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Contemplative, Risa Bear, in English Clear filters

ContemplativeRisa Bear

How She Knows

How she knows she is not useless yet: Old cornstalks must be shattered right Where they stood green, to feed worms She knows are waiting in darkness. Her hens wait too, for water, for feed, Especially for deadnettles, nipplewort, Kale and comfrey. Some hummingbirds Now arriving check the lilac for their Own nectar bottle that hung there While last spring, summer and fall Slipped past. There are wasp queens She finds sleeping in her woodpile; Her heart skips a beat as she sees Each one, for she fears them, yet Interests herself in their rest and Safety, for the good they do her garden.
ContemplativeRisa Bear

Spring Springs

Spring springs upon her unawares; Perhaps she thought snow would drift Right up to her window, as it should In February, as in her memory No such month escaped some white. Going forth in a sleeveless shift She pockets up seeds for flats, Pulls out dank bins of soil, Reaches for small pots, sets hope In light. Such April ploys are Not to be counted on, she knows -- Guessing random frosts Still may spring upon her unawares.
ContemplativeRisa Bear

Petrichor

This time of year that room is not much visited. Its herringbone-patterned floor of worn bricks tilts here and there where rodents have made inroads. Homemade flats lie heaped in corners; stacks of cells lean sleepily together; insulation dangles; tools hang, festooned with webs and dust. Sometimes when the door has been set ajar, a towhee wanders in, becomes confused at light from so many windows, beats itself silly, then rests, is eventually found and shown the way out. There's not much an old lady can do but wait, watching for earlier suns to rise, for petrichor, for that sudden dislocation brought on by stepping into sunshine by a southern wall. Then, after one jonquil blooms by way of
ContemplativeRisa Bear

Decembering

All that is left is the Granny Smiths; she Loves that they cling to their shivered tree, Leaves long gone. Even the hens have left off Trusting the sky to toss them sugar, and Have retired to their tractor, pecking At storebought feed in its styrene bin. The winds whistle through, rasping Ink-black twigs together; the apples nod and Stub their green bellies. She Lifts ten or so down, as if they were Each one of her own breasts, tenderly Filling her small basket. In the kitchen They will sit shyly waiting their turn: It is the season for other foods; in Stoneware bowls, nuts and citrus Talk among themselves in distant tongues.
ContemplativeRisa Bear

What to Do with Leaves

What to do with leaves, if one cannot leave them Here beneath aspen, gum, maple and birch As what they become in winter, a kind of skirt To warm and feed fanned roots, is gather and Toss them on a garden. She spreads hers Over bed and path alike, with straw, with Dead grass and weeds, barn bedding, the contents Of kitchen bucket and tumble barrel, along With any foliage that comes to hand, even prunings If too small to bother with for her iron stove. This is for worms and all their small companions Heaving aside the earth of path and bed alike, Leveling and loosening, making untilled tilth. Evening comes and she stills, listening As the city of humus thrums toward spring.
ContemplativeRisa Bear

Rhythm

The rhythm of the work is to set down Her padded bench, a flat, and trowel at the End of a bed and drop as if in prayer, Reach for the trowel (bent for her old Hand at right angles), dig, then grope for a pot. You may see each hole is deep and wide enough To exactly take the root ball. She carefully Holds this in her shade, tips the damp Mass in, packs with trowel, repeats all -- three Or four times -- then stands. Behind her, some Four plants glow green in any six feet of bed. The rhythm of this work, when best, resembles How monks or nuns in supplication glide Easily to the floor, centered, unconcerned With body or mind, then rise, then glide again, Outcomes not sought, nor merit earned.
ContemplativeRisa Bear

There Are Rooms

There are rooms in a life that may sometimes Have someone in them; but they are guests there. Even when one most loves, one may find, Really, a solitude that begins at this wall, Ends at that wall; the rest is not entirely ours. As years turn and suns, moons and stars Rise up and fall like rain by every window Even one's hands will shrivel soon enough Right at the ends of one's arms, as hands Of strangers. But to fret at this discovery Of emptiness arrived at and emptiness Made clear by moon's dance with water, Sun's dance with dust, by endings never sought In even that one room that is one's own, is Not worthy of even that we call our life. All our guests deserve from us restraint.
ContemplativeRisa Bear

Wassail

In August, but this year in July, Gravensteins: golden fleshed, generous, kind to cook, ciderer and ring-dryer. She tries everything, but mostly butter: a large crockpotful of peeled rings, quartered, lightly cloved, cinnamoned and nutmegged will make six pints and one short jelly jar. After that, the old Egremont Russet, Cortland, Honeycrisp and Jonagold come all together; what can she do but slice them all in quarters, toss them into her dedicated shredder, pour pomace into a burlap bag and hang that, with her father's pulley and old hemp rope, to a maple branch? Juice will run for hours, collecting in a tub beneath; at evening she dips gold,
ContemplativeRisa Bear

Learning to Walk

It's not that she hasn't been doing this all along: She'd walked to school as yellow lozenges, oozing screams, fumed past her along hot asphalt. She'd splashed the creek, anxious for a path, then built it herself, kenning to use her father's axe without lost blood. She'd walked from Springer Mountain north, chatting in her offhand way with bears, a big cat and a ghost. She'd walked the halls of academia and then the hills, big ones, bringing seedling trees to snug up to the raw stumps of firs machines had eaten. She'd walked to a job for decades, block after block of homes with eyes of black glass inching past her tired, angry shoes. Now, late in life, she keeps a small dog bereft by her parents’
ContemplativeRisa Bear

The Things to Do

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.

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