while night came on with fireflies
and the neighbor’s dog, always on his side of the fence
and born without a bark, prepared to sleep.
You did not lie down each night knowing
that the journey to this pocket of heaven
with its benevolent dogwoods,
clean sheets, and small chandeliers
had begun decades earlier with the sight of soldiers
marching down every alley,
dragging men to unnamed destinations.
For those not taken, only so long to gather belongings.
No place like a street whose name sounds the same
as the others: Greenbriar, Greenbrook, Greenwillow.
No place like a pristine living room used once a year.
No place like a driveway strewn in spring
with the fallen blossoms of the tulip poplar,
which might as well have been rose petals
as you walked from the mailbox to your castle,
checking for news from the other side.
July
I should have lived like the lettuces and broccoli,
bolting in excessive heat, as nature wills,
instead of pressing onward, making meals,
only to be cut down again, by the one who held me.
Raspberry Patch
Sanguine, swollen,
intending to be taken,
they barely hide, their flesh
the reason for our rash
and burn. Their sweetness
flees as it’s apprehended.
Would it be so wrong,
as ankles and wrists succumb
to mosquitoes and nettles,
to long on a primitive level
for the ignorant years
when they simply appeared,
flavorless and beautiful,
whenever we called?
Nothing new in carpe diem
under the terrible sun.
We realize eating’s
an art form now, but having
scrambled for strawberries,
snap peas, rhubarb, we’re ready
for something we can count on
to stay while our backs are turned,
even if it’s only the earthly bones
of something heavenly and flown.
Ownership
With so much shed fur, disappearing bagels,
going out and going out, de-stuffing of animals,
it wasn’t a practical move. Some advised,
a single parent has no business. Yet here lies
the advertised pet, unconcerned with the future
despite a past that shows in her posture,
haste to the bowl. Certain favorites had to go –
morning paper, gym – but there’s audio
news, and a dog can be personal trainer,
insisting you show up. Mostly, she offers
lessons in stillness, the center that’s missing.
And I had begun to believe in nothing
as a form of devotion: the desire to stay home
as if everything outside were a bomb, a storm,
whatever lands a dog in a shelter, pregnant.
Unsure what I wanted, I knew I wanted
this one, trembling, malnourished, eager
for routine. I went through the calendar:
where could I fit her in? I hounded
my dog-owning friends: how did
they know where to walk? None could say.
It happened, they told me, like love, like age:
just leash up, go outside: it will arrive.
To think, last year at this time
I lived in a fur-free zone (though not without mess),
she was in terrible trouble, and we hadn’t even met.
Grief
Stray dog that neither
departs nor agrees to be adopted,
it stands in rain and mud beneath
the yew, sometimes willing to eat,
unready to be touched. Where it spends
the intervening days, where it sleeps,
who its associates are, remain unknown,
but it’s made the semblance of a home
on the welcome mat. I won’t summon
Animal Control, because this is one
animal not to be controlled.
I know from the face. I know from
the way it walks off, it has somewhere
to go. It likes to be lonely, hungry, cold.
It would rather imagine a warmer, softer
life than live one, because then
there’d be nowhere left to travel.
I make sure not to plan for it, even when
going out of town. Neither family
nor property, it seeks to dwell with me,
not in a home, but on a home’s periphery.
Sage
Should I plant if what they say is true:
it delivers not only wisdom, but rescue
by eternal life? I’d prize its furry company
after everyone else was gone – family,
fellow readers, sworn companion –
and always be out of date, the only one,
crazy lady ringed by her favorite crop,
ladling beany soups from ancient pots,
recounting how a leaf outsmarted death.
Neighbor kids would flee, keen to accept
the course of things, suspecting thief or devil
in anything that sprang or seemed eternal.
Whoever approached, whoever fled the kitchen
wouldn’t matter, nor whether it was written.
The Rosemary, Outside
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you love, remember.
– William Shakespeare
Had you any conception
how literary my history,
how classical my origins,
you would never have left me
here on the frosted terrace
in hopes I would overwinter
without help from the furnace.
While none can recover
the dead, some of us can stem
the odor, maintain an illusion
of form, while you attempt
to absorb what has happened:
not insignificant power.
Yet you make me commonest
additive, like salt, black pepper,
always at hand. When first
we met, you thought fortune
had sent me, a gift, awakening,
but now that the season
of generous sunlight is fading,
you retreat to your couch,
oblivious, with novels and tea.
When you finally step back out
it will be spring, your brief,
human remorse a quick stab
as you survey the garden
to which I haven’t come back,
and remember your passion.
Tomatoes
They ended this week, close to November,
freak snowfall downing tree limbs
onto gardens, awnings, bikes. Temperatures
had kept tomatoes swelling into fall,
in biblical rain. My scientist friend says this
is apocalypse, we’re in it. He’s unsentimental –
he deals with it all day, as some do the economy –
but, teacher of English, I’m shocked each time.
I had filed the weather as synecdoche,
along with polar melt, national debt, the flight
of the cranberry north – all fine images.
Labor Day, I blanched the annual landslide,
raced them as they wept on the counter,
bleeding, splitting, growing black spots,
practically moving, punishing procrastinators
by exploding or simply dying. I said in jest
they’d made me farm wife for the weekend,
even cher
ished the moment of rats! I’ve lost
the recipes I marked in books all winter,
tabbouleh, simple pizzas, Israeli salad.
One day when the world is even warmer,
we’ll rail against loss, how nothing tastes as it did,
how “American” could once be said
with apple pie, how we used to bid
our plants goodbye at season’s end,
knowing they’d be back – not always where
we wanted them to be – and how we spent
our winters shoveling snow, our summers by the sea.
Mortals
Again we’re paying for crimes
we didn’t know we committed: being smart
or beautiful, able to throw a discus too far.
Normally we’re doing the unglamorous –
answering mail, hanging clothes to dry –
when the thunderbolt splits the workaday sky,
high, capricious wrath transforming us
into rainclouds, rocks, or squirrels to be chased
by our dogs, the orphans we saved
from gas or the needle. That morning
we’d bought phosphate-free detergent,
voted, biked, declined a prescription,
but the gods were incensed. Was it something
cruel we thought, the vagueness of our piety,
distant tragic news we didn’t take time to read?
The turning point must have been small,
that leatherbound journal with acid-free paper,
the little black dress, days of clear weather,
a glimmer for which we didn’t give thanks,
though we’re unsure to whom (it feels like artifice)
and it’s never been clear where to leave the sacrifice.
April
I’ve long had to be the responsible one:
oldest child, wife, mother.
Now I catch myself casting shadows
over all the young plants, even as year after year
they prove themselves to be true.
The season doesn’t know what it wants.
It would turn back the clock if it could, and not come out.
It’s suspicious of celebration; a jealous god might overhear.
Once we thought we would conquer the world,
but no one wanted to do the planning.
Another year is gone; the children will grow up.
But they are still small, and we not yet old.
What use is the struggle?
Always, the summer comes, with idleness and sweat.
Always, I end up embracing it, despite
its numbered days, its intentions.
The plot fails every time. Why did I work so hard?
I always end up alone
in wanting the end of things: flowers, tomatoes,
perfection, the profusion of hours, as the waiting,
the counting down, become the loss itself.
First Garden
All summer I tried to hold on,
extend the season of freedom,
pictured false springs on windowsills,
a hoard of frozen tomatoes. As if autumn
could be held off, as if I didn’t love it,
as if lacking in solitude and idleness,
I dragged out each day, prolonged it
by not enjoying it. This morning was crisp
though mostly summer. Expecting
to mind, I didn’t. The sunflowers
with broken necks, stems of bitter
broccoli, tired nasturtiums – everything
I loved could go to ruin. As their motions
and protests have slowly turned legible,
I’ve been able to pass most days alone
another year, even as the children
move closer to leaving and my devotion
remains in its wrong and right position.
I’ve forgotten my center, tried to take it
from the soil, always with excellent reasons.
Nothing wrong with loving the earth,
but the earth is one of many necessary
altars. The secret of creation would never be
so obvious. I’ve got to embrace the fear,
be a failure, act more like a president:
give up the re-digging, excess alertness,
misinterpreting of wilt – killing the plant
that wanted neglect, with kindness.
Inclinations
Minimalist stage sets; mid-list authors;
discarded pets; streets no one’s heard of;
clothes in counterintuitive colors;
poems that rhyme; yard-sale furniture;
unpopular children; the end of vacation;
the hour before sunrise; no-name shampoo;
immigrant grocers; TV without stations;
scratch-and-dent appliances; outdated news.
I love the sense of putting down a root
where soil seems not to have gathered.
While the gentleman in the beautiful suit
pretends to be listening, we freely pioneer,
buying Manhattan for a dollar an acre,
then driving quietly west, foraging dinner.
IV
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
– Elizabeth Bishop
Procrastination
It was surely invented by demons.
No one else could make it the human
norm, defied only by those military
civilians no one can identify
except as aberrations everyone
to temptation, misfit geniuses,
certain as engines. Released into
the world of people, they cling to
order, chronically surprised
no one else met requirements,
complacently holding the ruler
by which the rest of us measure
growth, as we quit, start over,
scale the hills of our failure,
and descend the other side,
telling stories of our lives.
Achievement
Turns out you could be wanted for your presence,
je ne sais quoi could be said without subtext,
and you could visit a country not having studied,
stammering interrogatives, and still be desired.
Nothing against industry here – everyone ought
to do like a Boy Scout – but time being short,
you might just buy a ticket. Stay home if home
is where you want to be, in heat wave or storm,
treasuring shelter, but don’t do too much research.
All I did for years was research. My universe
was books. Love and travel found me by exception
but took their time. When they ask me (with affection)
Where have you been, the all my life is implied.
And where had I been? I can’t even say I tried.
Technology
I feared it would rob me of something, purity,
the ability to listen, solitude, the shape of memory.
I held it off without knowing. Gadgets spread;
I distrusted them all, even in the hands of friends.
Like the old woman peering out between curtains
at the new neighbors with their terrorist moving van,
I longed for print newspapers, knowing what things
looked like, leaving no trail. Someone was watching.
Keyboards evoked my father’s typewriter, non-electric,
on which he’d done his doctorate, exiled, homesick.
The aerogrammes on which I wrote exotic strangers
would go the way of those from my grandfathers.
Even languages without alphabets going paperless,
drawing and writing could never be synonymous.
Once they went virtual, where would I lay m
y hands?
How would I imagine, when thinking made no sound?
How did text, which once suggested sanctity,
become a verb, neither spiritual nor literary?
What became of the nation we stayed to protect
when the emigrés set sail, swearing they’d be back?
By the Sea
Wedded to plans, we make them happen,
straight into the eye of a tropical depression,
water halfway up the tires, ferries potentially
canceled. The plan: to find tranquility
between the uphill of going and the plateau
of having gone. That night, the inn, though
waterlogged, serves hamachi and oysters
to an echoing hall. Next day, clearer,
at least one bride goes by: it’s that kind of place.
Bowls of perfect apples adorn the hallways;
no one minds directing strangers to the lighthouse.
It’s too cold to swim, which puts me at ease –
I’m at a loss in full sunlight – though here,
the beach behaves like a season or color,
incidental, a circumstance. One of us always
remembers the way; one of us has the key;
if only I’d known what was possible then.
Or so we say as rising waters undo more plans,
then make them again, into something else good.
The land wavers. The sky seems to know it would.
On Seldom Going to the Movies
I hate being told how to picture the villages,
dinner tables, the man’s body, the woman’s.
I hate the attacks, even the sweet revenges.
I hate knowing and not knowing the outcome;
I hate the unnecessary carnage.
I hate the houses, cozy and mainstream,
the shacks full of corruption and dust.
I hate the portrayal of the ideal woman,
the implication for the rest of us.
I have no desire for the ideal man.
I hate the speakers, too close and loud,
hate the absence of chapter or rhyme.
I abhor the popularity. I hate walking out
single file, everyone lately the same,
some affirmed, some in self-doubt,
and I hate never spotting a character
like me, except as backdrop or filler,
nor anyone like you, who should’ve been there,
taking my hand and saying ordinary words