This is the story
of the banjo jubilee:
the pregnant woman
lays her hand on a banjo
for good luck.
The burglar flees
at the sight of a banjo
over his left shoulder.
A dog sees a banjo
go yellow in alpenglow
& begins to howl.
The coyotes answer
with a yip & a yelp
& an ai-ai-ai.
The locksmith pauses
to listen on his way
Hypogastrura nivicola
The snow flea is rarely found alone.
Though if it were, who but another snow flea
would notice it against the snow,
a single speck of pepper, a mote of ash?
Come March & they move en masse,
transhumant across their blue-shadowed host.
Approach too close & they start to rocket about
like acrobats in a mad flea circus.
There’s safety in numbers, & in
the unpredictability of a random launch —
the wingless springtail’s main defense.
True, one sometimes goes straight up
& returns to the same, dangerous spot,
but what bird wants to mess with such
unquiet seeds?
Saved by a banjo, she turned
into someone forever glancing
in the rear-view mirror,
someone given to sudden,
unpredictable spasms of laughter.
The amount of space
her arms now claimed with
their emphatic gesticulations
alarmed even herself:
how unladylike!
She stopped smoking & enrolled
in truck-driving school
because, she said, she didn’t
ever want to slow down.
She’d pull into rest areas
on the high plains, hold
Where guitar says body, banjo says head.
Where guitar says soundboard, banjo says membrane.
Where guitar says six, banjo says one for each finger.
Where guitar says bridge, banjo says keep going.
Where guitar says hole, banjo says full.
It had been a drifter,
getting by on odd jobs:
guy wire for a weathervane,
the main spring in the crouch of a cat,
a corn broom’s binding cord.
It had learned to sing the wind’s several laments,
to play with its prey,
to teem.
It happened by
just when the banjo was holding
auditions for a new first string,
& unexpectedly
the fifth string got the part.
Its square tuning peg was a perfect fit
for that round & bottomless hole.
The banjo now began
My window is blocked by
an enormous vinyl
advertisement
for a red
cocktail dress.
If you’re looking up
from the street,
I am right behind
the left breast,
shameless as a blood fluke.
When the sun strikes it
at 3:00 in the afternoon,
the room fills
with evening
& I raise the window
to listen to it
First warm day.
I sit in the shade closing one eye
then the other.
This phoebeing—
even the pants on the line
seem to get the rhythm.
Vicious groundhog fight.
The victor stands still & lets the flies
land on his face.
Fur in the air—
the cattails
are shedding.
As slow as spring
on the half-naked dead elm,
a fox squirrel’s tail.
The vulture’s shadow
Its nut reburied,
the squirrel moves quickly away
& pretends to forage.
Half of the turkeys
run one way & half the other.
I turn in circles.
On the night we have to set
the clocks ahead,
the rustle of earthworms.
We search the sky
for the whistling woodcock.
Nothing but the moon.
In the bathtub this morning,
it’s the first wolf spider
of spring!
I am for the roadside rather than the road.
I am for the one who announces
rather than the one who is announced.
In the middle of a ballet, I am the fly
rubbing its hind legs together
on the collar of a coat.
I am a friend to those who curse
when they’re happy
& sing when they’re sad.
And when someone places a hand
like a hot iron on some starched bible,
I am with those who blush
& stare at their feet.
Like a snow flea,
wingless but spring-loaded,
its only defense being to launch itself
in a random direction,
but which sometimes ends up
right back in the same spot.
Which absorbs moisture through
a life-long feeding tube in its abdomen
& breathes directly through its thick skin.
Whose blood contains an antifreeze-like protein
that may turn out to have commercial applications
in ice cream & the storage of organs for transplant.
Which joins a million others of its kind
in late winter — cabin-fever time —
for mass migrations across
the frozen Serengeti of the woodlot,
For a day and a half, due no doubt to the rain and snow squalls, high-speed internet access here on the mountain varied from brief and intermittent to non-existent. I was forced to resort to dial-up, where it can take half an hour to complete the simplest task. No chance then of my attention leaping from site to site; I became as slow and single-minded as an autumn cricket.
When I step outside, mid-afternoon,
my quilted shirt turns white
with sudden pixels.
I blink like a cursor.
All the dried goldenrod heads
are blossoming into a second, ghostly life.
Clear and very cold.
I hear squirrel teeth
on walnut shell.
The Carolina wren’s happiness motor
turns over once, twice, then putts to life.