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.

Bring in the Gods

Bring in the gods, I say, and he goes out. When he comes
back and I know they are with him, I say, Put tables in front
of them so they may be seated, and food upon the tables
so they may eat. When they have eaten, I ask which of them
will question me. Let him hold up his hand, I say.
The one on the left raises his hand I tell him to ask.
Where are you now, he says. I stand on top of myself, I hear
myself answer. I stand on myself like a hilltop and my life
is spread before me. Does it surprise you, he asks. I explain
that in our youth and for a long time after our youth we cannot
see our lives. Because we are inside of that. Because we can
see no shape to it, since we have nothing to compare it to.
We have not seen it grow and change because we are too close.
We don’t know the names of things that would bind them to us,
so we cannot feed on them. One near the middle asks why not.
Because we don’t have the knack for eating what we are living.
Why is that? she asks. Because we are too much in a hurry.
Where are you now? the one one left says. With the ghosts.
I am with Gianna those two years in Perugia. Meeting secretly
in the thirteenth-century alleys of stone. Walking in the fields
through the spring light, she well dressed and walking in heels
over the plowed land. We are just outside the city walls
hidden under the thorny blackberry bushes and her breasts naked.
I am with her those many twilights in the olive orchards,
holding the heart of her as she whimpers. Now where are you?
he says. I am with Linda those years and years. In American
cities, in Copenhagen, on Greek islands season after season.
Lindos and Monolithos and the other places. I am with Michiko
for eleven years, East and West, holding her clear in my mind
the way a native can hold all of his village at one moment.
Where are you now? he says. I am standing on myself the way
a bird sits in her nest, with the babies half asleep underneath
and the world all leaves and morning air. What do you want?
a blonde one asks. To keep what I already have, I say. You ask
too much, he says sternly. Then you are at peace, she says.
I am not at peace, I tell her. I want to fail. I am hungry
for what I am becoming. What will you do? she asks. I will
continue north, carrying the past in my arms, flying into winter.

-Jack Gilbert, 2009

Tomorrow's my last day of work at Necedah. That's really all I had to say here--on Wednesday I start my trip to Connecticut, where I'll be picking up a new internship. And we'll see where things go from there.

Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

-Robert Frost
The first three lines of this poem was my senior quote for my high school yearbook, mostly because in the last minute I decided against the first six lines of the first poem in this post and happened to have those lines from "Directive" committed to memory. Plus, the lines and the reference fit within the yearbook's limit (for whatever reason, the yearbook staff choose not to include the reference, and I'm still a little annoyed with them for that). The quote didn't make much sense then, but it makes more sense now--the yearbook itself brings us back out of all this now to much for us, back to a time made simple by the loss, of detail, burned, dissolved, or broken off. Why else would we have it? But don't just read the first few lines--my disappointment that the reference was left out of my senior quote derived from the fact that I think the whole poem is worthwhile, so dive in.

So this is the third Robert Frost poem to be featured in Wednesday poem day. He's got everyone else beat (Wendell Berry is in second place, with two), demonstrating what an effective job the New Hampshire public school system did of convincing me that Robert Frost is some sort of poetical genius. And I was only in their care for six years--I imagine this blog would be entirely Robert Frost poems if I had stayed any longer.