3: Precarious Night (Parenthetic)

 

Margaret Miller photo

     

Up with Orion in moonlight (soon blue)

Stars in the grass at our feet (in the frost)

Glittering fields and dark woods (our world)

Faith in the heart of these hills (our people)

Three days before The Election (our future)

Nine generations born free (our illusion)

When most what we've needed is grace.

4: Place Wisdom

Built in 1862, dug out in 1918, rewired in 1974.

 

Fingercold four days before The Election,

blown mist quaking the dun oak leaves,

the hangers on. We, too, hanging on

in this old house where others have come and gone,

discontent with seasons in one place,

short-circuited in a shower of sparks,

leaving us in peace with handhewn beams

across stacked stones where all the truth we need

is when the breaker in the cellar is reset,

the power comes back on, and we can use

the electric heater and the coffeemaker

built to function well but not together

lest they blow a fuse.

5: All-Day Rain

     

So much comes and is gone,

anodized weather

bringing out the grain in things,

rain from the gulf

dripping from the eaves,

glazing the mountain road,

my tentative art turning back time—

all these years

I have never heard you sing—

rain in the woods

tapping out mysteries,

and on the misted field

a young rabbit hides in stillness,

five days before The Election.

6: Stepping into Evening

      

Away from the gurgle and whirl

of the digital with its breaking news

of a planet overrun by humans,

we step out the door and into the veils of evening,

into scattered leaves and gathering mists,

a landscape of silo domes and shed roofs,

limp fields and the cool damp silence

of a world made local by fog,

where the doe that prances in wet clover

seems more relevant to our lives

than all the intentions of nations,

her tail swaying like a metronome

as she melds into the trees,

and we follow, no one asking

for money, no one predicting

an apocalypse, night coming on

in a screenless peace, 

and really no one at all,

six days before The Election.

7: Early Voter

Who dreamt that we might live among ourselves,

a peaceful advance in assonance,

the mud road shining with ceased rain,

oak leaves hanging on

over snowfence stacked in rolls,

seven days to The Election ?

The way we are living,

timorous or bold,

will have been our life.

— last stanza is Seamus Heaney's first in "Elegy."

The Ache of Autumn

The ache of autumn

of what will be and used to be

when nodding bearded fields

when bright-crowned clouds in escalade

foretell winter as it was and

summer as it used to be

when you ran shining from the surf

phosphorescent as the sea

laughing with the gulls

in turning tide

the regularity

as woods go bare again

how many more

how many more

until the last

becomes the first

that slips from me?

Existential

 

A wool shirt feels right this morning,

Southward geese calling unseen in overcast,

Chickadees pluck seed from my palm

If I don't look them in the eye,

Finely made and weightless on my thumb,

Nine days before the election.

The Oatfield

      

The path my daughter opened

jeans-deep and running joyful down the ripened slope

childhood flying golden in her hair

is something else the combine and the fall

can never cut away.

Broken Window

    

I opened a window

at the edge of the world

and there you stood

on the driveway stones

with your bank account

in your makeup case

that far and no farther.

I closed a window

and turned you around

the broken pane

the briars desperate for light

scraping the mullion

in a confusion of wind

I threw myself out of life.

I tell myself 

it wasn't too late

decades ago.

Come back.

Is it far?

And So

Leaf-strewn, uphill.

 

Pursue a path,

The philosopher wrote,

However narrow or crooked,

In which you can walk

With love and reverence.

And so

We hear the hum

Of solitude.

Meet Me When the Weather Turns

Oh, my dark, creative friend,

explorer of the abyss,

meet me where the spring runs out of the hill

when the maples go to gold against the barn

and the weather turns.

When the furnace in the basement thunders on

for the first time in months,

let us sit by the window

looking out upon the fields,

drawing circles on the glass and saying,

Here is where we spread our quilt in goldenrod.

Here is where we dozed in the sun

to the music of bees.

And here is where we made our promises,

lip to ear and mind to mind.

Even if it were all imagined.

Even as the frost vignettes the panes.

Love in gentle hearts is quickly born.

— ultimate line from Dante’s Inferno, Pinsky translation. 

5:45 a.m.

 

Stillness

in all directions

as I stood in the dark

before first light

called out by Venus

bright above the hill

and by the crescent moon

rounded with earthshine

waning and close

so close it left me drifting

drifting somewhere

between earth and sky.

He Thinks of Her as Leaves Fall

 

Vivid, easy leaf-fall in light rain,

The forest laying down her carpet for the cold,

Each purling breeze a song in thinning crowns

To be remembered soon as used to be,

As I remember us in verdancy,

The you and me —the could have been,

If I were ever more than your chauffeur,

And you were ever more than quarantee

Against alone — the pinnate and the ovate

On the stones, the beeches in burnt gold,

The oaks in stubborn green still hanging on,

The crows decrying in the mist

What should and shouldn't be.

Where Poetry Comes From

No one in sight.

 

My legs know how to move me

on this tilted ground.

My heart knows how to feel.

The trick is in the head

where languages are foreign.

Listen to the hills.

—with a nod to Townes Van Zandt

Autumn Ever Since

 

We stood together

under the sugars of October

and together rose

in a blaze of wagging leaves,

the colors of the world

too much for us,

each of us adrift 

in our own moment.

I haven't stopped looking.

One Season Becomes Another

 

As if we could focus on shadows,

As frost on the shingles

Foretold a bright day,

And fog lay so thick on the fields

We could tear it like bread with our hands.

One season becomes another,

The mantis tilting her head In the weeds

As if she meant others no harm,

As if what we loved could stick to our sleeves

like beggar ticks traveling with us,

As if all we remembered had actually happened,

And the screams of coyotes deep in the woods

Had nothing to do

With the early coming of night.

Blessed Outage

 

Peace of mind

and sweeter thoughts

between the red barn

and the white church

and the sighs of standing corn

pickup trucks and tractors

shedded and at rest

a turn of blackbirds 

a rush of wings

sounding like a promise

warm creatures in their stalls

warm humans in their parlors

their screens gone gray

in a quiet world

minds at ease with faith

caring for each other

believing in a greater good

if only for an interrupted hour.

The Magic Hour

       

Stopped for the day,

the sun low at my back,

geese calling in flight

above the trees

in harmony with light,

evening an elevated tone,

dreams staring back

from every leaf and stone,

and I will begin again

in a little while.

Merwin's October

     

I remember how I would say,

"I will gather the pieces together."

Even then the days

went leaving their wounds behind them.

There was another time

when our hands met and the clocks struck

and we lived on the point of a needle like angels.

The promises have gone,

gone, and they were here just now.

There is the sky where they laid their fish.

Soon it will be evening.

—A compression of W.S. Merwin's "October."