1630 Nature poems

A new embroidery of flowers, canary color, dots the grass already dotty with aster-white and clover. I warn, “They won’t last, out of water.” The children pick some anyway. In or out of  water children don’t last either. I watch them as they pick. Still free of  what’s next and what was yesterday they pick today.

Do you know what whole fields are? They are fields with a dog and a moon. Do you know the answer — for the many? Except there would be vineyards. Meaning there would, as usual, be commerce. Money, and a game of sorts to play it. Meanwhile — Emma lost in the cover-crop. Top of her head bobbing through mustard-flower. It is, after all, still here — The real world, the outstretched earth, Rain, soil, copper for pennies.

The truck grinds by and pumps out grit; the road glints and goes still. The barn owl that had not finished here returns. But with its fill of scavenges, face ruffled in mulch, the vole is lost and safe so the silent specter flits away, its moon face to the moon and rears unknown against a copse, claws tipped for the strafe and something dies too soon.

And the place was water Fish fowl flood Water lily mud My life in the leaves and on water My mother and I born in swale and swamp and sworn to water My father thru marsh fog sculled down from high ground saw her face at the organ bore the weight of lake water and the cold— he seined for carp to be sold that their daughter might go high on land to learn Saw his wife turn deaf and away She who knew boats and ropes no longer played She helped him string out nets for tarring And she could shoot He was cool to the man who stole his minnows by night and next day offered to sell them back He brought in a sack of dandelion greens if no flood No oranges—none at hand No marsh marigold where the water rose He kept us afloat I mourn her not hearing canvasbacks their blast-off rise from the water Not hearing sora rails’s sweet spoon-tapped waterglass- descending scale- tear-drop-tittle Did she giggle as a girl? His skiff skimmed the coiled celery now gone from these streams due to carp He knew duckweed fall-migrates toward Mud Lake bottom Knew what lay under leaf decay and on pickerel weeds before summer hum To be counted on: new leaves new dead leaves He could not —like water bugs— stride surface tension He netted loneliness As to his bright new car my mother—her house next his—averred: A hummingbird can’t haul Anchored here in the rise and sink of life— middle years’ nights he sat beside his shoes rocking his chair Roped not “looped in the loop of her hair” I grew in green slide and slant of shore and shade Child-time—wade thru weeds Maples to swing from Pewee-glissando sublime slime- song Grew riding the river Books at home-pier Shelley could steer as he read I was the solitary plover a pencil for a wing-bone From the secret notes I must tilt upon the pressure execute and adjust In us sea-air rhythm “We live by the urgent wave of the verse” Seven year molt for the solitary bird and so young Seven years the one dress for town once a week One for home faded blue-striped as she piped her cry Dancing grounds my people had none woodcocks had— backland- air around Solemnities such as what flower to take to grandfather’s grave unless water lilies— he who’d bowed his head to grass as he mowed Iris now grows on fill for the two and for him where they lie How much less am I in the dark than they? Effort lay in us before religions at pond bottom All things move toward the light except those that freely work down to oceans’ black depths In us an impulse tests the unknown River rising—flood Now melt and leave home Return—broom wet naturally wet Under soak-heavy rug water bugs hatched— no snake in the house Where were they?— she who knew how to clean up after floods he who bailed boats, houses Water endows us with buckled floors You with sea water running in your veins sit down in water Expect the long-stemmed blue speedwell to renew itself O my floating life Do not save love for things Throw things to the flood ruined by the flood Leave the new unbought— all one in the end— water I possessed the high word: The boy my friend played his violin in the great hall On this stream my moonnight memory washed of hardships maneuvers barges thru the mouth of the river They fished in beauty It was not always so In Fishes red Mars rising rides the sloughs and sluices of my mind with the persons on the edge

Who, who had only seen wings, could extrapolate the skinny sticks of things birds use for land, the backward way they bend, the silly way they stand? And who, only studying birdtracks in the sand, could think those little forks had decamped on the wind? So many paired things seem odd. Who ever would have dreamed the broad winged raven of despair would quit the air and go bandylegged upon the ground, a common crow?

On a small lake off the map of the world, two swans lived. As swans, they spent eighty percent of the day studying themselves in the attentive water and twenty percent ministering to the beloved other. Thus their fame as lovers stems chiefly from narcissism, which leaves so little leisure for more general cruising. But fate had other plans: after ten years, they hit slimy water; whatever the filth was, it clung to the male’s plumage, which turned instantly gray; simultaneously, the true purpose of his neck’s flexible design revealed itself. So much action on the flat lake, so much he’s missed! Sooner or later in a long life together, every couple encounters some emergency like this, some drama which results in harm. This occurs for a reason: to test love and to demand fresh articulation of its complex terms. So it came to light that the male and female flew under different banners: whereas the male believed that love was what one felt in one’s heart the female believed love was what one did. But this is not a little story about the male’s inherent corruption, using as evidence the swan’s sleazy definition of purity. It is a story of guile and innocence. For ten years the female studied the male; she dallied when he slept or when he was conveniently absorbed in the water, while the spontaneous male acted casually, on the whim of the moment. On the muddy water they bickered awhile, in the fading light, until the bickering grew slowly abstract, becoming part of their song after a little longer.

Look the moon. Nuts look like wood but taste good.

Nothing's in the nest. No needles. No newborn ravens. Maybe something like night in the deep hollow, an eggshell planet, cracked in the middle, an empty bowl of soup. Nothing's in the nest. No thread. No webs of words. Maybe something like my navel, the eclipse of a magnifying glass. A slice, mute with regard to its empty depths. In the nest, nothing. The web unwoven. Dismembered. In the space, something, yes. A piece of cloth. Sounding like flags taking wing, a worm in its beak and suddenly, eyes, my eyes which, cutting across the empty air, direct themselves at something noiseless over there.

Parks and ponds are good by day; I do not delight In black acres of the night, Nor my unseasoned step disturbs The sleeps of trees or dreams of herbs.

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, And the sun looked over the mountain's rim: And straight was a path of gold for him, And the need of a world of men for me.