Category: Poetry

Damned Water

“Reservoirs created by the [Hydro Quebec] James Bay

Project cover an area of 12,241 square kilometers,

the largest bodies of water created by humankind.”

—from the James Bay Road website

your power needs water

traced to distant points of light like stars

 

unreachable          foreign

reflected in the fragile bones of quick-

silvered fish     drowned caribou      the snow-pale geese

 

relatives that feed me

decaying within as the fine root-web tangles in

the absence of water

 

siphoned and malign

feeding insatiable turbines

hulked on your layered landscape

a new topography shoveled and scraped

 

trembling beneath the weight

of your vast new lakes          never measured to memory

nor washed blue     on faded maps

 

here, where treeless spaces

crackle with a grid of

black and fire

 

all this to bring distant points

                    their light like stars

The Dream of the Wood

the night of the windstorm

the city swayed

 

steel branches wrapped in old concrete

 

the leaves fall in strict equations:

material tolerance plus environmental

pressure plus the work of builders’ hands.

 

in the morning, we count cracks:

birch lines in the drywall laid bare

for the deer. the corner panhandler lost

his hat in the night. spare change, a nickel

a quarter a dollar? I put palms to the sidewalk

and feel for roots, crouched, bent small,

parting rush-hour rivers of feet.

 

in the valley, the river wound round the birch, half in,

half out of water. the squirrels crept back to their nests

lean and loud, whistling as they gathered new twigs.

the muskrats drained burrows below, mirroring:

one crown wide, and one buried.

 

there are cracks in the city. we all feel it:

the thin drafts blowing through. in the wind,

I spread hands rootlike through the soil

and dream of changing: from our rusted degradation

point to tough green wood, flexed, bowed, unbreaking.

 

I can feel it coming, love, like the first

of spring: smoother, softer, here I go,

stretching hands-first into something

that bends, and then stands.

Corrupt the World With Drum2

I hear the drum beating.

What is it saying in the heartbeat of the world

other than look at the earth?

And the earth is there,

and the earth is always there.

 

I was conceived in Cades Cove

in the Smoky Mountains. In a tent.

Aren’t we always in a tent?

The red tent, the biblical tent,

the tent from other books I was never taught

that are also holy. I was conceived

in a tent and God came down

where the deer graze and the cars move

slowly over the long roads where people graze

on McDonald’s and peanuts and Coca Colas

and slowly roll through the park.

 

My parents rolled in the dark,

and I was conceived. My twin and I.

In Cades Cove. Perhaps this is why

I look at the earth and make a muddle of myself

wondering why people toss garbage

instead of making love and making children through love

and making children through the Bible

(or whatever holy book or unbook

or unBible or anything else, for I believe

in everything, including the Bible).

Make a muddle of myself and toss my hands

in my hair under my hat, for I am strong,

and weak, and do not understand how

to accept the ways of men

who toss and leave muddle on the ground.

 

Where will we go when we don’t conceive

ourselves properly? Where will we go

when everything is overrun with the wrong

kind of strength?

 

I would like to find the place of my conception

and sit there and feel God

and draw power from that spot

and perhaps bless the earth that way

or at least teach how to bless the earth that way

by finding our place of being

and being there and showing others

our being there.

 

And thus sing. And thus beat two sticks

together. The way God is always beating

us together at the very beginning

when sperm meets egg, beating sticks

together and making dry dead things sing

to do what’s needed on this dry earth

that is so in need of our blood’s water.

 

 

2 From a quote by Babatunde Olatunji

Paddling in the Sound

Not long after the election, when the left had failed

to reassure the broken hearted,

and the broken hearted had elected a lunatic

out of spite, I kayaked out to where the light

had never been torn,

to watch the darkness gathering

in the mountains’ seams.

 

Cool rain on flat seas, ducks ahead of me,

white trails of their wings beating water

as they fled. Fresh scent of snow in the wind.

 

A loon in the distance

began to call again and again,

a soliloquy from the sea’s grey throat,

each note going deeper into

where a certainty had once lived in my heart.

 

The longing in the loon’s call—a knife

cutting through rain, leaving nothing behind it

but more longing, more rain.

Song of the Suburbs

Our houses are decaying    plants wait to take control         no they don’t wait     they ceaseless

send their rootlings along the soil’s pathways     wheedling      their limbs unwind               across

blank         space                      filling up with light                 blocking the light

 

Meanwhile in the East        snow presses its heavy breast     against the eaves of a ranch house

the gutters tear away         sheets of packed ice lance   to the ground         watch out!

 

Our neighborhoods erode       woodpeckers drill utility poles

      kerkerkerkerkerkerkerkerker       how do they move their heads

so fast we wonder      but they do           holes accumulate

      a lacework        someday they’ll topple          and then            

kablammo         no more power  

 

Oak roots down below         thrust up        concrete sidewalks         bust up        Maintenance!       Maintenance!

someone call the city          the sidewalk’s all ajumble

 

And the freeways oh the freeways are a mess

       just look at all the new holes      every time it rains

             the veritable earth      dropping    out      pulling     away           the asphalt     withdrawing

        Never mind never mind          we’ll shelter in our houses         until we can no more

Kestrel in an Apocalyptic Landscape

Kestrel: (from French crécerelle, derivative from crécelle, i.e. ratchet)

 

Also known as windhover because he can hover, even in still air, but when he

hovers he usually faces toward a breeze, no matter how slight.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote

 

Dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding / of the rolling level underneath him steady air . . . .

 

Say that aloud: in his riding / of the rolling level underneath him steady air . . . .

 

rolling level underneath him steady             five troches that roll along

like a wave, cresting and falling, cresting and falling   and land         lightly             on air

 

In some future time and place a kestrel perches on a leafless branch on a leafless tree, waits

for something to stir. The landscape is open, naked, brown as his dominant plumage (but oh

the blue-gray of his wings, the black streak descending from his eye like a tear).

 

With a push he sends himself into the rolling level underneath him steady air. All is silent

except for the clack of his feathers as he holds himself upright facing into a breeze,

tailfeathers spread, wingfeathers spread, head bent like a penitent to scan the ground.

 

Scorpion.

 

He tilts and sleekens and spills himself down, talons thrusting, strikes.

 

Dead insect in claw he lifts and flaps back to his tree, to the hollow space in its trunk, where

she waits for him with the new one, first to emerge from the clutch, and only.

 

He drops his gift and she shares it with the hatchling.

Displaced Water

Somewhere from the diagrammatic stolon

of overgrown seagrasses, a voice carries

to the surface—to live radical compassion,

not just speak of it. The spiders still have not forgiven

me. The fish kill cited in the civil suit just a bead

in the course of stories scrolling by in my palm

like air pockets in rain—over 600,000 displaced

in Sri Lanka, two hundred dead and counting.

This is late May, 2017 AD. Flashbacks

of headlines some years back—

that heatwave which claimed some 2,000

in India but can this be more than read, felt

as the steadfast lamprey must feel, mooring

the stones of its own deathbed in the cool

lunar hollows? How it must feel, to prescribe

a burn, to watch the Oroville overflow with

predictions, the denial, no more water

in the pail! No more moon in the water!

What blame can be placed on the government

now? Someone says relief and means it.

Suppose blood could be set afire

with a simple question. Suppose we could

touch through the screen. Suppose speeding,

solitary, down the breathing highways

at the center of me, a course burns

its engine towards a future where hope

has long gone become obsolete.

Eruptions

The land knows

what we refuse to learn:

 

sometimes you must destroy

what has come before to create

new, unsullied things.

 

***

 

There are places my feet have trod

that are gone

never to be loved again.

 

The fire consumes

slowly, with enough time to flee

yet still relentless in remaking.

 

***

 

The ash like snow, blankets

the black cracked land covering

all that came before.

 

A goddess shows her children

the wisdom of destruction

 

***

 

The swordfern, the Ohia Lehua take

their first breaths, explore, make

a mission of re-seeding.

 

***

 

What comes next will be better,

and if not?

 

We burn it down again.

From the Editors: How Can I Look Up

for Michael J DeLuca

 

How can I write you this letter

 

through thick smoke the sun

a red dot in the sky

I should not be able to stare into

 

How can I make an appointment

with the car dealer

while mother Tahlequah takes

her tour of duty      displaying for us

hairless monkeys what the rest

of the natural world already knows

 

How can I take a shower

when thousands of people have poison

                              to drink

How can I look out the window at the moon

stroke my cat’s chin

                    make my bed

How can I admire the late blue background

and mountain silhouette on the ferry heading home

 

How can I take a seat on a bus

hurtling toward a city of dog-walkers     businessmen

and concerned shrugs of passers-by

it’s terrible this smoke it’s all terrible

I know          it’s really terrible      I know      I know

 

How can I bring the sleeping children home

after a long day of amusement park

fried foot-long corndogs

How can I look up my visa bill when

our relationship with the earth

is toxic

stored now in blubber

of whales that send us warnings

and raw grief

a suffocation of sound and light

in the realm of the dead

 

How can I make plans with a friend

     buy groceries          drink tea

while we are plunging toward an inevitable

tipping point

no return

extinguishing what has been

like a comet

or a cancer

or a chapter of some future history book

 

when we alter landscapes          lose habitat

when the world shrinks

gets hotter     tighter    angrier

goes hungry

 

How can I search for a lost coat

my favourite          when

we are losing                    every day

pieces of our humanity

of green

of corals and bees

and owls and streams

 

How do I rekindle passion’s poetry without falling into despair

feeling holding me there

when I exist in coffee pots          lists          renovations of the old

dish-washing          laundry          finally unpacking all my books—

finding homes for paperwork and tools

getting on them weeds in the garden out of control

testing recipes

collecting that fruit before it rots on the trees

 

How do I do the deep work

maintain connection to that slightly

MAD state

and go about my day                    lost as I long to be

 

How can I sit in an alley playing drums with a Turkish immigrant

How can I breathe smoke on the shoreline while

using my cell phone as a hot spot to

send an email about a postcard for a

talk about climate change

 

How can I sleep?

 

How can I ask a friend how I can do these things when

he says

How can we anything

 

My heart breaks because other hearts do not

my heart breaks and I go on making plans

scheduling dates

daydreaming about getting laid

calling out to alley cats

          to birds overhead

          to the leaves in the trees

 

How can I dress myself for success

add accessories

buy lemon tarts

browse antique stores

try on possible new shoes

 

my generation acquiesces to the inevitable

while millennials dream of Super Heroes

bursting through the screen

 

Somebody

do

something

do

something

I want to scream

Let go of every device in your hands

and look up                    are we going to lose

the sky          on our way to losing the sea

 

How can I leave space                    for us

to breathe

 

How can I

unbury your ears

shape a new kind of listening

to what is under our feet          and floating

still-born          (yet still hoping)

all around us                    stating the obvious

 

How can we anything          he asks while

chopping onions and peppers

to feed his young family

in the midst of idling engines

cooked rivers

air-conditioned ignorance

and addiction to machines

Will We Be Good and Kind at the End

When the long drought comes,

scorches the hands of the healers

will we bandage them

with clean white gauze

so they can continue their work

and when kindness faces starvation

will we look into our pantries

and gather, quickly

to feed her

 

when the winds come

raging and spitting

and buildings begin to buckle

at the knees,

will we rush to the labs

swing open all the cages,

release the macaques and chimps and baboons and dogs and rabbits and mice and rats

finally,

finally

 

and will someone run

and free Adam Capay

and all the others

and all the plexi-glassed

others

 

and when the sea’s belly

swells and lifts us up

above rooftops and eagle nests

will we grab hold of anything we can

and hold its head up—

try to save it