What Nourishes

The Rain

by Robert Creeley

All night the sound had   

come back again,

and again falls

this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself

that must be remembered,

insisted upon

so often? Is it

that never the ease,

even the hardness,

of rain falling

will have for me

something other than this,

something not so insistent --

am I to be locked in this

final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,

lie next to me.

Be for me, like rain,

the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-

lust of intentional indifference.

Be wet

with a decent happiness.

Migrations, Forced and Natural

Birchwood, Tennessee, near the site of Blythe Ferry

1.
The Cherokee Removal Memorial Park, on a small hill where the Hiwassee and Tennessee Rivers meet, offers a solemn place for reflection. Beyond a stone map of the Cherokee removal along The Trail of Tears, marble slabs rise. Incised with the names of 2535 heads of household of the Cherokee Nation, they represent a small portion of the 16,000+ people forced out of their homelands to territory west of the Mississippi River.

The East Tennessee Geotourism MapGuide adds this: "About 4,200 of the 16,542 Cherokees identified perished as a result of the Cherokee Removal in 1838. This is the closest thing to a headstone they will have. The Memorial is intended to humanize them. They were not wild savages, but were at least as civilized as most that replaced them. According to the 1835 Census they were: farmers, mechanics, weavers, spinners and business men. Many were literate in Cherokee and/or English."

According to Wikipedia's article about Blythe Ferry, "By the Fall of [1838], some 9000 Cherokee and 300 Creek had been imprisoned in stockades in Bradley County, a few miles to the east. It took several weeks to move the entire contingent across the river, with the last detachment crossing on November 12, 1838."

William Blythe, the ferry owner, and his Cherokee wife moved west with the Cherokee. Today, a bridge spans the water over which the native peoples came.

2.
On the same spit of land, over 10,000 of the Eastern population of Greater Sandhill Cranes visit the Hiwassee Refuge for food and rest before heading further south to Georgia and Florida. After breeding in Canada, the Great Lakes area, and the Upper Midwestern states, the begin migrating in the fall on a route that takes them through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Even here in Sewanee, early in the morning some days, if one is lucky, he or she can hear the unmistakable call of some flying overhead. 

According to the flyer I picked up today at the refuge ("Sandhill and Whooping Cranes in Tennessee," written and illustrated by Vicikie Taylor), the Sandhill was "suspected as migrating through Tennessee" in the 1960s, but folks rarely observed them. "In 1978, a total of 5.383 Sandhill Cranes were reported in Tennessee, with the largest flock containing 100 birds." But within twenty years, "biologists estimated that more than 40,000 Sandhill Cranes visited the Hiwassee Refuge during the 2009-2010 migration season. Of that number, approximately 10,000 wintered at the refuge," a practice that apparently continues today.

3.
J emailed this to me yesterday from The Writer's Almanac:

Watching Sandhill Cranes
by William Stafford

Spirits among us have departed--friends,
relatives, neighbors: we can't find them.
If we search and call, the sky merely waits.
The some day here come the cranes
planing in from cloud or mist--sharp,
lonely spears, awkwardly graceful.
They reach for the land; they stalk
the ploughed fields, not letting us near,
not quite our own, not quite the world's.

People go by and pull over to watch. They
Peer and point and wonder. It is because
these travelers, these far wanderers,
plane down and yearn in a reaching
flight. They extend our life,
piercing through space to reappear
quietly, undeniable, where we are.

4.
An oddly unsettling conjunction of history and nature, made more lively by reflection on current events--here and elsewhere in the world of man and nature, but a pleasant journey and interlude nevertheless.

(postscript: another Sewanee blogger today posted this with a wonderful sound recording -- Sandhill Cranes at Hiwassee Refuge, TN)

A Silvery Pause

CITYSCAPE

by Eavan Boland

I have a word for it —

the way the surface waited all day

to be a silvery pause between sky and city —

which is elver.

And another one for how

the bay shelved cirrus clouds

piled up at the edge of the Irish Sea,

which is elver too.

The old Blackrock baths

have been neglected now for fifty years,

fine cracks in the tiles

visible as they never were when

I can I can I can

shouted Harry Vernon as

he dived from the highest board

curving down into salt and urine

his cry fading out

through the half century it took

to hear as a child that a glass eel

had been seen

entering the seawater baths at twilight —

also known as elver —

and immediately

the word begins

a delicate migration —

a fine crazing healing in the tiles —

the sky deepening above a city

that has always been

unsettled between sluice gates and the Irish Sea

to which there now comes at dusk

a translucent visitor

yearning for the estuary.

A Poet Who Is a Kindred Spirit

at least in this regard:

What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use

by Ada Limon

All these great barns out here in the outskirts,

black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass.

They look so beautifully abandoned, even in use.

You say they look like arks after the sea’s

dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,

and I think of that walk in the valley where

J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,

No. I believe in this connection we all have

to nature, to each other, to the universe.

And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there,

low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss,

and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,

woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.

So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,

its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name

though we knew they were really just clouds—

disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.

Odd Angles

Sometimes, When the Light

BY LISEL MUELLER

Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles

and pulls you back into childhood

 

and you are passing a crumbling mansion

completely hidden behind old willows

 

or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks

and giant firs standing hip to hip,

 

you know again that behind that wall,

under the uncut hair of the willows

 

something secret is going on,

so marvelous and dangerous

 

that if you crawled through and saw,

you would die, or be happy forever.

Packing Up All My Possibles

Beyond the Red River

by Thomas McGrath

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,

And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass

Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,

Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,

A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses

Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping

An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.

My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.

I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,

Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.

Raspberries Taste Like Roanoke Summers in Childhood

The Children
by Mark Jarman

The children are hiding among the raspberry canes.
They look big to one another, the garden small.
Already in their mouths this soft fruit
That lasts so briefly in the supermarket
Tastes like the past. The gritty wall,
Behind the veil of leaves, is hollow.
There are yellow wasps inside it. The children know.
They know the wall is hard, although it hums.
They know a lot and will not forget it soon.

When did we forget? But we were never
Children, never found where they were hiding
And hid with them, never followed
The wasp down into its nest
With a fingertip that still tingles.
We lie in bed at night, thinking about
The future, always the future, always forgetting
That it will be the past, hard and hollow,
Veiled and humming, soon enough.

The Ubiquitous Day Lily of July

The Ubiquitous Day Lily of July
by David Budbill

There is an orange day lily that blooms in July and is
everywhere around these parts right now. Common.
Ordinary. It grows in everybody's dooryard—abandoned
or lived in—along the side of the road, in front of stone walls,
at gas stations and garages, at the entrance to driveways,
anywhere it takes a mind to sprout. You always see them
in clusters, bunches, never by themselves. They propagate
by rhizomes, which is why they are so resilient, and why
you see them in bunches.

There is an orange day lily that blooms in July and is
ubiquitous right now. The roadside mowers mow a lot
of them, but they don't get them all.

These are not the rare and delicate lemon yellow day lilies
or the other kinds people have around their places. This one
is coarse and ordinary, almost harsh in its weathered beauty,
like an older woman with a tough, worldly-wise and wrinkled
face. There is nothing nubile, smooth or perky about this flower.
It's not fresh. It's been around awhile and everybody knows it.

As I said, it's coarse and ordinary and it's beautiful because
it's ordinary. A plant gone wild and therefore become
rugged, indestructible, indomitable, in short: tough, resilient,
like anyone or thing has to be in order to survive.

In the Fog

In the Fog

by GIOVANNI PASCOLI

TRANSLATED BY GEOFFREY BROCK

I stared into the valley: it was gone—   

wholly submerged! A vast flat sea remained,   

gray, with no waves, no beaches; all was one.   

And here and there I noticed, when I strained,   

the alien clamoring of small, wild voices:   

birds that had lost their way in that vain land.   

And high above, the skeletons of beeches,   

as if suspended, and the reveries   

of ruins and of the hermit’s hidden reaches.   

And a dog yelped and yelped, as if in fear,   

I knew not where nor why. Perhaps he heard   

strange footsteps, neither far away nor near—   

echoing footsteps, neither slow nor quick,   

alternating, eternal. Down I stared,   

but I saw nothing, no one, looking back.   

The reveries of ruins asked: “Will no   

one come?” The skeletons of trees inquired:   

“And who are you, forever on the go?”   

I may have seen a shadow then, an errant   

shadow, bearing a bundle on its head.   

I saw—and no more saw, in the same instant.   

All I could hear were the uneasy screeches   

of the lost birds, the yelping of the stray,   

and, on that sea that lacked both waves and beaches,

the footsteps, neither near nor far away.

published online here at Poetry Foundation

Yes, Billy Collins, Yes!

Today

by Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

Yesterday There Were Geese

Today there were none at the lake. 

But the water came alive, ran like a tide under brittle and cracking ice, lighting the margins between water and earth in waves of blue and white, and then receding, leaving leaves burning brown and red.

I came home burning with cold, the wind so strong I had struggled to balance, and I read ice poems until I found one I love.

Here it is, a gift of the season:

Year's End
by Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year, 
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show 
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere, 
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin 
And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell  
And held in ice as dancers in a spell  
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;  
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,  
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns   
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone  
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown  
Composedly have made their long sojourns,  
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise  
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze  
The random hands, the loose unready eyes  
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.
These sudden ends of time must give us pause.   

We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause  
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

When Words Fail Me

Today, a friend complimented some of my photographs, calling them poems. I was happy to hear her words.

I once wrote poems, or I once tried to write poems. 

Often I could not move beyond an image or the sounds of words conversing with one another on the tongue and teeth and lip.

"But what does it mean?" workshop readers would ask.

Often, I didn't know. 

Often, I don't know what words mean.

For example, what fell overnight? 

Not sleet, I think, since it was not wet ice, not slickened and frozen, shmeared on the windshield. Not hail, I think, only because it was tiny, like nuggets of shaved ice in a snowball, but firmer. Ice pellets, perhaps, but I've never heard a weatherman or woman announce, "Warning: pellets falling!" More confusing, the Internet tells me that the term "ice pellets" is synonymous with "sleet," but my experience of the two reveals significant difference. There is no one right word.

There is often no one right word for much of my experience. 

Words, some writer once wrote, are like clear glass: you see through them to meaning. But for me, words ripple like winded water blown this way, then that, their shape distorting and changing, winding in new directions, leading toward new channels.

And sometimes the channel just stops.

Like this.

The Horrid Voice of Science

by Vachel Lindsay

"There's machinery in the butterfly;
          There's a mainspring to the bee;
There's hydraulics to a daisy;
          And contraptions to a tree.

"If we could see the birdie
          That makes the chirping sound
With x-ray, scientific eyes,
          We could see the wheels go round."

And I hope all men
Who think like this
Will soon lie
Underground.

Fall On Me Today Between Car and Mailbox

Fall
by Edward Hirsch

Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences‐ a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork; the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets,
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

Bees at Work

It's all I have to bring today (26)
by Emily Dickinson

It's all I have to bring today --
This, and my heart beside --
This, and my heart, and all the fields --
And all the meadows wide --
Be sure you count -- should I forget
Some one the sum could tell -- This, and my heart, and all the Bees Which in the clover dwell.