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’
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,
They do not always sit with an easy grace,
the aging: in afternoon light, even in October,
cracks invade her clear skin,
showing in relief, and he knows dismay,
seeing her, his own once simple face
crowding itself, as when a life within
doors runs out of thought. Yet, sober
as this renders him, he will not turn away
from her to seek some easier play:
there is no win or lose, no hunt, no race,
no battle. His eyes would disrobe her,
for she is to him more than she has been,
and he would know all, even here,
as passers pass, not seeing what his eyes see;
but he will wait on her clear sign
that this is welcome, even from his gaze,
As they grew older,
the land which had grown wheat
washed down the hill,
and the river
carried the land into the sea.
The priest with the horned
mask, who brought meat
from the altar,
turned into a bird
and flew among the mountains.
The people of the markets
who touched their heads to the ground,
changed into clumps of weed
among the gutters
of the bare hill.
A galley which carried wine
My friends lean
Across the table.
My breath stops.
What was it
They saw?
I become wary
of the huckleberries
inveigling ice down
my neck, no matter
how I turn.
New wrinkles
in my hands
are well matched
to those in yours.
Now we have loved,
we cannot die.
I watched the nurse
with her blue spoon
badgering our nana.
The old woman
stitched up her mouth
with what will
she had — she would
choose her time,
her place, her way.
This world's events
pass over me
like summer showers.
In my old mind
wind and sun
go free.
Sitting on a bench, lonesome
in a corner of a park
he fills his lungs with green air
and idly he drinks the milk of light.
He rises slowly, and he puts the path,
as a fiction book, in his pocket
walking towards the gate of twilight
where his white-dream night lies ahead.
Every day he repeats this journey
without betraying the day, air or wind
until the twilight runs away from him
or the night locks him in forever.
An old woman in an airport,
sunken cheeks,
turns toward a window
where sky comes in and
we can see metal villages
take off, glide down.
Her face suggests she knows
how society got this frenzied,
worried, driven to vacate.
She may know too where each
of us is going, returning from,
and why airports reek of grief—
her face is a rare manuscript
of grief. Her years spiral
slowly in memory like a galaxy.
Her attachments drift aboard
The iron garden-gate
was hard and wondrous to open.
Ornamentation dated it.
Up the walkway then,
into her stifling house,
where she sat in her purple
dress and parchment skin,
saying what she thought
her whole life
had taught. She was too old
to pity, too austere to embrace.
The voice seemed to come
from years ago.
Our minds assured us
we would never grow
that weird if we ever