What to do about trees, for she had room:
Have an orchard. But isn't that thinking
About twenty years ahead? So she went
To the tool room for her spade in November;
Took that and four apple saplings down
Onto the flat by the road, and began. Years she
Did this, working up and around the rise
Of better ground. Pears, cherries, quince
Abounded, but the plums got blight, and had to
Be started over. She was too old to harvest
Or even get shade from nut trees, they're so slow;
Uncoupling crop from objective, she anyway set
Them out, along with the rest. Last, she
Thought of mulberries. The hens could have
Really used those. Oh, well. She ordered,
Even this late in life, and planted once more,
She stands in wet and likes it; drips rolling
around the brim of her split-bamboo conical
hat to fall on thirsting clay. Here's
weather at last, there having been sun,
sun, sun, a lip-cracking and tree-splitting
dry, since the vernal equinox. Nothing
had been vernal about it, and her land
knew so. The very fir limbs sulked;
willows on creek banks browned up and died;
birds fell everlastingly silent, dropping
on needle-sharp tufts of what had been haymow
beneath their perches in rattling cedars;
fish sought pools deeper than any there were,
crowding in together, fin by fin,
gulping and grunting, then rolling over
to bump along hot, slimed rocks and lodge
Where are the potatoes, she wondered, watching
Heat shimmer across her corn block, its leaves
Each rustling against other, turning brown.
Right here they were planted, next bed over,
Evenly spaced, in two long lines, eyes up
And covered in soft soil, mixed with compost --
Really exactly as she had done these fifty years.
Early next morning, she reached for her mason's hammer,
The experiment with the spud hook having failed, and
Heaving her old bones down onto her gardening stool
Exactly at the end of that mysterious weedy bed;
Pulled block after block of solid hexagonal clod
Over, busting up each as she went, feeling for
That coolness she knew as round starch balls
All her life she'd depended on. It's not
The potting room was a miserable dank
shed, trash-chocked, roofed in plastic, blackberries
ingrown amid bedlam. she dragged it all into
the light, sifting for tools or nails, then
consigning the rest to dump runs. With one son,
the quiet one, she roofed the room with scraps,
tucking, there, or here, oddly-sized old windows.
To the south, a sliding door turned on its side
served for greenhouse glass. A friend's offer
of a chimney to salvage solved the question of how
to floor. With her other son, the tall one, she
rented a long-legged ladder for picking bricks
from the air, frightened at every ragged breath.
They piled them by the plant-room door, and the girl,
A bell and rattle,
a smell of roses,
a leather Bible,
and angry voices . . .
They say, I love you.
They shout, You must!
The light is telling
terrible stories.
But night at the window
whispers, Never mind.
Be true, be true
to your own strange kind.
Across the river
geese arrive
by a moon's light,
setting its image
dancing beneath
trees — and so
we know joy
though the world
has no use for us.
I came to a shelter
able to walk
no farther in rain.
There I found,
with a note
"You will need these"
a pair of dry boots:
my size.
From one hill to another extended
some grey clouds like clothes hanging on wire.
They hide the sun in their pockets and sleeves
making the day feel sad and depressed.
The birds with their beaks are pecking at them
in search of illumination and unfettered horizons
Their love for light and for the clean blue-sky,
has earned them wings and blessed their flight.
The frost under our feet
doesn’t cough that loudly,
yet it sounds more like
an old man’s mumbling.
The wind is not breathing
fast and chilly like last month.
Undressed trees
do not look that pretty
yet they seem shy, hiding within
thousands of pregnant buds.
It’s February,
the daylight
has emerged victorious
from its great battle
against dark.
Like I'm a tongue in the mouth of the wind;
In my face or at my back it moves me,
A mouse in its pocket, or a weasel
According to what present song it sings,
Low and limpid, high or hollowly.
It's seven minutes now; I'm still grinning
Since no breath opposes in all this whirlwind.
Let this my hide be brown sun gold. Let this
My body make a melody in muscle,
Elevated quick when love crooks her thumb
To the exit that's an entrance to sky kingdoms.
As long as any snuff of wind can tone a whistle
To thrilled ears, I'm a note in that mad chant.
If you haven't heard the robin's dawn song
You're a poorer man than you ought to be.
Up early once, by a small factory
Alongside which an elm tree was growing
Vibrantly in one of its early springs
With about two hundred heart-shaped leaves
Green as if it had just invented them;
I heard and saw a robin in the tree
Emit I'll swear in one protracted chord
With not a one I could label discord,
A note for every new leaf on that tree,
As if each leaf issued another leaf
Of spiritual stuff, metallic as well;
Brilliantly shone, etched with one perfect word.
So you got up and fed the cat. That’s something.
You hauled one leg, then the other, out of your
pyjama bottoms, and you fought doggedly across
the rugged terrain of the landing. You wielded
your toothbrush like a club. You stood under
the shower’s strafe for as long as it took
to deter the enemies under your skin, if just
for a while. You got yourself dressed: trousers,
T-shirt, socks – the kit. You sat for a bit then went
to the shops for milk and fruit, whatever your tired
gut could take. You wrote. That’s something.
Even read a bit too. You talked with your wife –
only half hearing through the hounding static,
but you talked nonetheless. You watched
some show about the Vikings. That’s something.