1630 Nature poems

cold birds still sing a bright sun chill air snow entombing precocious crocuses tricked by a spring now falsened ❏ cherry trees ... Good Friday ... —treatise: on the use of trees ❏ a flyblown carcass in the underbrush below the cypress in the cemetery : the dead above : the dead below ❏ like a Fantin-Latour the clutch of flowers in your hand and apple frothing the air ❏ the life you're not leading the blood you're not bleeding the knot you're not kneading the mouth you're not feeding the earth you're not seeding ❏ they're grooming the lawns for the graduates and the proud parents and meanwhile the yellowthroat sings unconcerned— cherries just gone by their faded blossoms thick against the insurgent leaves offer the very figure of spring melancholy o I missed when they were fully in bloom & the season & the time for the perfect spring haiku to hail another winter survived where among the redbud blooms exploding along the thin branches is my death written ❏ earth conspiring against me have a child to load the earth with vines with lives with signs songs & cries ❏ insistent crow cardinal whoop peepers booming open the night stabbing life into your heart the odious air reverberant ❏ that was no song but an alarm call ❏ the rhythmic thunk of the basketball thwacking the tarmac at the little park a block over . . . boys . . . calls . . . and the rain holding off— a May nor'easter deferring the fullest spring we might have had but leaving the lilacs to extend their delicate thrusting into the air the boys birds and blossoms share ❏ say that a heron perched immobile until alert the head turns ❏ the weather is far more violent here and present or so it seems days one's attention is open to the cloudthrottled air lit by a near-equinoctial sun—the nights too extend to a farther horizon the stars legible in this particular sky to those able and wishing to scry, too many years looking inward thinning the lexicon of the visible world its oracular reality sounding itself all along these maples that stone that garden fountain the mists rolling in over the mountains disguising the sky the world gone slate its greens drained as that fountain before the first frost the rain is passing and the lilacs the thunder the day but what have you held beheld beset as you are by yourself ❏ signing my best beset instead reveals itself the key an extra e lone vowel tiny howl I did not do what my hands did ❏ wavelap and lakeslap lick the ear; the air carries stripes in the low precincts of sky— a mower blares somewhere above A and shuts off a shock of silence into which the wave- slaps surge ❏ to enter the water in Mayan to die ❏ over there the gray gathering sheath meant rain but our private sun continues to sign- post a clear day at least for us. an earthquake in China means precisely what to me wondered Adam Smith— the world disappearing the instant my tooth aches: Sartre my skin some days extends as wide as the sea and the waves of the world roll through, equable terrible but I am living this narrow life and no other except yours I imagine some days we're graced or grazed by a shared bullet ❏ today no thrush silvered the air in the woods the wind blowing hard against the bike passing a stretch of field where tractors for miles around come to die the iron congregation rusting faithful as the grass, the cows at Saywards Farm seemed too confined why aren't they grazing in the field and why are their calves wired in— late last night after the sunset I did not see the lake took on that babyish blue I so love and I saw a sole balloon aloft lifting over Vergennes puffing by Camel's Hump and heading east— we have harnessed the air for our pleasure our leisure a rhyme with the weather clearing as if the skies cared or could ❏ radios and weathervanes conduct the air disperse manes ❏ mountains deforested by distance Hokusai shapes cut against the sky the clouds address just so and through the same air the radio pours its usual brew of cheer & death what wonder little schizo you reel so in the fractured world the sky bends to my way and to yours and to home sweet home ❏ my soul marching through the open fifths of its salvation shapenotes shaping me home ❏ not the sun but the sun in the river not the moon but the lake-swallowed moon the stars cracking open the black paved road where immortals strode

The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, 
Harvard Museum of Natural History The ovaries, when splayed, resemble sliced tomatoes. Or rose windows, each geometry precise enough to praise. I want to press my tongue against the bloodroot petal, to run its stamen along my slick shelf of teeth like a man might with a wheat stalk. Four times so far other tourists have taken me for a gallery attendant. In the glass, a slow- sidling crimson spreads over my own skewed reflection: a hesitant teen in a Harvard hoodie, the fifth, leans in to ask,Excuse me, sir? Are they really glass?— a testament to how my binder encases my breasts, my faith in the plum yew’s fruit- shorn frenzy. Dense clusters teeming with their separate blossoms, any unknowing eye might think they were living. But I know the lilac’s tell: two blemishes, bulbous where some hot glass mis-dripped, then caught forever in the filament. Sometimes, I think I’ll wake to find they’ve finally trickled off me in the night, pooled molten down the bed and gathered back again. I might thrash off both breasts in a sleepless fit, or could unfurl my clit like a pollen basket passed from a honeybee’s hind legs to the hive. It makes its secret seen. I can only answer yes. Yes, They’re real. I mean, they’re really glass. You could snap a stem between fingers with such a slight force, one stark blink — the flies flitting the gallery would fear the weight of their own landing, thick wings rapt still. When the public, in their distressed astonishment, demanded to know how the Blaschkas transported the models without a fracture in even one pistil, Leopold Blaschka revealed his own elaborate process: pack each flower tightly in its cardboard cradle, then strap them down with strong wire to restrict movement, and set each, at last, in a wooden box wrapped with burlap. They drove them straight from Manhattan in two hearses. The drivers, of course, wore black suits. Onlookers parted to allow their small procession past. I like it here, with everyone focused on the flowers. Hunched, kneeling, as if suspicious, still doubting, the teen eyes two tiny zinnias, then moves on to another case. I’ve seen many leave unsatisfied. They can’t bear to be partitioned — how can I blame them? Someone made these with their body. They let their breath unspool to form each impossible bud, crafted every flower’s fold, then waited on the heat to break to hold just one, wearing special gloves. Wouldn’t anyone wish for just one lie among a garden this precise? One daisy swapped out in secret, switched with a common courtyard flower, now waiting for someone to notice its wilt while its counterparts keep all their glisten. It does seem to me true punishment: never to change. Unflinching forever. Sometimes, near closing, when the hall becomes quiet, I really do believe they’re real.

Something in the field is working away. Root-noise. Twig-noise. Plant of weak chlorophyll, no name for it. Something in the field has mastered distance by living too close to fences. Yellow fruit, has it pit or seeds? Stalk of wither. Grass- noise fighting weed-noise. Dirt and chant. Something in the field. Coreopsis. I did not mean to say that. Yellow petal, has it wither-gift? Has it gorgeous rash? Leaf-loss and worried sprout, its bursting art. Some- thing in the. Field fallowed and cicada. I did not mean to say. Has it roar and bloom? Has it road and follow? A thistle prick, fraught burrs, such easy attachment. Stem- and stamen-noise. Can I lime- flower? Can I chamomile? Something in the field cannot.

wolves of music weave their way at a run hawthorns wheeze with clandestine laughter turning a new leaf, tide's out young ship-captains high up on balconies look far away through telescopes east and west a single fruit cut into halves beneath a tree grown from the pit I once spit out I've hung nets to trap birds, and waited how many years

At that time the sheep called to him From their wormy bellies, as they Lay bloating in the field. He was A pastoralist, The schoolhouse hardly handsize In a sky of flax. He began Then to keep the sayings of man (The left hand writing; the right hand Crossing out) farming the time by day With a great rake And in the evening hearing myths Of the hurricane and the tornado (Straws driven through glass), And of the waking in the grave (The sharp hands of brothers buried Together). In the deep night the rat- Traps in the seed room broke the rat's Back, and the rat called to him in The next room over in a penetrating Eloquent way. In the parlor it was Always deep night where the separated Organs of the living slept in jars (The lank goiter and the rotted Appendix) awaiting the end-time When the emasculated ram will rise In the flax-blue sky (Cold as the final bluing of a Sunday wash) And all of us will know The use in beauty of the whole body. In the hay field was the beginning Of knowledge: Sour wine, the great rake hoisted Toward the high sun-altar of the stack And the hoist rope hauled out hard (Like a greased whip of which the stories Told were of the severing of limbs) By two staggering teams—and the whole Sun in its extreme tower of noon. All he heard was violent and sad But he kept on writing the sayings Of man with his left hand, and sent Them off in broken words, and waited In the mortal field Listening to the mice in the bottom Of the stack. Now though the schoolhouse Hangs like a stone over the field Robed in its winding sheet as blue as air, The shepherd hand of eloquence still keeps And flashes Out the sayings of the man— And the other (the right hand of Obliterating habit) sleeps.

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too. I'm going out to fetch the little calf That's standing by the mother. It's so young, It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

On reading Susanne K. Langer’s Mind If  leaf-trash chokes the stream-bed, reach for rock-bottom as you rake the muck out. Let it slump dank, and dry fading, flat above the bank. Stand back. Watch the water vault ahead. Its thrust sweeps the surface clean, shores the debris, as it debrides its stone path to the lake, clarity carrying clarity. To see clear, resist the drag of  images. Take nature as it is, not Dame nor Kind. Act in events; touch what you name. Abhor easy obverts of natural metaphor. Let human speech breathe out its best poor bridges from mind to world, mind to self, mind to mind. Yet, I admit the event of the wood thrush: In a footnote Langer (her book rapids-clean like the spring-water aired over sleeked rock) says she witnessed an August bird in shock when a hawk snatched its mate. It perched, rushed notes fluting two life-quotas in one flood, its lungs pushing its voice, flushing the keen calls, pumped out as the heart pumps blood, not in twilight or warning but noon & wrong, its old notes whistled too fast but accurate. I read this drenched in bird-panic, its spine- fusing loss all song, all loss; that loss mine awash in unanswered unanswered song. And I cannot claim we are not desolate.

I walk down the garden paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The garden paths. My dress is richly figured, And the train Makes a pink and silver stain On the gravel, and the thrift Of the borders. Just a plate of current fashion, Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. Not a softness anywhere about me, Only whale-bone and brocade. And I sink on a seat in the shade Of a lime tree. For my passion Wars against the stiff brocade. The daffodils and squills Flutter in the breeze As they please. And I weep; For the lime tree is in blossom And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom. And the splashing of waterdrops In the marble fountain Comes down the garden paths. The dripping never stops. Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, A basin in the midst of hedges grown So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, But she guesses he is near, And the sliding of the water Seems the stroking of a dear Hand upon her. What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown! I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground. All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground. I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths, And he would stumble after, Bewildered by my laughter. I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes. I would choose To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover, Till he caught me in the shade, And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me, Aching, melting, unafraid. With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops, And the plopping of the waterdrops, All about us in the open afternoon I am very like to swoon With the weight of this brocade, For the sun sifts through the shade. Underneath the fallen blossom In my bosom, Is a letter I have hid. It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke. “Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell Died in action Thursday sen’night.” As I read it in the white, morning sunlight, The letters squirmed like snakes. “Any answer, Madam,” said my footman. “No,” l told him. “See that the messenger takes some refreshment. No, no answer.” And I walked into the garden, Up and down the patterned paths, In my stiff, correct brocade. The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun, Each one. I stood upright too, Held rigid to the pattern By the stiffness of my gown. Up and down I walked, Up and down. In a month he would have been my husband. In a month, here, underneath this lime, We would have broke the pattern; He for me, and I for him, He as Colonel, I as Lady, On this shady seat. He had a whim That sunlight carried blessing. And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.” Now he is dead. In Summer and in Winter I shall walk Up and down The patterned garden paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. The squills and daffodils Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow. I shall go Up and down, In my gown. Gorgeously arrayed, Boned and stayed. And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace By each button, hook, and lace. For the man who should loose me is dead, Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, In a pattern called a war. Christ! What are patterns for?

I’m thinking it’s time to go back to the peach farm or rather the peach farm seems to be wanting me back even though the work of picking, sorting, the sticky perils and sudden swarms are done. Okay, full disclosure, I’ve never been on a peach farm, just glimpsed from a car squat trees I assumed were peach and knew a couple in school who went off one summer, so they said, to work on a peach farm. She was pregnant, he didn’t have much intention, canvases of crushed lightbulbs and screws in paste. He’d gotten fired from the lunch counter for putting too much meat on the sandwiches of his friends then ended up in Macy’s in New York selling caviar and she went home I think to Scranton, two more versions of never hearing from someone again. I’d like to say the most important fruits are within but that’s the very sort of bullshit one goes to the peach farm to avoid, not just flight from quadratic equations, waiting for the plumber, finding out your insurance won’t pay. Everyone wants out of the spider’s stomach. Everyone wants to be part of some harvest and stop coughing to death and cursing at nothing and waking up nowhere near an orchard. Look at these baskets, bashed about, nearly ruined with good employ. Often, after you’ve spent a day on a ladder, you dream of angels, the one with the trumpet and free subscriptions to the New Yorker or the archer, the oink angel, angel of ten dollar bills found in the dryer or the one who welcomes you in work gloves and says if you’re caught eating a single peach, even windfall, you’ll be executed. Then laughs. It’s okay, kiddo, long as you’re here, you’re one of us.

Out in the orchards the dogs stood Almost frozen in the bleak spring night & Mister dragged out into the rows Between his peach trees the old dry limbs Building at regular intervals careful pyres While the teeth of the dogs chattered & snapped & the ice began to hang long as whiskers From the globes along the branches & at his signal we set the piles of branches ablaze Tending each carefully so as not to scorch The trees as we steadily fed those flames Just enough to send a rippling glow along Those acres of orchard where that body— Sister Winter—had been held so wisely to the fire