1630 Nature poems

Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun, The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run, And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold, With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold, Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew, While he waited to know that his warning was true, And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain. On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden; And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold; Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North, On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth, Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines, And the sun of September melts down on his vines. Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before, What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie? Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling, When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling! When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within! When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune, Our chair a broad pumpkin,—our lantern the moon, Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam, In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team! Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter! Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine! And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express, Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less, That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow, And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!

Whether or not shadows are of the substance such is the expectation I can wait to surprise my vision as a wind enters the valley: sudden and silent in its arrival, drawing to full cry the whorled invisibilities, glassen towers freighted with sky-chaff; that, as barnstorming powers, rammack the small orchard; that well-steaded oaks ride stolidly, that rake the light-leafed ash, that glowing yew trees, cumbrous, heave aside. Amidst and abroad tumultuous lumina, regents, reagents, cloud-fêted, sun-ordained, fly tally over hedgerows, across fields.

Esteville begins to burn; The auburn fields of harvest rise; The torrid flames again return, And thunders roll along the skies. Perspiring Cancer lifts his head, And roars terrific from on high; Whose voice the timid creatures dread; From which they strive with awe to fly. The night-hawk ventures from his cell, And starts his note in evening air; He feels the heat his bosom swell, Which drives away the gloom of fear. Thou noisy insect, start thy drum; Rise lamp-like bugs to light the train; And bid sweet Philomela come, And sound in front the nightly strain. The bee begins her ceaseless hum, And doth with sweet exertions rise; And with delight she stores her comb, And well her rising stock supplies. Let sportive children well beware, While sprightly frisking o’er the green; And carefully avoid the snare, Which lurks beneath the smiling scene. The mistress bird assumes her nest, And broods in silence on the tree, Her note to cease, her wings at rest, She patient waits her young to see.

There was Dai Puw. He was no good. They put him in the fields to dock swedes, And took the knife from him, when he came home At late evening with a grin Like the slash of a knife on his face. There was Llew Puw, and he was no good. Every evening after the ploughing With the big tractor he would sit in his chair, And stare into the tangled fire garden, Opening his slow lips like a snail. There was Huw Puw, too. What shall I say? I have heard him whistling in the hedges On and on, as though winter Would never again leave those fields, And all the trees were deformed. And lastly there was the girl; Beauty under some spell of the beast. Her pale face was the lantern By which they read in life’s dark book The shrill sentence: God is love.

He asked me       if I had a choice what kind of bird would I choose to be. I know what he thought I’d say since he tried to        end my sentences half the time anyway. Something exotic he thought. He thought maybe macaw. That would fit all loudmouthed and primary colored he would think. (He thinks too much I always thought.) But really       at heart I’m more don’t laugh now an L B J little brown job except               except I’m not the flit        from branch to        branch        type such a waste of energy all that wing flap and scritch scritch scratch. Really now can you see me seed pod clamped between my beak like some landowner, Havana cigar clenched between his teeth? No         I think         not I think green heron. You ask why? Personality mainly. That hunched look wings tucked to neck waiting        waiting in the sun on a wide slab of rock alongside a slow river like some old man up from a bad night’s dream where he’s seen his coffin and you say to him Have a nice day and he says Make me. Oh          you want looks I’ll give you looks: long olive green feathers a trace of iridescence I could stand going out       iridescent chestnut sides and head a black crown yes        a crown something regal to flash when you get too close dark bill         bright yellow legs and that creamy streak down my throat and pecs good not great but good         pecs just enough for a quick hop to the next. The best part no sexual dimorphism male         female both alike endless possibilities.

The Poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead In summer luxury,—he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

I have come to collect the various species of America: ruby-spotted, tigers, kites & pipevines — an armory of wings & two-week bodies. The room swells openly & I ascend to the top — I am separate from the boy who swats persistently. Tucked in the corner of a window, a white morpho, the only kind to perch long enough for me to satisfy my collecting — its lunar afterglow still hanging as I pulse & pace to get a closer look. I am separate from the boy who climbs a nearby tower & shouts for his father. Perhaps I am half of this — a set of dots for eyes, spine for spine, my insides half my father’s — half my mother’s.Kuv tus ntsuj plig unlike the fate of quick bodies, sovereign cavities, mother whose torso fell early in harvest — a bed of muscle to hold her from splitting in two — & do we hear it? As in a fever the boy runs back & does not see the white morpho the way I must see it: my personal moon stone-ripe in this foreign corner, mother as fauna forever — inhuman & gazing. Then my body a chariot pulled by a pair of orange helicons sweeping towards the main water feature (complete with koi). This place in which I dream the new body — whole & abiding — I am reaching for the boy now as warden to both the living & the afterliving — the privilege in every gesture — like mother’s first gifts: name & citizenship, poetry always in departure, the song about the moon falling over, fast in flames —

Once in moonlight when I had not slept for three nights, when there was no food and a long rain had stopped, and some had slept outside in the rain you could see the streaks it had left on their skin, once in the eighth week of my captivity, alone in the moonlight outside on the ledge, I looked up and felt the stars move strangely back and forth, a slow rocking, as though the Lord were rocking us somehow back and forth, and I was not afraid but tears came anyway as I remembered my children so far away, the way children can call you back in through your thoughts and keep you awake like hearing the stars ring all night long. And when you watch animals die, when deer die you notice it, how they don’t cry out— I could see it in my mind’s eye— they don’t cry out but lie there, eyes open, and then they are dead outside of themselves they are dead but inside themselves they have joined the earth where they have always been rocking and rocking.—And so I was able to sleep a few hours before our next remove, miles and miles beyond the Great River, though I had lost track of our place in the world.

Its small celestial reach stops where the counterweight, the first tough green fruit, pulls earthward and returns the brazen, almost rank perfume of blossoms now six months gone. The slurred odor of its leaves calls back that long evening’s end: we shivered in the cool light a northerly sun bent against the world into the hands of friends who helped clear the outdoor supper’s sharp debris—forks, tin plates, balled napkins and bone nests. The lemon blossoms throbbed. The air slowed with so much young life, the fragrance quickened in our veins the common, too surprising wish to hold, just then, another, whoever stood nearest, whatever charm would bind us to the lowering light. Then someone said, “Let’s eat the tree”— Tear apart the bole, raid the green heart, devour remembrance with one moment’s hunger and eat the nature of things. Scraped plates, laughter, glasses refilled . . . Our sweet anger urged and gathered us around the young tree’s tub, made us tamp the wet soil and drink fast the clear smell of unseen yellow fruit in time we ourselves might never know.

Watching that frenzy of insects above the bush of white flowers, bush I see everywhere on hill after hill, all I can think of is how terrifying spring is, in its tireless, mindless replications. Everywhere emergence: seed case, chrysalis, uterus, endless manufacturing. And the wrapped stacks of Styrofoam cups in the grocery, lately I can’t stand them, the shelves of canned beans and soups, freezers of identical dinners; then the snowflake-diamond-snowflake of the rug beneath my chair, rows of books turning their backs, even my two feet, how they mirror each other oppresses me, the way they fit so perfectly together, how I can nestle one big toe into the other like little continents that have drifted; my God the unity of everything, my hands and eyes, yours; doesn’t that frighten you sometimes, remembering the pleasure of nakedness in fresh sheets, all the lovers there before you, beside you, crowding you out? And the scouring griefs, don’t look at them all or they’ll kill you, you can barely encompass your own; I’m saying I know all about you, whoever you are, it’s spring and it’s starting again, the longing that begins, and begins, and begins.