From 2007
It's July and I'm reading Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, again. Again, again. The first time I read it I was still cutting grass. It was my job, lawn mowing and maintenance, some landscaping here and there. Between stops I would fold myself up against the passenger door with the window rolled down, smoke a Camel Light and read against the wind, against the whine of our old truck accelerating, and pulling thousands of pounds of grass and equipment, against the cigarette blather of my co-workers and the incessant repetition of Toledo's classic rock station. "More Than a Feelin", "Free Bird", Thunder Road", a song I actually like and can still listen to. Oh yeah. Sometimes the younger kid on my crew would ask, "What are you reading?", and I'd try to explain so it would sound interesting to him, so it wouldn't sound above him, since it isn't, but I have a tone, you know, that puts people off. But the problem with Annie is this: when I read her, nothing is what it seems, or, everything is too much itself. It's hard to explain. He'd have to read the book himself.
Now I'm at Amanda's house, waiting for her daughter to get dropped off; I'll watch her tonight until Amanda gets home from work because her dad has to work very early in the morning. On my way out of the bathroom I saw a small heart, cut out of green construction paper, on the floor. I remember Jada and I made that heart, and others like it, to glue on a Get Well Soon card for her aunt. Earlier today I was reading about how chlorophyll is practically blood, almost human blood. Or vice versa? Is human blood almost chlorophyll? Hemoglobin and Chloroplast is almost the same: trade an atom of iron in your hemoglobin for an atom of magnesium in the chloroplasts swimming in the roadside milkweed, and you, yourself, might become a milkweed. You might be loved my monarch butterflies and dined on by their children. Does milkweed have a heart? Is its heart in its roots, in its too brief flower, in its strange toxic blood that gives the clown faced caterpillars their color?
This kid I used to work with wasn't very bright. Barely television educated. He did time for drugs, selling dope, carrying dope, growing dope. A couple days a week he'd buy a Swisher Sweet first thing in the morning, and roll a blunt for later. He'd share it, though I didn't trust myself to operate a mower under the combined influence of Annie Dillard and marijuana. He had a baby at home, and an old lady. That's what he called her, that or my girl, as if he owned her, it was not exactly a term of endearment. He wanted to understand the world, to fit into it somehow. He had a tattoo on his arm--his child's name engraved in a giant cross. I think he had a baby who died, too. I could see that working on him. His eyes would blear up, sad and wistful he'd sort of remember. His fingers were blunt objects, never clean, they seemed to accentuate the Menthol 100s he smoked, though he wasn't above bumming a smoke from a non-Menthol smoker. I wondered a lot back then about how he cared for his kid, he seemed like such a kid himself. He asked if my book was about pilgrims, 'from the olden days'. I tried to explain.
June, the black cat that Jada loves, has a white mark on her neck that looks like a heart. Right now she is sitting on the ottoman, facing the sun, eyes closed against it. Now her ear tilts toward me. Now she lays down.
From October 2010
I took Henry to the Irwin Prairie today. We walked on the 1 1/4 mile long boardwalk that makes a sort of loop around and through the wet sedge meadow. We squinted in the sun and chattered at invisible animals waiting in the blue joint-grass and twig rush for us to pass by. I heard crows calling, saw a clutch of sparrows flit through the tall grass like smoke, like spirits, like gray songs of the ancient dead; a robin flew high overhead and something else did, too, a bird whose call I've heard but couldn't identify today.
There's something sort of haunting about this place--I can't name it, the sensation that unsettled me but also coaxed me to look closer. Pin oaks decay on the edge of the meadow; they're tall and skeletal, black halloween branches hang down, leafless, they seem to reach out for something, don't they, Henry? They remind me of a shroud, a gravemarker; they're the prairies undertakers.
It was a beautiful day today, late in the afternoon, perfect for a walk, blue as veins and brisk. A day made for me and Henry by the God of Autumn and the God of Indigenous Trees. They put a blue gentian in my path--the first I've ever seen outside of a book. I turned over a few small pieces of wood (like I always do when I'm in the woods) chainsawed by park personnel and slowly breaking down. I hoped to see a salamander, a blue spotted one maybe--how exciting! All I found was an earthworm, a few centipedes, some unusual fungus.
What other foolish hopes do I have today, on the fifth of October? Well, I hoped the crow calls meant there'd be an owl flushed out and harried my way, maybe. That happened to me once at Wildwood and I relish the memory. I hoped I might be lucky enough to see a rare snake or turtle; there are supposed to be spotted turtles in the prairie but it seems unlikely I'll find one so late in the year. Did I imagine I'd find a clutch of leathery reptile eggs under a rotten piece of wood? I did. Silly me. I should know better, but the truth is I don't know when turtles lay their eggs or when young turtles hatch.
Maybe I should say the prairie seems to absorb my understanding of time and skew it. I know, in the field of time, that reptiles don't lay their eggs in the late fall. I know what I should expect to see here at this time of year, and yet I hope for events and animals that I know have passed into some kind of rest, or the beginning of rest, or the God of Autumn's memory. I imaginge impossible things on the edge of this prairie, where my line of sight is unbroken and where nothing seems to move. I realize many of the birds I'd like to see have started their migrations. The reptiles and amphibians are sequestered in their dark burrows, minding their temperature, hoarding whatever warmth is left like their old brothers the dragons hoarded gold. Can I see a fox, please? A red fox lurking under cottonwood or pin oak shade? A yellow-billed cuckoo? Something amazing to show my son?
I was tempted to take cuttings of the willow trees growing there, and some of the dogwood, too--red-twigged dogwood. And what's the kind of dogwood that has white berries in the fall? Is it a dogwood I'm thinking of? Because I remember that's the kind that used to grow around the pond, and still might. All of the sudden I remember there's a gigantic tulip poplar growing in the thin stand of woods behind my parent's house. I used to roam around back there quite a bit, pushing old trees over, hiding from my sisters, oblivious to everything but my wild daydreams. What wonder could I have found back there, in those days, under the tulip poplar I didn't even notice, had I only known to look or pay attention?
This place makes me remember so much. I tell Henry every story I know about every plant I recognize. I tell him its name, where it used to grow at my childhood home, or next door, at his great-granparents house, that I picked it for my mother and put it in a mason jar on the dining room table, that I hid under its branches while my sisters or cousins played without me, that I got my first kiss in its shade, or that the monarch caterpillar I collected from its leaves became a chrysalis in a styrofoam cup in my bedroom. I give him names and stories now, so one day, when he looks around, he'll notice, he'll know, he'll remember, and wonder.
At home, I'm reading The Language of Life, interviews with poets. I'm nearly finished, reading and relishing the Gerald Stern interview. He says "In rememberance is the secret of redemption". I say, as long as you can, remember, and don't repeat the mistakes you can't forget making. But do everything you remember loving over and over again, and share it, somehow. This is why I write poems, I guess, and frequent letters to my son, and notes for his sweet mother. This is why I learn the names of all the plants and animals I love. I visit daily the paltry evergreen tree that grew in the yard between my house and grandpa's, where I found the only cecropia moth I've ever seen in the wild. The tree isn't there anymore, but the memory burns like a candle the God of Autumn left in the blue window, to help me find my way back to myself, to the place I love to be, where I wonder and remember.
Quickening (2013)
At my daughter’s cross
country meet
I walk through piles of
wind heaped maple leaves
with my son. He’s two
years old
and the leaves are bigger
than his hands.
We drag our feet through
them and kick
those scarlet and yellow
spanners up
and watch them tumble in
the breeze
like these high school
runners, almost
light as air as they
stream by in their
silk jerseys blazing with
color and
bright sneakers scudded
with mud.
My daughter emerges from
the woods
running across the soccer
field, approaching
the last leg of the race.
She’s red faced,
striding out the final
yards, she’s graceful,
perfect joints greased
with sunlight, quiet
and weightless as a white-tailed
deer at full speed.
Her brother calls her
name, breaks my grip
on his coat and runs
across the chalk lines
defining the course. He
wants to run, too,
and merges with the stream
of runners
shrinking again in the
distance, so many
wind blown leaves, on
their way to the finish line.
Lovely.
ReplyDelete