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Sara Teasdale
Heaven-invading hills are drowned
In wide moving waves of mist,
Phlox before my door are wound
In dripping wreaths of amethyst.
Ten feet away the solid earth
Changes into melting cloud,
There is a hush of pain and mirth,
No bird has heart to speak aloud.
Here in a world without a sky,
Without the ground, without the sea,
The one unchanging thing is I,
Myself remains to comfort me.
White clouds that change and pass,
And stars that shine awhile,
Dew water on the grass,
A fox upon a stile.
A river broad and deep,
A slow boat on the waves,
My sad thoughts on the sleep
That hollows out the graves.
There was a flash, so bright — as if
from the world’s largest camera,
come to capture everyone in
their work clothes.
We children ran to the top field
& turned & looked.
What new kind of cloud was this?
What new kind of tree?
It stood for hours on the horizon,
brewing its own weather, we guessed,
or setting fruit. No one could imagine just
how strong the wind, how terrible the rain.
But we were farmers’ kids.
When we saw white birds
streaming away toward the west,
we knew what to think.
A giant puffball bulges among
the dried stalks of goldenrod
like a misplaced hope.
I stuff it in my coat pocket & look
around for others, without success.
That evening, I chop its spongy cloud-flesh
into a sauce with clams.
Then, too, there was the spruce tree
a porcupine had recently girdled.
It stood in the dense center of a galaxy
of needles, some fallen pale side up,
some dark green – a pleasing blend.
Out at the feathery edge, a scattered pile
of hickory shells. I crouched there
tracing words with my finger
over & over in the soft dirt,
the road grows with us
the road is lost
though going the same way
the road is master to the clock
but not to clouds
it’s easy to stop seeing
what’s on the horizon
people in the valley
don’t really believe in it
what summer makes seem
no less than a mountain
winter shows as it is
no more than a hill
from my front porch
a sudden influx of sky
after the leaves fall
look it’s snowing
the flakes come to settle
in their multitudes
well into the evening
lightness piling up
i am prey
i am mammal
pure fear
fires my pistons
my eyebrows
can pupate
i have outgrown
my own hair
earth-bound
descended from the trees
i drink from the gray
breasts of clouds
on hind legs
i hone myself
to the thinness
of a blade of grass
i pass a black glove stuck
to a white oak beside the trail
and soon i am seeing trees with faces
pot-bellied old maples
great buttressed oaks
limbs spreading in all directions
spared for the shade
they once gave livestock
now filling in fast
with pole timber
and a blue-green haze
of little white pines coming up
an old pasture slowly climbing
toward the bovine clouds
sky face says meh
to the white noise
of our anti
bodies of work
squeezing whole lives
into a few hours before sleep
while six-legged leaves
chant half the night
sky face acquires
a round cloud mouth
the moonlight denies
ever knowing the moon
the lives we’re missing bloat like corpses
as species dwindle
sky face is just the void
with better branding
wren wiping his bill
on the ridgeline of the roof
his mate already brooding
on a second clutch
the first clouds always
look innocent enough
until they open
their rainy mouths
catbird singing out
instructions for assembly
a deer sneezing
from her day bed in the weeds
this is how one gauges
one’s aptitude for silence
in Figure 1 we can see
how the trend lines wander
Three days before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, my friend L. and I get lost on a hike above a dammed-up river, too busy arguing about politics to notice that we’ve branched off onto the wrong logging road. The sun is going down. On the ridge above us, coyotes start singing. Their melismatic solos intertwine in a way that can’t be called dissonant, though Lord knows it’s nothing as simple as harmony.
no longer lost
that hole in the clouds
far upslope
A small cloud on the cliff
above the railroad tracks—
the shadbush is in bloom.
As I drive up the hollow on
our one-lane road, a red-tailed hawk
passes me going down.
All the spring ephemerals are emerging,
leaves wrinkled and damp
like freshly pitched tents.