His left back paw is too small and hangs
useless. He carries it above the others
like a cup filled too full,
and walks, not hump-backed
like a raccoon, but sway-backed.
And because he is smaller than the others
by a third, when he’s confronted,
I see them make a quarterback
pocket for him. Maybe he’s less
ferocious, and they, turning more so,
having to fight his battles. Circumstances
can alter and mold us. Who’s not
touched by how he carries that paw?
By his strain when climbing trees in the dark
and having to push off of only one back anchor?
I think of how many of us came to English late.
Of those who never lost their limp.
Still Life
After the streaked
and chalky sky,
after the chill wind,
I saw the nestling
flattened on the road
in a few blue-gray feathers . . .
and fat blueberries
hanging in the sun.
Crows Under Trees
Caws crossed the lake.
More crows came.
Even on the opposite shore
crows edged close to the water.
Caws raspy and shrill went on.
Once a horned owl in a tree
along Bony Lake Road
had to move deep into the woods.
Once a crow made a road-dead
porcupine into a neighborhood picnic.
You have to admire how crows
throw themselves into causes.
The smallest’s raspy voice
can rattle your ear
like Dylan’s harmonica
or like the bald eagle’s cries
in that damp morning
as the small crow dive-bombed it.
3. Death of a Doe
Death of a Doe
She ran slowly through the hayfield.
Maybe a dull ache had stiffened
her left side and spread up her throat.
At the fence by the road where she leaped,
as always, where the broken strand hung down,
maybe a hind foot snagged, dragging.
She lay in a heap where she went down,
at the foot of the fence, in the tall grass
at the edge of the road. Her spotted fawn
ran across as we walked the road, and we saw
her wind her way back in a slow curve,
through the tall grass and blooming mustard weeds.
Flies buzzed and landed now as she stood,
licking and nudging a flank of the heap
as the sun rose and grew hot overhead.
With each passing car, the fawn jumped,
skittered across the road, and leaped
up a short grassy slope to the edge
of the woods. But she’d stop on the slope
to look back. All that long hot afternoon
she came back to stand by a flank
of the heap. After dark you might have heard
the rush and swish of a passing car
and the clomp of her hooves on the blacktop.
Litter of Bones
You will find your own image in the grain of wood,
In the dark translucence of trees in summer . . .
~Robert Bly, “Summer”
Along shore
a trail of beaver-skinned twigs
and hunks of chewed-off branches.
So many creatures
live and die out of our view.
Tell me again the night’s not haunted,
death isn’t stalking the dark.
I love the daylight,
my smiling friend.
A Wilson’s Warbler Lying on Her Belly
After heavy air and rains,
the sun rose over the trees.
It was a day to bless yourself.
This green-backed bird
must have flown out to Jones Road
in the early dawn and felt the northeasterly
chill enough to make her look
over her shoulder
at the cozy brush and grass
she’d left,
when she felt the twinge in her chest,
closed her eyes and dropped.
Kingfisher’s Home
When we came back,
the sandbank holes were dark,
stilled as Mother’s basement
after my father died.
And a fleeting
shadow passed. You thought
of a cloud. I imagined
the black paw
of a fisher or weasel.
The round neat openings
had been gashed
and dug to the side.
Two Swans
At sunset
before the tide came in,
two swans floated
white above the shadows,
and the orange wash of the sky
stayed far.
Our car rushed us past.
Two Otters
Most mornings we swim out
from our separate shores
and meet, floating
above the deepest water,
two otters, gliding in
and out of windy waves,
two watery birds.
Black Bear
At evening
he swims from across the lake
toward our little bobbing boat.
We can hardly breathe.
Like when your love comes
toward you and your insides
bunch. Still feeling that,
we look after the bear,
parting lily pads along shore
in the dusk.
Last Fling
August gone,
the ferns paled
overnight.
And the bottoms
of the reeds.
Only the white
water lilies
suddenly
blossomed again . . .
reckless starry
flowers.
Decoy
The wood duck ahead of us
suddenly beat her wings
and sputtered through the water
like a paddle wheel.
We’d seen her seven ducklings,
trailing behind her,
and this broken-wings’ act—
took our eyes off the brush
where the young had hid
and showed a generous heart.
Between the Lakes
Winding through the channel
through thick beds of pickerelweed,
we let the canoe drift.
Heart-shaped pointed leaves
hold up blue spires
and a faint sweetness
of hyacinth. Behind us
the sun hangs beyond the trees.
Though evening cools,
we dream of reawakening
forever on such evenings, streets
lined by thick beds of pickerelweeds.
Heading to the Dentist
A black bear ran across the road
and stopped in the weeds and grasses
at the edge of the woods to look at us.
Color had come up in the leaves.
; Ferns had curled to a dry rust.
The goldenrod held its yellow
to the north wind. We were happy
to see a bear, her loping run
in her loose fitting all bear suit,
even if frost was imminent
and we were headed to the dentist.
When you closed your eyes,
the triangular bear head, looking
at us, was above the brush
where she’d disappeared.
Lowly Crow
I was saying, holy, holy is
our being beneath heaven and the day . . .
~Milosz, “The Year”
Wings whooshed over the canopy of birch
and under the sky out over the lake.
I imagined wonderful birds, bright-headed
wood ducks, slow-flapping herons, a vigilant
eagle. Even when I heard the troop of crows
farther off and remembered the whoosh
of wings as their sound, I pictured shiny
black feathers like those I’d seen once
in a band of light along a quiet shaded road
when the holy one whispers in your ear.
4. The Bald Eagles’ Whistles
The Bald Eagles’ Whistles
She sits on the top right branch
of the white pine and whistles
as he comes in piping
greetings and mighty whistles, too,
and sometimes bringing
a large stick for the nest,
and it’s a comfort,
in the morning,
when you walk out to your studio
at the back of the garage
and I hear them whistle
because you have come out.
You Could Smell the Wind
Her nose and eyes
caught sounds where they started.
When the red fox stopped
and cocked her right ear,
the gray squirrel
crouched along a tree branch.
Sometimes You Push Back the Curtains
and find the red fox
standing on a stump.
She looks at you,
and you know
summer has slipped by
and the years.
Your mother’s age marks
are on the back of your hands.
The fox looks mottled
in her new gray with black spots.
Second Swoop
You could see the white tail and head
come down out of the trees in the darkened bay.
A duck squawked and splashed
and came up, there, sputtering quacks.
In the moment, it was easy to side with the eagle,
though a second swoop from across the lake didn’t show
much heart. The duck quacked softer.
Then, all got dim and still.
Home
Coming in side by side
above the tall pines,
the bald eagles
can’t keep from whistling.
Each having to say one more whistle,
they land in the top branches
of the white pine—
home for the evening.
Mid-October
The bald eagle
has been working on the nest
and brings smaller sticks
and hunks of leafy popple branches
he’s snapped off with his beak.
His fluttering and flapping
raise our eyes off the ground.
The colors of the trees
greet us coming and going.
You Saw That Fox Running
Unexpectedly you came into the room,
and we took half a turn
to a Neil Young song,
and I played my harmonica
in your ear. Why should it
now remind me of the red fox
in her half-black phase,
running across the road
and disappearing into the woods?
You said how you’d waited all day.
My Skipping Stone
in the wind and rain.
A gentle, steady rain.
And the lake skips again
toward the milky ice-fringes along shore.
You’d like to forget
how November toys us with March.
These wet snows over a new green.
All the Birds
Days
when snow lies heavy
on the land,
we walk in our own silences,
and at a place
where from in the woods,
far, far . . .
crows and chickadees
raise their voices,
I say, mostly
to myself,
Do you hear . . .
all the birds . . .
Birds
We go days without seeing one,
snows mounded and crusted,
nights and mornings dangerous
with cold. We walk out anyway,
to the farthest points, listening.
Great sweeps of wind.
Maybe a Chick . . . Chick
from beyond the buried fence posts
and the snowbanks against the trees,
a chickadee deep in a spruce.
Some days when we don’t see or hear
a bird, we find we have nothing to say.
Patience
Every day, now, the lake rumbles and thumps
against the icy shell. Small and great fissures
trail her distress. You know sometimes
how everything grabs at us. Today,
in one place, the ice heaved under our feet
like a great tingling shoulder, shifting in sleep.
I’ve awakened in the night and turned
and heard the lake deep in my ache
and turned away and back,
looking for day, too soon.
Gray Squirrel
The gray squirrel climbed
up the siding, looked in your window,
then went to the birdfeeder again,
and I wished you had been at your desk
and I had looked in at you.
What do I do
the next time I dream
that I search on the run for you
and then awake, but never find you?
The Greeting
Sometimes the eagle sits for hours
on the branch alongside that nest.
Sometimes she sits. It’s a life.
Yesterday when we went out,
he whistled to you, to you.
I could tell because I was walking
behind you, and he was
into his whistles, the way
his tail trembled after. It was
morning, and he was greeting you.
5. Deer
Deer
From the window I saw the deer.
They got me up on an early winter morning. The light
was white. The sky was white.
The air a wide hollow of evening cold.
From my window I could see the hillside
snow louvered by wind.
My daughter’s hand on my forehead like a draft in a room
had shivered into my sleep and brought me back to see
five deer standing in a green patch of white cedars.
They faced the ho
use, their cocked ears
bleached conches left on the shore,
their eyes wide as black walnuts.
When the deer stepped forward a little, downhill
toward us, they could have been recalling our faces
and moving in for a handshake. Brown fur
curved and folded in wind along their backs
like a dark sea washing in with the morning.
Unafraid, they listened and nosed
the wind. Their thin legs didn’t
talk weakness. They were drawn out
of sharp lines and spring-tight angles.
The deer stood heavy bottomed, heads
like Greek prows on a sea of snow, but their eyes
were dark, tense. If light splintered, if the sun
splattered through, the deer would be gone.
I saw, I saw the light sharpen and a ray
of gold burn the shade off the hill.
The room lightened and looked out.
Cold air stood at attention. I
was awake. And the world.
Tracks on Damp Sand Page 2
