There are no planes
or denunciations in it,
nothing combustible,
no flags or falling bodies,
no twisted I-beams
or pacifist cris de coeur.
In this poem, we are
eating soup, & the radio
is off as it always is during meals.
Nobody calls to tell us
to tune in. We are for
the most part ignoring
the extraordinary events taking place
all around us in field & woodlot,
in the air & soil & water
from which we are knit.
A sudden waft of perfume at 1:00 a.m.:
night-blooming cereus.
Six hours of broken sleep.
I wake to find a web across my door.
I eat the good half of a hairy peach
as quickly as I can.
Distant tropical storm.
A small flock of migrants gusts around the yard.
Above the blue-and-while dogwood berries,
a blue-and-white warbler.
It’s like walking in the dark
or chewing on a good-luck tooth:
a map doesn’t always help
& no vowel can be trusted.
Which is why the Israelites
dispensed with both. But
we have lived here in Canaan
so long, we’ve forgotten
about ties & collars
& all the other uses to which
a neck can be put. Jubilee
comes every day at noon, now,
& the Adam’s apple never falls
far before bouncing back.
Goats can get by, I swear,
on the notes no one else sings.
Working through a black-
berry patch, you learn
a new way to move, step
high & slow as a heron,
pivot to trample back-
wards in your big boots,
& lean nimble as a lover
into the fiercest thorns
to get free. These are
not skills of widespread
applicability. But one
day when the sweat dries
& the mosquito’s skirl
dwindles to a soft wind
in the inner ear, you may
find yourself stretching,
When a relationship dies, what happens
to the orphaned plus sign?
Might it live on as a cemetery cross
marking some otherwise dubious grave?
At one time it could’ve been reborn as
a TV antenna mast or the minimal
skeleton of a scarecrow. Now
even crossroads seem archaic,
& a crucifix is a piece of jewelry
to finger in times of stress,
finger & twirl on its chain
around the neck — a thing humans wear
instead of a bell.
In extreme cases, the plus sign
can lose its vertical axis
& merge with the horizon,
How many miles into the earth
would we have to dig to find true stillness,
free from all taint of life?
Some bacteria can thrive solely
on the energy from radioactive decay,
know nothing of oxygen, & persist
as a single-species ecosystem,
alone in their subterranean cosmos.
We’ve come to learn a full half
of the total mass of life on earth
dwells underground or beneath
the ocean floor. So thoroughly have
we infected the planet, it might
never be rid of us, the poor thing,
burdened as it is with a barren mate
that remains untainted by its contagion,
So those are magpies!
They do look acquisitive.
They hover over
the graves like eyebrows
or second thoughts, tails
held decorously aloft.
Each time I raise the camera
they take flight—proof
they’re not spirits
but among the quick.
They are, in their black-
&-white way, shiny.
They remind me of
our shared mission:
to rob the dead.
Their chatter offers
Highgate Cemetery, London
We are used to blurriness here
in the temperate regions.
When the air is too clear, I walk like a drunk,
hesitating & veering around sharp-edged shadows
that come alive when they move.
Too bald a truth appalls us.
I can’t remember the last time I spoke
unironically of love. It’s best to be circumspect.
We are used to being watched by paraplegic angels
over closed-circuit TV.
Our children play hangman with blackboard and chalk.
Listen, if we hate poets here, it’s only because
they brandish empty wash tubs instead of roses
& remind us we’re all in exile from our dreams.
The blackbird has built a caravan park
on a roundabout where five roads
join a hot pale highway.
What led her to choose the straight & narrow
over a hedge’s Medieval maze of streets?
She eyes the lights, which only blink,
& cocks her head at the pulse
of unseen traffic.
Chrysosplenium americanum
The so-called water carpet
forms a creeping mat
over soggy, springy ground,
its flowers so tiny & indistinct
as almost to escape notice,
lacking petals, greenish
except for the red dots
of anthers & the brown
verge of its own
miniscule wetland:
sweet pool for some
lucky gnat.
Sanguinaria canadensis
The red juice of its root
has nothing to do with love
& everything with war, caustic enough
to leave permanent scars on the skin,
burn out cancer, repel insects,
& once to give Indian warriors
their fabled hue. But it isn’t just
the blood-red color;
see how the anthers circle
a pale heart. How the tender
young plant embraces itself
like a bat with its one green wing.
Dig up a bloodroot & watch a tremor
travel through the patch,
connected by something
Panax trifolius
Because the root is round
& no bigger than a nut
it is not worth its weight in gold,
though still prized as medicine.
Had it limbs like a man
we might sing out its name—
little brother ‘sang! Instead,
we step over its perfect clouds,
oblivious to the mystery
of its androdioeciousness,
why some umbels should be all male
& others hermaphroditic,
how that little knot of a root
unties itself from year to year:
the flower fading to pink