On the longest, darkest night of the year
a noble deer appears
at the northern edge
of the starless sky,
her antlers branched
like the brown limbs
of brooding oaks.
Through winter’s frozen curtain
shines a pale light
and then another
and another growing brighter
as Mother Deer carries aloft
the life of the new sun
like candles on the tree of life.
Watch as she flies over the sleeping houses
leaving the gift of warmth,
the blessings of light,
the promise of the sun’s return.
Solstice, 2016
On this day of light and laundry
a lift of the heart
and then an unmatched sock
brings you close to tears.
A sunpatch among fallen brown leaves
and you draw in your breath
with the surprise
of remembering.
The rake scrapes singles into piles
over and over and then
its claws uncover
an unwary blossom.
What were you thinking,
arm or rake or flower?
All the unknowing
pushes you into an unlit corner
where you linger in lazy musings
as the bedsheets flap on the line
in the neighbor’s back yard.
In the beginning was the dream
and the dream was made woman
and the woman took her brushes
and washed the sky clean
picked up her broom
and swept the desert of all its bones
with her shovel
she cracked open
the mute clay.
She called hunger by its true name
and strode through the forests of fear,
gathering up the broken limbs
and fallen flowers.
In the landscape of an unspoken morning
she piled the bones and stars
the sand and clay and twigs
the stillborn hearts
and unspent angers.
High was the pile
hot the center of creation.
Deep in her elation
she plunged her hands
into the burning sky,
she stirred the dying sea,
she lifted the rim and scrabble
pressed fast the fish and feather
crumbled the clumps of stubborn clay.
She turned and turned the pile
of what was,
then spread it like a blanket
on the infant land naked of hope and
unadorned with memory.
On the blanket of what was
she rested from her work
and dreamed she was a seed
and the seed dreamed it was a garden
and the garden dreamed this beginning into being.
I pick one flower
a perfectly red hibiscus
place the plucked end in water
hoping it will drink and
stay with me for a while
stay alive though I know
the picking will shorten its time
has already changed its fate
from coquette to languid beauty.
Longevity is hardly the question now.
Perhaps there is no question.
There is only this looking, looking
this small remorse that I have interfered
this sigh for my clumsy human flesh
that steps on grasslings
leaves footprints in pink sand
in mud
picks a hibiscus
and only then remembers
that fate surprises us
picks us from our bush
our limb
so I place this perfect blossom
behind my ear
its bawdy pollen-laden stamen
observing me
from the corner of my eye:
here we go together
stepping out
to see what we can see.
Sleeping bulbousness
round-hipped and heavy-lidded
layers of elephantine skin and promise
you are the India of flora
a subcontinent unto yourself
silk-red as a sari.
Having chosen a pot as round
and windowless as your soul
the gardener
in the dark basement
of winter
tucks you into pillows of earth
and waits
and watches
the invisible egg
of gestation
nestled in dirt
a singular
self-satisfied womb
taking all the time you need
and more
no questions asked.
And then
with the attitude of royalty
you present yourself.
How could we not
long for you?
Comes the carpet
long, slow, green
five runners firm
and impervious.
Each scarlet bell
a new surprise:
that such majesty
would visit this windowsill
that such nectar and velvet
of carmine and sap
would know from black
to answer to its name
and lift,
open its arms
and bow
to the applauding sun.
The Gathering of the Clan
The wind quickens.
In the East the sky brightens.
In the West the wings of old loves hover on the horizon.
A moment passes.
It carries the damp of moors they have walked.
Wafts of their talk touch her collarbone,
her fingertips and earlobes.
Through the mists of her ancient eyes
Appears the arriving clan:
Clan not of bone
or breastplate
nor blood
nor shared hearth.
In the land of heart’s desire
Are born these brethren.
Setting out one from the bone-dry desert,
Another from the willow sweep of river,
A third from the gladsome meadows of spring
Blushed of lupine and sweet clover,
They have tread the endless plains,
Bathed in the morning dew of Alchemilla,
And rested in the valley of many stars.
Around the night fire
They have opened the book of unending mystery;
They have sung its songs,
Retold its tales,
Deciphered verse by verse
The language of wolves and herbs,
Woven and unwoven the tales of war and peace.
Then moving on:
Packing their shallow bowls,
Winding the harp strings of first light,
Wrapping with care the blue and silver book of
Their collective soul,
They have followed the paths of remembering
To this forest glade
Where dwells this piece of time.
She opens the door to their verses and cloaks,
Their shawls and shoes and thirst.
Herbs she brews, mats she spreads,
Pillows she plumps for their rest.
She welcomes them home.
They sit on her porch as the evening descends,
They watch as the moon opens its heart
And the sky reveals its treasures.
The wind is still now.
An owl calls from the wood.
Someone plays a flute.
She opens the book of promises forged
And regrets forgotten,
Of jade palaces and purple peacocks,
Of clay bowls and painted portraits,
Of golden hope and silver memories,
Of hay and sand and stone.
She chooses a poem of birth,
She chooses a poem of death.
She reads them together as if they were one
And passes the book to her right.
Thus they spend the night
Reciting each a fragment of this life
‘Til sleep rejoins the shards
And they are made whole again.
By morning they have gone,
Making each their way through landscapes and sunsets,
Oceans and orchards.
On the blank pages of her book
They have written the poem of their journeys
In the language of tansy and violets.
May the regal Angelica guide her voice
As she translates her vision
and her dream.
May Artemisia protect her,
Borago give her strength
To speak the true words,
To know the true names,
To write the story only she can tell.
What silent sound
in the gray and green
of the path?
What breath beside
this waiting ear?
Which green dream
of walking palms
wild ginger
fingered ferns
trailing ficus?
Which memory
in the long bone
of this spine
plucked the harp string
of this neck
and, unthinking,
she turned her head
in time
to see.
No, not possible, he said,
maybe a bird.
No, she insists:
four legs, this tall,
white, sleek, elusive.
What does it mean, she wonders,
when someone crosses your path,
emerging from the untrod,
present just long enough
to appear
and melting, then, back
into formless memory?
White jaguar spirit
or pale deer
or trackless puma
of the forest
and its filtered light
its floor of rain-slick mud and crawling roots
its curtains of shadow
its warm wetness—
She walks on,
hopes the mystery remains unsolved,
holds the beast in her heart.
A crow on a branch
of that old Norway maple
and then another
a third alights
and off they fly to the backyard trees.
They are free to go
and return,
as is the lone gull
and the loon who passes
on his daily flight
from lake to bay
and the cardinal couple
always in tandem
and the robins in late winter
nipping at the wrinkled burgundy crab apples.
They range over our plots
and lots and garden fences
our tenderly tended slices
of the village pie.
Perhaps I’ll hang a house and a feeder
to lure these songsters
these blues and yellows, browns and reds
into my domesticity.
But really what I want is
that lift at my shoulder blades
that unfolding of wings
that unrehearsed melody
as I take to the air
through the open window.
First, the smell of red-brown
clay moist of earth
a column
thick so thick
we want no air to penetrate
this heft and dense
no bubble forming
undermining.
Knead, then,
ask this clay elastic
to know your hands
the dough and stone of them
pushing back and together
the palms cradling
the whole hand lifting
and sinking pressing
repeating the song
the bowl of your body
quietly forming.
Sometimes I want nothing
but to stand boot-deep in spring mud,
to poke around the flower beds
in the chill April air,
to listen to
this heaving subterranean
gardener at work
on the seasonal meanings
of seeds and bulbs and roots
and the wordless awakenings
and the perfect beginnings of things.
I cry easily these days,
sleep lightly.
Has life always been this sweet?
Or is it because it is barely spring
and through the cold rain and salt,
in the most improbable
and in some of the desired
places hard green shoots
the tough bulbs of April in Maine
are finding their way back?
I remember, watching them,
the long nights spent waiting,
the despair that comes
from living
where things really die,
where one need not feign surprise
that tender-lipped violets
are resurrected
from the frozen land.
The garden is ragged with
crumpled leaf heaps
and straw mulch pushed aside by
the rubber knights of tulips
the spongey knives of narcissus.
The accumulation of cycles
looks in April like unmeshed gears
and broken bones.
In May it seems to work as if effortlessly,
like things that are never resolved
because they work,
work together,
have never stopped working.
janetngold 