Category Archives: Poems 2012

Nothing stays the same: the garden we started
when Joe died with leftover logs to hold the dirt,
creek silt, horse manure and our grief

bearing fruit, that fed us, saving trips to town—
and Margaret’s corner we added, planted
to garlic and squash again. Come evenings,

since the many glasses tipped to their spirits
sprinkled upon the cotyledons rising, reaching
to greet warm summer darkness, the weeds

and snails have made a home. We are slower
now, months behind the late spring rains—
your tendonitis, hole in my hand—clearing

a bed at a time, making furrows, planting
dreams. Yet, this must be heaven-made
when there is no need to keep track of time.

No straight lines in any season, we wake
within a broken bowl of dark ridges
come together beneath the same blue sky
as the leaf-hoppers streaked last night:

elliptical orbits of gold going for the light—
such passion before they flutter and die
like poor humans looking for an opening,
a short-cut to the easy life. Somehow,
we have bastardized the word, the thought

of work without joy, swapped satisfaction
for a salary, let our hearts go empty
and hands get soft and we hate it—hate
having to pay for a moment’s diversion.

Wheel off the wagon, mind running
through grasses turning brown around
little spots of color, eyes combing

the deep meander of yesterday’s cows
and calves in crooked furrows like earth
laid back in waves of stems and heavy

heads, parted in passing, brush of bellies
grazing—a mouthful left, here and there.
No man I knew as a boy would look

for flowers, would take or waste those times
when the sun raced days across the sky.
Some things were never true, never

considered, yet I am consumed, bending
closer to purple faces before they die,
stepping around happy families smiling

upwards, short-lived clusters beneath
a sea of grasses as my own looks down
at what’s become of their wild seed.

                                                  Everything that slows us down and forces
                                                  patience, everything that sets us back
                                                  into the slow cycle of nature, is a help.
                                                  Gardening is an instrument of grace.

May Sarton – courtesy of Wikipedia

We could set our watches by poor dirt farmers
rising with the birds in the fields. The Orioles show
within Redbud leaves, sing gleefully to the Burr Oak,
then visit the Palo Verde for a new limb to hang

a nest above the ripening strawberries, appraising
the near apricot, early and late peach, apples and pears,
especially the cherries—the price of a summer song,
the colorful return of old adversaries, first hot day.

We become part of a slow dance of certain cogs
and wheels that coast or disappear, slip and spin
to reengage into a familiar forward gear, swept-up
by seasons, sun and all our near neighbors busy

raising families, making good livings around us.
Shiny black feathers a glint in the sun, his beak
agape, he pants with wings unfurled to an upcanyon
draft and waits until she arrives at the water trough

for an evening drink together, all-day gathering
eggs, dodging posses of flycatchers through oak trees.
We do the same, tip our glass in the gloaming glad
another day is done, making plans for another.

*

Bob Blesse of Black Rock Press left this soothing epigram from May Sarton on Facebook a few days ago.

We draw lines, sort
the good and bad
like fruit that won’t last
forever. It’s how we are
with new things
that don’t quite fit
what we remember
of the old ways
marked by seasons,
never one the same.

All the dust and dirt
in ’77, the leppy wanderings
when it could not rain,
hillsides solid gold
in the warm wet spring
of ’78—we survived them.

But hard to say, today
what resilient beauty waits—
how the bad fruit rots
and its seed takes hold
to make a generous tree.

Limp head and tail draped on the top rail,
a raven skins a young ground squirrel
that looks like a snake from a distance

I try to improve by posing nonchalantly
as an unfocused old man with a camera
puttering without direction. On the cusp

of summer, of green bleached brown,
and busy exposing bare ground, the local
crows and ravens keep track of me.

He drops low to coast hidden behind
the trailer, then just over my head,
black chisel beak dripping with entrails

towards where a nest ought to be—
just to show me he’s watching, and like
a mouse on the doorstep, earning his keep.

Every once in a while I get my wish
of sixty years to drive tractor, little boots
breaking clods behind a disk–the loud,

unmuffled power lurching in the hands
of one man turning the ground up
with bugs and worms, clouds of backbirds

drawn like seagulls trailing fishing boats
on the ocean. The diesel purrs metallically,
the local crows and ravens glide low

over tractor and disk breaking into the earth.
Even the old red horse recognizes me
perched on this new contraption, sweet

smell of damp dirt and wants to play
along the fence, paw and roll–just
something attractive about a tractor.

Perhaps a hundred since the first two
stopped for shade and water, forgot
home and stayed to raise families

in every barn and shed for five miles
in as many years, trying the high eaves
of human domesticity. Their nesting coos

in the rafters turn to a singing flap of wings
when swashbuckling raven lights, like
Zorro, upon the horse pens. Gentle feathers

rain from the roof. A black cape walks
the top plate collecting eggs, taking naked
squab to a disheveled nest of kindling.

We pray in strange ways and
genuflect before the gods at hand—
thin skinned, mending fence,
drops of blood from rusty barbs
on blond stems, sweat spots
in the dust when it will not rain.

And when it does, we spray
and hoe weeds at the gates
for rattlesnakes, make fire breaks
to hold the leap of flames at bay
and thank God every summer
evening for another day of feed.

Between weathermen, we hear
news of another world churning
with drama and disaster, and turn
instead to native totems that grace
the land, then nod to our gods—
believing in more than we understand.