a woodpecker’s
speckled woods
weathering novemberly
down to embers
in the soothills
of the alleghenies
where victorians went
on elegant excursions
railroad logging a hundred
summers in a day
now free to go
fluttering
muttering off
earthward
warm
worm
everything forks and branches
you can’t get there from here
unless you go sideways first
like a knight in chess
or a long-tailed weasel
hunting in the stiltgrass
you must run out
of luck or lumber
get saved by a discount preacher
behind the barbecue shack
lose an argument
with the moss
wonder what horrors
lie hidden beneath your feet
wrapped in duct tape
sealed in mason jars
a morning-fresh aroma
from the compost
steaming in the cool air
i descend the mountain
just so i can climb it
yet again
through fog
as soft as the moss
acorns clattering down
the sun’s already out
in the valley for
the annual farm show
and above the gap
the first broad-winged
hawks of the day
spiral high around
In the house of rain, all are kin. Consider the toadstool releasing its spores when the rain comes knocking. Many of those spores drift up into the atmosphere, where they become cloud condensation nuclei and give birth to new raindrops—with moisture released by the trees. I recite this true fable to myself as I trudge through the downpour.
that scent
of wet rhododendrons—
Pop-pop’s place
I like how the world is textured.
Visually and aurally and in food webs and ecological niches.
The endless intricacy and beauty of it.
It’s utterly entrancing sometimes, like the best rave ever.
Whatever i tell myself, it’s never enough. Understanding begins with listening.
without issue i can feel the forest
thicken within me
build up fuel and hunger
for that incendiary spark
ah to slash and burn
plow and harrow with my ancestors
or cut down the old giants
and replace them with windmills
deadly flowers scything
the air for migrants
our doom laid out
like a meal for ravens
fates intertwining like fingers
at a lovers’ leap
a mile and a half up a mountain hollow
under the green banners of the sun
in one summer how many
generations of aphids
chicory blueing the roadside
where a drive-in used to be
and the spindly trees
that stand in for angels
their green blades
for carving up the sun
so much more than we know
grows in a summer
sporangia like eyestalks
seedpods like space ships
and the mountaintop bleeds orange
where coal was stripped out
but we climb with
our mouths open
Mind the gap they said
and I didn’t. There’s
a storm wind but
no storm. Children
play in the distance
or maybe fight. Don’t
mind me I murmur to a deer
trotting past while I type
this on my phone standing
still as a tree at dusk
just vibrating a little
from a Swainson’s thrush
on his yearly trip north.
I’m mindful that everything
human in this hollow
comes from the gap
I didn’t go to bars or restaurants all that often, but I still miss them. Longing is all about the unattainable, isn’t it? I often find myself out restlessly walking around the mountain instead.
so much more
than one can hear
hermit thrush
I like walking at dusk because it is then that the buzzing stops. I don’t mind the whine of a mosquito, but as long as I can remember, I’ve been bothered by flies. Too many of them and my nose starts to itch uncontrollably, I don’t know why. And nothing is more horrifying than some dead animal heaving with maggots.
ephemeral pond
raccoon footprints fill in
with tadpoles
at the bottom of the mountain
a small mountain
of gravel
riprap
just enough soil
for anise root
where the hollow empties
its silence into the gap
old cellar holes
locked gate
stroking the touch-me-nots
so they burst
whispering against
the road from both sides
endless water
backhoe toothmarks
our complicated relationship
with the mountain
gabion wall
the quarried stones softening
with moss at last
a beech log’s pale skin
beginning to rupture
that rich ferment
Clouds hide the top of Ice Mountain
and it looks like a real mountain again,
no turbines in sight.
Below, the ugly subdivision
where a black family once woke
to a burning cross.
I find a shed antler on the powerline,
a twisted Y like the bottom half
of a stick figure.
The first warm day.
The mountain hums with insects
and the valley with motorcycles.
Between twists of old coyote scat
and dried grass curled
tight as pubic hair,
close to the ground, the trailing
arbutus’ fragrant parts
begin to open.