From Gobbler’s Knob
For my parents,
Norman and Claire
Mountain Fog
Something you can hardly put
your finger to moved into town
last night. This morning,
upon waking, we see our mountain,
who has stood behind us, is gone —
along with the range of hills
that were our stolid neighbors.
The backyard contains only
the children’s sandbox littered
with toy trucks, pail and shovel,
the doghouse with rusted chain.
Beyond that tall pine lies
what new land? Is surf rolling
beyond that cloud veil?
Or is a river falling?
We need our landmarks back,
our old faithful ones
to reassure us this is the way
we have come before.
Unsure now if we are
on the right path to the garden,
we slow, look twice. Place our
feet carefully. First one step,
then another, discovering our way.
The earth beneath our feet
telling us as we wade through mist
This world of cloudy shapes,
froth of waves, mountain mist,
is still the world
underneath it all.
Out Walking
The brook’s small talk
won’t bring you here
for six days and five nights
it’s never going to ask you
for any money down
or talk you
into anything… it’s only
talking to itself
or maybe the oaks,
the tulip poplars
it goes on
and on its small vowels
colliding with consonants mossy
rocks, eddying around in
leaf lined pools… it’s saying
something about _the mourning dove’s_
_low notes in the early hours_…
and _white tails stepping_
_down from hills to nibble_
_those sheep-nosed apples_
_from their black branches_…
it keeps
its rambling to itself
out of respect for your own
reasons for coming here friend
pay it no mind
it wants you
to know it has always
gone on like this
ever since it was
a little bitty brook.
Grace
Give thanks these brief days
the lee side of the holiday
for one sad-looking
picked-clean turkey carcass.
With tenderness, bathe it
almost like you would a child,
lovingly. Cover with water
in a large pot and simmer a few hours.
Turkey will be swimming in the air
as the windows cloud.
Spoon out wishbone and thigh bones,
and the fragrant rafts of skin,
skim off the queasy decks of fat
from the surface of broth
and what’s left takes on new life
with peeled baby carrots,
a yellow onion, some chopped celery,
leftover spaghetti noodles,
and the fresh sprig of parsley
you rescued this morning
from under dried oak leaves
blanketing your garden.
Sup on this hearty
innkeeper’s soup to cheer you
the long wintry night,
stoke your home fire’s flame
and warm you to the depths
of your hearthstone.
Give some small thanks
for the big bird
whose clipped wings
could not outfly
its fate and praise it
for its rising
to feed you
again.
Getting Back
No longer on the state road,
walking gravel, then double wheel ruts,
I go back the way I came once, walking
cross-country. Alders and beech light my way.
* * * * *
The earth forgives me my trespassing —
pine needles, dried leaves, moss beds soft beneath.
Bills, mortgage, wife, neighbors,
I have left behind. Birch tree
welcomes me back. Staghorn sumac, laurel,
an old hickory. Now the lowdown scent
of skunk cabbage. Hello, Jack-in-the-pulpit.
High in branches a squirrel’s bark
announces my arrival. It is always good
to be back. On cool black mud,
an orange newt with its bright red spots.
* * * * *
I begin reading the signs.
Many small hands have come this way — raccoon,
opossum, skunk. I walk until dusk
and find a friendly maple. Back against it,
I eat. Evening arrives as I drink my tea.
* * * * *
Huddled against the cold in my poncho,
I begin to drowse but scurrying among leaves wakes me.
Sudden movements up the trunk and a visitor is perched
on my shoulder. Then up the trunk and onto my head,
surveying the world from on high. To surprise him
I move my head — he disappears in a flash —
and chuckle myself to sleep.
* * * * *
In the morning
I wake to find my boot laces
chewed into pieces.
Visitor
At the pass, where the reservists fall
like spiders with their lines,
dangling down the carved cliff
where the engineer corps drilled
dynamite holes to blast through
the mountain for the four lane —
almost beyond my vision
in the dreamy twilight,
something shaggy and wild,
with a coat to hide in the long grass
of autumn, slinked across my path,
slipping beneath the guard rail,
escaping to the valley below.
Four-legged, it was something
not quite a shadow
gliding lost and nameless
into the shadows.
No moocher of table scraps,
but one dark loper
to lurk the edges
and dark depths,
to worry our bones
as we sleep.
Spirit-that-will-not-be-caged,
Moon-stalker,
you make goosebumps
and the little hairs of my nape rise.
Tonight, we will lock our
family pet inside all night
though she cries and begs
to join small movements
among the laurel
under the wide moon’s light.
We will keep what is ours close.
Beyond the reaches of our lamps,
the night is yours.
Thanking the Tuckaseegee
Like others we know
you too take what you do seriously
and are always doing
what you do best.
There is much to be admired
in your steady persistence.
Always pushing onward,
never too tired.
Even dog day afternoons
when your pace slows,
and your riffles smoothe out,
even then you pace yourself,
like the long-distance runner you are
at heart. Never resting in your lonely bed,
alone in this life-work that you do,
flowing towards your end, yet always
with us here in our valley.
We puzzle over your ways,
reflect on your shores and probe your
deep runs and shallows with our lines
and flashing beads to lure your wildest secrets
from the depths of your cold heart.
Eluding our grasp, you do what you do
naturally, following your natural bents
and this narrow bed you have made.
Still we are drawn to your banks
by your falls, your white-water,
and your quiet brooding
over deep pools. Looking at you,
charmed by your changeable features,
we lose ourselves in your magical fracturing
of light. You allow us to see ourselves
in you. When we return, refreshed, from swimming
your cool waters, our cares wash downstream.
We thank you for this and more, for nourishing
crops and stock, for the speckled trout our children
bring home. We could not imagine this valley
without your mists rising off you
in early morning. Without you running
through our lives, elbowing around
these hills, where would we be?
In a Used-Books Store
“Excuse me, but have you seen any poems by Angie Dickinson?”
– unidentified patron
Emily, oh Emily.
Let’s write this letter
to the one who confused you;
let’s say you never wrote
poems behind the scenes at Burbank Studio,
never wore a mini, no knee-high leather boots
or fired off a snub-nosed .38 or spat out
the words, “Get back, Jack. Hands
against the wall and spread ’em.”
Let’s tell him to listen hard instead
for a wind like a bugle
or watch for any small movements
among the tall grass giving away
that narrow fellow parting the green blades
as he goes, the common backyard garden variety
still known to haunt barefoot maids
in summer dresses along garden paths
when the yellow squash swell on their vines
and green beans hang like elves’ stockings
growing larger sizes overnight
as if by some natural decree
or prank of some divine pixy
with a grin.
What the Citizenry Knows about You
The shoe salesman sizes you up
with a glance, knows paperwork
has you stymied…by your heels.
He reads your sole and sees
how many trips you take
to the water cooler.
The barber knows by the length
of your sideburns how much
you will pay for a haircut
and whether you will tip him,
and if you will stand for his
wheezing in your ear, or if he must talk
weather and politics with you
instead of this favorites,
sports and girls.
The grocery clerk can tell
you are what you eat,
as she rings up chips and Coke,
apples and aspirin, Wonder Bread
and cornflakes.
And if anyone could tell,
the bank teller could
tell how your life lies
in the balance or your house on the brink
of an abyss to make the fault line
look like a soft shoulder.
The druggist knows what
will lift your spirits and what spirit
you favor. He knows
what relieves your tension.
And the masseuse too knows which ways
to rub you, and if it can be helped,
will never rub you wrong.
My Old Shoes
Sole brothers, homely twins,
they cower in the corner
of the closet, as if knowing
what their chances are
of being asked to go anywhere.
Worn, slightly frazzled, almost
too comfortable and willing
always to go wherever with
only a moment’s notice —
a match for two elderly spinsters.
One brother is holey,
the other owns a loose tongue.
Gone are those days I could go
anywhere with them. When
I would polish their leather
until I could see myself
in their shine. Together,
we would all go out
on the town.
But now, no more talk
of the old days. Today, I’m taking
them out for a walk. Next weekend
we may hang some windows — or even
paint the back porch.
Bean Soup, Or a Legume Miscellany
Nobody there is that doesn’t love a bean.
If not the royal Navy bean, then the wax bean,
the soybean, the green bean, the black bean — the
pot is large, it contains multitudes — white bean,
pink bean, small red bean, the lowly pinto, the
lovely lentil — let the lamp affix its bean — or
the walnut-shaped garbanzo, large lima bean, baby lima,
(A reunion of the Bean families is here assembled),
the cranberry bean, white kidney bean, northern bean,
or their cracked cousins: green split pea, yellow
split pea, and ol’ blackeye. A lineup
of likely legumes. Gather ye bean-pods
while ye may. Go and catch a falling bean
and if you catch one, let me know.
A man and a woman are one. A man and a woman
and a bean are one, or two, or three.
The beans I mean, no one has seen them made
or heard them made, but at supper-time
we find them there. Come live with me,
and eat some beans and we will love
within our means. One could do worse
than be an eater of beans.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s bean?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Had we but world enough, and time,
this coyness, Lady, were no crime.
But, at my back, I always hear
a pot of beans bubbling near.
Mark but this bean, and mark in this,
how little that which thou deny’st me is.
An aged bean is but a paltry thing.
I must lie down where all ladders start,
in the foul rag-and-bean shop of the heart.
O my love is like a red, red bean,
that’s newly picked in June:
O my love is like a pinto bean,
that’s truly cooked at noon.
So much depends upon a red kidney
bean. You might ask, Do I dare
to eat a bean? Dry beans can harm no one.
They remind us of home sweet home,
home on the range,
home where the heart is.
Without expecting anything in return,
they give us protein, zip, and gas.
Add what you will — onion, tomatoes, red
pepper, chili powder, juice of lemon,
salt & pepper to taste. Add ham
hocks, bring to a boil, simmer slowly.
Call your friends, serve with
panache, crackers, and green salad.
How do I cook them? Let me count the ways —
boiling, steaming, frying, baking.
And if these verses may thee move,
Sweet Lady, come live with me
and be my love. And if this fare
you disapprove, come live with me
and please be my cook.
Popcorn
Once the ancestors
of these kernels
were the darkest secret.
A prize guarded
and handed down the long corridor
of years. Sorting seed by seed,
a young woman could learn patience,
and to pick and choose carefully.
If she picked carefully,
she might win a husband
for all her days.
For Your Table
To Marjorie
Today I have walked fields
and trails looking for flowers.
They reminded me
of your enjoyment
when I’d bring you
the blossom of the day.
No matter what — brown-eyed Susans,
a wild iris, daisies —
always you were pleased.
Today I noticed tiny violets
and spring flowers I don’t know
the names of, so I’ll call them
shyest girl in the class,
little one in blue,
blushing bride of the valley,
belle of the mountain,
lady of the dell.
And one I’ll call snow flakes
in her hair. They
remind me of
when we first met.
They remind me of you
as you were when I last saw you.
They remind me of when you were a girl
and I didn’t know you.
The View from Delmar’s Riverhouse Restaurant
If you’re ever too lost to find your way,
you may find yourself here, beside
the remains of a two-stall carwash.
A camouflaged island with spray-painted
beaverboard latticework hides the
prehistoric gas pumps. What looks like
a converted gas station up on stilts
is and isn’t. The horseshoe over
the doorway testifies to the ups and downs
of life along this river road.
It says you’re home and welcome
before you’re even in the door.
Stuffed trophy trout hang mouths open
on a cinderblock wall. One antediluvian
space heater hunkers in the corner.
Homemade apple pie reflects under glass.
The cook looks in from the kitchen,
wearing a dirty T-shirt, earring,
and three-day stubble.
You can’t see your smile in the worn Formica
tabletop but across the river is the Ratliff Brothers’
trailer park — eight trailers up on blocks
and canes growing thick to the riverbank.
Out the window the river wrinkles, and winks
at odd moments when you gaze from your booth.
The coffee is strong enough
to jump-start you, in thick ceramic mugs
that don’t match, survivors of Jersey turnpike
diners’ auctions and fires. Here they have
a second life. On a wall of compressed wood chips
and glue hangs local art so dismal you don’t want to ask
where the waterfall is, the grey too grey
and the brown too brown to be anything but dismal,
with too little green, and surely nothing
you can see clearly enough to give a name to —
meager as the parsley snip with your sandwich
and overcooked French fries.
Quarters lie under clear plastic,
imbedded in the oak countertop
by the register. The girl who
takes your money couldn’t land
a bit part anywhere but here.
Her grandmother owns this place.
Spread-Eagled on a Cliff Face
A hawk is circling, overhead.
Tiny red spiders crawling all over the basalt.
I have one good foothold, one good
handhold, and need one more…
either toehold or crack will do
to keep me moving up, keep me
from falling….
Halfway between the summit
and the scree fanning out below
into boulders the size of VW’s at the base,
hugging the rock
like an awkward lover,
my cheek pressed against stone,
yearning for the ledge above
a hardscrabble birch leans from,
hanging onto what little ground it has,
too tough to say die,
its few green leaves like toy flags
waving life, its stand
against the worst weather
northerly winds dish out.
The black top winds from the trees
to the state road. Panther Swamp off to my left
over my shoulder. Sun at my back warms the rock.
Dried snakeskin on the dead limb. Why did I choose
Rattlesnake Mountain? What do you do if on that ledge
you come eye-to-eye with a coiled surprise? Turn sideways
maybe, protect your eyes, and with your good arm whip it
into space like lightning striking. But keep a good balance.
My heart tied to goldline,
top-roped to my brother
on belay somewhere above me in the clouds
tied to a scrub oak, his anchor.
Hope it’s strong enough to hold —
him and me.
Why am I here?
Why am I climbing this again?
How many times must I climb it?
One more time.
This time.
May be the last time.
One way
or another.
How’s it going? My brother calls
from his end of the line.
Up, or down?
Which is it going to be?
That’s a good question, I say.
Tell you in a minute
or so.
Usually the questions nag about now —
stopping for a breath
about half-way — seeing below
how far I have come, seeing above
where I have yet to go.
Gothic
Then he said, “Come here. Look at me.
You’re too beautiful” — his hand
flashed by her face and she almost
laughed, almost thought he aimed
to slap her and missed — but
the razor slit her cheek
like a tomato, blood splattering
her new dress. “Someday you’ll know
why I did it,” he said, “And you’ll
thank me.” She screamed through
her bloody hands, “You — you monster!
You –You’re not my father! You’re
crazy! A father is supposed to love
his children. You devil. I hate you.
Look what you did to me! I hate you.”
That was then. Months ago.
Mark of her defiance at his word,
the neglected curfew, her laugh
behind his back. A thin scar
across her cheek marks their skirmish
in his holy war against the flesh,
which he knows too well —
didn’t he marry her mother?
Tonight she negotiates with him
for her release in his favorite
yellow polka dot dress.
Beyond the streetlight an engine
idles. Her mother knows what she
is fighting for — her love, hate, life.
Aesthetics
Two noisy young men have left
the obscure, dim bar lights inside
of what looks like from here
a sorry-excuse for a roadhouse
and have come outside
Into brilliant daylight,
bringing their disagreement with them
into the grimy parking lot
with its broken beer bottles
and oil-spotted pavement.
They curse and insult each other,
slapping, then shoving, and
grappling over car hoods and rolling
onto the filthy pavement. They break
apart and begin boxing. A few wild punches
and then, one or two, connect.
Who knows what they’re fighting for?
Miss America, waiting inside,
with too much mascara, and perched
on a bar stool, cooing her displeasure
at “all the fuss” as she cozies up
to another Mai-Tai, perhaps?
One has short hair and the other long —
now the short-haired one grabs a fistful of long hair
and pulls, slamming his fist into the other’s face,
now that he cannot escape….
It almost always comes down
to your vision of the beautiful
and your belief
that you are the right one.
The Struck Man
From the heavens’ roiling,
I was singled out on the hill.
Out of clouds, out of darkness,
out of thunder, come
the light, the power.
Singled out, I was
struck blind
by a fire-bolt.
Later, they all flocked around me,
wondering when I rose
and spoke to them.
Startled into speech, they
asked of that no-man’s land
from which I had come, a traveler
upon the road they would all
one day travel.
I could not tell
what they would hear.
They touched my wound
and drew back. They feared
and marveled. It was said
I was a man among men
but touched by the light,
power, darkness, thunder.
I could not see
what they saw.
They rallied around.
They cried I had vision —
I, who was blind.
The heavenly bolt wounded,
cauterized, branded me — at once
my curse, fame, glory.
Brown Trout in a Pool, Holding
Hide from heron under the cutbank
when he comes. Upstream the speckled brook,
my little brother, leaps, smashing the sky
into pieces. Mosquitoes swarm above.
Down here I lie beside my rock,
the siren song of the wild water
reaching me here where I live
down from the source calling to my need.
Soon I will be climbing the falls.
Hide from bruin’s swipe, raking my run —
confusion like osprey’s dive into these waters,
talons worse than the eagle’s claw.
All’s a flowing. Current is always passing.
I hold, and it brings me what I need,
angleworm, grasshopper, ant, damselfly, snail.
Gratefully I accept earth’s offerings.
Nose to the current, behind this rock
I take what comes when it comes
or tail turn at the forked thing’s twisted mayfly
lying unnaturally on a stonefly day.
Those times, rust flavors my musing,
I nurse an old wound. The barb deep in.
The current flows all around me, wherever I go.
A dull ache keeps me steady. White-water or brown,
it argues against my forgetting.
Loneliness
There is nothing else in the world
like it.
It is a foreign country
you somehow find yourself in
where the only words you hear
are those that rise within you
like exotic fish rising from depths to kiss
the surface of a pond into ripples.
It is a nearby foreign land
where your words echo
off the walls of your room.
You are in this country alone.
Another name for it is
the life you have chosen.
Solitude is the path
that brings you here.
Jays jabber in the trees,
thunder reverberates in the valley.
You learn the many voices
of the rain. One day you begin
speaking in one of the world’s voices
as if you had forgotten your native tongue.
One day a visitor finds you
and speaks words you once knew.
A voice rises within you — the words
that escape from you like caged birds
suddenly freed fly around the room
and her words–together all the words
fly around and around
in joyous circles, brushing lightly
each other’s wings. Together
you sing a happy song. The two of you
travel together into a new country
where your words take you both
by the hand, showing you the way.
You learn the way together.
Along this path there will always be
an answer to your question,
a question waiting for your answer.
You will not be lonely.
This is a new land you are discovering.
There is nothing else in the world
like it.
To Patricia upon Learning of Her Cancer
You, who are reborn,
find yourself young
even as your children age.
Once again you say you have found
the gift you thought was lost.
You give thanks and tell everyone
the good news: each day we are born
again. Child of the morning,
may the spring rains fall gently
upon you as you tend your garden,
may song birds sing for you
from the tops of your father’s maple trees
and the new sun strengthen you
as you smile at your sons revolving
around you, the center of their
universe. May your husband learn
every thing you wish him to know,
and as you walk hand in hand with them
may the sea breezes be kind and the water-
birds favor you with their graceful
ministrations on the air as their various
calls and chattering mingle with your voices
and laughter in a hymn of praise.
Smoke Rings
For Vincent Nowak, for not saving his breath
That was a clear day
when you sat in the parlor,
the day your granddaughter
and I came to call: there
was no baby crying in the other room,
no rain coming through
a hole in the roof, no smoke
from burning oak leaves
filling up the front room;
the sun was bright on the mountains
of slack outside Morris Run.
I didn’t know then about those dark days
when air hangs heavy
with coal dust and the mind
loses its way. The women
gone, you conned me into rifling
drawers for the cigars
you planted earlier. We smoked
up until blue-grey clouds
hung from the ceiling.
You told me more than the story
of the big buck stepping from pines
each morning at sunrise
to nibble sweet flesh
off your apple trees, something
more than the claim
that the rainbows of the Susquehanna
light the eyes like white-water
falling far and fast: sometimes
for those who share the light
and the air a while with us,
we must give our breath
to fan the flame, for it too quickly
becomes a smoldering ember
in a darkened cave.
Semper Fidelis
To my father
Northman, the potato flower
is delicate as any, yet common
and white. It grows anywhere
far to the north, your country
of pine treed mountains, deep, blue
lakes where square tails divvy
the currents between them.
Remember the green smell of pine,
the glue from pitch blacking
your hands long after the climb
down broken limbs, its sticking to
a shirt someone ironed for you?
And the speckled brookies leaping
for mosquitoes, snaky streaks of
nervy energy fighting always to the end
the eagle claw hook buried deep
in the gut? They are there,
still, far back, away from the state
roads, the party lines, the concrete
walks of The Hardware City, where your
friends danced the fox-trot
to the tune of the Second World War.
Conveyor belts of brass hinges gave way
to shell casings. You became a leatherneck.
The Marine dress blues uniform
recruited you. The fighting colors
of a bantam cock of the walk. From the
halls of Oak Street to the shores of Iwo Jima.
When the cockfight was over there,
offshore breezes sickened downwind sailors,
their green faces matching your fatigues.
They arrived too late, bringing fresh K-rations,
new pics of Grable and Lamour, the latest
baseball scores, and other news
from far off Eden. The swabbies looked
around, shuddering. Tears like streams flowed
full down their faces, they cried joyful stories
of home in front of your eyes with wild gestures,
anything to drive the look away, to bring back
memories of the wall, and garden, pear tree
growing in the backyard, your neighbor’s doves
cooing from their rooftop cages.
The Rainbarrel
The best fishing hole was legal
if you weren’t caught, my cousin
said, on one of those nights
the mayor fished with off-duty officers.
I had trouble believing my cousin
sometimes, then something would happen,
and I’d believe him. Like the night
he caught a barrel full.
After the long hike down the mountain,
he said they were still alive.
So we watched him dump them, foul water
and all — catfish, pike, bass —
into a hogshead. Gulping fresh water,
they couldn’t believe such sweetness.
Finning slowly, reviving in the April rainwater,
like patients gradually recovering, suddenly
entering the River Jordan.
Days later, the moss-backed barrel
full to brimming, they spooked easily,
alive to the crunched gravel
of our approach. Five black, head-shaking bullheads,
whiskers groping. A green pike long as your forearm
rose and fell like a submarine, finning the clear water.
A little big-mouth bass, holding his own among the big cats
and the giant pike, going head-to-head with them
for elbow room, jawing at them in self-defense
like the only little man on a court of six-footers,
making what moves he has to–an elbow, head-feint,
dribbling between their disbelieving knees.
Mountain Stream
Wanderer, wherever you go,
whenever you drink again
from these melting snow fields,
the fog will slowly rise
off this lake of clouds,
you will walk softly
and not disturb
the wood-drake’s dance,
the partridge’s drumming,
for the white-tail’s hoof prints
in cool black earth
beside the flat stone
upon which you kneel to drink
have impressed this upon you.