Posts for June 4, 2020 (page 4)

June, warm, with thunderstorms—grass season.

Zero-turn mowers scuttle about the monoculture lawns

And along fencerows, like weird crustaceans,

Backward, forward, pivoting, unpredictable,

Their operators clutching the upright claws.

I think of them as crab-turn mowers,

Though unlike crabs, they can’t go sideways.

In the fields, spiked hay rakes turn the tall grass

Into windrows, not destined for the compact bales

That the shirtless boys of my youth

Once lifted effortlessly onto wagons, 

Farm boys unaware of their own strength,

Or even their transitory beauty. 

Today’s windrows will become round bales,

That weigh a ton and can crush a car

(I’ve seen it happen)

And must be lifted by machines.

A handsome word, “windrow,”

Nearly forgotten now, in steady decline

Since its peak in the agrarian 1950s, 

After its first recorded use in 1523,

To describe cut grass exposed to wind

For drying before being forked and ricked,

As there were no balers then. 

The OED offers no etymology for “windrow,”

Just a reference to “wind + row,”

“Wind” from the Old English “windan,”

Going back through Norse “vinda” to “wander,” 

And “row” tracing its lineage 

To an older source, 

A Sanskrit term for “stroke,” or “line.” 

So, each “windrow” is a “wander line,” 

Lying in a pale curve though the shorn fields.

This honest word that limns the scene

Has the feel of Norse or Saxon kennings:

Whale-road, word-hoard, earth-stepper, sea-weary,

Wood-bane, blood-ember, mist hills,

All so much more eloquent

Than the ones we use today:

Arm candy, bean counter, pencil pusher, hot potato,

Slights, in a time that has almost abandoned windrows,

I think of how these peevish modern concepts

Would have confused the marauding Vikings, 

Or been perceived as great insults, if understood,

By warriors with neither pencils nor potatoes nor candy. 

Perhaps enough to work a pause

In the violent sack of Lindisfarne in 793 AD,

Had the distraught monks been divinely inspired

To shout them out, uncomprehendingly, 

Before the mounting bale-fires consumed

Their glorious, hand-lettered, parchment books. 

Or what might the original utterer of “windrow” thought,

Standing in a hayfield in Sussex, or maybe Devon,

Admiring a hay crop brought in before ruinous rain,

Had someone responded with “motor mouth,” 

“Tree hugger,”  “tramp stamp” or “bookworm.”

But that was 1523, when Henry VIII was in his 30s,

Still trim and writing poetry, still  married to his first wife, Catherine,

Though that year he warned Henry Percy

To cool things off with Ann Boleyn.

And this is the sinuous path

By which the word “windrow” took me this morning,

In a poem that was supposed to be about

The wholesome pleasures of the month of June.

How is it that I even know “windrow?” 

Books, surely. Has to be. 

This was not the sort of language

My practical haymaking grandfathers used, 

Nor a word favored by the tanned boys

In the long ago fields of my youth,

Fields now as nearly forgotten as “windrows,”

Where the lean boys laughed with hay in their sunlit hair,

As they tossed the first golden bales of June

Onto the waiting haywagons. 

Steam lines over a bread loaf?
The “Cruelty Free” rabbit?
A lowercase “V”?
An uppercase “F”?
Apron strings?
Backwards baseball cap?
Nose ring?
Diamond tattoo?
A ginger kitten?

No.

When I hear your name
my first vision
are those lips
you drew
with front teeth
slight gap.
You made me a zine
I look at two or three times a week.
This is when I realized I love you
I said.

Eyes closed, I see
your lips
quivering
our first night
on that awful couch.
That was when
I knew.

Night, desert driving.
Let’s put the top down!
But it’s 103 degrees 
even now in the dark.
Stop over for the night.
The sun only catnaps, so
we doze with her, then wake
to chase those foothills up ahead.
A worn old road winds
and climbs.
With the pressure change,
a change in mood,
a satisfying solitude
there together.
Soon, the shouts of
rushing falls,
water calling out to dirt.
And the smell,
rich evergreen perfume,
A promise from the earth—
I was always meant to
have you here.
My hair whips in the wind.
You flash a sun-glassed smile,
and we climb.
Soon we will be among the giants.
Wise old women with rough skins
and soft hearts. I feel the secrets
they grip in their roots.
I am a human woman
on this spinning sphere,
Put in my proper place here,
Dwarfed by history.
Time here exists only
as height
and circumference.
I’m made small again in
space and time,
Humbled anew in my own mind,
Brought back to a place
of stillness, wonder.
Something of the spirit
hums here.
You tell me I’m the one humming.

Can you put a knee on a note’s neck

Put a note on a knee’s neck

A reminder

To quarantine the tone

Repetition not homogenization

Can you pour the notes in our eyes

Shoot rubber livers

Hold back your notes

Put a badge on your nightmare

Put a neck on the note’s knee

Before the music skitters to nowhere

I
The end of a crane against gray clouds, a tassel dangling in the wind. I remember the blue heron at the edge of the pond, leg bent against the fog, and I suddenly know why they are called cranes.

II
In between classes, on the first day of the year that I have worn short sleeves outside comfortably, I see a cardinal perched in a tree and I wonder, who watches over me today?

III
I leave my house for the first time in two days. As I get in my car, I notice the body of a robin dangling from a bare branch in my front yard, its neck and beak caught, capturing the bird’s descent. Locking, sealing, the moment behind the depths of my own brown eyes. I drive away.

IV
There are trees blossoming everywhere; pink, white, yellow, red. The fields are lush and green once more; and the air is warm and humid, the water lingering in the air from the previous night’s downpour. A small, shiny bird perches on a telephone wire. It is spring, even so.

V
114 new cases. 7 deaths. I glance out the window, not wanting to believe it, and spot a darkly colored bird grooming itself in the rain. Perched on a branch in the same tree that led a robin to its end. In the emptiness and gray, it still checks for observers and the green eyes of my cat, waiting at the window.

VI 
The cardinal visits every afternoon, always catching me off guard. I see his brothers fluttering together at the top of a distant fence, stained with rainwater. Bittersweet. The trees stretch towards the atmosphere and the grass sighs once more.

My father’s near death experience

I stand at the foot of the bed,
my eyes glued to the monitor
above him.
I count his heartbeats
as the machine records them.
I observe his blood pressure as it drops,
and then he dies.

The nurse rushes in,
responding to the machine’s alarming.
she shocks him
and gets his heart to beat.
The rest of her team arrives,
but she waves them off.

He looks at me and says, “
When I floated above you,
I knew I was out of my body,
for I could see it.
I could not touch it, asleep,
so it appeared.
I knew I would not escape this death.”

“But you did,” I say.

“Did you see that shadow man,
running around the walls?”

“No,” I say.  

He laughed.  

“What’s so funny?”
 
“I really showed him,” he says.
“I bet he’s angry about it.
I can’t say I blame him though.”

i am a storm.
i can smudge out the sun in an instant
and use lightning and thunder to demand your attention.
i flood the earth with the water she desperately craves
and scare animals into their hiding places.
my thunder makes adrenaline course through your veins.
you can feel me coming from miles away.
the calm before i truly arrive is your only warning.
when you feel the pressure in the atmosphere shift,
you should prepare. you can’t ignore me.
i come when i want, stay as long as i want.
i’ll wake you from your dreams
and beat on your windows so you can’t go back to sleep.
i am the darkness, the thunder, the power, the fear.
i am all of it.
the pressure, the electricity, the rain, the force.
i am a storm.

it always happens around the same time
even when it’s raining with heavy clouds
I can feel the evening sun push through
the hazy, heavy, horrible muck
carrying the sharp cut
of nostalgia and ruin
of her and how we became a neon
flash that grew and blossomed
spilling out and redefining
who I am
exposed 
unafraid

but those can’t match
when I was fishing out the coldest 
Pepsi’s I ever drank from my father’s
work cooler
while getting him another beer
I can still remember how he smelled
sitting on the picnic table with a cigarette;
sweat and blood and tar
and the white-gold pure heat of the sun
while he told stories and laughed 
the time when I still believed
that he loved me

or when I was on the southern coast
with the hard-edged heat masked 
in the coconut wafting off those women
that would walk by with their sun hats
and I wished to taste the salt off their 
shoulders
that place where I believed that 
the more I visited
that my entire family was 
enamored and transformed
in a sad way because none of them
knew that they weren’t meant 
for that kind of place
and I wasn’t meant 
for my mother
because I wasn’t that kind of kid

or the sick and broken feeling
that I got while deep in a hollow
right after a heavy rain
with the orange sun struggling
to find passage through the
heavy
green 
leaves
stood in a patch of wild Easter lilies
while the insects started back up
their chorus and the night shift
of animals started to move
I watched 
that 
old 
bitch
gather those flowers up
in those gnarled hands so gently
knowing what she did to me
knowing what she would do to me
but unable to be smart enough
to figure out how to escape
from the whole thing
besides killing myself 
or her

so when I say Summer is my favorite
still seems a little confusing
by my god
the what could be
is better than the 
what has been

all ghosts
all gone
just like 
parts of me

will I make amends
for the things I have done today
will I be able to let go of the things
that I’ve held on to so tightly?

I know mother always said
“Don’t end the night with things weighing on your heart”
but it’s already dark and I do not have the strength
though his light is still on
the path to his room is too long

I will regret this choice in the morning

Wind rustles the leaves,
frogs and birds call,
but a sharp engine cuts
across the background –
a plane in the distance filled
with people on their way
to somewhere.

The sounds
of man invade even the
sacred space of the woods.
There is no escape –
no places left untouched
by our destructive greed.

I have tracked the bird calls
and frog eggs, tree buds and
flower blooms for seasons
upon seasons; my life
mapped out in careful
phenological notes,
nature a concept far more
entwined with our fate
than the economy
will ever admit.

The past few years
have destroyed the
careful pattern
unfolding in my
records to map
out the sudden
and erratic
changes in our climate,
building more evidence
for concern
each passing day.

I walk the forests,
as I always have,
lamenting
past clear cuts
now filled with maples
and sycamores,
pawpaws and sassafras,
absent the giants of
old growth sacrificed
in the name of dollars.

We leave scars across
the land for progress
and money,
burning out what’s
not valuable to the
capitalist eye
and harvesting
the rest for profit.

We leave litter cascading
over protected areas where
we go to “soak in nature,”
cameras snapping perfect
moments for followers online,
and we cry out in horror
because the world
collapses around us,
and we just
can’t figure out why.