Poem: Dark winter morning with the dogs

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Dark winter morning with the dogs

Dog stars Sirius and Aludra gnaw
the bones of the black locust trees;
a rout of coyotes behind the woods
barks and sings a round for the chickens,
gone these three years from their shallow roosts;
a meteor falls like a seed of fire
into that sleeping corner of the barn
and lights up its empty boxes; see
the straw mixed with chicken guano
that remains after three summer gardens, ablaze
and still abundant on the floor; my sleeping husband
dreams of the next planting, starting with the shovel
and the shit, the wheel barrow, the eternal stew;
Murzim howls, Muliphen listens, and Aludra,
a virgin, hungers with everlasting heat.

Poetry should be heard.

Quite literally the other morning, a shooting star fell behind the barn, right there, while coyotes clamored, either after, or in preparation, for their early morning hunt.


Hubble image of Canis Major's "evil eyes" found here.
For information about Canis Major and the stars that shine in the constellation, go here.

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A home in winter

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I am not much use with my hands. I have bent them to work in an office on computers. They are weak, sore, pitiful. I hold a needle to a quilt a short while, the fabric and batting gathered and bunched in my left hand, the needle a steel splinter of my once-magic wand arm in my right; then my hands collapse, in pain or icy numbness, in the calico on my lap. The most basic tools have no moneyback guarantee.

But once, after the supremacy of Sunday morning church and dinner, these hands of mine built a home. I was five. I had three construction assistants in the yard between the house and the church — ages nine, eleven and thirteen; male; also inexperienced builders. It had snowed; the snow was deep. Then it snowed some more. It was January, the snows piled like ancient stone-dust cities of the Holy Land pilgrimage our parents showed us in slides. Then it rained on our cotton and wool hooded snow suits and on the snow; the rain froze. The black metal clasps of my red rubber galoshes froze shut. If we were very delicate, we could walk atop the crusted snow. With straight-edge machete fingertips, from the large age thirteen size to the small five, we punched out big rectangular snow bricks. Deep, deep I still feel the way of precision, my fingertips in wool mittens slicing snow stones from the whole quarry yard for layering in the masonry of igloos. No one taught us this. When the walls were an inch higher than the thirteen-year-old, my brothers placed the plywood ceiling and finished the exterior with a roof of ice-and-snow slate. We packed white mortar in each gap; smoothed with pearl-iced mitten-index fingers: a ten by ten closet or a small bedroom where the four of us could lie side by side hidden in mystery in the expanse between our father's parsonage and the church. We slept quietly in our civilized and insulated imaginations. We could live there, and survive. So warm; so home. So temporary.

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concrete poem, and alternate traditional form: family tree

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family tree

while   traveling

at the speed of a car   a particle hovers in the
passenger seat next to me      a neutrino of time and
space travel that I do not need to prove to anyone   or apologize

to the standing cows    for talking to myself like a mad scientist
who is to say he isn’t my self    a particle miracle      I go on
about my dead brother and gasp because he is not old enough
yet to hear about death    not even arrived here in this hubbled air
not having swum the arc through his mother’s arch    that opens
to the courtyard wherein the    family tree spreads limbs
on which my brother,   my father,     my mother have already

ripened and fallen in earth’s gravity    and I tell him
we don’t even know what they are

gravity    or death     or falling

but     soon    he    will
drop    and      be
caught     in
his
mother’s

ivory
hands

then

perched

and

nestled

in the

fork

of her

armpit

and

breast

his head

a plum

the crease

of his mouth open

for the galaxy of milk and I point

to the calf in the farmer’s field holding on to his mother for dear life

from the twig of her teat between the branches of her legs and say see life falls like that

Added note, from wiki: Concrete poetry or Size poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on. 

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11/20/11 7:22am I am reposting the poem without the shape, which may be a distraction this time. Fun to experiment (as Brendan says in his comment), but maybe this poem is better served in a traditional shape. 

family tree

while traveling at the speed of a car
a particle hovers in the passenger seat next to me
a neutrino of time and space travel
that I do not need to prove to anyone
or apologize to the standing cows
for talking to myself like a mad scientist

who is to say he isn’t my self
a particle miracle

I go on about my dead brother and gasp
because he is not old enough yet to hear about death
not even arrived here in this hubbled air
not having swum the arc through his mother’s arch
that opens to the courtyard
wherein the family tree spreads limbs
on which my brother, my father, my mother
have already ripened and fallen in earth’s gravity
and I tell him we don’t even know what they are
gravity or death or falling
but soon he will drop
and be caught in his mother’s ivory hands
then perched and nestled in the fork
of her armpit and breast
his head a plum
the crease of his mouth open
for the galaxy of milk
and I point to the calf in the farmer’s field
holding on to his mother for dear life
from the twig of her teat between the branches
of her legs and say see life falls like that

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Poem: Red Pines

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Red Pines

Every day I drive to work
and it is the same thing. Listen
to two minutes of political news
or economic disaster. Turn it off. Sail
past farmlands with birds.
Sit at my desk, answer, type, question.
Drive home between the same
houses for sale. Work to Friday.

On Saturday the sun shines down
on the oasis of meadow and I get up
to walk the still-wet grass into the end
of summer. Sunflowers fall away
from the sun, petal-stripped but big
bellies of seeds still feeding the traffic
of chickadees. Goldenrod and Canada
thistle sputter in ragged frizzles out of
dirty brown stems; royal pokeberries
droop down down down like antique
necklaces from the necks of dowagers.

Long they stood, these thin strong
spines, day in and out. Would I
complain in their constant stillness,
rejoice in the skyslide of a storm?
So slow ! this meadow watching, and yet
too rushed the machinery of what I live.
Now they fall headlong, tassels touching
each other over the path, weaving a baldachin
over half-moons of egg-yolk mushrooms.
Orbs of green walnuts revolve around them
in planetary randomness.

Rain on my glasses blurs sight:
My favorite red pines in a long row glowing
and backlit — Are needles dying among
the soft green plumage? Tenderly I pull
a cluster, and without resistance they release
and fall into my palm, spent. Some blight
is taking the trees. O Beauty, where to?
I am always at the edge, this side of that. A fly
flies in and out, drawn to some heat
in me, or scent: the other. I am apart, skin
side out, embarking or disembarking
onto the path whose current pulls me
into the fields like kindness.

What honeyed dark energy sings
from the yellow soybeans in the field
next door as the beans dry brown, harvestable,
the green leaves going going almost gone?
Can the farmer, scientist
or economic analyst answer:
No matter the speed of matter,
no matter where we are falling,
what makes the heart keep accelerating?

Poetry should be heard.

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Poem: A year in an apple

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A year in an apple

Crunch into the sweet flesh,
and winter snow crumbles under a black branch
where the juncko lands.

With the second bite, the entire orchard
blossoms pink again in your mouth.

Hold its red skin against your cheek
and it is a hot summer day
but you are cool in the shade
of the tree it fell from.

It is autumn, you are eating an apple.
For a few moments remember the year,
how it opened and fell into a thousand pieces
and how you widened your being.

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Poem: At the orchard

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At the orchard

It is a late Saturday afternoon in early
October, and I am headed nowhere,
certainly not the cider-and-doughnut orchard
I happen upon, where it seems as though
the Rapture has air-lifted the good farmer
and his customers up into a mountainous range
of clouds, leaving behind this littered
grassy harbor at the side of the road.
I stop the car of course
and stroll and meander among abandoned
crates and bushel baskets domed
with butternut squash and apples, the way
I might wander a marina eyeing steepled yachts
with prettily altared bouquets and exposed living
rooms of the heavenly high life, as frivolous
as these pumpkins lounging in the field, perfectly
tufted and plush in rafty orangeness,
waiting to be the chosen, to pose as ghouls
or toothy goofs, thick, rich flesh and eyes
golden candlelit within. And over under a tree,
a grubby discard of apples on the ground, unhinged
and white where broken, fading to gray ferment
at the bruises where a fleet of yellowjackets fizzes
out the only sound, in full-out bingeing, mindlessly
enraptured, partying like there’s no tomorrow
                                                   or this or that life.

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