You'll only arrive at this house through
the woods we grew with purpose
Those birches dance
in costumes curled & fringed
Lights wink between the two
still flirting with the handsome oak next door
While below graped canopy
four chairs collect deep shade
emptied now of long-awaited guests
Sensitive ferns beside smooth purple stones
focused on this visitation
Heavy, cool air, fuels the spreading greenness
embedded in every surface, as if footsteps
you might fit your sole into each morning
and trace, still sleepy, a path older than ants.
"Yonder in Ethiopia are the Antipodes, men that have their feet against our feet." ~ Bartholemus Anglicus
Even the bereft take advantage of a window's uncostly function -
But no transparent choice guarantees an apparent outcome.
Through crust & core, shovels hammer in hopes of riches and great escapes -
Those wounds never heal. When a women's mantle is disturbed - she'll leak her innermost secrets - so don't be too hasty.
Bide your time, taking away slowly spoonfuls of dirt.
If you leave your perceived Siberia in haste just to pop up in Antarctica,
You deserve a penguin's sour upbraiding. To not be kitted for the occasion -
Is to be vestigial, tuxless & fucked.
If it could be written in words, all of it - the clearing of the woods down the gorge wouldn't provide enough paper - but there are so many things worth writing:
The woven nest whose tendrils snake the rafters that fat-bottomed bee she bores the beams and rails
Sun and shadow mutate from mid-day dapples to six o'clock streaks and stripes Regularly, the blue-jays terrorize the robins, "Cheer, cheer!" A cardinal, to spite its weaker song fans the braver fire of its plumage against which the robin's pale orange blush is shamed.
Will there be a roast tonight? Will those broken cords be put to use - cut loose into a crackling moonlight sonata while we are still able to hear it and while the woods around are still audience?
Beech twigs at daybreak clears the palate - coffee pulls the shades open Spatters of separating forms evolve in God's country the oddly mittened sassafras, orange & ribboned mushrooms - the companions of coal. Animated wood smoke tests memory's rafters - recalls California or Maine? Suddenly, I am ten, with Betty on a stone beach.
Or that visit with Ben Franklin which yielded little, But called to mind: "If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing." I have done so little of either lately, I reflect - I've missed you, my friend, and it's my fault, really.
What becomes of the world emptied of the wild and woolly? The incorrigible flirt of birds - their inexhaustible metallic twitters; What song accompanied Adam's expulsion from that first forest? The retreating and silenced hemlocks, their crushed needles evoke poisons and potions. The dimming of the lanterns, the wetting of the coals... What soft smell will be registered by our human exit?
So here's today's episode - Mr. Ireland's Mum and Brother are staying over for a few weeks:
Akethan: Did i tell you about the bird juice?
Sister: uuugh
Sister: bird juice?
Akethan: Mr. Ireland's brother - K - said he needed a few things from the store - crispix, milk, white grape juice... so I picked 'em up and they were here for him when he got here
Akethan: after the first day or so - he finished the white grape juice off
Sister: ok
Akethan: everytime he goes for juice - he gets a new glass - at the end of each day there are glasses all over the house.... i keep
Sister: <~~~skerred
Akethan: collecting them and washing them and putting them away
Akethan: then -- yesterday i noticed they all had a red juice left in them
Akethan: i looked around and couldn't figure out where this red juice was coming from
Akethan: so when they were all sitting in the living room (Mr. Ireland, Mum, K)
Akethan: i asked - "Hey, what is this red juice - ?"
Akethan: everyone just sat there and then K got up and came over to look
Akethan: i asked - "Where is this coming from?"
Akethan: he stuttered that it was juice he found in a jar in the fridge
Sister: oh no
Sister: hummingbird food?
Akethan: puzzled i walked over to the fridge and looked inside and then bust out laughing
Akethan: he had finished off a gallon of hummingbird juice
Sister: oh my lord
Akethan: *can we have a 'grandma f memorial moment'*?
Sister: uhuh
Akethan: we were all in tears. he's mildly Rain Man - and got a bit flustered.
Sister: when do they leave?
Akethan: i said - now K, it's just sugar and water - no harm to you - don't get yer feathers ruffled.
Sister: i would say poor man but cant bring my self to quit laughing
Footnote = Grandma F - a dear soul who liked to sit on the sofa for days watching PRICE IS RIGHT - was found munching serenely on dogfood which my mom kept stored in an old Charles Chips can. She didn't bat and eyelash when I told her that wasn't a snackfood but kibble. She lived through the Depression, she informed me.
In tentacles of shade hyphae dark and narrow tunnels underneath the forest floor a fairy ring in mushrooms a web of eyeless parasites supply a mouth or opening at the cavern’s edge a firefly lights a lamp in meadows to mark the dancing of fairy-folk hy·pae·thral under the open sky without roof temple asexual spores interested in or engaging in sexual activity to an abnormal extent blessed with an exquisite gift of touch like squid in the water oidium like the worst writing in the best of ink - come the elemental basics into the sylvan soil they deeply sink - a threadlike part of the vegetative portion of a fungus to touch infrequent visitors with a forever leisurely life and soothing lines of decompose.
Under the coming promise of velvet night Reality lets cautiously loose As sunset's frail wings Neatly clasp to the ocean's, firm In union, perfection, collaboration As if any old sunset would do.
Rival evenings, lost from memory If either eye saw more beauty Pale now, paler still Holding soft hand to strong At sunset's iridescent cue Every star lets its dance begin Under the looming curfew of dawn Stand beside me, dance with me, too.
The first one fell without remorse a hint of smile on its facet it was never alone even on impact its undirected course the only felony incurred: the stealing of the autumn lawn and the untintended ankle sprained at indelicate landfall askew, but only the first one knew the exhilaration, the acceleration. If one will do it the others will too, that for all the friends who jump off bridges because the other friend, too, knew- it takes an eon to reach the ground... as if each tiny hand to another’s hand was sewn, then blown from that high cloudy precipice to precipitate. The first one fell and the million followers, too small white crystal lemmings so close, their bodies on the autumn lawn- not a peak was left, just white and on they lay so close together as if each tiny hand to another’s hand was sewn.
When the finger snapped off- it was clearly too cold- we should know better than to walk into the wind- but - its the only way to hear it sing. Walking away from anything is safe, but silent. There's no song in retreat, not even a hum. So, with fingers tingling we lay them on the panel of the wind and mightily play its keys- 'til the finger snaps, again.
