Deep'sky
Nights as a kid
Eyelids peeled
I've forgotten more
Drifting down the staggered lights
Than you'll ever know
Rhubarb, pieces of eight
Feet in the air
And the more I see
IQ getting filmy
Car lengths at a time
The more I see
Surface tension, rimfire
I need my fingers to be careful with
The more uncomfortable I get
Memories of childhood
The sweetness of summer comes
Bursting on my tongue
a boy carved his initials
way up high
I'll be a knight he said
a poet lover sage
but they cut
the tree down
he worked dreamed mated
gave birth and lost a child
to death
had a profession comfort
used wood to burn
cosy night fires
flame-coloured flowers
and letters flew
around the room
chastising burning
my memories hold machines
the wall lighting up as a car
cruised by our house
and i was happy
high up a buzzing plane in the
hot empty blueness motors
sputtering on lakes
the long car journeys to the
city school with car rugs
the big orange busses leaning
around corners or to
the rolling hills
those old ironing machines
for sheets -
are machines romantic
after all? I've wanted them
A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, ‘Why not?’
In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, ‘Just it.’
And he said, ‘That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm.’
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
Dust always blowing about the town,
Except when sea-fog laid it down,
And I was one of the children told
Some of the blowing dust was gold.
All the dust the wind blew high
Appeared like gold in the sunset sky,
But I was one of the children told
Some of the dust was really gold.
Such was life in the Golden Gate:
Gold dusted all we drank and ate,
And I was one of the children told,
‘We all must eat our peck of gold.’
The army of things,
like a horde of locusts
has occupied
up to the smallest corners
almost all the space
of my big house, which I just bought.
Memories of my past,
like shy children lie wordlessly
on the angles of the sofas and armchairs.
Greed, like a hussy,
wanders around the rooms,
grinning, showing off,
shouting and cursing.
New house, big, all complete
with everything,
Yet I don’t feel comfortable at all.
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.
The eight-year-old boy can’t reach the first branch of the
largest of a pair of Maples in the front yard so he settles
for the lowest branch of the smaller tree. He easily pulls
himself up into the first crotch and pauses there, planning
his route to the top of his favorite aviary. He knows each
branch like the back of his hand, every step, every
handhold. He starts to climb, one limb at a time.
As the boy ascends, the branches get smaller and more
flexible. He can feel himself now swaying gently in the
wind. He can almost (but not quite) poke his head out of
the leaves at the top of the tree before he’s forced to stop
climbing. Here he tucks a leg into the fork between two
branches and settles in.
Outside the cabin, a smaller, child-size log cabin once sat
next to the driveway. Over the years, a coven of spiders
and wood ticks took it over, the forest slowly staking a
claim, gravity wresting it back into the ground. We never
played there. Who wants cobwebs in their hair, much less
nightmares on the brain? There were bear claw-marks in
the wood, for crying out loud. No telling how many
creatures chewed on that shack, and the fallen pine
needles on the roof left a musty Hansel and Gretel feel.
Little children could get lost in there.
Finally, someone dismantled it, the children grew up, and
the ghost stories surrounding it gradually subsided into
memories of fear we’ve almost now forgotten.
The wooden stairs are steep, only about ten of them but
steep. At the foot is Grandma’s canning pantry complete
with carefully sealed Mason jars filled with applesauce,
jams, jellies, watermelon pickles, and other preserves.
Mostly it’s fruit we picked. I like it when Grandma
chooses me to fetch something from the shelves.
To the left is Grandpa’s workbench with an assortment
of tools including a bench-grinder, a couple of rock
tumblers and, my favorite, a handheld black light. We
use it to view the fluorescent stones and minerals in his
rock collection gathered on many trips across North
America. Fluorite, calcite, and hyalite all dazzle in its
subtle glow. Grandpa weaves stories of adventure in with