Work in Progress

Here's something new I've been toying with. I think maybe the title is too heavy for the poem, but the previous title was "In the Woods," and that wasn't enough. I hate titles. Can I be Emily Dickinson and rely on the first line of each poem as the title? When I am dead and suddenly famous, y'all can chronologically order my poetry in a collected works and give them numbers. No more titles.


Knowledge of Good and Evil

I show my children the Mayapple,
lift its waxen umbrella for their eyes
to see its single flower. My mother’s
faraway warning steers us away
from three-leafed vines with a red dot
in the center. I use her firm grip
to turn my curious pair from their itch
to explore the woods beyond the path.
She told me, too, which berries
could be eaten on the border
of the forest where we scavenge
between the pin oaks, lift branches
heavy with the ripest fruit.

Maybe someday we will walk
through the shadows in the lane
of pines and my son will stop,
stoop down to lift an unknown
to me, give me a new world.

Interference

*poof!*

Measuring Rings

Settle your shifting vision on the maple stump
your son is standing on, growing out
of all your ancient history. The past keeps repeating
in new rings, health you measure by breadth.
You count the number of times you’ve grown
out of the fire, the layers of heartwood healing
over scars, new branches jutting from woundwood.

Do you see the little man stomping his feet
on this stump, laughing? Stop searching
for ways to hollow out your trunk. It is hard
to distinguish redemption from regret; you must see
the heartwood for what it is – dormant, but solid –
here only so you have something to grow on,
matter to attach your sapwood.

The present flows directly from the past.
As every second dies, a new one stumbles in
to stand on the back of the last. If the sun
indeed will rise to warm your town again,
you’ll take this trail tomorrow, but it will never
be the same – you cannot pilfer this moment
in your pocket to pull out a year from now.

Without the bouncing toddler on the stump,
there is no playful coaxing down, no upward-
reaching hand, no march down the sidewalk.
Every dead and living branch you’ve wished away
would erase this knot, this casual miracle
sprouting light with every hallowed breath.

Easter Saturdays

Easter Saturdays (tentative title because I stink at titles)


Cars full of people split the swamp where my creek flows.
They must not ponder, pause, stare at hollowed logs,
branchless trunks and wonder about the end of winter,
spring still a whisper in the trickle of cold water through the culvert.

What does all this dying mean, this surrender
after striving for three seasons? Grasses have been shedding
locks for decades, climbing out of caskets, grow and grow
over all their flawed history. We are all eating ourselves,

regurgitating what we thought was digested,
disposed and left behind. But it heaves back,
the crunch of gravel chip and seal, the steady rain falling
after having traveled the culvert just yesterday,

when I straddled the guard rail, cold metal creasing my thighs,
watching every season of my life die and be reborn.

Canada Geese

Canada Geese


We fly the same V for weeks, know
our destination without words and sail,
driven by a force north to calmer waters.
It is almost instinctual, the way we settle
on the lake, wingtips ripple, wait for summer.
But nesting takes its toll, days stretch out as long

as summer shadows. Our hatchlings are a handful,
so stressed, endure nine weeks of molting,
flight feathers plucked just to grow them again.
We are grounded these first days, exhausted –
hiss at threatening predators, each other,
broaden our wing spans to show our power.

Now that they’re strong enough to fly,
we migrate from the only nest they’ve known,
feel that same pull south. Wind shifts
in fitful gusts, why must this tension reign,
unpredictable? The currents turn, certainty
drifts away. Our flock edges the horizon,

uneven. I thought I knew how we moved,
how best to battle each season. Life-long mate,
please do not desert me. The V will tighten,
lean, ascend out of this turbulence. I will follow
your lead, watch for signs of fatigue, take your place
at the head for a time so you can breathe.

Picture Book

I don't like my title. Oh well.

Picture Book
His gentle dumb expression turnd at length
The Eye of Eve to mark his play; he glad
Of her attention gaind, with Serpent Tongue
Organic, or impulse of vocal Air,
His fraudulent temptation thus began.
- Book 9, lines 527-531, Paradise Lost by John Milton


My children identify animals,
name and order according to their kinds.
We turn to reptiles, son and daughter
shrieking, “Snakes are scary!”
and I agree, an after-Eden Eve.

But being ten, I watched a garter glide
between my hands, my voice tasting innocent
on his tongue. I followed his twist
over my wrist, the simple movement
like memory, so steady the snake’s body
trickled like mist pooling on leaves.

We turn the page in the picture book –
eagles, owls, cranes, flamingos, doves –
celebrate the birds of peace, strength, paradise
who cast their shadows on the earth
and dive, snatch the snake from wild grasses,
smooth path trailing away from a tree,
a corner of the garden stolen, hunger satisfied.

Rappelling

**POOF!**

PAD Challenge and Creek Walk

April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, I've decided to again take up the challenge to write a poem-a-day. I altered the challenge a bit last year to only happen on the weekdays unless I felt particularly inspired on the weekends, so I will likely stick to these guidelines again this year. My kids and husband deserve some attention at least on the weekends ;)

To kick things off, I'd like to mention how I started this afternoon carrying around a notebook in my hooded sweatshirt walking down the sidewalk with my kids. Apparently I thought I could sneak in a poem while Lydia rode her bike and Elvis wandered from grass to sidewalk to tree to grass to sidewalk. A laughable effort, to say the least. I was on the hunt for a poem - I came back with a son on my shoulders and the notebook rolled up in the pocket of my sweatshirt.

It was feeling like a very poor start to this challenge, but after the kids went to bed, I whipped out the notebook and started in on this poem (now in third draft form, maybe?):

Creek Walk


Wading in the stream to feel the current
find its way between my legs, I become
part of the riverbed, sediment blending
with my toes. I am woven with the wild
grasses on the banks, molded to the surface
of the earth in perfect curves, my body
fluid, rooted. I could be washed
away with a little extra rain.

What trickles harmless around me now
will expose the roots of ancient trees
downriver later, who lean toward light,
grow sideways to keep from sliding.
They too will join the rapid flow,
deteriorate and turn to sediment.

I dip my fingers in to feel the river
make room for me. I will participate
in this shifting of earth - dirt loosened
until the roots give way.

Cascade Valley

Look, my daughter, the pine tree
dropped its seeds, and here
a fragile sapling braves the forest floor.
This used to be a birch tree
but maybe lightning sliced it,
wind heaved its heavy breath against it
and now the trunk is rust.
Sticks used to flirt, flare
their skirts of springtime buds,

but now we throw the broken limbs
into the rushing floodwaters to see
how quickly we could be carried away.
We are always a hair too close
to the edge, send pebbles skittering
into the river. Let's find our way back
from this spring rage, out of the valley
that catches what used to cling above.

Climb this mountain with its muddy paths,
deer trails, tread marks, hoof prints,
decomposing oaks - we are not the first
to grow and fall. But see the way the leaves
return to earth, the way the dust collects.
Crocus blades emerge from crumbling stumps
as if this growth does not take more than soil,
light, and rain. Reach down, my child,
bring a pine cone home to show
how miraculously we are carried.

Psalm 40

Boots
Psalm 40


These boots by the door are still caked
with hardened clay, their leather darkened
by water, still swelling, absorbing,
the flannel lining damp and pungent.
Clumps of mud stick to the kitchen floor,
discarded here and there from the field
that pulled and sucked until I was stuck.
I will not use the broom - I like the imprints
left behind, the way that visitors trip
on my oversized steel-toed boots and gasp –
how high the line of mud rides up,
how great the crumbs of dust.

Let me tell you about these boots,
I will say, about the field, the mire, the muck,
the slow, steady suction, the way I reached
for branches, the way the grasses bent and broke
when I pulled. Let me tell you again how I trembled,
how my hands hung idle, how a farmer
saw me, bent down to loosen my laces,
stretched out his hand, how I stepped from the sludge
in just my socks, mud oozing between my toes,
found a protruding rock, breathed deep,
“Thank God you came by when you did.”
I leave them here to remember the swale.

(Companion piece to The Swale)

Crater

Wrap your atmosphere around me –
I do not want to be the moon, unable to deflectt
he smallest cosmic speck. I flinch and dodge
a thousand bullets in a meteor shower,
yearn to watch the light show at night without fear.
Without you, my surface is sensitive – I bruise
at the slightest affront, scurry away to nurse each hurt.
If I must wear the craters of personal implosions
and exterior stonings, dress them in deep blue water
with stunning clarity so that none may question
why this happened but only know that nothing
so beautiful and pure could come without pain.
Plant in my volcanic cavity a hemlock tree
so all will witness how you’ve rooted yourself
in my explosive fragility and called me strong.

Junction

There is no el train in Auburn, no steady rumble
like long thunder on a summer afternoon.
Instead, Suburbans honk and veer behind
my neighbor’s combine, pass and speed to the light,
line up at four-ways for permission to turn.

The Cleveland and Eastern Interurban
used to pass through here, the Maple Leaf Route
curving slow through Newbury out to Amish country,
its steady clacking carrying produce and passengers
in to the big city to see a show at the Hippodrome.

Today, the maples shiver and dance along the upraised curve
as if a train has just passed through, but it is only me,
the wind. I do not hear the click-clack on the raised track,
the crowd of impatient travelers standing in the woods waiting
for the junction’s switch to take them north or further west.

Now the forest and road are silent; last season’s leaves
crunch steadily beneath my feet. Syrup oozes slow and thick
from its tap into cold, steel buckets. A car swings south down
Munn Road, wondering at the steady slope in the woods
and then the thought is gone, fleeting as the season’s

leaves along this path. The sun rolls steady on its track
across the blue, though I’m the one who’s moving – I
and the farmer and the Suburban and the earth composting
beneath my feet. How slow the shift in shadows; how soon
I’m surprised to be chilled in the late afternoon.

--------

I have Chicago's el trains to thank for this poem. Lots of inspiration from Chicago - hope to write more in the coming days if work and other responsibilities don't overwhelm.

The Swale

Roving feet get suctioned in the swale.
Mud leaches between laces and leather
before you see the depression coming.

The valley looked drier, but spring rain
and winter melt had no time to evaporate
or seep deeper into the earth, harmless.

This land rises up in such a way that dips
are unpredictable. Perhaps shallow cavities
will always be damp, hollows I dare not tread,

not even during the hottest drought.
Some swales will never drain enough
to step unburdened. The hiker

is swallowed, boots sucking heavy in muck.
Anxious hands quiver for help, unable
to reach down and untie my own shoes.

Pruning Burning Bushes - in Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression

Issue 2.4 of Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression came today in the mail, and in it, my first published poem. Look at me, I'm a poet. Ah ah ah.

Pruning Burning Bushes


I am over-pruning burning bushes
that border my front porch on Morgan,
cutting back two-thirds of growth
to trigger recovery from the trunk up.
Horticulturalists wince as I saw
through oldest limbs and keep going –
the shrubs are old, nothing new is budding.

Someone buzzed them back before we bought
the house, topped and tipped instead of using
crown reduction. There are a dozen leaves left,
tiny offshoots triggered - bursts of green
from long dead, empty stems. My trimming

is traumatic. The branches bend, sustained
so long by suckers sprouted in haste. Here I am,
sighing, sweating, fists on hips, the pruners
lost in the grass. The landscape breathes.
There is no exchange, no return in trauma –
either slowly hollow, heartwood rotting outward,
or grow from green into a fiery blaze in autumn.

I pick the pruners off the earth, dust
my aching hands and look for where
the calluses will form.

The Merciful Gardener

The Merciful Gardener
“Come, see a man who told me
everything I ever did.” – John 4:29

It feels as if I’ve been buried here
forever, dehydrated, covered in dirt,

a crocus stagnant and frozen with scales
wrapped tight and tunic pointing skyward

waiting for signs of spring. And now
water trickles down, sunbeams warm the soil,

I can feel myself changing, breaking!
All I’ve ever done was wait and rot.

And then he – And then he showed me –
I am compelled to tell, can’t help but bloom –

Do you see how he knew just what I needed?
Do you see how he knew what I could do?

Consider the Sparrows

Consider the Sparrows


So many come, Dad hides behind a blind
with birdshot and a rifle in the grain field.
They scatter, land, scatter, land. I hear them
chirping through the boom, watch their flight
ripple like cotton sheets lifted in the wind.

A sparrow’s egg on concrete - the yolk
seeping through the fracture - makes me stop
to look from broken shell to fretting maple
branches above for the mother who chirrups
in her nest, twitching, head tilted, eyes blinking.

This too shall pass, small sparrow. Tomorrow
I will walk beneath your bed just like today,
the ruined egg in smaller fragments, or vanished
and you will scavenge the earth, fly overhead,
the sky heavy with you and your flock,

who will not know me from any other beast
below. I will regard you as just another
house sparrow, aggressive attacker
who captures bluebirds in their nestboxes,
descends on golden fields of grain.

Driftwood

I have been wanting to get back into the habit of "blogging", or what used to be called journaling and before that diarying, for some time - and this seems like a good time to start back up. I have known for about a week that we are pregnant with #3, which seems unbelievable. THREE KIDS. I am of course thrilled and excited, but the husband is less-than-so, since he is still the primary care giver in the relationship.

I had the hardest time coming up with a clever name for my new distraction from everything else I should be doing, but thanks to a recent poem, I found myself a title. "Driftwood" came about from an old poem I wrote when BW and I started dating and went river walking. This is funny now because my husband is not exactly nature-boy. The things you'll do to win a girl's heart, I tell you what. At any rate, the old poem was... bad. But I love renovation, and renovating old poems is much like renovating houses - you find one characteristic you love and you build on it, tearing everything else away. So, "Driftwood" came about as a piece about marriage making two people holy rather than happy, though it could be about any type of long term relationship - with God, with people, with pets, I don't know ;)

Here 'tis -

Driftwood


Not unlike two pieces of driftwood from up river,
we spin in the current and undertow of the falls.
The rocks, slick under our sandals render each step
cautious, the familiar made unfamiliar
by lichened sandstone loosened, unpredictable,
transient beneath our feet.

The water makes us softer; we are blending,
being refined, losing sharper edges, your limbs
and mine twist together, threaten to destroy each other.
How do I not break you, our throes violent, sudden, severe?
I could snap in half, take part of you with me.

When we’re finally spit out, the knotted whorl left over
will be bare, our two indistinguishable, polished, holy.