1630 Nature poems

The teddy bear cholla and the fat fat • Oh buckthorn, devil, whipple, teddy bear • Oh beavertail, oh pancake, porcupine • Oh plump saguaro with your hairy arms, I love Each of you with a different nerve of heart. Especially you, so trim, so pert, your birds Cupped in your pits and crotches, little friends • Oh areoles and aureoles, the orioles With yellow caps are havering and hot Making themselves a breeze with their cut wings • I ask the docent and he indicates • Oh nation, how you might have been, spread from So sure an order, with such tendering love

Boll-weevil’s coming, and the winter’s cold, Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old, And cotton, scarce as any southern snow, Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow, Failed in its function as the autumn rake; Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take All water from the streams; dead birds were found In wells a hundred feet below the ground— Such was the season when the flower bloomed. Old folks were startled, and it soon assumed Significance. Superstition saw Something it had never seen before: Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear, Beauty so sudden for that time of year.

Now goth sonne under wod: Me reweth, Marye, thy faire rode. Now goth sonne under tree: Me reweth, Marye, thy sone and thee.

If Socrates drank his portion of hemlock willingly, if the Appalachians have endured unending ages of erosion, if the wind can learn to read our minds and moonlight moonlight as a master pickpocket, surely we can contend with contentment as our commission. Deer in a stubble field, small birds dreaming unimaginable dreams in hollow trees, even the icicles, darling, even the icicles shame us with their stoicism, their radiant resolve. Listen to me now: think of something you love but not too dearly, so the night will steal from us only what we can afford to lose.

Why waste away in a box when you could be a nurse tree? That’s what they call dead logs: mushroomeries of the woods. Your living room’s a wood of couches, books, and chairs. You’re dead not at all, but could you be preparing for things to grow inside the chest of the log you plan to become: cherished compost heap where heat turns the brown mess of feelings, sorry, that’s peelings, into comp-o- sition? For we who love our hands in dirt, a leaf skirt de composing seems an ideal station between this life and next: I visit your room as on a forest walk. Passing a fallen log — is that you? — I see a scarlet fungus cap pop up from friable bark.

The Nut Garden holds things felt and thought and feeling for thought is always a palace— Sinai with flames of fire about it, burning though never by fire devoured. On all four sides surrounded so— entrance is barred to pretenders forever. For one who learns to be wise, however, its doors are open toward the East: he reaches out and takes a nut, then cracks its shell, and eats...

—It seems a day (I speak of one from many singled out) One of those heavenly days that cannot die; When, in the eagerness of boyish hope, I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth With a huge wallet o'er my shoulders slung, A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps Tow'rd some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint, Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds Which for that service had been husbanded, By exhortation of my frugal Dame— Motley accoutrement, of power to smile At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,—and, in truth, More ragged than need was! O'er pathless rocks, Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets, Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook Unvisited, where not a broken bough Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign Of devastation; but the hazels rose Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung, A virgin scene!—A little while I stood, Breathing with such suppression of the heart As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed The banquet;—or beneath the trees I sate Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played; A temper known to those, who, after long And weary expectation, have been blest With sudden happiness beyond all hope. Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves The violets of five seasons re-appear And fade, unseen by any human eye; Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on For ever; and I saw the sparkling foam, And—with my cheek on one of those green stones That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees, Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep— I heard the murmur, and the murmuring sound, In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure, The heart luxuriates with indifferent things, Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones, And on the vacant air. Then up I rose, And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash And merciless ravage: and the shady nook Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up Their quiet being: and, unless I now Confound my present feelings with the past; Ere from the mutilated bower I turned Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, I felt a sense of pain when I beheld The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky.— Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand Touch—for there is a spirit in the woods.

No one saw the first ones swim ashore centuries ago, nudged by waves into the marsh grasses. When you look into their faces, there is no trace of the ship seized with terror, the crashing waves and the horses’ cries when thrown overboard. Every afternoon you ride your bicycle to the pasture to watch the twitch of their manes and ivory tails unroll a carpet of silence, to see ponies lost in dream. But it isn’t dream, that place your mind drifts to, that museum of memory inventoried in opposition to the present. You felt it once on a plane, taking off from a city you didn’t want to leave, the stranded moment when the plane lifts into the clouds. That’s not dream, it’s not even sleeping. It is the nature of sleeping to be unaware. This was some kind of waiting for the world to come back.

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours, Fair Venus' train appear, Disclose the long-expecting flowers, And wake the purple year! The Attic warbler pours her throat, Responsive to the cuckoo's note, The untaught harmony of spring: While whisp'ring pleasure as they fly, Cool zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky Their gather'd fragrance fling. Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch A broader, browner shade; Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech O'er-canopies the glade, Beside some water's rushy brink With me the Muse shall sit, and think (At ease reclin'd in rustic state) How vain the ardour of the crowd, How low, how little are the proud, How indigent the great! Still is the toiling hand of Care: The panting herds repose: Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air The busy murmur glows! The insect youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring, And float amid the liquid noon: Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some show their gaily-gilded trim Quick-glancing to the sun. To Contemplation's sober eye Such is the race of man: And they that creep, and they that fly, Shall end where they began. Alike the busy and the gay But flutter thro' life's little day, In fortune's varying colours drest: Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance, Or chill'd by age, their airy dance They leave, in dust to rest. Methinks I hear in accents low The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glitt'ring female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display: On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone— We frolic, while 'tis May.

(I hope) the only reason That I am this pre-autumn Afternoon in the privacy Of my suspicious living room Grant myself permission To believe in god once again Is solely because I saw An unexpected grasshopper Staring at my thoughts On the table that keeps The telephone from having A mind of its very own At first I was startled And then I was startled less At the sight of this insect Put together in green details To pay me an afternoon visit 39 floors above floor level In my High Rise Hobo apartment Miracle on 53rd street Grasshopper hopped all the way 39 floors above floor level To deliberately invade my privacy And I didn't mind at all After grasshopper assured me It didn't speak English or Spanish Or Chinese with an Italian accent So we hit it off right away You mind your own business And I will not ask you Any personal questions aside From how the hell did you get here I've never written a poem About grasshoppers this high up before And I know it wasn't something My non existing paint brushes Conceived behind my back and The only grass I have here is To smoke & not hop around in Until I get dizzy and levitate There has to be a mistake Or did the grasshopper take The elevator to the 39th floor And enter my apartment without knocking To make it obvious grasshoppers Have the right to remain silent also And give credit to the desert For his arrival and not no Almighty The only other mystery capable