1630 Nature poems

It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky, like spiders when a fly is caught, began to appear. And there, not the promised land, but barbwire and barbwire with nothing growing under it. I tried to fly that dusk after a bat said la sangre del saguaro nos seduce. Sometimes I wake and my throat is dry, so I drive to botanical gardens to search for red fruit clutched to saguaros, the ones at dusk I threw rocks at for the sake of slashing hunger. But I never find them here. These bats say speak English only. Sometimes in my car, that viscous red syrup clings to my throat, and it’s a tender seed toward my survival: I also scraped needles first, then carved those tall torsos for water, then spotlights drove me and thirty others dashing into palos verdes, green-striped trucks surrounded us, our empty bottles rattled and our breath spoke with rust. When the trucks left, a cold cell swallowed us.

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling!  You scatter all my winter dreams.” Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling!  Songless, peevish thing!  You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.” Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept.  And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass. And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves!  They make such noise!  They scatter all my winter dreams.”

The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words and in touch blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow began remembering all down her thick length, from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine down through the great broken heart to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

The park admits the wind, the petals lift and scatter like versions of myself I was on the verge of becoming; and ten years on and ten blocks down I still can’t tell whether this dispersal resembles a fist unclenching or waving goodbye. But the petals scatter faster, seeking the rose, the cigarette vendor, and at least I’ve got by pumping heart some rules of conduct: refuse to choose between turning pages and turning heads though the stubborn dine alone. Get over “getting over”: darks clouds don’t fade but drift with ever deeper colors. Give up on rooted happiness (the stolid trees on fire!) and sweet reprieve (a poor park but my own) will follow. There is still a chance the empty gazebo will draw crowds from the greater world. And meanwhile, meanwhile’s far from nothing: the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees.

Our ropes are the roots of our life. We fish low in the earth, the river beneath runs through our veins, blue and cold in a riverbed. When the sun comes up, the moon moves slowly to the left. I tie the logs and limbs together, holding them in place. The ocean beats them smooth like rock. Here my sense of time is flat. I find in a strip of damp sand footprints and marks of hands, and torn pieces of flesh. Night is a beast. The tide moves, gushing back and forth. Sunlight touches our faces, turning us, turning us, turning us in our morning sleep. 1976

The rice field birds are too clever for scarecrows, They know what they love, milk in the grain. When it happens, there will be no time to look for anyone. Husband, children, nine brothers and sisters. You will drop your sugarcane-stick-beating of plastic bucket, Stop shouting at birds and run. They will load you in trucks and herd you for a hundred miles. Old men will teach you trade with soldiers at checkpoints. You will give them your spoon, blanket and beans, They’ll let you keep your life. And if you jump off the truck, The army jeep trailing it will run you over. Later, they will accuse you of giving up your land. Later, you will stand in distribution lines and won’t receive enough to eat. Your mother will weave you new underwear from flour sacks. And they’ll give you plastic tents, cooking pots, Vaccine cards, white pills, and wool blankets. And you will keep your cool. Standing with eyes shut tight like you’ve got soap in them. Arms stretched wide like you’re catching rain.

When fall brought the graders to Atlas Road, I drove through gray dust thick as a battle and saw the ditch freshly scattered with gravel. Leveling, shaving on the bevel, the blade and fanged scraper had summoned sleepers— limestone loaves and blue slate, skulls of quartz not even early freeze had roused. Some rocks were large as buckets, others just a scone tumbled up and into light the first time in ages. Loose, sharp, they were a hazard to anyone passing. So I gathered what I could, scooped them into the bed and trucked my freight away under birdsong in my own life's autumn. I was eager to add to the snaggled wall bordering my single acre, to be safe, to be still and watch the planet's purposeful turning behind a cairn of roughly balanced stones. Uprooted, scarred, weather-gray of bones, I love their old smell, the familiar unknown. To be sure this time I know where I belong I have brought, at last, the vagrant road home.

this morning weaving Chi in the garden invisible ball in my hand * Halong Bay battle distant memory smoke from Gulf of Tonkin * did the atom ever know its destiny how our hands create? A student asked me, “Why do your people believe in dragons?” * river birch – undressing in the wind * the solid bones of elk antlers or branches of a limber pine – memory bobcat with mange unwatered plants also dying * mountain lion her land, before ours invasive plants * scent of orange blossoms – memories of my late grandma who planted this tree yarrow seedlings pop up a week later – each moment a small beginning * stopped in my tracks by a primrose blooming – I, too, will overcome this * dinner a bowl of rice and soy sauce food to survive on * my heart the Santa Ana winds today branches fall to the ground

I have seen the arrested shrub inform the crag with grief. Lichens crust the rocks with red. Thorns punctuate the leaf. Sorrow is not a desert where one endures the other— but footing lost and halting step. And then another.

In the barn demoted to garage, the ax in a cherry stump can’t be budged. Daylight perforates siding despite the battered armor of license plates— corroded colors, same state: decay, their dates the only history of whoever tilled the soil and left, as a welcome, the skull of a possum nailed to the door, and the trail of lime to the torn sack in a corner where cobwebs festoon a scythe. Rusted sharp, it sings when he grips its splintery handle, swings, and crowns topple from Queen Anne’s lace.