1630 Nature poems

Can we learn wisdom watching insects now, or just the art of quiet observation? Creatures from the world of leaf and flower marking weather’s variation. The huge dry summer of the ladybirds (we thought we’d never feel such heat again) started with white cabbage butterflies sipping at thin trickles in the drain. Then one by one the ladybirds appeared obeying some far purpose or design. We marvelled at their numbers in the garden, grouped together, shuffling in a line. Each day a few strays turned up at the table, the children laughed to see them near the jam exploring round the edges of a spoon. One tried to drink the moisture on my arm. How random and how frail seemed their lives, and yet how they persisted, refugees, saving energy by keeping still and hiding in the grass and in the trees. And then one day they vanished overnight. Clouds gathered, storm exploded, weather cleared. And all the wishes that we might have had in such abundance simply disappeared.

I wanted to see where beauty comes from without you in the world, hauling my heart across sixty acres of northeast meadow, my pockets filling with flowers. Then I remembered, it’s you I miss in the brightness and body of every living name: rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch. You are the green wonder of June, root and quasar, the thirst for salt. When I finally understand that people fail at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle, the paper wings of the dragonfly aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity? If I get the story right, desire is continuous, equatorial. There is still so much I want to know: what you believe can never be removed from us, what you dreamed on Walnut Street in the unanswerable dark of your childhood, learning pleasure on your own. Tell me our story: are we impetuous, are we kind to each other, do we surrender to what the mind cannot think past? Where is the evidence I will learn to be good at loving? The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies. There are violet hills, there is the covenant of duskbirds. The moon comes over the mountain like a big peach, and I want to tell you what I couldn’t say the night we rushed North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers and the way you go into yourself, calling my half-name like a secret. I stand between taproot and treespire. Here is the compass rose to help me live through this. Here are twelve ways of knowing what blooms even in the blindness of such longing. Yellow oxeye, viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms pleading do not forget me. We hunger for eloquence. We measure the isopleths. I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude. The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries. Fireflies turn on their electric wills: an effulgence. Let me come back whole, let me remember how to touch you before it is too late.

It is a sultry day; the sun has drunk The dew that lay upon the morning grass; There is no rustling in the lofty elm That canopies my dwelling, and its shade Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint And interrupted murmur of the bee, Settling on the sick flowers, and then again Instantly on the wing. The plants around Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms. But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills, With all their growth of woods, silent and stern, As if the scorching heat and dazzling light Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds, Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven– Their bases on the mountains–their white tops Shining in the far ether–fire the air With a reflected radiance, and make turn The gazer’s eye away. For me, I lie Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf, Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun, Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind That still delays his coming. Why so slow, Gentle and voluble spirit of the air? Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth Coolness and life! Is it that in his caves He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge, The pine is bending his proud top, and now Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes; Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves! The deep distressful silence of the scene Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds And universal motion. He is come, Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs, And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs, And sound of swaying branches, and the voice Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers, By the road-side and the borders of the brook, Nod gayly to each other; glossy leaves Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew Were on them yet, and silver waters break Into small waves and sparkle as he comes.

O wind, thou hast thy kingdom in the trees, And all thy royalties Sweep through the land to-day. It is mid June, And thou, with all thy instruments in tune, Thine orchestra Of heaving fields and heavy swinging fir, Strikest a lay That doth rehearse Her ancient freedom to the universe. All other sound in awe Repeats its law: The bird is mute; the sea Sucks up its waves; from rain The burthened clouds refrain, To listen to thee in thy leafery, Thou unconfined, Lavish, large, soothing, refluent summer wind.

1 I tried to live that way for a while, among the trees, the green breeze, chewing Bubblicious and by the edge of the pool      spitting it out. The book open on my chest, a towel at my back      the diving board thwok ing, and leaving never arrived      Cut it out my mother said     my brother clowning around with a water gun Cut it out. The planes arrowed into silence, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, always coming home from summer     over the bridge to Brooklyn. The father stabbed on Orange Street, the Betamax in the trash, the Sasha doll the dog chewed up, hollow plastic arms gaping. Powdered pink lemonade, tonguing the sweet grains liquid-thick. I could stand in that self   for years wondering is it better to anticipate than to age     Imagining children with five different men, a great flood that would destroy your possessions     and free you to wander. Bathing suits and apples and suntan oil and a mother bending over you shadow of   her face on yours. It’s gone, that way, the breeze, the permanent pool. A father saying “ghost” and the sheets slipping off   the oak tree’s bough. When I wake, leaves in the water. You could say green forever and not be lying. 2 The pond near the house in Maine where we lived for one year to “get away” from the city     the pond where the skaters     on Saturdays came, red scarves     through white snow, voices drawing near and     pulling away, trees against the clouds. Trying to live off   the land for a while. Too hard in the end my father said.     What did he say? Forget it     you weren’t listening     He wore fishing overalls most days and stank of   guts. Our shouts slipping, the green garbage cans edging the white scar pond, so many days like secrets about to be divulged . . . White snow; to stink of   fish guts but     to be trying to live:               the pond near the house and the sound of   voices     drawing near. As you aged you got distracted, indebted. In the hospital around my mother the machines     beeped, the long leads of   the heart monitor, drooping parabolas. It’s not worth dying for     she said. What was it she meant? Swollen shells, the desiccated brown seedpods we used to pinch onto our noses and skate about     putting on airs. Then the books opened their pages and with our red woolen scarves flying and the Freezy Freakies’ once-invisible hearts reddening into the cold we disappeared. Evian bottles skitter against the chain-link fence. It’s gone     that way     the green planes arrowing into silence     gum wrappers slipping to the ground. O wild West Wind     be thou our friend and blow away the trash. Salvage us from     the heap of our making and Cut it out my mother said     Stop worrying about the future, it doesn’t belong to us and we don’t belong to it. 3 The surface more slippery, slick and white the ice. I stand at the pond’s edge gather the information     darkening there hello algae     hello fish pond my mind in the depths     going. On the beach I dig, tunnel to the hands of   the woman who stitched this red shirt     holes all the way to China. It got so easy to     get used to it, the orchestration of meaning against the night, life a tower you could climb on not a junk heap     pale picture books yellowing on the shelves. It got so     I close my eyes and walk along the hospital hall. The iris quivering in the March light, a nurse taking my mother’s pulse not paid enough to help us as we wished to be helped. And your hope left behind     turning the pages of   magazines, the models in Prada. As a girl it was a quest, to feel exploded every second, pudding pops     and Vietnam vets standing on the corner shaking their Styrofoam cups.     Holding her cup my mother stands, petting the dog, it’s 1982     the sun tunneling in     she drinks her coffee Cut it out or     Forget it or     Hello. Look, I’ve made a telephone for us. Put that cup to your ear, and I’ll put it to mine, and listen     I just need to find one of those Styrofoam cups and what about you     where did you go what kind of night is it there electric synthetic blackened or burnt. 4 At night they come to you distorted and bright, like an old print on a light box, present,     present,          not quite. Are we inventing them as we sleep, or are they still     happening in a time we can’t touch? The hockey game on the blue tv glowing and slowing     I come home to a man slumped on the couch not-quite-saying a greeting     all the gone ones there the slap of skates     all gone and the commentator it’s going on forever the blade moving along rink says What a slapshot what a shot. You make a life, it is made of days and days, ordinary and subvocal, not busy becoming what they could be,               dark furlings of tiny church feelings, mysterious, I mean, and intricate like that high-windowed light — intricate and mysterious          I come home. Near our house we hung out on the Promenade after school the boys smoking the security systems in the Center blinking     a disco party blue red / blue red the East River reflecting scraped sky     cornices and clouds we could hear the roar of cars across it and taste the chemical air of   the offices the fathers worked in we’d been there to pick them up for the long weekend in the Catskills the hum-gray computers, the ibm Selectrics massive on the desks, eleven, twelve, thirteen, riding the graffitied subways, flirting, the boys     grabbing us calling     hey     hey. Changeable one day to the next. Jon talking of atheism blond hair in strips          At night the bomb mushrooming over the Statue of   Liberty, white blinding everywhere.          Oh, she said, don’t worry just a dream          just a dream. Everyone is scared of   Russia. Imagine          she laughed     We used to have to hide under our desks! Forget it     you weren’t listening     I was trying Don’t worry it gets you nothing to tell you something     the air cold the maples bare your mother pregnant Come on the horses are     past the window with a son much younger than you of   the house she rode them past the river where all the Catholic kids sailed ice boats uncles taking cash to wire home to Ireland. The future isn’t here yet, it’s always going to be,     but I’m holding you, walking the Promenade, thirty-six, the ferry crossing the river again. 5 and for a while               rain on the dirt road and the pastured gray horse     holding Chex Mix up to its fuzzed mouth     pockets of   time all summer     eating  ghosts in the arcade Pac-Man alive quarter after quarter I keep trying     Cut it out she said and forget it     I was trying to tell you my father cooking fish in the kitchen licking his thumb     to turn the page. In the meantime you try not to go into a kind of exile — Oh, you read too many books, says my friend Dan     Here’s the tv . And the small voices of children     enter the room, they sound so narrow and light and possible. But don’t you think we’re always making the same standing at the car rental kind of mistake we began by making at the last minute, rushing to call our fathers before setting off for vacation.     It’s warmer this August than it has been for decades. Still the sun bathing us isn’t preposterous or cold.          Grace: imagine it and all the afterworld fathers sleeping with their hair perfectly          combed faces mortician-clean unlike the ones they wore. In the motel Reagan on tv his hair in that parted wave     the milk prices up, my mother says, inflation.     Key Food on Montague, the linoleum tiles dirty and cracked, the dairy case goose-pimpling my skin. Those tiles are still there. She is dead now     and so is he. I know it seems bare to say it bare to     bare linoleum tiles. You who come after me I will be underfoot but     Oh, come off it, start again. We all live amid surfaces and                    and I wish I had the     Start over     Come on thou Step into the street, amidst the lightly turning trash, your hair lifting in the wind     Remember I have thought of   you the lines of our skates converging in a future etc. etc., the past the repository of   what can be salvaged, grace watering the basil on the windowsill, until the day comes of   looking back at it all, like a projectionist at a movie slipping through the reel, the stripped sound of   time — I tried to live that way for a while Bubblicious and          spitting it out Only forget it you          were if   I could hear your voice     again     I could pretend Rise and shine she called in the morning     Rise and shine leaves in the water     intricate and the dying Dutch elms the cool blue pool pockets of    time          Sun-In bleaching our hair the faces they wore     arcade ghosts and lilacs by the door in Maine where she leaned     close to me     said smell the planes buzzed     a purple light     fingers sticky if   I could only hear it again     you could say forever     tonguing the sweet grains     you could say forever     and not be

I saw an eagle sweep to the sky— The Godlike! – seeking his place on high, With a strong, and wild, and rapid wing— A dark, and yet a dazzling thing; And his arching neck, his bristling crest, And the dark plumes quivering upon his breast; And his eye, bent up to each beam of light, Like a bright sword flash’d with a sword in fight. I saw him rise o’er the forest trees; I saw his pinion ride the breeze; Beyond the clouds I watched him tower On his path of pride – his flight of power. I watched him wheeling, stern and lone, Where the keenest ray of the sun was thrown; Soaring, circling – bathed in light: Such was that desert eagle’s flight. Suddenly, then, to my straining eye, I saw the strong wing slack on high; Falling, falling to earth once more; The dark breast covered with foam and gore; The dark eyes’ glory dim with pain; Sick to death with a sun-struck brain! Reeling down from that height divine, Eagle of heaven! such fall was thine! Even so we see the sons of light, Up to the day-beam steer their flight; And the wing of genius cleaves the sky, As the clouds rush on when the winds are high: Then comes the hour of sudden dread— Then is the blasting sunlight shed; And the gifted fall in their agony, Sund-struck eagle! to die like thee!

XXXVIII Over the cliffs of the hillside: the sun then below in the valley the earth covered with flowers Zurita enamored friend takes in the sun of photosynthesis Zurita will now never again be friend since 7 P.M. it's been getting dark Night is the insane asylum of the plants XLII Enclosed with the four walls of a bathroom: I looked up at the ceiling and began to clean the walls and the floor the sink   all of it You see: Outside the sky was God and he was sucking at my soul —believe me! I wiped my weeping eyes LVII In the narrow broken bed restless all night like a spent candle lit again I thought I saw Buddha many times At my side I felt a woman's gasp for air but Buddha was only the pillows and the woman is sleeping the eternal dream LXIII Today I dreamed that I was King they were dressing me in black-and-white spotted pelts Today I moo with my head about to fall as the church bells' mournful clanging says that milk goes to market LXXXV They've shaved my head they've dressed me in these gray wool rags —Mom keeps on smoking I am Joan of Arc They catalog me on microfilm XCII The glass is transparent like water Dread of prisms and glass I circle the light so as not to lose myself in them

A last rock-skip hurlstorm (crazing river-glass) the closest they ever were. • In right lockstitch snared and split some fire-supper cooked on sticks. • By dawn the older brother took to chucking what bottle-frags he could find and crud-oysters across. The (high-pitched) younger blacked our waters with a yowl. • Lord the sound such as rose from him carried so— Carved into us. Clings. • Hadn’t they clung tooth and claw to branch and bark. — Came a man (and truck) to take them off. • Dieseled those boys off away some say somewheres upcountry, inland. • Where it was they landed (why) nobody not them knows. • No body not them knows just how they humped and grubbled home what road they’d graved what woods criss-crossed which creeks which trains they’d hopped who helped. • Came safe home sure        but blank as houses. Came safe home       —as him  —and him. —as (evermore) not them.

This is the time lean woods shall spend A steeped-up twilight, and the pale evening drink, And the perilous roe, the leaper to the west brink, Trembling and bright to the caverned cloud descend. Now shall you see pent oak gone gusty and frantic, Stooped with dry weeping, ruinously unloosing The sparse disheveled leaf, or reared and tossing A dreary scarecrow bough in funeral antic. Then, tatter you and rend, Oak heart, to your profession mourning; not obscure The outcome, not crepuscular; on the deep floor Sable and gold match lustres and contend. And rags of shrouding will not muffle the slain. This is the immortal extinction, the priceless wound Not to be staunched. The live gold leaks beyond, And matter’s sanctified, dipped in a gold stain.

You’re expected to see only the top, where sky scrambles bloom, and not the spindly leg, hairy, fending off tall, green darkness beneath. Like every flower, she has a little theory, and what she thinks is up.   I imagine the long climb out of the dark beyond morning glories, day lilies, four o’clocks up there to the dream she keeps lifting, where it’s noon all day.