underfoot the piece
meal of it
what was once gray sand
now glitters under lichen
after dark the lunar
landscape of it
shivery with crickets
dense with ambiguities
the way bare wood weathers
or old snow collects grime
aging in place
lost in a maze of cracks
i have taken my micro
dose of humility
the high line buzzes
with ghosts of power
sitting in a cold house
staring at my empty wood stove
thinking it’s my fault
that she went cold
and with the lights out it’s brighter
outside than in
the snow reflecting the clouds
reflecting the lights from town
a house is a strange husk
home to so many others
like the 18 white-footed mice
I’ve slaughtered this winter
or my dreams which I no longer recall
but which I presume to exist
like the giant rat snake whose skin
I found in the ceiling
A year into the pandemic, do I still remember how to kiss, or even to hug? Is it a muscle-memory thing, like riding a bicycle? I’ve forgotten whole languages, one lonely drink at a time. I barely remember what it’s like to be in a room full of strangers. Will we ever pretend that’s normal again?
last year’s pod
still holding on
to next year’s milkweed
Limbs against the snow, outlined with more snow. Treetops no longer canopies but the bare nets of need. Their no-longer-rare caresses and collisions in the winter wind. The moans of the ice-bound. How tormented they’d be if they hadn’t retreated to the underworld, that silken matrix of rootlets and hyphae, to trade fermented memories of sunlight for the bones of a mouse.
winter den
a slow leak of breath
growing needles
snowy meadow
seedhead bending into
its own pit
In the news: a last-minute Brexit deal, a Covid stimulus bill passing through Congress, and possible signs of intelligent life from Proxima Centauri. Sitting outside around midnight, I watch a deer silhouetted against the snow pick her way to the stream, hooves crunching through the icy snowpack. And the lacework of tree branches: a threadbare garment. It’s one thing to feel as if we’re all connected in some cosmic web, but it’s another matter entirely to share the bleak familiarity of our solitude with strangers, I mutter to myself. Her head goes up, ears pivoting like radio telescopes in my direction.
power outage
all the glowing lights
in the sky
It’s not every year we get snow in dogwood season. This particular year, the wild weather simply adds to the impression that the world is completely out of whack.
spiderweb
catching snowflakes
their little spikes
Marooned in our homes, tempers fray. We wonder how long this will go on, worry about finances and food shortages. I watch a pair of scarlet tanagers—treetop birds—reduced to feeding near the ground and foraging for invertebrates in the creek.
redder
than our open mouths
tanager
But spring is always a puzzle: the innumerable ways that spikiness blossoms and leaves us.
it is winter
and we speak
with passionate hands
in the world beyond
there will be no ground
that is not white
I go bone by bone
through the whole
strange city
snowflakes
on my bald head
tapping woodpecker
subnivean
I tunnel through the day
half awake
Groundhog Day
the former coal town living
off a shadow
cabin fever
today’s potato flaky
as old wood
meltwater pool
the way my reflection
keeps shivering
cold moon
brings marvels:
a phoebe diving for snow fleas,
the track of a chipmunk,
a turkey vulture flapping its wings.
The art museum’s smallest room
is filled with miniature landscapes.
We stop in front of each,
& my 8-year-old niece waits for me
to hoist her up by the armpits
for a five-second look.
I learn a new word from the exhibit’s title: purlieu. “A frequently visited place, an outlying district,” says Merriam-Webster’s New Collegiate. In the plural, “Confines, bounds” as well as “Neighborhood, environs.” From the French, “to go through,” it came into use in the Middle Ages, when it had a fairly specific denotation: “ME purlewe land severed from an English royal forest by perambulation.”
Later, she watches from
the back seat of the car as
a ten-dollar bill change hands. Giggles.
“They hold the money
The March winds
have blown wet snow
sideways against the trees—
look in one direction
and the woods are white;
in the other, brown.
The snow sticks to our boot soles,
lifting like lids
from jars full of spring.
A groundhog comes out of her hole
and begins to gather bundles
of dried grass.
Harlequin ladybirds
emerge from the side of the house
with a burning thirst
and dive onto the snow,
where they suck and stumble
and come to a frozen halt.