way up, but something, as though nothing we’ve ever touched wants to stay in the earth, the patient artifacts waiting, having been lost or cast away, as though they couldn’t bear the parting, or because they are the only messengers from lives that were important once, waiting for the power of the frost to move them to the mercy of our hands.

Today I saw the word written on the poplar leaves. It was

The Moon's a little prairie-dog. He shivers through the night. He sits upon his hill and cries For fear that I will bite. The Sun's a broncho.   He's afraid Like every other thing, And trembles morning, noon and night Lest I should spring and sting.

I. Only now, in spring, can the place be named: tulip poplar, daffodil, crab apple, dogwood, budding pink-green, white-green, yellow on my knowing.   All winter I was lost. Fall, I found myself here, with no texture my fingers know.   Then, worse, the white longing that downed us deep three months.   No flower heat. That was winter.   But now, in spring, the buds flock our trees.   Ten million exquisite buds, tiny and loud, flaring their petalled wings, bellowing from ashen branches vibrant keys, the chords of spring’s triumph: fisted heart, dogwood; grail, poplar; wine spray, crab apple. The song is drink, is color.   Come.   Now.   Taste. II. The song is drink, is color.   Come now, taste what the world has to offer.   When you eat you will know that music comes in guises— bold of crepe myrtle, sweet of daffodil— beyond sound, guises they never told you could be true.   And they aren’t.   Except they are so real now, this spring, you know them, taste them. Green as kale, the songs of spring, bright as wine, the music.   Faces of this season grin with clobbering wantonness—see the smiles open on each branch?—until you, too, smile. Wide carnival of color, carnival of scent.   We’re all lurching down streets, drunk now from the poplar’s grail.   Wine spray: crab apple. III. From the poplar’s grail, wine spray.   Crab apple brightens jealously to compete.   But by the crab apple’s deep stain, the tulip tree learns modesty.   Only blush, poplar learns, lightly.   Never burn such a dark-hued fire to the core.   Tulip poplar wants herself light under leaf, never, like crab apple, heavy under tart fruit.   Never laden. So the poplar pours just a hint of wine in her cup, while the crab apple, wild one, acts as if her body were a fountain. She would pour wine onto you, just let her. Shameless, she plants herself, and delivers, down anyone’s street, bright invitations. IV. Down anyone’s street-bright invitations. Suck ‘em.   Swallow ‘em.   Eat them whole.   That’s right, be greedy about it.   The brightness calls and you follow because you want to taste, because you want to be welcomed inside the code of that color: red for thirst; green for hunger; pink, a kiss; and white, stain me now.   Soil me with touching.   Is that right? No?   That’s not, you say, what you meant.   Not what you meant at all?   Pardon.   Excuse me, please. Your hand was reaching, tugging at this shirt of flowers and I thought, I guess I thought you were hungry for something beautiful. Come now.   The brightness here might fill you up. V. Come.   Now the brightness here might fill you up, but tomorrow?   Who can know what the next day will bring.   It is like that, here, in spring. Four days ago, the dogwood was a fist in protest.   Now look.   Even she unfurls to the pleasure of the season.   Don’t be ashamed of yourself.   Don’t be.    This happens to us all.   We have thrown back the blanket. We’re naked and we’ve grown to love ourselves. I tell you, do not be ashamed.   Who is more wanton than the dancing crepe myrtle? Is she ashamed?   Why, even the dogwood, that righteous tree of God’s, is full of lust exploding into brightness every spring. VI. Exploding into brightness every spring, I draw you close.   I wonder, do you know how long I’ve wanted to be here?   Each year you grasp me, lift me, carry me inside. Glee is the body of the daffodil reaching tubed fingers through the day, feeling her own trumpeted passion choiring air with hot, colored song.   This is a texture I love.   This is life.   And, too, you love me, inhale my whole being every spring.   Gone winter, heavy clod whose icy body fell into my bed.   I must leave you, but I’ll wait through heat, fall, freeze to hear you cry: Daffodils are up.   My God, what beauty! VII. Daffodils are up, my God!   What beauty concerted down on us last night.   And if I sleep again, I’ll wake to a louder blossoming, the symphony smashing down hothouse walls, and into the world: music. Something like the birds’ return, each morning’s crescendo rising toward its brightest pitch, colors unfurling, petals alluring. The song, the color, the rising ecstasy of spring.   My God.   This beauty.   This, this is what I’ve hoped for.   All my life is here in the unnamed core—dogwood, daffodil, tulip poplar, crab apple, crepe myrtle— only now, in spring, can the place be named.

They flared on the sea green of the Subaru that seemed netted under the unleafing maple, a limestone moulage cut from a quarry and cast in immemorial arrest behind Pete’s Absolute Asphalt truck, throttling still when I alighted and said, besides, in Aleppo once — to nothing but the wind photographed in sunlight; the pavement’s watery brier and children and their ghosts and the air-raid screams of mothers, once, in Aleppo, altered that moment in history when titihihihihi titihihihihi those white houses, stiffened with silence, broke the private change, the public good to dive into pits of leaves.

When in Wisconsin where I once had time the flyway swans came whistling to the rotten Green Bay ice and stayed, not feeding, four days, maybe five, I shouted and threw stones to see them fly. Blue herons followed, or came first. I shot a bittern’s wing off with my gun. For that my wife could cry. My neighbor’s wife mistook the spawning frogs for wood ducks nesting the white pines up on Bean Hill: I straightway set her right. Each April, on the first rainy night I lantern-hunt for salamanders where they hide, toewalking the bottom mucks and muds. I shudder at the scored skin of their sides, the deep flesh tucks. In hand, they dry. I walk in frogspawn jellies on my lawns. One time I hoped the great white birds might brake for the frog ditch and alight, but all the addled past falls in on itself, splash rings close inward on the rising stone, my gun sucks fire, the bone becomes whole bone, light narrows back on point and filament, the forest turns to sand, and only season lacking source rolls round and round, till I in my turns fall forever back clutching my stone, my gun, my light. When in Wisconsin where I once had time and spring beasts gorged my marrows and my tongue, I was not blind: the red eft clambered in my eye.

it is hallelujah time, the swallows tracing an arc of praise just off our balcony, the mountains snow-sparkling in gratitude. Here is our real life — a handful of possible peonies from the market — the life we always intended, swallow life threading the city air with our weaving joy. Are we this simple, then, to sing all day — country songs, old hymns, camp tunes? We even believe the swallows, keeping time.

where the fish had withdrawn her house emerged contours each jagged water crossed morning with required hours shadows empty the chimneys Europe stood between

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey And short the season, first rubythroat in the fading lilacs, alyssum in bloom, a honeybee bumbling in the bleeding heart on my gelding’s grave while beetles swarm him underground. Wet feet, wet cuffs, little flecks of buttercup on my sneaker toes, bluets, violets crowding out the tufts of rich new grass the horses nose and nibble like sleepwalkers held fast— brittle beauty—might this be the last?

Whether anger quickens a lagging stride, and periodic burn-offs in the forest revitalize exhausted soil and flora—. Whether we should take pleasure in the wildcat jubilation of a lightning bolt that whips its silver vein of genesis through the night sky, flash-photo of a white birch upended, the root-system buckled to swollen thunderheads—. And whether naming an offense amounts to sour grapes and common bitterness, or even the conceited nonsense of unwashed yahoo multitudes, a yawping insult to civilized behavior—. Whether a July rainstorm, even when it drenches the unprepared pedestrian and befuddles traffic, might be extravagant, a joy, like the whoops and escalating bop glissandos of Gillespie’s upraised horn, cascading pitches a countersong to meteoric chalk marks Perseids burn across the House of Leo—. And whether peaceful ecstasy might float up from a fifteen-second avalanche reflected in the skier’s goggles, his jacket a spark of scarlet on the topmost slope, waiting for the homeward track to clear.