The things to do: bring an egg from her
Hens, a found apple, beet leaf, cat's-ear foliage,
Ensuring freshness even in October.
The skillet she heats, oil frisking.
Here's egg: break yolk, turn once or twice;
Insert chopped fruit and greens, with salt and pepper;
Now turn again, wait, remove from heat,
Give all to a spelt wrap. As she sits to her meal, a
Sun rises, invests her eastern window, spills in
To caress and warm six thick maple boards
Of her grandmother's table. Whatever remains to be
Done's already forgotten: the meal an emblem
Of all her morning cared to be.
The first few fires of autumn laid by me
Here in this stove aren't much; I acknowledge
Even the hummingbird's still caressing blooms, so I
Feeling only a brief dawn chill, build accordingly.
In thickets of summer I range about,
Ratcheting my long-handled pruner among stout sticks,
Stealing from oak and ash, letting in a little light.
These I pile in the long room where that stove squats.
Fueling it with paper and a stack of twigs, admiring
Even the least hints of gold and vermillion therein,
We sit back, warm enough for one dark cup of tea.
For awhile; then day overtakes us, ready
In sweater and chore coat to see to hens;
Really, we shuck those soon enough, sweat on our
Nothing can stand still. If it were to do so
absolutely, I could not see it; if I
were to cease scanning, I could not then see;
therefore change is all. These were my thoughts
as I walked a dog, watching my year run down.
Apples were falling; I chose one to eat.
Hips blushed fiercely; I stuffed my pockets full.
Ash and maple and willow turned and turned.
Restless mice and voles risked their all
for seeds. We reached the river; a trout rose, an
osprey plunged; they met and flew as one.
An osprey will turn a trout head first in flight,
you know -- for improved aerodynamics. I
disbelieve it; surely the bird is kind.
It turns the trout to show it what's to come.
Terrified of them she was through long
Experience being swarmed with stings,
Running, her hands over eyes and mouth,
Running to the house or jumping in the lake,
In whatever way possible to stop the punishers.
For years, she made herself their nemesis
In revenge, setting nests afire! Or in
Evenings inverting a glass bowl upside
Down over their holes to watch them starve.
Only in recent years, as her ways have slowed,
Finding in books their part in the scheme of
Things as helpers in garden and orchard,
Has she learned to move more gently
Even as they light on her cidery hands,
Milking fingers for juice, never stinging.
She has work to do, establishing
Her anchor threads, her frame threads,
Even her bridge thread and all her radii,
Hub to be ready by dawn, herself resting --
All-powerful, so far as any lacewing can
See. Seeking out the ripest berries, she
Works not to eat drupelets, but entirely to
Offer them as bait to fruit flies and their ilk.
Right away along comes another
Killer, a ladybird beetle, seeking the berries
Too, and for the same reason. He's caught,
Offers resistance, is overwhelmed, rolled up,
Done. Whatever comes in, if protein, her
Ovum will accept. Death it is brings life.
She turned up the weeds without pity, spreading
their roots before the sun. Most of them died,
though a few tenacious grasses rolled over
when she was not looking, and sucked earth
till she found them skulking about, and banished them
to the heap with the egg shells and old tea leaves.
Returning to the scene of the massacre, she placed
a five-tined fork before her, pointed toward
the earth's core. On its step she placed her boot's
sole, and drove its teeth home, tearing living soil.
She did this many times, and in her hearing,
the dark loam whispered in protest. But what
was she to do? One must eat, and the white seeds
in their packet were waiting for the sun.
She carried a blue denim bag at her side,
Commonly, this is done with herbicide.
Leery of that, she tried a chain saw. That was
Easy enough, but made fumes and sets fire to
All the earth's air over time. Electric clippers
Ruled the roost awhile, but that, we know,
In the scheme of things is but a longer tailpipe,
Neither the labor direct nor personal. She's
Going to have to simplify further. She takes
The hand pruner with her to the patch. It means
Her time in blighted shade, bending, will be
Extended, reaching to each stem in turn,
Killing with a snip and twist, dragging four or five
Not so much weeds as small trees outward
Or upward from the dry wash, toward hot sun,
Toward the roasting garden, into the paths
Three deep breaths, palms together,
Here in her room, or elsewhere, she may
Rise and take. A habit she has formed,
Even as most of her ideas, ideals,
Even her so cherished findings, hard found,
Deducted, inducted, reasoned, debated, polished,
Even those most like faith, as taught her,
Even those most like science, measured, observed,
Peeled one by one: a human desert, she.
By three deep breaths, she centers somehow: how?
Reality itself a question she's no longer asking,
Eating and sleeping themselves provisional.
All she bothers to call caring is now to listen
To breath, room sounds, outside sounds, to
Her friends, their worries unpacked, their voices
Spending both hope and pain. She bows.
What she will do today is walk and take in
Hand her apple staff, leaning on it
As she does now, more and yet more
The nearer arriving to a last heart beat
She comes, and check for vegs and berries.
Here are yet more peas; she's not as
Eager for them as three days ago.
With a bit more busy-ness, she'd go
In for blanching those. Onions and
Leeks too small yet; almost out of
Lettuce; tomatoes on the other hand
Doing well, and some ready already.
Oh, she could cut kale, collards or chard
This morning like any late spring morning,
Only she's hungry for something more.
Do what she will, there are yet no pears,
There are two climbing roses by her gate,
one to each side, with velvet blooms, small,
but heavily scented, suitable for soaps, salves
and potpourri. They blossom out together,
several hundred, perhaps a thousand whorls
French pink, shading to cream, the haunt
of matching shy arachnids. How tall they'd grow
she doesn't know, having twined an arch of willow
whips atop her gate, to bind them to.
In her middle years, her family took this place
and named it for the stony creek, dry
in summer, rolling through between house
and garden. A storm year came; that garden up
and vanished down a river to the sea,
leaving them three dead plum trees and a rose.
She started fresh, by the house. For the rose
She knows the weeds will win. Sometimes, at night,
Hearing them grow in her dreams, she'll wake, grasp
Even in her two hands, a phantom thistle, or
Knotweed, errant blackberry, or teasel.
Now not able to turn and sleep, she'll rise, throw
On her robe, and step out into night;
Walking the way the slim moon shows her,
She throws aside her garden gate and listens.
There might be corn and tomatoes chatting,
Having about as much to say as farmed things.
Even a whisper among the kales and chard --
Whatever such things say. Beyond are beds
Ensnarled in dock, barnyardgrass, bindweed,
Everlasting morning glory vines.
Dire straits; but there's no sound there.
She knows they're biding their time,
Along the new trail, built by no one I knew,
acorns had fallen by thousands, more than enough
to leave creatures dazed by too much fortune.
Conkers have tumbled among them, each
experimentally chipped and then rejected
by some set of tiny teeth. Hazel nuts
were better, it seems. Should an adder pass en route
to denning, amid this rich mast, amid
this late fall of goldened leaves of ash
and beech, I might merely step aside,
unalarmed as any fattened squirrel.
Across the pasture, I remember, past
the partly shaded ferns, cowslips, bluebells,
buttercups of spring and summer, where
falling water, catkin-patterned, drowned out
the cygnet's cry in an otter's teeth (witnessed