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Good
Friday
Forsythia
had just begun blooming
and, along the road, coltsfoot,
yellow in the sunlight, and it was
a clear day, the
street was dry
so there was nothing inevitable
in the
momentum of a small
sedan traveling east on a back road.
The
driver--it was only
10 a.m., had she been drinking?--
took
that curve too fast,
overcompensated the turn, braked
too
hard on the gravel embankment.
Slid, rolled.
Jumped the shoulder,
stopped by the trunk
of a
20-year-old hickory which bears,
now, a cambium-layer scar.
There--where the bank is steep,
rocky with that
runoff stream
splattering behind it and between
pellets
of bluish safety glass
sifting through boulders--
bloodroot
opens its white blossoms,
its leaves like crushed fists
pierced
through their centers by a stem.
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Campbell
Hall, NY: 1961
Inside
the white-steepled, cedar-shake church
empty of congregants
after Sunday communion,
I sat on the polished pew and
swung my legs,
my dress shoes too far from the floor to
scuff.
My mother had gone home, across the driveway.
I
watched my father open the door to the ambry
and replace
the folded vestments, satin, tasseled.
A glass-doored
cupboard held Communion vessels
gold in the gold light
through the clerestories.
I was thinking, probably, of
strawberries
and powdered sugar and the pink stain on my
pale blue dress.
I was thinking, perhaps, of birds' nests
and whether or not the barn swallows in the steeple eaves
had hatched out their new brood.
I was thinking so
diligently I made no sound and,
being small in the
tall-backed pew, I was invisible.
I heard the scree and
shudder of brass hinges,
the heavy doors' baritone–amen—in
closure.
Dust quivered silver in the still nave air:
forgotten.
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Pastorale
with Dishes
Beneath
Beethoven's Sixth
I hear you in the kitchen,
the klaxon
of flatware
as you sort knives from forks,
shuttle spoons
into their
molded slot in the drawer.
I recognize the
creaking
of the glassware-cabinet door
while cellos glide
over
another familiar phrase;
I recognize my familiarity
with those shelves, cups,
plates and butter knives--
the routine we exercise daily
between the breakfast
oatmeal
and the last light snapped out
each night, the
promises
we try to keep as the commonplace
collides with
the exquisite--
plates rattled in the cupboard,
Beethoven's
cuckoo calling, calling.
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March
Snow
The
neighbor's sow got loose,
made her way over the stone fence
to root along the leafless thicket
edging our meadow.
The last snow's fallen.
The pig's chapped trotters
look painful, raw;
she leaves a trail of rounded Vs
in
the damp, white layer.
We pity her bloodied feet.
Her
teats drag along icy stubble,
she investigates cold mud.
We
deem her neglected;
she eyes us without interest,
suspicious enough to spurn
our calls and our apples.
Evasive, she trundles
along the rubble wall.
On
our patio, the snow
has already melted.
She stands there
a moment,
peering at the cats:
a white pig.
On
sore feet she treads
over rocks toward
our neighbor's
barn.
Her tracks disappear in an hour,
along with the
last, late snow.
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