1630 Nature poems

Clouds thin into form: a hawk pulling a tail of rings—beads of an abacus, the mathematics of light—a lengthening spine, snakeskin no longer inhabited. All day I'm giving a name for what isn't there. Yet somewhere we've left our likeness, the hollow shapes of us. Even though the snake has slipped into the shade, the shed skin, deceptively whole, hidden in the sun-flecked grass, remembers what it once held.

Then all the nations of birds lifted together the huge net of the shadows of this earth in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues, stitching and crossing it. They lifted up the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes, the shadows of glass-faced towers down evening streets, the shadow of a frail plant on a city sill— the net rising soundless as night, the birds' cries soundless, until there was no longer dusk, or season, decline, or weather, only this passage of phantasmal light that not the narrowest shadow dared to sever. And men could not see, looking up, what the wild geese drew, what the ospreys trailed behind them in silvery ropes that flashed in the icy sunlight; they could not hear battalions of starlings waging peaceful cries, bearing the net higher, covering this world like the vines of an orchard, or a mother drawing the trembling gauze over the trembling eyes of a child fluttering to sleep; it was the light that you will see at evening on the side of a hill in yellow October, and no one hearing knew what change had brought into the raven's cawing, the killdeer's screech, the ember-circling chough such an immense, soundless, and high concern for the fields and cities where the birds belong, except it was their seasonal passing, Love, made seasonless, or, from the high privilege of their birth, something brighter than pity for the wingless ones below them who shared dark holes in windows and in houses, and higher they lifted the net with soundless voices above all change, betrayals of falling suns, and this season lasted one moment, like the pause between dusk and darkness, between fury and peace, but, for such as our earth is now, it lasted long.

When first I walked here I hobbled along ties set too close together for a boy to step easily on each. I thought my stride one day would reach every other and from then on I would walk in time with the way toward that Lobachevskian haze up ahead where the two rails meet. Here we put down our pennies, dark, on shined steel; they trembled, fell still; then the locomotive out of Attleboro rattling its berserk wheel-rods into perfect circles, brightened them into wafers, the way a fork mashes into view the inner light of a carrot in a stew. In this late March sunshine, crossing the trees at the angle of a bow when it effleurages out of the chanterelle the C three octaves above middle C, the vertical birthwood remembers its ascent lines, shrunken by half, exactly back down, each tree on its fallen summer. Back then, these rocks often asked blood offerings—but this one, once, asked bone, the time Billy Wallace tripped and broke out his front teeth. Fitted with gold replicas, he asked, speaking more brightly, “What good are golden teeth, given what we’ve got to eat?” Nebuchadnezzar spent seven years down on all fours eating vetch and alfalfa, ruminating the mouth-feel of “bloom” and “wither,” until he was whole. If you held a grass blade between both thumbs and blew hard you could blurt a shriek out of it—like that beseeching leaves oaks didn’t drop last winter just now scratch on a breeze. Maybe Billy, lured by bones’ memory, comes back sometimes, too, to the Seekonk Woods, to stand in the past and just look at it. Here he might kneel, studying this clump of grass, as a god might inspect the strands of a human sneeze that percusses through. Or he might stray into the now untrafficked whistling-lanes of the mourning doves, who used to call and call into the future, and give a start, as though, this very minute, by awful coincidence, they reach it. And at last traipse off down the tracks, with arrhythmic gait, as wanderers must do once they realize: the over-the-unknown route, too, ends up where time wants. On this spot I skinned the muskrat. The musk breezed away. I buried the rat. Of the fur I made a hat, which as soon as put on began to rot off, causing my scalp to crawl. In circles, of course, keeping to the skull. One day could this scrap of damp skin crawl all the way off, and the whole organism follow? To do what? Effuse with musk, or rot with rat? When, a quarter- turn after the sun, the half-moon, too, goes down and we find ourselves in the night's night, then somewhere hereabouts in the dark must be death. Knowledge of it beforehand is surely among existence’s most spectacular feats—and yet right here, on this ordinary afternoon, in these woods, with a name meaning “black goose” in Wampanoag, or in modern Seekonkese, “slob blowing fat nose,” this unlikely event happens—a creature walking the tracks knows it will come. Then too long to touch every tie, his stride is now just too short to reach every other, and so he is to be still the wanderer, the hirtle of too much replaced by the common limp of too little. But he almost got there. Almost stepped in consonance with the liturgical, sleeping gods’ snores you can hear humming up from former times inside the ties. He almost set foot in that border zone where what follows blows back, shimmering everything, making walking like sleepwalking, railroad tracks a country lane on a spring morning, on which a man, limping but blissful, makes his way homeward, his lips, suppled by kissing to bunch up like that, blowing these short strands of hollowed-out air, haunted by future, into a tune on the tracks. I think I’m about to be shocked awake. As I was in childhood, when I battered myself back to my senses against a closed door, or woke up hanging out of an upstairs window. Somnambulism was my attempt to slip under cover of nightmare across no father’s land and embrace a phantasm. If only I had found a way to enter his hard time served at labor by day, by night in solitary, and put my arms around him in reality, I might not now be remaking him in memory still; anti-alchemizing bass kettle’s golden reverberations back down to hair, flesh, blood, bone, the base metals. I want to crawl face down in the fields and graze on the wild strawberries, my clothes stained pink, even for seven years if I must, if they exist. I want to lie out on my back under the thousand stars and think my way up among them, through them, and a little distance past them, and attain a moment of absolute ignorance, if I can, if human mentality lets us. I have always intended to live forever; but not until now, to live now. The moment I have done one or the other, I here swear, no one will have to drag me , I’ll come but never will I agree to burn my words. The poplar logs creosoted asleep under the tracks have stopped snoring. Maybe they’ve already waked up. The bow saws at G. An oak leaf rattles on its tree. The rails may never meet, O fellow Euclideans, for you, for me. So what if we groan. That’s our noise. Laughter is our stuttering in a language we can’t speak yet. Behind, the world made of wishes goes dark. Ahead, if not now then never, shines what is.

The first four leaders had broken knees The four old dams had broken knees The flock would start to run, then freeze The first four leaders had broken knees ‘Why is the flock so docile?’ asked the hawk. ‘Yes, why is the flock so docile,’ laughed the dog, ‘The shepherd’s mallet is in his hand, The shepherd’s hand is on the land, The flock will start to run, then freeze— The four old dams have broken knees,’ The dog explained. The hawk exclaimed: ‘The shepherd leads an easy life!’ ‘I know, I know,’ cried the shepherd’s wife, ‘He dresses me out in a narrow skirt and leaves me home to clean his dirt. Whenever I try to run, I freeze— All the old dams have broken knees.’ ‘Well, I’m so glad he doesn’t dare to bring his breaking power to bear on me,’ said the hawk, flying into the sun; while the dog warned, in his dog run: ‘Hawk—the shepherd has bought a gun!’ ‘Why is the hawk so docile?’ asked the flock, ‘He fell to the ground in a feathery breeze; He lies in a dumb lump under the trees, We believe we’d rather have broken knees Than lose our blood and suddenly freeze Like him.’ But the oldest dam gave her leg a lick, And said, ‘Some die slow and some die quick, A few run away and the rest crawl, But the shepherd never dies at all— Damn his soul. I’d will my wool to the shepherd’s wife If she could change the shepherd’s life, But I myself would bring him low If only,only I knew how.’

In the aftermath of calculus your toast fell butter-side down. Squirrels swarmed the lawns in flight patterns. The hovercraft helped the waves along. From every corner there was perspective. On the billboards the diamonds were real, in the stores, only zirconia. I cc’ed you. I let you know. Sat down to write the Black Ice Memo. Dinner would be meager & reminiscent of next week’s lunch. So what if I sat on the sectional? As always I was beside myself.

Heartbeat trembling your kingdom of leaves near the ceremony of water, I never insisted on you. I admit I delayed. I was the Empress of Delay. But it can’t be put off now. On the sacred branch of my only voice – I insist. Insist for us all, which is the job of the voice, and especially of the poet. Else what am I for, what use am I if I don’t insist? There are messages to send. Gatherings and songs. Because we need to insist. Else what are we for? What use are we?

For one thing, there’s no more snow to watch from an evening window, and no armfuls of logs to carry into the house so cumbersome you have to touch the latch with an elbow, and once inside, no iron stove waiting like an old woman for her early dinner of wood. No hexagrams of frost to study carefully on the cold glass pages of the bathroom. And there’s no black sweater to pull over my head while I wait for the coffee to brew. Instead, I walk around in children’s clothes— shorts and a T-shirt with the name of a band lettered on the front, announcing me to nobody. The sun never fails to arrive early and refuses to leave the party even after I go from room to room, turning out all the lights, and making a face. And the birds with those long white necks? All they do is swivel their heads to look at me as I walk past as if they all knew my password and the name of the city where I was born.

There was a roaring in the wind all night; The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising calm and bright; The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters. All things that love the sun are out of doors; The sky rejoices in the morning's birth; The grass is bright with rain-drops;—on the moors The hare is running races in her mirth; And with her feet she from the plashy earth Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun, Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run. I was a Traveller then upon the moor; I saw the hare that raced about with joy; I heard the woods and distant waters roar; Or heard them not, as happy as a boy: The pleasant season did my heart employ: My old remembrances went from me wholly; And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy. But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might Of joys in minds that can no further go, As high as we have mounted in delight In our dejection do we sink as low; To me that morning did it happen so; And fears and fancies thick upon me came; Dim sadness—and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name. I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky; And I bethought me of the playful hare: Even such a happy Child of earth am I; Even as these blissful creatures do I fare; Far from the world I walk, and from all care; But there may come another day to me— Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty. My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, As if life's business were a summer mood; As if all needful things would come unsought To genial faith, still rich in genial good; But how can He expect that others should Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all? I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; Of Him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough, along the mountain-side: By our own spirits are we deified: We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness. Now, whether it were by peculiar grace, A leading from above, a something given, Yet it befell that, in this lonely place, When I with these untoward thoughts had striven, Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven I saw a Man before me unawares: The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs. As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie Couched on the bald top of an eminence; Wonder to all who do the same espy, By what means it could thither come, and whence; So that it seems a thing endued with sense: Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself; Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead, Nor all asleep—in his extreme old age: His body was bent double, feet and head Coming together in life's pilgrimage; As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage Of sickness felt by him in times long past, A more than human weight upon his frame had cast. Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face, Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood: And, still as I drew near with gentle pace, Upon the margin of that moorish flood Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood, That heareth not the loud winds when they call, And moveth all together, if it move at all. At length, himself unsettling, he the pond Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look Upon the muddy water, which he conned, As if he had been reading in a book: And now a stranger's privilege I took; And, drawing to his side, to him did say, "This morning gives us promise of a glorious day." A gentle answer did the old Man make, In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew: And him with further words I thus bespake, "What occupation do you there pursue? This is a lonesome place for one like you." Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes. His words came feebly, from a feeble chest, But each in solemn order followed each, With something of a lofty utterance drest— Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach Of ordinary men; a stately speech; Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use, Religious men, who give to God and man their dues. He told, that to these waters he had come To gather leeches, being old and poor: Employment hazardous and wearisome! And he had many hardships to endure: From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor; Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance; And in this way he gained an honest maintenance. The old Man still stood talking by my side; But now his voice to me was like a stream Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide; And the whole body of the Man did seem Like one whom I had met with in a dream; Or like a man from some far region sent, To give me human strength, by apt admonishment. My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills; And hope that is unwilling to be fed; Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills; And mighty Poets in their misery dead. —Perplexed, and longing to be comforted, My question eagerly did I renew, "How is it that you live, and what is it you do?" He with a smile did then his words repeat; And said that, gathering leeches, far and wide He travelled; stirring thus about his feet The waters of the pools where they abide. "Once I could meet with them on every side; But they have dwindled long by slow decay; Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." While he was talking thus, the lonely place, The old Man's shape, and speech—all troubled me: In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace About the weary moors continually, Wandering about alone and silently. While I these thoughts within myself pursued, He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed. And soon with this he other matter blended, Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind, But stately in the main; and, when he ended, I could have laughed myself to scorn to find In that decrepit Man so firm a mind. "God," said I, "be my help and stay secure; I'll think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor!"

A loon dives in the swollen river. It followed the river first. The town lies between it and canals Diverted from the river. The beak of the loon is orange, Its wingspan broader than a duck’s. My father’s legs were swollen. His once thin ankles barely fit his shoes. His heart no longer fed his body. Toxins and liquids began to drown him. His silly doctors didn’t see He couldn’t breathe. My father took me to the river. We fished for bass and bluegill, Sunfish, cats. Fat suckers, Their lips like suction cups, We put back. Too many little bones To catch and make you choke. I no longer want to go fishing. I don’t even want to play In the water. The boat Here has no oars, the current Is too swift. In the dark, teenagers Discover their body together. The body feels like a prison. I kneel by my father’s stapled body. He suctions thick liquid from his lungs. He coughs to clear them; it hurts. He wants more air. He wants To live, the heart’s valve's parachutes Opening with oxygen to feed The body’s healing. A tube Empties the chest cavity. He excretes Liquids and poisons. His shocked kidneys come to life. His stunned heart beats. His lung Opens again. He eats. He poops. He walks. He wants to go home. On the phone, I catch my sister Taking him home. It’s snowing. It’s cold. My brother and mother Help him climb the stairs. I walk down the path By the shallow canal. I see A falcon fishing. The power plant Breathes steam. I hope The wind won’t singe me. I come to the falls Where a little dog Barks and bounces hello. His owner Smiles and greets me. In the church Of Saint Laurence I kneel, I Give thanks, my heart jumps.

Often visitors there, saddened by lack of trees, go out to a promontory. Then, backed by the banded sunset, the trail of the Conquistadores, the father puts on the camera, the leather albatross, and has the children imitate saguaros. One at a time they stand there smiling, fingers up like the tines of a fork while the stately saguaro goes on being entered by wrens, diseases, and sunlight. The mother sits on a rock, arms folded across her breasts. To her the cactus looks scared, its needles like hair in cartoons. With its arms in preacher or waltz position, it gives the impression of great effort in every direction, like the mother. Thousands of these gray-green cacti cross the valley: nature repeating itself, children repeating nature, father repeating children and mother watching. Later, the children think the cactus was moral, had something to teach them, some survival technique or just regular beauty. But what else could it do? The only protection against death was to love solitude.