Tracks on Damp Sand
by Franco Pagnucci
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
St. Cloud, Minnesota
To Susan & Gian, Robyn, Anna, Stefan
Cover art by Anna Pagnucci
Inside photo by Anna Pagnucci
Copyright © 2014 Franco Pagnucci
Print ISBN 978-0-87839-756-3
Ebook ISBN 978-0-87839-980-2
All rights reserved.
First Edition: March 2014
Published by
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
P.O. Box 451
St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302
northstarpress.com
Acknowledgements
Some of these poems have appeared in Lowly Crow, a limited edition handmade book by paper artist Susan Pagnucci © Bur Oak Press, 2006.
Others have been published as follows:
The Christian Science Monitor (March 5, 2012), “Where You Were Headed.”
Red Ochre Press (Fall 2012, Vol. 2, #3), “All That Is Left,” “Black Bear,” “Deer,” “Heading to the Dentist,” “Now the Swallows.”
The Raven Anthology (2012), “Deer,” “Heading to the Dentist.”
Whistling Shade (Fall-Winter, 2012), “All That Is Left.”
Wisconsin Poet’s Calendar (2012), “Everyday We’re on the Lookout.”
The swallow brings back blades of grass
not wanting life to go.
Eugenio Montale, “Lindau”
Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Before the Rain
Before the Rain
Now the Swallows . . .
The Bobcat
Come to the Window
Desert Sparrow
All That Is Left
Otherwise
Two Chickadees
All Day
Love
Another Snowstorm
Icy Heavy Wet Snow
Crows Come in Bunches
2. Where You Were Headed
Where You Were Headed
Eagles
Bailing Out the Old Rowboat in the Morning
Wind on a Sunny Morning
You Heard
First Swim
Sunset
Summer Solstice
Flasher
Immigrants
Still Life
Crows Under Trees
3. Death of a Doe
Death of a Doe
Litter of Bones
A Wilson’s Warbler Lying on Her Belly
Kingfisher’s Home
Two Swans
Two Otters
Black Bear
Last Fling
Decoy
Between the Lakes
Heading to the Dentist
Lowly Crow
4. The Bald Eagles’ Whistles
The Bald Eagles’ Whistles
You Could Smell the Wind
Sometimes You Push Back the Curtains
Second Swoop
Home
Mid-October
You Saw That Fox Running
My Skipping Stone
All the Birds
Birds
Patience
Gray Squirrel
The Greeting
5. Deer
Deer
Early March—That Whistle
Now a New Moon
Sunny, with Wind and Thirty Degrees
Four Wild Turkeys Crossed the Road
The Wind Had Changed
Now the Bald Eagles Are So Solicitous of Each Other
When He Came Back
They’ll Go Off Together
From Below
The Wind Vane
Everyday We’re on the Lookout
1. Before the Rain
Before the Rain
A grouse crossed the road
and ran for the woods, and under sprinkles,
a bald eagle rose from a yard to a birch.
The urge was there,
to look out from their eyes.
We walked on.
A soaking rain
satisfied most of that afternoon.
Now the Swallows . . .
They are gone.
And sparks of their twitters.
At the bottom of the hill,
air over the bridge
is a vacant house.
Footsteps don’t raise a flutter.
Under the bridge,
their mud nests entangled
by dusty webs. The neighbor’s
house behind
white cedars. No one knows
if we passed or if we looked back.
The Bobcat
running across
Robinson Lake Road,
looked at me
over his left shoulder,
yellow eyes
holding the lights of the car
and any light from my eyes.
He could have been
on the path off our back steps.
I rushed home to tell
but felt unsure.
Come to the Window
A shadow.
A dark spot
in the leafless trees
against a chalky sky
catches your eye.
High in a poplar,
a thick base.
A white head
appears and disappears
in a smudged heaven . . .
You, too, see the bald eagle
and square your shoulders.
Desert Sparrow
You are far from home—
if I saw you where we live.
Maybe you turned off once
somewhere to have a look
and kept going.
It’s the urge that makes
wings lift. We rise
and move out.
I remember one winter
going to look for the desert.
We found it
fenced off at the edges
of the highway.
Afterward we came back
feeling better
about our own place.
All That Is Left
Imprints of your tires on damp sand . . .
I see them. Maybe the road holds
the pressure for a while. Maybe
leaves shifted along both sides
as you drove away.
Who else to remember you
turning a page in a room,
creaking a chair?
All goes silent,
though I put these words around you.
And nature is unmoved,
even if I love what green is left.
A new pair of muskrats stuff
weeds under the roots of the birch.
The lake cools in November rain.
Otherwise
Eleven geese
lingered in the bay
and one lost mallard.
The pale light
distanced itself.
Wind hunted openings.
Two Chickadees
in the trees
along Bony Lake Road
were saying their name.
It was sunny. No wind to speak
of, but seven below.
We heard them clearly,
chick-a-dee-dee-dee . . . fee-bee,
over and over and looked up,
our faces muffled
toward the cold blue,
where an immature eagle,
dusky head, dusky tail,
brown-speckled body feathers
more black than brown,
was gliding
cold lonely
magnificent up-drafts
he seemed to own.
All Day
Great sweeps of wind,
were settling the cold in.
Chickadees twittered
from the hollows of the spruce
and stayed put.
The bald eagle came down
into a low pine
below the northwest hill
out of the wind.
In late afternoon
an orange horizon,
and a clear night. Stars.
I loved the feel in the west
of days getting longer.
Love
Stopping to retie a boot,
you hear it . . .
below the swish of the pines,
the lake shifting under the ice,
a faint rumble on the wind
again . . . like someone
awake and pacing the dark kitchen.
It pulls you
out of a winter burrow.
When you hear it in the night,
you lean your chin on an arm
on your bunched pillow to listen.
You would get up
if someone called, needing you.
So, why shouldn’t I think of you,
how you saw that scarlet finch,
working between tufts of the spruce,
gathering cobwebs into a ball,
the sun brightening his scarlet throat,
and how you called me to the window?
Another Snowstorm
So the lake
had been stretching
awake in its shell
and my goggles fogged up
and a whirl of windy snow
dusted my jacket. My mind,
a sleepy marmot,
ducked into the bed of the lake,
again, under the cover of ice.
Icy Heavy Wet Snow
Even the deer must have been surprised.
You could tell they’d come back
looking for green shoots
and trampled everything
in the open, sun-softened places.
We met on such
a foolish start of a season,
as if someone pointed
to each of us and said, There.
Crows Come in Bunches
Crows come in bunches
to the river channel, where the ice
has opened a slit like a window.
They squawk and from the trees
come down to drink and look.
Small bird tracks are there and a mouse’s.
Even the fox stopped in the night.
We go close to look, too. The pale
sandy bottom . . .
2. Where You Were Headed
Where You Were Headed
It didn’t matter.
It was how the pileated woodpecker
squatted to her belly
and draped and dipped her neck,
one side,
then the other,
to her chest
in a rivulet of melted snow.
It was how the wind
rubbed across the pines
and the clear melt
washed down every road rut
all that afternoon.
Eagles
We saw the two
making grand loops, dives, and sweeps
over the river channel to Birch Lake,
one white head and white-tipped tail leading,
he following every lift and dip,
every curve. Smooth as two skaters
on air, connected by a ribbon of air,
a rhythm wave from head to wings and tail,
they went as they knew from a thousand runs.
And she never slowed down
or pretended so she could be caught
even if that’s what her whole self wanted.
Every feather tip to quill end told her to fly,
and his chase was a furious desperate urge
that pulled him after her so that from the start
he found and fell into her air wake and let himself be pulled
like a winged skier. That second’s pause when they connected,
mid-air above the river and tumbled,
turning clustering loops downward and parted
and went their separate ways, it was a sunny, late, mid-April
afternoon, and we stepped in close toward each other.
Bailing Out the Old Rowboat in the Morning
After a dry May, a rain.
The muskrats swimming out,
diving into the lake weeds,
ripping a mouthful,
then hauling it up and back,
strands trailing over a shoulder.
Tiring work, though the lake is calm.
Friend, how insignificant my bailing seems.
Wind on a Sunny Morning
I look out on a cottony surface of the lake.
Tiny newly hatched black flies swarm my head
in the unusual heat of a sunny morning,
before a little wind kicks up, sweeping the water
like a good host and the flies
from around me. The varied greens
leafing out of the trees across the lake
bring out a tenderness, and the wind and I
walk up the hill, looking for others to greet.
You Heard
You heard the eagle’s wings
flap, flapping
against the lift,
like a large umbrella
in a great wind,
as he struggled
to carry the big stick-
pole. Not much of a builder,
still he must have felt
he was doing more for her
than most, and he’d
been at it for weeks now.
He rose above the white pine’s
peak and her whistles
and loosened his claws,
letting the long stick drop,
left of center, next to the trunk.
It settled well but dislodged
a couple sticks below it,
and they tumbled through the pine’s
branches, knocking and echoing,
like a screwdriver down a basement
stairs. When he dropped in next
to her on the branch, she shifted a little,
then settled back against his side.
First Swim
Up the hill from the lake,
you hung your suit on the line,
pink patches from cold along your hips and thighs,
beads of water crowded in the small of your back,
and above you in the blue dusk and light wind,
tall poplars leaned and let loose the last of their cotton.
Sunset
Dust strands
along the edges of the lake
as we paddled through without a sound.
They clung
to us like children who can’t play on their own.
Summer Solstice
Where the army worms
had already returned,
an orange light came down,
widened the unknown universe,
and spread a long thin path
toward our little darkened boat.
Flasher
So I was outside in broad daylight.
I’d come up from a cool August swim
in the lake. I hung my suit on the line
under trees, wrapped in a sun-warmed towel,
and turned in that late afternoon.
A large deer, a doe, stood staring,
and I remembered old Margarelle
peeping from the corner of a gauzy
curtained window, those years when we
were young and new on Lutheran Street.
Suddenly I opened my towel.
Here, take a good look, I said, and go on.
I’ve been as curious . . .
Immigrants
One of the three raccoons has a limp.
Tracks on Damp Sand Page 1
