Also by ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT
Poetry
Claiming Kin
The Forces of Plenty
The Lotus Flowers
Two Trees
Kyrie
Shadow of Heaven
Messenger: New and Selected Poems, 1976–2006
Prose
The Flexible Lyric
The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Speech, Rhythm of Song
CONTENTS
Headwaters
Privet Hedge
Stones
Oak
My Mother
Owl
Milkmaid
Yearling
Cow
Fox
Noble Dog
Moles
Garter Snake
Groundhog
Hog-Nosed Skunk
Hound
Lost Boy
Maestro
Geese
Birch
Bear
Chameleon
Lament
Spring
Sleep
Larch
Roof
Storm
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the editors who first published these poems:
The American Poetry Review: Birch, Garter Snake, Hound, Lament, Milkmaid, Moles, Noble Dog, Oak, Spring, Stones
The American Scholar: Headwaters, Larch, My Mother, Sleep
The Atlantic: Fox, Hog-Nosed Skunk, Yearling
Blackbird: Lost Boy
The Cortland Review: Maestro
Granta: Geese
The New Yorker: Bear, Chameleon, Cow, Owl, Roof, Storm
The New York Times: Privet Hedge
HEADWATERS
I made a large mistake I left my house I went into the world it was not
the most perilous hostile part but I couldn’t tell among the people there
who needed what no tracks in the snow no boot pointed toward me or away
no snow as in my dooryard only the many currents of self-doubt I clung
to my own life raft I had room on it for only me you’re not surprised
it grew smaller and smaller or maybe I grew larger and heavier
but don’t you think I’m doing better in this regard I try to do better
PRIVET HEDGE
first frail green in the northeast the forest around us no longer
a postcard of Christmas snow clotting the spruce or worse
fall’s technicolor beeches sumac sugar maple death
even the death of vegetation should never be
so beautiful it is unseemly I prefer the cusps
they focus the mind
which otherwise stays
distracted knowing things when my friend said
knowledge does nothing for him I felt at once superior
and chastised I’d just deduced the five new birds in my yard
woodpecker size and stripes and red blaze but feeding on the ground
five yellow-shafted flickers can the soul be known by its song who hears it
what keeps it aloft what keeps it whole what helps it survive habitual
pride greed wrath sloth lust a list compiled by a parent always
needing something to forgive you for I meant
to ask the nuns to straighten this out for me
while I was among them in Minnesota their earlier spring
but I couldn’t guess which ones they are they dress
like everyone else no veils no starched white
no kneeling boards I was left on my own
to study the graveyard behind the privet hedge
their markers all alike as on a battlefield immense and calm
beneath an open midwestern sky nothing between
the pilgrim and the scoured horizon
STONES
birds not so much the ducks and geese okay not horses cows pigs
she’d lived in the city all her life some cats and dogs okay as part
of someone else’s narrative the posted photographs are someone’s
pets the figurines less figurative than graceful to behold the same
with carved giraffes and camels no reptiles no amphibians nothing
from the sea although she loved the sea her passion was for stones
I don’t know why the parquet floor never buckled and caved collapsed
into the rooms below her rooms all the horizontal surfaces were covered
with stones the bureau the cupboards the closets were full of the precious
stones she wore at her throat her ears her fingers her wrists the inlaid
tables held ceramic bowls of polished stones the antique desk a basket
of stones a bushel of stones on the floor on the windowsills more stones
each one unique each one a narrative the étagère held up to the light stones
hewn from the source and hauled up here still jagged refracting every
shade of amethyst her birthstone like my mother’s crystals shimmering
as if alive rescued from the field the cliff the shore the riverbed I found
a single cufflink by her bed a tiny diamond set in silver did her father
sift out at his flour mill the dangerous stones I stretched out beside her
in her bad time thinking to help her sleep I held her hand her fingers wore
a few of her favorite rings the two of us lay entirely still atop the quilt
a stiff sarcophagus she didn’t sleep her mind was an etched plate
from which she drew off print after print the framed prints on the walls
were all interiors our talk had always been a stone kicked down a hill
no purpose no destination her father her mother my mother my dogs
she never said she was leaving me in charge she wasn’t my mother why
put me in charge I put the jewels on other throats and wrists I threw away
the bushels of cosmetics and perfume her chosen armaments
against the world who loved the world I sold the breakfront
cabinet full of cut-glass bowls and blown-glass figurines but who
will save the living stones she loved I have so many already
in my yard half-in half-out of the earth immovable
she’d seen my yard she’d seen those heavy stones
OAK
not to board the bus but wait for the last bell
like those who live in town shuffling ahead of her the clumps
drift apart drift back shifting boys in a cluster now a boy and a girl
a dance a recess game as each is subtracted one by one into the houses
she passes the windows half-lidded by half-drawn shades
or framed by curtains and sash she likes
walking alone
along the verge of the lawns no fence no field the leaves
drifting out from under the oaks while in the woods
they would only settle and rot she likes the way a passing car
releases them across the grid of the sidewalk a solid math
for a solitary girl the small steps into the larger
world of strangers wholly indifferent houses cars rust-colored dog
she passes the hardware grocery pharmacy beauty salon every Thursday
you’ve noticed such a child content to be invisible
scuffing the leaves
toward the bungalow the hushed backroom
where someone is propped in the high bed her webbed face
her halo of hair past humankind and all its suffering
past seeing now past death too old for death
and waiting for this girl
who thumbs the latch
who lifts the lid of the black box lifts from red felt those silver pieces
fits them together the trick is to breathe across and not
into the small round hole as her arched fingers hover
over the other open holes each finger knows its task she’s fixed
to one purpose Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee
dark out in the street the wind ruffling oak leaves the dark
window lit by the silver flute the white ghost hair the brighter
lights is it her mother come to drive her home
MY MOTHER
my mother my mother my mother she
could do anything so she did everything the world
was an unplowed field a dress to be hemmed a scraped knee it needed
a casserole it needed another alto in the choir her motto was apply yourself
under a bushel you might
forget it there in the dark times the lonely times
the sun gone down on her resolve she slept a little first
so she’d be fresh she put on a little lipstick drawing on her smile
she pulled that hair up off her face she pulled her stockings on she stepped
into her pumps she took up her matching purse already
packed with everything they all would learn
they would be nice they would
apologize they would be grateful whenever
they had forgotten what to pack she never did
she had a spare she kissed your cheek she wiped the mark
away with her own spit she marched you out again unless you were
that awful sort of stubborn broody child who more and more
I was who once had been so sweet so mild staying put
where she put me what happened
must have been the bushel I was hiding in
the sun gone down on her resolve she slept a little first
so she’d be fresh she pulled her stockings on she’d packed
the words for my every lack she had a little lipstick on her teeth the mark
on my cheek would not rub off she gave the fluids from her mouth
to it she gave the tissues in her ample purse to it I never did
apologize I let my sister succor those in need and suffer
the little children my mother
knew we are self-canceling she gave herself
a lifetime C an average grade from then on out she kept
the lights on day and night a garden needs the light the sun
could not be counted on she slept a little day and night she didn’t need
her stockings or her purse she watered she weeded she fertilized she stood
in front the tallest stalk keeping the deer the birds all
the world’s idle shameless thieves away
OWL
the sign for making the most of what you have
on the human hand is a thumb at full right angle to the palm
for the owl it’s two talons forward two back a flexible foot
that crushes the prey and lifts it to the beak to the eyes
which are legally blind this is why the owl
hunts in the dark in the dusk when nothing is clearly seen
and why the owl’s eyes are fixed facing ahead to better focus
so its whole face swivels in each direction like the turret on a tank
the round plates of feathers surrounding the eyes collect the least sound
when it turns the owl is computing by geometry the exact
location of the mouse or snake or songbird
that moves imperceptibly in its nest toward which the owl
sets out from the hole in the tree the burrow the eave of the barn
and crosses the field in utter silence wing-feathers overlapped
to make no sound poor mouse poor rabbit
last night
from the porch obbligato to the brook and the snuffling deer
intent on the gnarled worm-bitten apples we leave on the tree
I heard what must have been a Barred Owl or a Barn Owl
or a Lesser Horned Owl close by not deep in the woods
what I heard was less a call than a cry
a fragment repeating repeating a kind of shudder
which may be why the country people I come from
thought an owl was prescient ill-omen meant to unspool
the threads they’d gathered and wound I was a grown woman
when my father took the key from under the eave
and unlocked the door to the darkened house he had grown up in
and stepped across the threshold and said as he entered the empty room
hello Miss Sally as though his stepmother dead for weeks
were still in her usual chair
in the Medicine Wheel
the emblem for wisdom is the same for gratitude at dusk at dark
the farsighted owl strikes in utter silence when we hear it
from the tree or the barn what it announces
is already finished
MILKMAID
white froth overnight on bare ground brown leaves
no yellow bus on the snow-slicked road so I could help my father
deliver the mail his other job begin at six finish at two then farm
my part was laboring through the drifts
toward the red flag the widow’s flag meant
dried-apple pies fried pockets of fruit to sweeten
his usual bitter thermos his usual two sandwiches
one butter sliced in a slab the peasant’s cheese one meat
maybe headcheese the leftover parts of pig snowdays
I waded to the metal box put something in took something out
I still believe getting the mail is the best part of the day my beloved
disagrees he says he has enough bad news but what about finding
among the trash a piece of smooth beach glass today a postcard
a milkmaid’s royal blue emphatic apron
not dulled by many washings not stained by milk or mud the blue
Vermeer’s ennoblement he lets her pour a pure white stream
from the lip of the pitcher into the earthbrown bowl
what’s rich has been set aside for butter or cheese
what’s left enough to soften the week’s stale bread a peasant’s
Sunday supper Milk Soup my father’s favorite
YEARLING
Thanksgiving Day was the day they slaughtered the hog the carcass
hoisted by its heels from the oak the planks across sawhorses holding
the hams the buckets catching the blood the shanks the organ meats
the chunks of white fat for biscuits the feet sunk in brine as the yard-dogs
whined for the leathery ear and my grandmother napped
with the baby always a baby needing a nap
my neighbor
at ninety-six claims she’s never had a nap she has no use for dogs
she used to spend Thanksgiving in the woods getting her deer
and strung it up outside the shed where now droops
head down rack down her son’s deer her knives
stay sharp one year her son brought by
not venison a yearling bear glossy and black
dressed out there wasn’t much underneath its thick coat
a scrawny frame the paws so much like hands she said
when she looked through the window it startled her
hanging there the size of a child
COW
end of the day daylight subsiding into the trees lights coming on
in the milking barns as somewhere out in the yard some ants
are tucking in their aphids for the night behind
hydrangea leaves or in their stanchions underground
they have been bred for it the smaller brain
serving the larger brain the cows eat so we will eat we guarantee
digestion is the only work they do heads down tails up
they won’t have sex they get some grain some salt
no catamounts no wolves we fertilize the fields
we put up bales of hay we give them names
but again this week one breached the fence the neighbors
stopped to shoo it back a girl held out a handful of grass
calling the cow as you would a dog no dice so what
if she recoiled to see me burst from the house with an ax
I held it by the blade I tapped with the handle where the steaks come from
like the one I serve my friend a water sign who likes to lurk
in the plural solitude of Zen retreat to calm his mind but when it’s done
what he needs I think is something truly free of mind a slab of earth
by way of cow by way of fire the surface charred the juices
running pink and red on the white plate
FOX
rangy loping swiveling left then right I’m thinking
nonchalant but the doves flutter up to the roof of the barn the crickets
leap from the grass like fleas a fox is in my yard-o my yard-o
plenty of songs in my head
to sing to my child’s child if she were here
she wakes in her wooden crib and sings to herself
odd happy child so like another child content in her pen
with a pot a metal straw a lid a hole in the lid a glass hat
for the hole a metal basket with smaller holes
one hole the size of the straw for hours
I made the pieces fit then took them apart
then made them fit when I got tired I lay me down my little head
against the flannel chicks and ducks then slept then woke then took
the puzzle up my mother had another child sick unto death
she needed me to fall in love with solitude I fell in love
it is my toy my happiness the child of my friends
is never ever left alone asleep awake
pushing her wooden blocks around the rug they cannot bear
her least distress their eyes stay on their sparrow poor happy child
last year I startled a fox crossing the road the tail
more rust than red the head cranked forward facing me
it stopped stock-still as if deciding whether to hurry forward