1630 Nature poems

As P strolled the path around the pond, he sniffed the humid air. His kimono brushed the parched ground. The metals of the earth rose up in traces of dust and hints of lightning: a waft of petrichor, the smell before the rain. Beyond the pale hills of his peaceful land, scores of horse soldiers prepared their armor. Soon the soldiers would sweep across the plains, and the dry politics of princely maneuverings would be as rice paper soaked with blood. Instead of petty policies — immensity. Peaceful farmers would be impaled, paltry officials imprisoned — twisted, screaming, then praying. There on the dusty path the young poet P was just perceiving the beforeness of it all, the pre-. From his masters he had learned that immensity makes the small crucial. A little poem before a big war becomes a necessity. And like a small poem on a long scroll, a lily pad appeared on the pond. P stopped to peer. He puzzled through its pattern of green inside green on water. A poem began to perfuse. It was inside P, but it was also on the lily pad. At...On...    At first only prepositions came to him. He stared into the water, seeing the silvery clouds reflected. Then he leaned at an extreme angle and noticed the pattern of his gown wavering in the reeds. A pinpoint of a poem stabbed him, like the sharp scent of earth before the rain. Petrichor:before, before. • Then drops pelted the pond, pipped at the pond, plunged toward it, plummeted into it, driving P to take refuge beneath the deep tiled eaves of his house. Inside the sliding paper doors were a desk and a futon. On the desk lay a brush. On the futon lay a lover in uneasy sleep on petal-printed silk. He chose the desk. He lifted the brush while looking down at the restive slumberer. In a mere matter of stopped time he had his poem, written from the very tissues of an arm and hand that could plunge a sword. Silver soldiers mass on far horizons, but here, silk pools on the bed. The rain rained; moisture curled the edges of the paper. Seventeen syllables, an epic of energy, made him drowsy and hungry. His lover still asleep, he rose, ate leftover peaches poached in soy sauce and ginger, and, with the rain a drizzle, thought again of his poem. How could he have loved it in the instant after he wrote it, but now be so unsure? He sat at his desk again. Another one? This time he drafted: Poppy? Penis up. Prow into periwinkle. Peony behind. After he calligraphed the puzzle of passion across the page, he woke the one in the pond of pink silk, and they proved it on the futon. He heard the pluvial patter on the eaves, while they angled and slipped, perspiring on silk. The stamping and snorting of the horses sweating in their armor was far too far away to be sensed by P, but he heard. He felt the pond muddied and the roof cracked and the poems scattered. How far was he now from this picture in his mind? He worked to make his pleasure stay, pitiable and small against the portents rising, for P was afraid this afternoon would never be remembered after the bloody conquering. But later the barbarians would bivouac in this house, the pond saved for drinking water, the path roughened by horses, and the 
reverse of P’s scroll used for another man’s military diary, his afternoon’s foreboding and pleasure a preparation for the future, and in the future, a stay against another’s view of the past. “P from Alphabetique,” 2013 by Kara Kosaka

April fool Bear's-foot Bog-onion Devil's-apple Dog parsley Doll's-eyes Fairy hells Flying saucers Four o'clock Gagweed Goosefoot Hare's-ear Indian beans Inkweed Jacob's-coat Lady's-thumb Lion's-beard Locoweed Monkey-fiddle Moonseed Mother-in-law Puncture-vine Naked lady Quaker-bonnets Rabbit-bush Smartweed Sneezeweed Snakegrass Stinking Willie Sundials Swallow-wort Wahoo Wart-cress Witches' thimbles Wolfsbane Wonder berry

From flowering gnarled trees they come, weighing down the branches, dropping with a soft sound onto the loamy ground. Falling and fallen. That’s a pome. Common as an apple. Or more rare. A quince or pear. A knife paring away soft skin exposes tart sweet flesh. And deeper in, five seeds in a core are there to make more pomes. Look how it fits in my hand. What to do? What to do? I could give it to you. Or leave it on the table with a note both true and untrue: Ceci n’est pas un poème. I could paint it as a still life, a small window of light in the top right corner (only a dab of the whitest white), a place to peer in and watch it change and darken as pomes will do. O I remember days.... Climbing the branches of a tree ripe and heavy with pomes. Taking whatever I wanted. There were always enough then. Always enough.

Once when I was living in the heart of a pomegranate, I heard a seed saying, “Someday I shall become a tree, and the wind will sing in my branches, and the sun will dance on my leaves, and I shall be strong and beautiful through all the seasons.” Then another seed spoke and said, “When I was as young as you, I too held such views; but now that I can weigh and measure things, I see that my hopes were vain.” And a third seed spoke also, “I see in us nothing that promises so great a future.” And a fourth said, “But what a mockery our life would be, without a greater future!” Said a fifth, “Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are.” But a sixth replied, “Whatever we are, that we shall continue to be.” And a seventh said, “I have such a clear idea how everything will be, but I cannot put it into words.” Then an eight spoke—and a ninth—and a tenth—and then many—until all were speaking, and I could distinguish nothing for the many voices. And so I moved that very day into the heart of a quince, where the seeds are few and almost silent.

A fly wounds the water but the wound soon heals. Swallows tilt and twitter overhead, dropping now and then toward the outward-radiating evidence of food. The green haze on the trees changes into leaves, and what looks like smoke floating over the neighbor’s barn is only apple blossoms. But sometimes what looks like disaster is disaster: the day comes at last, and the men struggle with the casket just clearing the pews.

The fenestrate surface of the pond surfaces in old companions     snag ripples namely, Saburo I recommend his face for the pond museum above the fox’s skulking face the hare’s face, death’s polished stone the crane’s     larval pearl eyes transmitting the code for a sodden voice in the splintering reeds And when I say I recommend I mean the menagerie in the utmost dark saviors hung from supping trees gone the way of idiot flesh—where you were endowed with a chance, and fucked up Evening, I went down on the pantry, pried open a basket of rice cakes, grew partial to eating in the dark if only to concentrate the sound of walking through the wilderness at night, enlarged without people as wax I sleep in nectar When was the flora brass A woman kneeling among cranes Willows waiting for sticks to arrive to burn cranes from her body genital wind through which No, it has always been this way blooms erupting suspicion, husband making sure each dawn the sticks stay lashed to his back, the wood she waits for thin as blades, and cut as close To fallow soil sea dragon in hand proper, yes, though petrified crimson, pink, indigo, green purple and yellow     lotus cradle in the hedgerow I feel faint     exceptionally hot      here on the ground Should I be sweating this much? Should the sea dragon weigh so heavily? Bronze skin festooning the trees cutting a spirit loose? Carrion flowers slip from my hand

Snapping turtles in the pond eat bass, sunfish, and frogs. They do us no harm when we swim. But early this spring two Canada geese lingered, then built a nest. What I’d heard of, our neighbor feared: goslings, as they paddle about, grabbed from below by a snapper, pulled down to drown. So he stuck hunks of fat on huge, wire-leadered hooks attached to plastic milk-bottle buoys. The first week he caught three turtles and still there are more: sometimes he finds the bottles dragged ashore, the wire wrapped several times around a pine trunk and the steel hook wrenched straight as a pin.

Cold, wet leaves Floating on moss-coloured water And the croaking of frogs— Cracked bell-notes in the twilight.

Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you—banded one?

what a saint you are, shining on everything, drawn to the world like flames are to moths, like honey to bees. So readily do you dole yourself out, and in such abundance so that we might operate our otherwise redundant eyes. For they’d be useless even as shiny bibelots that studded the otherwise dull surfaces of faces. No, in your absence, in that total darkness the eyes wouldn’t see or even be seen. And they would soon shrivel up and desiccate, die out from pointlessness like the little toe will (unless we can find a way to reverse its long decline). Hey, plump eyes! Isn’t it time you put your tiny wet hands together for the light!