1630 Nature poems

they thought the field was wasting and so they gathered the marker rocks and stones and piled them into a barn    they say that the rocks were shaped some of them scratched with triangles and other forms    they must have been trying to invent some new language they say the rocks went to build that wall there guarding the manor and some few were used for the state house crops refused to grow i say the stones marked an old tongue and it was called eternity and pointed toward the river    i say that after that collection no pillow in the big house dreamed    i say that somewhere under here moulders one called alice whose great grandson is old now too and refuses to talk about slavery    i say that at the masters table only one plate is set for supper    i say no seed can flourish on this ground once planted then forsaken    wild berries warm a field of bones bloom how you must i say

Murmurs from the earth of this land, from the caves and craters, from the bowl of darkness. Down watercourses of our dragon childhood, where we ran barefoot. We stand as growing women and men. Murmurs come down where water has not run for sixty years. Murmurs from the tulip tree and the catalpa, from the ax of the stars, from the house on fire, ringing of glass; from the abandoned iron-black mill. Stars with voices crying like mountain lions over forgotten colors. Blue directions and a horizon, milky around the cities where the murmurs are deep enough to penetrate deep rock. Trapping the lightning-bird, trapping the red central roots. You know the murmurs. They come from your own throat. You are the bridges to the city and the blazing food-plant green; The sun of plants speaks in your voice, and the infinite shells of accretions A beach of dream before the smoking mirror. You are close to that surf, and the leaves heated by noon, and the star-ax, the miner’s glitter walls. The crests of the sea Are the same strength you wake with, the darkness is the eyes of children forming for a blaze of sight and soon, soon, Everywhere your own silence, who drink from the crater, the nebula, one another, the changes of the soul.

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants - At Evening, it is not At Morning, in a Truffled Hut It stop opon a Spot As if it tarried always And yet it’s whole Career Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay - And fleeter than a Tare - ’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler - The Germ of Alibi - Doth like a Bubble antedate And like a Bubble, hie - I feel as if the Grass was pleased To have it intermit - This surreptitious Scion Of Summer’s circumspect. Had Nature any supple Face Or could she one contemn - Had Nature an Apostate - That Mushroom - it is Him!

Like silent naked monks huddled around an old tree stump, having spun themselves in the night out of thought and nothingness— And God so pleased with their silence He grants them teeth and tongues. Like us. How long have you been gone? A child’s hot tears on my bare arms.

All this tall grass has ruined my gold acrylic nails & I know something’s dead just beyond my window. I grew up with rats running my floorboards & know the smell straining from a body once caught in a trap. In the city what little I have of an ass is always out, a simple wind blow from Marilyn Monroe-ing the street. Here, in all this nature, there is nobody but me & my 5 friends for a week & I promised myself I’d be naked but the first day I found a tick clinging to my arm hair for dear life & decided no way I’m exposing my pussy to the elements. My love for nature is like my love for most things: fickle & theoretical. Too many bugs & I want a divorce. Last week, before I was here my uncle drove me from our city to the suburbs & sang “Project Chick” in the car. When we parked he asked me to take off my shoes & there we walked, silent, barefoot circling the lake, trying to not step in goose shit. He walked in front & I trailed behind both our hands clasped behind our backs. When you were my daughter, those were the happiest days of my life. I wish you would come home.

My mouth is snow slowly caking that stiff pigeon. My mouth, the intricately moist machinery of a plant. I have forgotten if I ever had a mouth. I have two mouths. One like warm rain; or wind manipulating the worn limbs of an elm. My mouth knows nothing of music. Or of the oils of love. Its shape is the shadow of innumerable pigeons; its words, at times, their bones. My eyes too know of shadows. And of the delicate hairs of my grandmother's heart. And of the plums of puberty. And the shadow of the eggs inside the woman who moves immemorially through clover past the wheat field and alfalfa and the 1890 Roman Catholic cemetary near the farm in Palos Park. My eyes know of the blue shadow of the one desire. The mind does not; it is an animal, ignorant, ambiguous, talking, as it must, with many voices. I walk toward you as if wading through the waves in somebody else's dream. I walk toward you as if wading through the waves in somebody else's dream. I shall survive this death, even though the heart is a shadow of a bone. Or thick glass. My mouth quick with many bees.

There is the torch and the only thing That will prevent us from using it Is whether or not we can allow Jellyfish in the otherwise Crystalline surf. It would be easy To dismiss this view as beautiful and walk away Because it is buggy and we forgot The spray, to cancel the conversation Because its ease is perilous with conjunctions, To not touch because the sky would Separate from the sky and the mothership Would fall through with a banner Waving in a language we wouldn’t Understand though the meaning is As clear as these intercontinental Contrails hatching mackerel sky Saying we are full we are full Of sound and fury, we are signifying Nothing. Damned universal law. Damned categorical imperative Elbowing its way between my hands And your face. The sparrows again Exploding against windows As a circle of men sitting outside The cafe while away their intentions With invisible motor tics they can’t Even feel unless the right empire of light Covers every last inch of them And brings to the surface the names — Those loves they chose To stable. And there it is: The choice — if only the metaphor Were more complex if I could only Adverb away my existence And say what a remarkable Sunday This is a perfect Sunday And turn my breath to stone. I’ve done it before, I spoke The language of sweating cavern walls And electric light. But I won’t go there again. We are all and only our distances And when we touch that is what we touch. Our messy shelves. Our sullen privations And overabundance of lemons. Our grief, our mountains and fields And rivers of grief. Our dismissals And the love we ignore when we don’t run After the sparrows because the sparrows Will fly away. My sparrow, fly away if you have to But know that I am coming. I am low in the grass. I am burning With patience. I am every song. I know all the math in the shore Says you shouldn’t but my distance Is yours if you want it. And it is yours If you don’t. Dandelions and honeysuckle Surround me, the world’s ineluctable fire Is looking right at me, and I am making my stand.

even a small purple artichoke boiled in its own bittered and darkening waters grows tender, grows tender and sweet patience, I think, my species keep testing the spiny leaves the spiny heart

Wakeful, sleepy, hungry, anxious, restless, stunned, relieved. Does a tree also? A mountain? A cup holds sugar, flour, three large rabbit-breaths of air. I hold these.

When my hole-punch drizzles tiny paper circles onto the carpet, my wolf sister moans and bites it, covering her ears with her paws. I think she’s tired of the moon. She takes a stack of dinner plates from my cupboard and slinks off to the park to break them. Our brother shows up a week later, collapses on the sofa like a fur throw. Why have they come here when everything I do is wrong? They howl in the shower together but the water doesn’t mask the sound. I go in afterwards with paper towels to mop the droplets–I know there’ll be water all over–but the room is bone dry. Maybe this time things will be different. I hide the home movies in case they ask for them. In the one I always watch, there’s some wobbly footage of the sky, then my father lowers the camera’s eye to mother teaching my sister and brother to “tell time.” They’re following a mother hare on her sunset rounds–one leveret mouthful at 12 o’clock, another at 3, 6, 9. Then the camera zooms in on me–I’ve spat out my pacifier made of fur and I’m on the porch surrounded by bonsai trees, killing or saving Barbie.