Flying

I catch a curve, a flash of wing
And know your soul is gone.
Maybe you never called home

The sheltered hollow you found
When your first tree fell.
Have you've been flying ever since?
When will your muscles tire
Of the restless movement
Searching through strange leaves
For the place you lost?

Believe me, bright feathers-
There are other trees,
But nothing like the faithful sky.

Boy

No telling what's chasing around
in his head, but
my boy sweats when he sleeps,
getting out those bad dreams.
His knees move back and forth,
body can't decide what to do
all on its own.
My baby wears a ring on his hand,
just because I wanted him to have it.
Man, he doesn't talk too much-
Not even enough,
but he'll smile a bit when he listens.
My baby laps up the sweetness of life
to get that bad taste out of his mouth.
And then he shakes his head. You know,
like a dog with water in his ears
and then he trots off again, renewed
maybe a bit.
That boy grabs me hard sometimes
in between the other times.
And when he's thinking
and his eyes get that lidded look
and his fingers just have to move.
Maybe that's when I love him most.
But I'm not sure, cause my baby doesn't talk much.

Assignment

Driving past

The hills and chimney smoke mingling

With the earth’s waking breaths

I can feel the crisp road crunch

Under the tires, as I turn slowly

Remembering that time

When the road spun me off into the grove

Of maple saplings

Cresting the hill saved for neighbors’ graves

Sunrise

Welcome

While the condensed snow clouds slumber in the valley

Spilling over the sides of the loping hills

Sunbathing, not reaching the bottom of the valley

As I weave my way along the thin road

Looking at the underbellies, spent and sleepy

The roosters hear the rutted gravel driveway welcome me

And hurry, jabbering for first place

I scatter the grain slowly, watching the fiery necks glisten

Sunlight rising

Over the East hill

Spikes of sudden frost illuminated on the garden fence

And the rain barrel sketched with ice

Sunrise

Hoping

When you know prayer is all you have,
When you know prayer might bring no fruit
Except for your own soul-
Presumptuous hope wrapped in candle smoke
To make your eyes water
Your nose tickle
As the censer bells jingle by your bowed head
(It's like getting high on holiness)-
Listen, when all you can do is nothing,
Keep praying.

A Ramble

. I'm full of Thoreau (what an obtuse, wordy, falsely misanthropic, bearded man), and Sylvia Plath, of Emily Dickinson (that slippery, dark-haired flirt of a woman- darting all around me with her dashes and unexpected capitals) and Willa Cather (whom I was going to write about but simply couldn't, it's all too dear to my heart, that love story that ended in the orchard), of William Butler Yeats and Vincent Van Gogh (I asked SKY if Vincent would rather I have a copy of his sunflowers, or a real sunflower. SKY told me that, as Vincent had moods, it depended which mood I asked him in. A sunflower mood! Well then, said SKY, as anyone in a sunflower mood would know, Vincent would want me to have a sunflower, not a painting of a sunflower. I said he was probably right. I'd rather have a real sunflower and pretend Vincent loved the same one that to have a copy of a dead man's painting and pretend he made it only for me. I'm sure he made it for himself, and for the sunflowers.). I'm full of ecofeminist writers, and Gene Stratton Porter stories and of her limousine death, and of the phantom smell of hookah smoke and charcoal, I'm full of that kiss between Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman, of dead terrorists and dictators, of ribs jutting over swollen bellies. I'm full of the piercing wind of Ireland and wide wind of Alaska, the wetness of Vermont and salted fertility of Maine. I want to talk existentialism with SKY, but we're not together tonight, never on Sunday night. I'm full of longing, don't you see. Longing for new ideas, new words, new women and men who are nothing like me but whom I adore. I want to drink tea and read poetry all day with speckled sun over my thin lap. I want to marry and have my hair be a sunflower, to mirror SKY's name. I want to try a drug that makes me laugh never-ending, those unexpected fits I get when barely anything is funny. I want to have children named Henry and Samuel and Vincent and Alexander and Esther-Anne and Evelyn and I want them to all be like their father, but to have my eyes, or my hands. And we would all live happy ever after, though we don't exist. And nobody would drown themselves with pocketfuls of stones, and nobody would be exiled. Isn't that a thought, huh? Thoreau says he never met a man who was alive. I hope he didn't die to find he never really lived, that would disappoint us all, Henry.

Night on the Hill

Where is my peace?
And where is my tranquility?
I no longer find it here.
The first time I hear monsters beyond the tree line
Trying to disguise their movements with the rustling of fallen leaves.
But I hear them- monsters, timid.
The geese are at the marsh, cackling to one another
catching up after this last long stretch
I hear one fly away from the rest, despondent
What happened to that one goose?
Smells pound against my nerves- clothes detergent, manure, my own skin.
Scent always was my greatest weakness.
Not even these hills can calm me now
I see them, flirts with veils of mist
Rolling repetitively against the dull atmosphere.
Where is your comfort, where is your passion and your flaming tresses?
I ask the moon for punishment and she gives me none
Only that gentle smile that says
When I am dead and lying on her breast
Then will I be at peace.

First Confession

I wish everyone was Jesus, then
Because they'd be compelled
To forgive me
For all my sins
As soon as  I showed
Repentance.
A confession list is
Almost a poem.
Read it, then-
Lips ring
With all the sins that rhyme
Make it ceremony
Give it celebration
And you'll be forgiven.
(Just a bit of penance on the side.)
Icon lips are pursed
Too small to tell
Why my sins
Are sanctified.
I wish everyone was Jesus
No sin as ceremony
Only this life,
These lips- pressed against
More than saint's lips.

Like Dickinson, That Flirt

1.
Memories are dreams-
Dreams collected, scribed
In back rooms of brains
Pulled out of boxes-
Boxed reality, now-
More real than That
Which I cannot capture
With my broken butterfly net-
The candlelit dreams
Revel over me-
Reality flutters

2.
Broken seadollars- swallowed sandbars-
Padding particle footprints-
Where- When-
Have you been?
The past has prepared you- For me
As though you knew-
I would be here- My soul,
You are here
The shells and husks are bound to me

3.
I had a dream, one night-
We were back again
Soft-visioned- soft feet
Pacing on the sand plains
Of Popham-
Grey wisps of living water-
Brushing whispered souls
Heads bowed down-
And up to search for coins
Architecture of sand
Yelling silently-
With- Of- joy
"We're rich now"

Blue

Just a flash of blue

And there is a butterfly-

photo by my father

Is this not a dream?

A Story for My Memories

            This starts with a secret that I’ve decided not to keep. When I was little, I would confuse my sleeping-dreams with reality. I thought I really did fly that time, I really did see that animal crossing the road, and I really did have that conversation. I couldn’t keep my waking life and my night-life separate, the dreams I mistook for reality were so realistic- I could see, touch, taste- and the sounds I could hear were the most vivid. My brother still teases me for thinking I could fly when I was ten.

            But I am still me, and this still happens. I constantly have to check with SKY to make sure I wasn’t dreaming about that walk we went on yesterday, about that discussion we had about farming, about his brother asking us a question. Many times when I ask, they are dream-memories. It doesn’t help that over time, my dreams have become much more lucid- sometimes I am able to control my activities within a dream. Much of the time, I am simply aware that I am dreaming- somehow- and I get frustrated because I don’t like dreaming, I just want it to end. That usually results in me “standing by” in a dream and waiting for it to finish.

            But when I get really into a dream (usually when I’m incredibly tired before falling asleep) I still mistake it for my real life. I don’t know how I feel about this inability to disconnect my dreams and my waking life. Some people don’t believe me; others think I should try to work on my lucid dreaming… But in the end, my dreams and my life are intertwined, my brain is strange.

            I dreamed that we were at Popham Beach again, SKY and me. In the dream, it wasn’t daylight as in reality, but the darkest, brightest red and purple glow over everything. The sun filled the near horizon with a band of gold and made the islands stand out shadowy. Droplets of sea-spray filled our eyes and made it clearer to see the ocean. We vibrated in time with the tide, which was receding. (When we were there, the tide had been coming in- we had to hurry in from the sandbar to avoid being stranded.)

            The only people on the beach were few and quiet, walking with purpose. They made soft eye contact with us as they drifted by; they welcomed our presence and we were glad of theirs. It made the dream feel more alive.

            It seemed I was forever away from SKY as we walked together on the sand- in the sand as our feet padded gently, toes pressing pockets in the flat universe. He was only a dark spot way over there; I thought, but- then he was right next to me, a gentle smile as a gift before he walked to the edge again.

            But it was as if we were holding hands, walking together even in physical dream-distance. The water licked our ankles, washing us. I didn’t know how we would ever be able to walk into the sea. The water seemed so dense, so solid and sure. SKY walked farther than me (he always does), and the water enveloped his legs like a wool blanket, wrapped and winding.

            We bent our backs, eyes up to the sand, looking for sand dollars, just as we had when we were there. The storm had rolled in, but missed us. It didn’t miss the sea animals. Jellyfish and crabs, seaweed, and the elusive sand dollars were decorating the sand. Somehow, we stepped on none. We could see through this misty world, and the sand dollars glowed softest white as they laid on their deathbeds.

            I yelled out to SKY when I found my share of the round beauties. He heard me, and I heard his foggy voice call back over the winding coastline. When our search was satisfied, we retreated to our resting area- somehow we had a small tent that could take the battering of the ocean winds and the salt spray. The glow of this world filled the tent as well. He and I sat together in silence, looking out to the rounded water, knowing that we were wanted here. “We’re rich now, baby”, I said. We had left the sand dollars on the beach.

            I don’t know how many more dreams I had before I woke in the morning. I don’t know how much time had passed during the dream, or when it occurred in my sleep cycle. I told SKY I had a dream about Popham. He said he was jealous of my good luck, and I remembered the photos he had taken of the beach, the forever lost photos- of me, of the birds, our collection of dead sea skeletons, the islands, the view… And I remembered the sand dollars we left behind in the dream. Either way, I’m rich.

Song for South Branch Pond

We paddled side by side

On the twin ponds

Surrounded by rocky peaks,

Gracefully

Upheld by white birch columns

A branching colonnade, blending green

Into the slopes

Each body peeling to show pink flesh

Underneath thin, stretched scars

We struggled through the stream’s current

Welcomed by

Fallen pillars

Buried beneath the kayaks

Remnants of past nations

They reached for one another

Stripped bone on bone

Branching still

Holding water and earth together

With delicate arms

A mastery of beauty in mineral soil

Which enshrines the dead,

Wraps seed against its breast

While the columns stay in place, tempered

By the wind

Around reeling vessels

White bodies glow against air

Waiting at the edge

For how long will you hold up the mountains?

Slight of Sight

The golden-dried leaf was a butterfly

As it fell, deliberately dancing

Flipping forward in a rush for land

Tricking my eyes

With life

My First Haiku

Jutting out its neck

The fallen grey willow limb

Turned to a heron


I don't think haiku is really my form. I'm long-winded, and getting to the pure meat of a subject is difficult. Maybe I'll keep trying. If you want to read some amazing haiku, check out Matsuo Basho.

three poems

Entry 1: The Storm

I woke up to an especially loud thunderstrike

And remembered I wasn't scared this time.

I looked to my left and saw he was still asleep,

The lights and sounds had no mark on him,

Maybe because the outdoor pathway light was still on,

The contrast dimmed-

I could see white drips of water coming off the roof

Like a stop motion film

Now it's one drop, now it's lower, flashing

In between lightning, the sky was pink

From the heavy clouds that reflect the never-ending

Building and street lights that define the city.

Still I choose to miss

The dark of my lightless town.

Thunder, lightning, how close was that one?

I nudge him awake, saying I want water

When I really just want to share the storm,

But remember

Men would always rather sleep.

It took me hours and the storm moving miles

Before I gave up and stopped expecting

The next flash,

The rolling rumble,

And sudden wind against the windows.

Entry 2: The Walk

He went up the hill to smoke

In the morning after the thunderstorm

I asked if he wanted to go for a walk

(He said no)

But left alone as

I follow him through the window

He stood behind a tree, either

So he couldn't see me

Or I couldn't see him

I watch his hands moving to and from his mouth

One with a cigarette

Other with a green mug, holding it as a globe

He left for a break

To make himself with smoke

And honeyed tea

Entry 3: Reaching

A dark man lying between my legs

Holding thick thighs

                     in open palms

Eyes to the ceiling snap shut when I see

All day it's been eyes up

Or down

Hands never-still but never-to-me

Lips to cigarettes and hands to little Lizzy

                to the trees

Lifting her                  when she shouts

“Sky!

         Look!

                   Touch!”

She uses the best and fewest words

To point at

The thin branches, not sky

               But it's the closest

Any of us reach

Even little girls with important words

That are raised by the same arms

Now pressed

                    against my flesh

Still but not silent

Uncomfortable in this stifling cradle

Where you can't reach farther

Only         push     hard     against     the walls

Internship Paper No. 1- Possession and Love

Ireland, home of the culchie

      "Sans Terre"- without land. Thoreau says that may be the place of the vagabonds in the language of people who lived in houses. It is obvious, maybe, that this is a misguided and sheltered point of view. Anyone who wanders around has more connection than someone that lives his life in the opposite of exploration. I have an acquaintance who lived for seven years on the streets. Those were the happiest days, he says, and only paying off school bills causes him to remain in one spot with a steady job now.

     Vagabonds are not without land, for all of it is theirs. Possession is a strange idea. People claim that objects and places are theirs, they want sole ownership and dominion. But those same people disappear without a trace after a few decades, leaving behind those possessions for someone else to claim.

     Possession is not love, and causes the “owner” to think only about themselves, and not about that which they claim to care about. Possession means that someone is possessed (not that being claimed) with an illusion. The owner may care for their property, but only so that it reflects well on them, so that they can get what they want out of the deal.

     Love is not possession. Love is not taming, or coddling, or holding back. “I would I were your bird!” Romeo says to Juliet.

     “Sweet, so would I. But I should kill thee with much cherishing.”

     Ah, is this love? He kills himself for her, and with the loss of his life, she thinks hers has ended as well. Lovers always promise to die for what they love and give up themselves. That isn't love. That is juvenile obsession. True love would not need to promise death, but life!

     But we do promise death- the lack of soul and wildness is death. To the land we claim, to the bodies we are clothed in that want to beautify, we promise slavery. We do not love our bodies or the land. Though we claim possession, our care is only an a cover-up. If we loved our bodies, we would not starve them to attain an ideal, we would not try to improve ourselves in superficial ways. If we loved our bodies, we would want them to live wild. We would not try to tame one another if we felt true love, rather than possession.

     Our bodies are earths, an old cliché analogy, but one that has truth. We do find similarities in our treatment of each. We build up the land we claim, making it work for what we want, try to cover up imperfections. We have no regard for whether the land is healthy.

     If humans knew love, they would know not to kill with much cherishing. If humans were not afraid of giving up possessions, they would know that the vagabond is not without land. Jean Paul Sartre, famous philospher and author, said, "We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn't generosity- it's only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me." Cynical and humourous, but it gets the point across.

     Lack of possession doesn't mean that people should feel separation and independence from the earth, that they are above the earth. It means that people should feel like welcome guests in a generous house, not like an owner of a foreign slave. The realization of love, instead of dominance, would lead to people protecting the giving land. Right now we lock ourselves and our home in a birdcage, jealous of freedom, demanding song.

Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2

Juliet: ...I would have thee gone:
And yet no further than a wanton's bird;
Who lets it hop a little from her hand,
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,
And with a silk thread plucks it back again,
So loving-jealous of his liberty.  

For a Soul

There are waves breathing in and out
Lapping my brain with salty tongues
Fragments of other lives collected,
Cast off and condemned to memory

Don't squirm so quickly through the spaces
Linger a little in my mind before
You fly off
With the Northern Cross behind you

I wonder if
That soft quivering kiss
Will last longer than you meant it,
Maybe your star will always remain
If I keep it close with broken shells
Picked up along the ragged beach

Walk, feel the bones beneath
And rise above constellations
Pinned to the sky for our eternity
You'll be past the brightest one before
The beating ocean
Wears us down to sand

Just walk with me now, smoky breath
Smoking eyes wrapping round me
And soft grey water against gem-woven sky
While patience smiles shyly
She makes love through worn-out skin

Near Perfect Death

Don't you wish you lived through this weekend with me? Oh, it made me more than I was before. Less than three days we were there, on that famous Massachusetts Cape.  I'll be honest, it did more for my soul than Ireland could ever hope to do, even with its fairies and sad shining eyes. I learned so much, and so much about how little I know. Mostly, I felt at peace. But was it only a short runaway?

Perfection is a flighty companion, and only arises when there are echoes between people. Ah, those echoes die out in rocks of people's hearts eventually. Don't they? Sometimes the sounds are discordant, and sometimes they're moonlight when it hits the water and ripples in time with the movement of the seabed.

We sat on the rocks, the ocean growling at us, pretending to be tough, but always going back out with froth at its mouth. We sat and talked, arms wrapped, honesty flayed open like a finally-captured beast. You're never quite sure if the beast is ever truly dead, though. I think death might be the most obvious sign of life. The killing brings out blood, it brings out out the lights of frightened eyes, and it expires into the air. Make it quick Baby, I'm thirsty for this chase to finish. Baby, please, I just want a quick end to this echo-dance, don't make the whites of my eyes show as I wait for the knife. If you kill me, I'll kill you, Love, I promise.

I got shot dead and still dragged my body to the next ambush site, so green and sheltered and small. I'm waiting, ears pricked and muscles twitching, for the next echo, the next moment when all doubt is gone and I know I'm dead, foreign perfect death in my ribs. Ah, life- the waiting game, only won when you give your own.

Love Poem to America

Baby, I love your soul, plastic soul, full of broken vinyl edges.

I love your oil soul, pumped full of dead carbon corpses

That make your voice sing so sweet.

Baby, you have those 9-to-5 fingers that snatch me up with promise.

Mm, you fill me up so I look so good on my outside.

Sweet darling, sometimes I miss your youth

When I conquered you first

And your skin was still unbroken,

When the honey from your wounds hadn't crystallized your eyes,

Made you blind to me.

But baby, you lay yourself open for me,

So I love you.

Snakes

My mouth's ceiling is moving

I can feel

Bits of twisted wire

Popping from my slippery skin

Hard on bone

I won't deny it hurts

When tissue comes undone

Worming into a mass of

Tendrils squirming towards escape

Through those gates

That let in lovers' breaths

I know

My eyes must look so...

Just doped up

Only from sadness

“Please don't look at me”

Because gazes are tiring

And I'm like a silent rock

Ha, but unraveling

Inside where it's warm

To hiss silently

Under the scrutiny of

Dark Eyes

Searching for emptiness

The Tenth Muse

I've never been a muse
In a past life or lucid dream,
Telling men how to sing
With suggested inspiration
And filling body with longing and pursuant strength.
Goddesses aren't real women after all,
Little boys make up all myth
With female characters in static place.
Hesta of the hearth,
Stoking fire for the consortium of gods.
Moon a woman, borrowing Helios' pure power-
Silver is the colour of reflected gold.
The jealous wife Hera,
Dangerous beauty with a dangerous hand
Watching Husband make victories in secret.
But the nine had their arts
They thought it was sacred possession
Of treasure they gave to men
To make them more like women and less beasts,
Through dreams and visions collected
In scribed bibles
Filling shelves of humble homes.
Humble with women at the fire's side,
In beds working for men and children
Looking to prayer for assurance
And the moon for a fellow heart
In a world that muses control in stealth;
Forgoing glory
With the mask of man.

Clematis

A vine wraps

     Around twisted metal, chain-

Living and naked

     It grows.
Up to heaven- go!

     Never minding roots or seed,

Bloom to die

     Alone,

Wrapped in blankets

     Too tight to peel

Away from skin, bone.

     But go, grow.

No death for us,

     No chains of rust.

You’re a landscape and a miracle

     Not made for decay.

There’s snow, I see

     And you, bareboned

Stand out in dull humility,

     Nude and modest.

You do, you know-

     Embrace dying, as

Cold roots and clinging tendrils

     Grasp  inevitability.

Oh, heaven!

     Beyond green cathedrals,

Beyond flapping angels that nest
     In hidden spires.
Reach, strain,
     Pull me with you so I feel
The pain of living.
     Still we stand in earth
'Til safely, soundly in

     Lullaby to death, we part.

Recipe

Good morning:
-roll over
-he's warm
-your arms are there
-he fits

Good meal:
-at home
-make sure the veggies are fresh
-the meat is fresh
-souls are full and hungry
-clean plates

Goodnight:
-pretend to go to bed
-lie close
-make love
-smile

A Place

            They’re tearing down the hill by building it up- backhoe the road and foundation, test the well, pour the gravel.  Mountains of discarded soil mark the edges of a long scar covered by the clean gauze of winter. When I walk over the scabbed, sloping earth, I feel like a parasite, expecting the sudden slap of my unwelcome host to rebuke me.

            The hill never made me feel this way before. Half a mile and up the ridge was a circle of short grass, mowed in the middle of a two-foot high field of “weeds”. That six acre field was home of the meadow voles I tracked in winter, the nesting grounds of the red-winged blackbirds, and was filled with the spit bugs who were so much fun to expose, tiny and green and naked.

            Once, in the middle of a rainstorm, I met a fawn who was just as wet as I was. I knelt beside her, the grass shielding both of us from view. Slowly I pet the soft baby fur on her forehead, her nervous eyes fixed on my arm. After she left me, I found a swallowtail butterfly, hanging underneath a blade of grass to shield its delicate wings from plummeting raindrops.

            In the circle at the top of the hill, with trees on two sides, you can see the blindingly bright ski slope, the hops farm down the road to the south, the next door neighbor training his prize-winning barrel-racing quarter horses. Small fallow deer always dot the backyard hillside next to the horse corral, surrounded by a tall metal fence and freedom. If I walk up the hill during the day, my dog anxiously waits underneath the locust tree at the bottom of the trail, hoping I come back home soon.

            But the hill is most alive at night. When the horses and dogs are asleep, the field and woods simmer with energy. Owls are the strangest to hear- they’re only supposed to make appearances in movies. Wild deer make soft footsteps along the edge of the trail, the coyotes yelp and howl during every season, and the crickets never shut up in summertime.

            In the night, during the moon’s dream show, everything on earth swims and gives light in return with each undulation. The moon tenderly asks the gentle night breeze to cool feverish minds, if you go looking for escape when everyone else is sleeping. On the hill in that softness, you can believe all good ideas and dreams will come true, no matter what strange noises are coming from the woods. Moonlight in early summer… that was unpolluted.

            And now the moon doesn’t matter to me. Neither do the blackbirds and their grass perches, or the vole tunnels. I let myself imagine it will all be gone now, I am obsessed with the scar snaking up the hill, the pits and mountains that have replaced the mowed circle. It will still be there, alive, but that house will be grinning through the windows, daring the moon to give more light than its 60 watt bulbs. The furnace will know that no meadow mouse tunnel could be quite this cozy, and no blade of grass could be as rain-proof as the roof on this house. The hill won’t die, the moon won’t stop bathing the earth, and the snow won’t give up healing bruises. But that house will always be laughing at all of them. 

*Photos by Caleb C., dear brother*

Lost at Sea

Maybe fingertips brush messages
Lost in the sea
Drawn down by stronger hands

Bottles never make it
Only shipwrecks
Words drown in green glass air

Crabs harvest bone
Birds nest with hair
But hearts are lost at sea....
Shallow tide pools erupt from the ashes

All that's left of inner protestations
Certainty and verse hidden in the bow
Pointed at sharp rocks
Too sure for the lighthouse's warning