Love and Death
Living with someone by choice for a long time sets the foundation for becoming. But only if you are awake enough to grow together and allow it. Loving someone, for a moment, for a day, for a lifetime, transforms you. Transforms the one you love. Both in life and in death. These poems were written over the span of more than forty years — selections from a conversation with the person who walked with me on a long and joyful journey.
You
1.
i am not as neat as you
or as kind or nearly as persistent
about the truth
but i have resolved
that the world should be
a better place because of me
and that is enough
2.
you have come from the pond
with your red hair wet and clinging
to your face and you are yourself
the sun and the fire
of the sun and the fire
when the sun is gone
and the leaves
that turn away from green
to red and gold and orange in autumn
3.
the bear growls in its winter place
and wears a child’s face
and sleeps and dreams
of the salmon that swim up the mighty stream
to spawn and die and
of the fish that fed the bear
and the great grandchildren of the bears
4.
in a high place in the clouds
the cold rain is falling hard
without a sound
in sheets of silver
in swaths of gray
from cloud to gray cloud
above the earth
without a sound
5.
it will not be long and it will be spring
and a girl will sing and a girl will dance
the dance of the light dancers
on the running waters
with so much glistening ice to melt
and so much of the frozen world
to do and to undo
in drips and careless drops
of golden sun
6.
i am not as old as the one
who hands us the beginning
or as young as she is young
who takes away the end
7.
and you are left at a small distance
a hill of your own making
where the mountains loom
and the valleys sleep
in a woman’s peace
Colors
you have the colors of the sky
and the dappled light of the trees
about your head
and the moist dark earth
and the brown of trampled leaves
beneath your feet
and the colors of the sky
and the colors of the earth
have journeyed
to the center
to become you
both bright and brighter
both white and black
both dark and sodden night
a dance of the hues
and the shades and the tints
the blur of understanding
and the clarity of the infinite
Loading the Car
in the chilly hour before dawn
when the fog crawls down from the river
and settles on the salt marshes to hug and kiss
the other mist that has rolled off the cold
atlantic the sea that stretches
from the beach that lines this old resort
east to greenland the
island continent of wintered stones
we cannot see before you have
begun to stir from the welcome sleep
that comes from making love
the one last time before we had to go
before the children cease to dream or stir
before the sun and the sun’s hint of warmth
rise from the water off the shore
i load the car
alone and every
bump or thud or metal ring
of this solitary chore is amplified
for a single moment and then escapes
into an empty space as vast
as the remaining night
and the coming light
and calls to me that we should go
the way of desolate chords
and calls to you that you should wake
before we go
Vacation
we checked
into the lodge and spa
next to the river fed
by the ice of melting glaciers
and fell asleep
to the sound
of time rushing by
What You Imagined
let’s not milk it too much
but what a view
what a snippet of bucolic bliss
at a distance
from our new house
a solitary tree grows
at the crest of a gently sloping pasture
that rises from a large man-made pond
(swelling at the head of a dirt levee)
to the hilltop
all beef cattle and grazing fescue meadow
the tree framed by the backdrop
of the blue ridge mountains
rolling up farther west from west virginia
like soft swollen clouds
fallen asleep on the earth
as if to overstate
the pastoral perspicacity
of this rural rejoinder
the tree is companion
to a small weathered barn
with a small red roof
where calves are weaned
and steers are tended
and further down the ridge line
to a bigger stand of taller trees
shading the farmhouse
protected from the meadow
by a four-rail oak fence
painted black
you say time and again
that someone had
to have imagined it
ruminated on the way
the tree would look from this distant ridge
a focal point at each sunset
for the white tail and red fox
a harbinger to the bluebirds and swallows
a marker for the coyotes
and the cattle that back when
lived and died here
planted you speculate
by a strong young farmer
newly married to a newly married bride
both convinced the tree would survive
despite being so exposed
despite the cold northwest wind
that rips down the valley
from november through march
and the merciless summer sun
and the ice and the snow
in the same way perhaps
that we imagined once
that life might be easy
that at a certain age we were invincible
that there would always be enough time
enough of tomorrow
to take a chance on disregarding
today’s storm
that love
like the water for the tree
would rain from the sky
if we assumed
it would just fall
that what we needed to thrive
like the nutrients for the tree
would percolate up from the ground
if we just expected them to do so
in today’s bright september light
you sit there convinced
that surely it must have been the woman
who conceived it
too much balance
too much serenity
too much shade to nurture the cattle
that crowd under its canopy
on hot days
for it to be any other way
i sip a bit of wine
and silently laugh at the thought
of explaining to cattle where steak comes from
then slowly drift back to imagining myself
hauling the young tree up the hill
digging the damn, back-breaking hole
in the clay and the rock
setting in the sapling
rolling back the dirt
slowly begin to feel a certain wonder
a certain gratitude perhaps
a certain intervention by what might
only be called the hand of god
that despite the storms
the lightning strikes
the delayed sowing seasons
and the aborted harvests
despite the heavy rains and snow
the summer hail
and the late night hail marys
we are present here
still together still
quietly sipping
red wine
from old wedding glasses
a kind of love
we could not have understood
when we dug the first hole
to plant our own improbable tree
all fire and haste
all uninformed and unaware
of what it takes
for living things to grow
what now seems like
a lifetime ago
old roots running deep
tired branches
and colorful tattered leaves
graceful and high
on yet another hill
you have imagined
Ash
when we bought
the property beneath
its sometimes orange
sometimes amber sky
the first cull we planned
was cutting down
the dead stand of ash
at the edge of the
small peninsula of
trees fingering up
the side of the meadow
from the big forest
that flips to a state park
as you hike north
the ash borers
having finished
their work in time
for our arrival leaving
gray monuments to testify
to once graceful lives
but thanks to
revelations appearing
in moments where
we allowed ourselves
to see more
than we first saw
and to the press
of unopened boxes
of endless stuff
we never got around
to cut them down
so something initially
ugly in our view
turned beautiful
with living beneath
their upstretched arms
no morality or purpose
in leveling the house
of flickers and gray squirrels
the perch of hawks
the vantage point
of black massive
turkey buzzards
peculiar birds like
cannonballs with wings
balancing on dry branches
that support by who knows
what miracle these odd balls
of feathers and orange beaks
with never blinking eyes
scanning the ground
waiting patiently for
an opportunity to float
with the wind and dine
*
now i look alone at
what’s been culled
now i feel
what’s fallen down
now that you are gone
gray bones toss and shake
against the wind
a gray stone settles
in a cemetery garden
flat and carved
atop the disturbed earth
small pink flowers
cut from our summer bed
wilt untended
in knotted bunches
pretty rooms inside
a half-empty house
full of what
you felt should be
the fading memories of
your gentle way
with children
those forehead kisses
your slow and many steps
to reading books
your quiet conversations
with the newly born
in the hour it would often take
for you to change one diaper
let others wait
the persistence
your children
now must muster
to help your
grandchildren recall
to help them keep you
near their hearts
before they forget it all
*
september
the first
since when
the wind comes
as it does more frequently
over the ridge
pulling a steady stream
of yellow leaves from the heart
of otherwise green but tired trees
not tears exactly
reminders
of the drought
of summer
the coming fall
the slain deer
in winter on which
these peculiar birds survive
Pin Oaks
pin oaks are not hasty
about unfurling in spring
under no great compulsion
to part with their curled
and dry leaves in autumn
what reason
they seem to say
to open before it’s warm
to let go your dead
until the days again
grow long
*
some death feels
to the touch of us
like life
hay in rows
surrendering water
to the sun
steady heat
from compost bins
the fingers of mycelium
propping the world above
yoshino petals floating on winds
we name for directions
from which they come
even the multitudes
left on white sands
by the tide to dry
but then again
some life feels
to the touch of us
like death
maggots
buzzards picking
at roadside kill
gray mold
on yesterday’s
hard bread
*
a certain kindly
well-intended few
still inquire how
i’m making do
now without you
but there’s no point
in choking up
a rote reply
i miss the rock
that fell from
my careless hands
the rock i held but lost
the rock i grasped
for a moment
then let go
from the heat of fire
to the unexpected cold
i hear water seep down
to the silent aquifer
in the stony ground
i close and lock the outside doors
to the howling of strange beasts
that pass by the lightless house
at odd intervals throughout the night
in the morning i choose
an unpaved road to walk
worry about
what you left behind
wonder if you will stop
your long dead watch
ever close your eyes
so beautiful in life and rest