Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
See also my Woodrat photoblog and my Flickr account.
so what if the labile moon
becomes your emblem
the half-shell upon which
your camino is served up
sew it into the lining of a coat
for use in emergencies
a subway token for the underworld
or an owl’s limitless eye
stirring up the birds
in your bedroom tree
its screen will sell you nothing
in glowing detail
it claims one egg
from every clutch
it brings out your darkest shadow
once a month
where a buck rubbed
the felt from his crown
fog drifts through the trees
without getting snagged
the day after Christmas
it’s not accurate to say the ground is bare
it hosts a 10-million-piece puzzle
of the fallen in brown and gray
a hickory nut still in its hull
is riding out the rain
like my last lost idea
nestled among roots
a red flourish of surveyor’s paint
flakes from a dead oak
while a power pole marked up by bears
is turning green
who knows what markings
might outlive us
stay too long in one place
and all the faces change
the once-vernal pools
now hold water year-round
which means we’re witnessing
the birth of a bog
it fattens on raindrops
each one a bull’s eye
the water seems murky
but it’s only the fog’s reflection
down below this cloud ceiling
a train blows its horn three times
instead of the usual six
i keep listening for the rest
my fingers grow cold
daylight begins to fade
shadows flit through the woods
heading for their roosts
at a crossroads of trails
traffic is light
just the clouds and me and then
just the clouds
high above the town
a tree rests on a black stone of sap
like an exclamation mark
for a life sentence
or the old hearth and chimney
that i found yesterday
standing alone
deep in the state forest
we are confronted by the absent
the deciduous undead
drained of sap
immune to the provocations of sunlight
their pantomimes of desire
reduced to mere architecture
while stones dance
through freeze and thaw
all winter long now
rocking in their cradles of leaves
the day after the solstice
the sun reappears
in the dark ice-free end
of a woodland pool
for a long moment just after noon
amid the clamor of bells
the elephant has left the room
disguised as many gray trees
this isn’t a political poem
missing elephants are everywhere
at the end of November
one needs a woolly coat
but there’s a certain slant of light
that induces mild euphoria
let’s all raise our arms
to summon an old flame
red crest of the good god bird
no ordinary peckerwood
cackling down at me
in my red checked cap
just before dusk a rifle booms
and i remember what moon this is
it looks so much less mammoth
once it escapes the trees
struck long ago by lightning
charred heart open to the sky
what doesn’t kill you
leaves you damaged
climbing a mountain to learn
what you already know
like telling the pines apart
by how they whisper
or marveling at birch twigs
etched in sunlight
on the shadow
of the neighboring mountain
and underfoot the moss cracked
like mud in a honeycomb pattern
a kind of ur-text
about cells and absence
the way a life was laid down
ring by ring in a log
or how after the rungs rot away
and the tree topples over
it’s not a ladder anymore
the bark’s long gone
there are just these troupes of rusty nails
awaiting further orders
the sky so clear your binoculars
pick out distant windblown leaves
or follow a hawk
following the ridge for miles
with the leaves down a white
clapboard church appears
with a steeple to staple it in place
between the river and the railroad
where shipping containers roll past
night and day
from this height like pale capsules
full of bad medicine
this is the trouble with all
tracks and paths
it’s time to stop following
and set your feet free
off-trail
on a careful descent
stepping from rock to rock
stopping for twisted oaks
and tall straight pines no 19th-century
logger is coming back for
though a thousand feet downslope
and you’re in pole timber
the whited sepulcher of a tip-up mound
marks the shift from ironstone to shale
through long shadows made feathery
by young white pines
footfalls mingle contrapuntally
with woodpecker taps
on a twisty back road
the tarmac cracks in honeycomb patterns
and the low sun is attentive
to every detail of mummified roadkill
its five-fingered paw
still stretched out
just past a sign that reads
UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
MAY GOD HOLD YOU
IN THE PALM OF HIS HAND
on bare wood
in letters of faded blue
to walk through new-fallen leaves
is to raise a thunderous hush
at the trailhead a red maple
grown grandiloquent with age
sends me in the wrong direction
past an abandoned scout camp
and a red oak with four massive trunks
festooned with wild grapevines
i scramble upslope to the trail
slipping on dry oak leaves
a tiger moth caterpillar
isn’t moving in the cold
black and bristly as the fisher
fleeing down the trail ahead of me
more like a badger than a weasel
more trundle than leap
the sun comes out and shows me
the shadow sides of things
a snag wearing a shroud
made of paper birch
beeches flaunting a fool’s gold
of lifeless leaves
tiny mushrooms gathered in a hollow
among yellow birch roots
i pause to snap a photo
and let other walkers pass
two panting humans and a poodle
modeling utter joy
throwing himself at the trail
as it turns up a ravine
completely if temporarily in love
with the smallest of waterfalls
i drop back to regain my solitude
worn out by a lingering cold
pick up yet another glossy leaf
to use as a tissue
on the way to the summit of the second
highest mountain in the state
the vistas are grand but I’m here
for the twisted oaks
finding alternate routes to the sun
through all that ridgetop wind
do they fight it or worship it
like Jacob wrestling in the darkness
but how strategic to drop their sails
before the arctic blasts
and with their leaves down
they are fantastical eldritch rococo
the only oaks that aren’t bare yet
are less than a foot tall
embers to catch the eye
of a young man laboring past
on his mountain bicycle
looking at the ground
from here the mountains of home
disappear into the haze
downslope the trees are younger
but bigger and full of themselves
the trail deviates from the map
re-created for two-wheeled recreation
i head off-trail and soon
become un-lost again
reveling in this leaf litter
a shambles not unlike my own
witch hazel blossoms dangle
in the low-angled sun
but my gaze goes
to the moss and ferns
and every last scrap
of embattled green
***
Blue Knob State Park, November 4, 2024
Our lives are an amnesty given us.
William Stafford
meanwhile the trees
are relaxing their grip
turning toward sleep
in a kind of hypnagogia
vivid and hallucinatory
against the gray
‘HUNTERS WEAR ORANGE
SO SHOULD YOU’
though the sign itself is yellow
as are many red maples
it’s the most primary
that school-bus color
meanwhile children play tag
outside an Amish school
in clothes so plain
it marks them as exotic
one of them rooted to the spot
scrunching up his face
a hole opens in the clouds
but not for any missiles
meanwhile skeletons
are unsettling in front yards
one pushes a lawnmower
towards several bony arms
like barked sticks
sprouting from manicured grass
in the distance some engine
i don’t notice until it stops
and i’m left with the sound
of my footsteps in fallen leaves
walking the empty bed
of a former coal country railroad
past pastures and high hayfields
up into the autumn hills
just below the clouds
a raven gives his voice box a shake
and out tumbles
something like a child’s cry
crossed with a horn
18 October 2023
there’s no mountain
to the cloud
its shadow wandering
lonely as a poet
who no longer believes
in the power of words
as another name escapes
the tip of my tongue
trees are applauding the wind
their life-long mentor
the black birches are yellow
and the black gums
a pale salmon
a hawk flies through the forest
carrying something small
and very dead
a white-tailed deer
raises and lowers
her eponymous flag
as her antlered companion
seems almost to dance
between the boulders
there’s so little soil
the big oaks get their roots out
before they enter the ground
i take my seat
against a chestnut oak
we rock together in the wind
occasionally it makes
a high inhuman sound
that vibrates in my bones
it starts with a zipper in the rain
that soft syllable
an oak leaning into
its impending death
you can shelter under it
as open as a book
it starts red and wrong
as an oak apple
old sapsucker holes bleeding
pale sap down a spruce
rain collecting in a hollow
atop an exposed birch root
so the tree can mainline it
like an autumn addict
mushrooms glory
in their fruiting bodies
as black drupes swell on maple-
leafed viburnum
and beechdrops’ self-fertilized flowers
hide under a twiggy bouquet
it’s a kind of spring
buried in the heart of autumn
just before antlers turn
from trees into weapons
and every leaf in the forest
goes off-script
fog forms in the meadow
at first light
rising from the mop-
topped goldenrod
as if it were the conjoined breaths
of a shadowy golden horde
massed against the bald
white fact of the barn
its credible rooflines
asphalt-tiled
in the same dark green as
the ridges that flank the field
the barn’s ridgeline broken
by a slatted cupola
to draw air through
whether for hay or horses
or once a hundred years ago
a circus elephant
who spent the summer tethered
on the threshing floor
no one can remember why
only that it was here and lonely
like the young lady
a generation later
who came to the hollow to hide
an unplanned pregnancy
one winter shuttered up
in the summer house
with a church organ
they heard her playing Bach
for years after she and the child
died together at birth
every Appalachian hollow
has its share of ghosts
but the sun tops the ridge
and the fog shapes vanish
catching in spiderwebs
glistening on the breast of a wren
