Though fate and fidelity
are in the eye of the witch, one might say
and she has found us reliable
or is playing a quiet shell game of her own
The rude izba at the border of the land of the dead
has a stove of solid Russian works; what a nest
the roof makes
if you don't mind the grief and howl of
death at your back
Or, of course, the trophy bones —
fancywork, fuel, sorcery of life
and Yaga the shaman
with a blazing skull in her closet
If you are quite clever
you might win the use of such a talisman
but it is best not to cut your fingernails or
wear anything new when you petition her
Bring rye bread and apples for us
or a fat silver fish
but nothing under a spell (we have enough of that)
and in return you might find us inattentive, dizzy
or having an off night
It isn't true that we never speak
But you must pull your own weight, child
find the brother you lost and
build your own disenchantments
All Night This River
Open the enamel box
underneath your ribs
and draw out the white locket
whose chain is a river
whose river is you
and you the ferryman
deckhand, river horse, naga
filled with fish wisdom
belly full of gold bullion, legal papers
and a sink full of dishes
All night this river
rises and rolls
rises and falls
There are boundaries to your landscape
but not limits
Lift the orange salmon sun
from the roof of your bonehouse
where it weeps and gilds
your leaps, sleeping and climbing
and you the satellites
stars, stings, centaurs
planted in the blue garden of night
for your nine good deeds
hummingbird eggs
and a dozen pint jars of honey
All night this river
rises and rolls
rises and falls
Cross three times the watercourse
over, back, over
and find yourself in a new place
Break from your frozen moraine
the great stone who dreams of flying
cracking the old songs into fragments
and you the grinding slab
the marzipan ice wolf
turtle, lullaby, snowfall
hunting the glacial till for
black jewels carved into crows
shist, then shale
then silt in the firth, funnel, door
How small you shall become
before you belong to the sky
Five Maps
I've made trails with small white stones
breadcrumbs, buttons, omitted commas
pressed pennies, and paper fortunes
I gave away
a box of handkerchiefs sent to me
singly, over years
by my great grandmother and her sister
laced, embroidered for a
girl becoming a woman
I gave away all the
pink depression glass, too
Now they narrate a different land
with cotton lawn, silk, and
engraved remembrances
I've made trails with
blackberries — wait,
I ate those
but the seeds, the seeds
mark something, or will
— with blackberries, virgin's bower
blue crawdads, cornbread
scuffing the leaf duff
and chopping in a path with my
round-point shovel, sometimes
a mattock
And how many leagues have
flown along the page,
busy-tangled, sleepily rumpled words
charting trumpet weed and territories
hunting and shining
owls, bowls, and petals
on how many pens and sheets!
Today I sat and watched the erratic
flights of bees, making no
sense and perfect harmony
their own algorithm of sticky love
and hive-ness
So many small cherished maps
are folded away in my pockets
and cabinets, along the lining
of my shelves and tales
including this one
IV. The Storm and Home of Us
Cabinet
Inside my chest is a cabinet
of a thousand drawers
With them all shut for company I'd say
it would be tidy except
for the constant leakage and
the strange grinding sounds
The drawers rattle open on their
own no matter what I do
and randomly cave, coalesce, incinerate or
cough clouds of spores
Inside an entire row at the front
(it's important to tell you this right away)
are layers of brown confidence in
thick sturdy pages
Though one day I will have
filled a dozen sheets with charcoal drawings
and the next the drawer has swollen shut
and refuses access
Some drawers are stuffed with wool socks
and baby bonnets
beeswax and the amiable natter of crows
a few blazing fast starts (not many timely finishes)
the sweet perfection of cleanly splitting a chunk of beech on the first swing
Row after row have stones under which there are salamanders
But there are also tiers marked need to please and overthought
(I scratched through the labels but
you can still read them)
The ones dedicated to precision I've never opened
(smashed the edges with rocks — didn't budge)
And the paint is lovingly worn
from untethered, and deeply attentive
and the attenuation that comes
with gradually being spun into a glittering stream of light
Released
For weeks I called the cutleaf toothwort by the wrong name. It niggled at me, then suddenly I realized where I’d gone amiss.
It bloomed all over the mountainside anyway.
I remembered a moment back in our pale February — I was stricken to find a wildly curling orange and yellow bloom erupting along the bare branches of a tree like fireworks.
“What is it!” I demanded, both elated and baffled.
Mary Jo told me, of course. “That’s an Orange Squiggly with Eyes.” And it was.
Just for today, you could let go of your need to be perfectly correct. Drop your guard, quiet your heart, and allow things to unfurl without your nomenclature.
Watch for the things that germinate, or effloresce. In the name of the Carolina geranium, you are forgiven. By the power of the squiggly witch hazel, you are forgiven.
You are living energy, made from stars, and cast wildly out again.
Tonight, despite your efforts to prevent it, the deer will nibble at the tender young shoots on the blueberry bushes, and trample the false earthstar into clouds of spores.
The Storm and Home of Us
You were born, I think, like a storm precipitated from the breath of the thousand generations who came before, created of ancient queens and charm quarks, hippogriffs and wood sorrel.
Hiking into the woods after a spring rain, I feel the salamander turning lazily in the mud of my genes. Did you know she is suffused with homing metals that call her to the water? When the sun shines, her body becom
es a glittering flame that loves the puddle, the pond, the great river.
So there is magnetic dust in my gut that compels me to slide bare hands beneath a clod of sodden leaves, to turn over endless rocks in the creek surging down the mountain. I am looking for home.
We are warriors and red algae, feldspar and manticore and garden mint. We are made of clouds and etched with holy meridians. Wave by wave our lives are called to their source in rushes and rivulets until the last burst of fine mist, then cloud again.
Cherry Tree
I have been studying the space between fear and grief.
Last night before the moon faded, I climbed up to stand under the dying mountain cherry.
Nine stone steps, slick with unease, then another short rain-soaked rise. I can see into our second-floor bedroom window from here.
Thirteen nights more until the man comes to take down the tree; a feat that will involve harnesses in neighboring trees and a careful system of pulleys and ropes. The cherry is a hundred feet tall, three trunks splitting away from the main, badly rotted at the base.
Death leans toward the house.
Thirteen more nights, and sixteen inches of rain so far this month; nearly four times the average. I rearrange the numbers over and over again, but they aren’t my numbers, over and over again.
Sometimes as you are carrying your laundry up or down the stairs, you will forget.
At night, in bed beneath the moon-shadow of a dying cherry, you will remember.
Shut the bedroom windows so that you can’t hear another inch of rain, or the whip of wind. Turn off the flash flood warnings on your phone. They aren’t your numbers.
Stand in the slippery weeds with your palms and forehead to the tree. Allow yourself to grieve and fear, fear and grieve.
The sharp, liquid arrow-song of the wood thrush will leave a silver scar on your heart.
The Church and the Wildflowers
I do not believe I must choose between
the church and the wildflowers
between the Apostles’ Creed and washing dishes
while my son does homework at the table
You can learn much about God from
a weathered marriage or
a bouquet of blue asters and goldenrod
gathered from beside the gravel drive
The world is a great banquet,
tables set not with embroidered linens and
polished silver
but with coffee cups and some spring violets
You and I have done nothing to make this happen
but we can choose to be present, curious, glad
For it is possible that our lives depend on it
It is just possible that our lives depend on our presence
and rapt attention to the Great Feast in our kitchens
on our mountains
with the people and creatures
both lovable and reviled
already gathered where we are
Hit and Run
Sometimes your heart needs more space to do its job.
You know those calls you get, where afterwards you stand clutching the phone to your chest and holding back tears? That’s three for my year, so far. How grateful I am to still have my son. It can go either way, you know. The great tides sweep through our lives, triggered just as easily by the act of choosing between loaves of bread as getting into a car.
When you draw close to a miracle, you sometimes catch a glimpse of the waves of horror and weeping against which miracles are often born. How tempting it is to build an understanding of life based on what hurts, or what’s missing. One despairs of human fragility.
Instead, turn your face toward life, despite its constant proximity to death. The lone root still breaks through the stone, the single stone still changes the voice of the river, and the one river continues to shape and refresh the world.
Boxes
In a small box knit of moss and a murmuration of birds there is a wisp of duck down and a red jade Buddha from the day he was born. The stink of cigarettes and the resistance of the world around me I sprinkled with wild mint and rosemary for a holy fire.
I had made the box earlier for the whispered name of a different child. The unsaid prayers and shorn locks of a saint I folded into bright origami frogs to scatter in the woods. The crows carried them back to their nestlings as toys.
In the small box woven of larkspur and icy spring water there is a generous twist of pale blue thread, the kind surgeons use to cross-stitch two hundred sutures into a four-year-old’s head. My grandmother washed the blood-drenched winter coat (twice) and I shook out the down for birds’ nests and sewed a thousand sky-blue sails for toy boats.
He doesn’t remember much of it, smiles easily, and isn’t afraid of dogs. I don’t love them any more.
In a small box shaped of lichen and bits of eggshell there is a chunk of quartz carved into the shape of a deer. The terrible phone call and the hospital smells I mixed with dish soap and glycerine, and later we sat on the front porch to blow bubbles, letting the sunshine heal.
For the next terrible call I cut a new trail into the mountain to the offering tree. It seems to be working so far. The thin folded shadow I may look at in 20 years, or never.
Make ham sandwiches, hunt for salamanders in the creek, and tear the dark thoughts into strips for your bee smoker. This winter there will be honey.
The Offering Tree
halfway up the ridge, at the top of twelve steps
not really steps, just hard mountain dirt cut into shelves
there is an offering tree
I’ve left there curls of grapevine
nuts, a yellow violet
broken snail shells
yesterday there was a wide acorn cap
not mine
with the rest, rearranged
a moment of startlement
nothing like the hook in the chest
you get as you parent
when your children pull the cable
thick as your wrist
which you would love to disconnect
not really though
but you’ve chewed at it in misery
wished it less firmly anchored
you are a tree fallen in the woods
with small gifts left
by hands you love
you cannot roll away
from their hidden dark glory
the futures you cannot protect
Ablaze
Coming in together
at the close of day
we surprised a young ringneck snake
soaking in the last of the sun
Seeing us
she slipped behind the steps
to hide under the deck
Of course we followed
both of us on our knees in the dirt
whispering like excited teens
hunched over
inching deeper into shadow
to catch
a glimpse of silk and cream
softly folded into a crevice
between stone and ledge
We quieted
sensing each other’s heat
and felt the secret unfold
like we have years before
and many times since
Breathless
ablaze in wonder
as night dropped her cloak
Moving Stones
Yesterday I stopped
trying to be useful and
wandered out to the creek
Where the wind had not yet
come ahead of the rain
and there was no need
To haul stones
and thump them down
in the mud again
for a crossing
The sun licked her thumb
turned one more page
then gathered up her yellow hem
and still
I moved stones
in the purpling woods
rearranging my t
houghts
with the pileated's
periodic commentary
Some things you will do well
Some stones you must leave unmoved
The stream sighs and gleams
under a swelling moon
and the rain soon
will sing her compline prayers
One Year
It's a good day for a house-iversary and
there are presents for everyone —
though the bears I've left out
for good reason
We've made cakes in the shapes of
little chocolate homes
with no leaks, new gutters, and all the
damage torn out and repaired
with peanut butter frosting, delicious
and wildflower sprinkles in every color
For the crows a thimble, boot, top hat
polished to a glittering shine
race car, iron, wheelbarrow
secreted in the moss
(I lost the cowboy)
A handful of cornbread crumbles
scattered in the creek for the crawdads
Appalachian Ground Page 4
