By Immersion

To get a pure pumpkin,
one with sweet, smooth flesh, you had to
pollinate by hand and tape the blossom
closed. Otherwise, the plants would cross,
get fertilized by any squash around.

Black horses wouldn’t stop rolling
in the dust, in pleasure,
legs up and out from under every load,
until their intestines tangled.
Or, at least that’s what was said in warning,

like they said Hellbenders,
two foot long, slime covered salamanders
that filled the river, were evil.
Hellbenders breathed through loose skins,
filtering that water for decades,

and I swam in it, I went in deep.

-Rose McLarney, 2010

All Wet and Shine

It sounds like the cracks and clicks of the house settling

as the room warms in morning, it sounds like a fan

whispered up. It tastes of wood smoke--sweet and then stale.

It looks like the curve of a mountain

under streaked sky, and everything pale blue

just before sunrise, everything translucent,

even stone. The stone is blue, it tastes, after all,

like tea in a glass cup, it feels like wanting a

blanket on your lap, nesting, hovering around

a wound, no a break, where the mountain opens,

wanting to heal, to soften the gap, to close it,

like an empty room inside of me, and I want to give it fire

and fill it with humming, and make it hum

and vibrate--the resound of a chamber

opened and filled with air--with beating.

I want to fill the gap

but it keeps opening, pressing

inside to outside, unhousing

and unseeding the husk of me.

I am not a house with an empty room,

a broken window in a wall.

I am not sleep battered open by a dream,

not even a mountain turning solid again

as light rises, I am not a cave in the mountain. I

am not I--that's what it feels like

today, waking alone in late winter. A spider

hanging her web in the doorjamb, spinning in three

dimensions--to catch what passes,

trembling with capture, all wet and shine,

moments when everything is a door.

-Cynthia Huntington, 2010

For cold(er) weather: 1 song 2 ways, neither of which is the original. But sometimes that's okay.

Essential Beauty

In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
Of how life should be. High above the gutter
A silver knife sinks into golden butter,
A glass of milk stands in a meadow, and
Well-balanced families, in fine
Midsummer weather, owe their smiles, their cars,
Even their youth, to that small cube each hand
Stretches towards. These, and the deep armchairs
Aligned to cups at bedtime, radiant bars
(Gas or electric), quarter-profile cats
By slippers on warm mats,
Reflect none of the rained-on streets and squares

They dominate outdoors. Rather, they rise
Serenely to proclaim pure crust, pure foam,
Pure coldness to our live imperfect eyes
That stare beyond this world, where nothing's made
As new or washed quite clean, seeking the home
All such inhabit. There, dark raftered pubs
Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,
And the boy puking his heart out in the Gents
Just missed them, as the pensioner paid
A halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes' Tea
To taste old age, and dying smokers sense
Walking towards them through some dappled park
As if on water that unfocused she
No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,
Who now stands newly clear,
Smiling, and recognizing, and going dark.

-Philip Larkin

This is where I live now: in a valley where I don't get cell phone service, at the end of a long dirt road that has been deeply eroded, in a house built for an artist who spent half his time in Paris and bought by Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-grandson in the 1970s.

I should probably note that I never know what I'm going to get when it comes to housing--it's always a gamble. You can get a glimpse of where I was living previously here, but the short of it is that I was living in a trailer home (singlewide). And now I'm living in a questionably-constructed log cabin that looks like it was decorated by someone's grandmother, complete with afghans. But we have an extra room. Come visit.

I had the day off for Columbus day, which is just one example of how much more lax this position is than my previous one. Of course it was necessary there--the cranes needed to be fed and cared for, regardless of what Christopher Columbus was up to in 1492. It's funny, too, because I'm not sure when the last time I got Columbus Day off was. Probably elementary school.
After picking up apple cider and cider donuts at a local orchard, I went for a little walk in Saugatuck Falls Nature Area, a local park tucked between the highway and some snazzy powerlines. It's interesting to think about what makes a place--Connecticut, in geology and plant life, recalls New Hampshire, but the difference is the people, their prevalence and density. The resulting land fragmentation changes animal life, too, which probably explains why the only animals I've seen here are squirrels and chipmunks. The roadkill is almost entirely squirrel and raccoon. That's part of the whole of a place, too, because place exists somewhere at the juncture of geology and climate, which shapes and biotic life, and culture. These are pictures of where I am now, but that's not the whole of it, and maybe not even half.

Nothing Ventured

Nothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing's ventured
it's not just talk;
it's the big wager.
Don't you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don't matter?
How they'll drain
the big tanks down to
slime and salamanders
and want thanks?

-Kay Ryan, 2000

Good morning from the east coast. I'm once again living at the end (well, not exactly) of a long dirt road, but that looks different here. But I'm settling. More thoughts on life and the whirlwind change later, maybe.