or turn back it had a yellow apple in its mouth
and the little ones chew on the bones-o
NOBLE DOG
behind our house down to the brook and the woods
beyond the groomed grass and flower beds what we see
are brook and woods and sometimes mild creatures of the field
we thought when we bathed in the claw-footed tub we could pretend
we stayed inside the natural world no shutters no shades at night
beside the mirror over the sink the windows darkened into mirrors
where my daughter at thirteen admired her tan her new body until she felt
or thought she felt something move outside in the yard and asked quietly
up the backstairs for us to come down here for just a minute please
come down here now we couldn’t tell how much was fear
how much was shame we thought she needed us to be calm
we tried to be calm like the trooper we called who said without alarm
to the handsome noble dog where is he buddy where is he buddy
at which as if in a game of fetch the dog went straight around the house
to the one smell that didn’t fit to the one smell that crossed the clipped grass
into the ditch beside the dirt road where the dog went too the dog
tracking the smell the trooper tracking the dog the dog
not barking or baying until the scent stopped
inside the culvert bearing the brook west under the road
a large metal pipe that amplified the dog’s whimpers and moans
dog of righteousness dog of retribution
we heard it from our house where soon the shutters would go up
we sat in the kitchen the summer air soft as a damp rag we knew
this was a moment of consequence but we couldn’t tell
whether the world had grown larger or smaller
MOLES
where is his hat where is his horse where is his harrier my beloved
is distraught he made this yard each blade each stem each stalk except
the mounds of fresh dirt like little graves it’s moles that make the mounds
when they make holes they’re worms with fur the cat
does not do moles she’s stalking rooks and mice beloved
has scattered human hair across the sod it keeps the deer away
he has installed a high-pitched hum in the lily bed it keeps the dogs
out of the yard who might have otherwise unearthed a mole too bad
traps don’t work the way they do for squirrels my father
used to thrust the hose into one hole and flood them out my beloved
does not care what my father did this greensward is his joy his job
my job was children food house the rest of what I did stayed underground
GARTER SNAKE
hibernaculum a hole in the earth
from which in spring the snakes ooze forth the males
much smaller than the female stretched out like a tree-limb
among the tulips not moving not rippling or flinching preoccupied
a film over her eyes along her body the smaller snakes
flex and extend they may be helping her shed or may be
roughhousing like little boys which is what I thought at the pond
when I saw three mallards jump another duck they stayed underwater
a very long time she never did resurface the female snake seems
oblivious sheathed in ribbons one of them shudders off
and shimmies toward the lilac hedge our friend
wants to show us he can catch a snake at the top of its spine
and reaches into the grass but even a garter snake
has teeth we see it flung then reinvented half erect
on its coils hissing or taking soundings with its tongue
swiveling its head to follow the enemy
that’s us
GROUNDHOG
not unlike otters which we love frolicking
floating on their backs like truant boys unwrapping lunch
same sleek brown pelt some overtones of gray and rust
though groundhogs have no swimming hole and lunch
is rooted in the ground beneath short legs small feet
like a fat man’s odd diminutive loafers not
frolicking but scurrying layers of fat his coat
gleams as though wet shines chestnut sable darker
head and muzzle lower into the grass a dark
triangular face like the hog-nosed skunk another delicate
nose and not a snout doesn’t it matter what they’re called I like swine
which are smart and prefer to be clean using their snouts
to push their excrement to the side of the pen
but they have hairy skin not fur his fur
shimmers and ripples he never uproots the mother plant his teeth
cower like sheep or bite like a sow with a litter is he ever
attacked he looks to me inedible he shares his acreage
with moles voles ravenous crows someone thought up
the names his other name is botched Algonquin but yes
he burrows beneath the barn where a farmer once
dried cordwood he scuttles there at speech cough laugh
at lawnmower swollen brook high wind he lifts his head
as Gandhi did small tilt to the side or stands erect
like a prairie dog or a circus dog but dogs don’t waddle like Mao
with a tiny tail he seems asexual like Gandhi like Jesus if Jesus
came back would he be vegetarian also pinko freako homo
in Vermont natives scornful of greyhounds from the city
self-appoint themselves woodchucks unkempt hairy macho
who would shoot on sight an actual fatso shy mild marmot radiant
as the hog-nosed skunk in the squirrel trap both cleaner than sheep
fur fluffy like a girl’s maybe he is a she it matters
what we’re called words shape the thought don’t say
rodent and ruin everything
HOG-NOSED SKUNK
because she’s half blind and thus prefers
complete not partial darkness and because
she cannot raise her tail entirely over her back
in order to use her one weapon her one defense
when you come to the squirrel trap from behind
and cover with a blanket the wire box
although my beloved won’t believe it
she just gives up she just gives up
HOUND
since thought is prayer if hard and true I thought that thought
could lead me to compassion for my fellow creatures
insects excluded contrary to the Buddha the wasps
might show a little compassion too I do include
the hound next door it moans all day all night
a loud slow lament a child can make itself sustain
to dramatize its misery this dog was once
the neighbors’ child but now they have an actual child
he’s been cast down to be a dog again chained outdoors heartsick
uncomprehending why can’t he just buck up remember his roots his lot
not more special than any other
sad hound look up
at the fledglings’ wide mouths look over here
at the cat teaching her litter how to hunt all sleek all black
they’re interchangeable her many tits confirm no favorites
no first no last
at least with only two
both can be a kind of favorite it’s better than three
I ought to know my sister and I each had one parent to herself
like Tea for Two it wasn’t hard to be the boy
until there came the actual boy he was nothing like my father
wha
t does it mean to have flown from the same nest into the world
you’re thinking one is best
one open mouth no first no last but isn’t it
then the parents who compete no wonder the father of animals
wanders off the best is two all right one parent and one child
we’ve seen it work among the elephants
LOST BOY
who says we aren’t primarily animals for instance
you recognize at once the smell of doom and keep away unless
you’re drawn by pheromones like a soldier ant or for once you worry
about your soul he reeked of doom despised by those he loved one parent
missing one parent Pentecostal disgusted by the queer parts of him
he was himself disgusted self-despising snarling sick
unto death the chronic contagious sickness of our times
a righteous judgment was what he called it the rash
erupted over and over no meds no money no readiness
for help if there’d been help no self-defense unless you count
self-sabotage the wounds were old and ugly he kept them fresh he was quick
to take offense except from me and for what for merely a kindness
that brought me letters photos poems seeds saved from his yard roses
profuse on the cards for Mother’s Day on valentines because I was a surrogate
it cost me nothing until he chose oblivion the news was no surprise his gift
was always making something out of nothing
MAESTRO
Chesterfields the fragile horizontal column of ash
lengthening as he winced at the sour notes but plunged ahead
even when it splashed down onto the keyboard his long hands
showing the smaller hands how it was done the Chopin the Bach
or some reduction of the Nutcracker Suite whatever might be needed
in order to teach the young you also need
herculean belief in the possible and his had sugared off
into a pure elixir he must have sipped from
nights in his rented room in the widow’s house I suppose
she cooked for him and always someone’s mother had sent pie
everyone knew it wasn’t us he loved
but he made his Chevrolet an open closet instruments and scores
and the book that conjured every known song
when there were two pianos the two of us
took turns the solo the orchestra imagine
the odds that he’d turn up in my life in time
to loosen the bony grip of Mrs. Law who kept
the ledger of your mistakes and whose breath could peel back bark
exactly as my older sister said when she leapt from the bench
and fled the lessons leaving me behind it didn’t matter
whether I was worthy or unworthy he took me
everywhere in the Chevrolet he played
with flat fingers I do too
GEESE
there is no cure for temperament it’s how
we recognize ourselves but sometimes within it
a narrowing imprisons or is opened such as when my mother
in her last illness snarled and spat and how this lifted my dour father
into a patient tenderness thereby astounding everyone
but mostly it hardens who we always were
if you’ve been let’s say a glass-half-empty kind of girl
you wake to the chorus of geese overhead
forlorn for something has softened their nasal voices
their ugly aggression on the ground they’re worse than chickens
but flying one leader falling back another moving up to pierce the wind
no one in charge or every one in charge in flight each limited goose
adjusts its part in the cluster just under the clouds
do they mean together to duplicate the cloud
like the pelicans on the pond rearranging their shadows
to fool the fish another collective that constantly recalibrates but fish
don’t need to reinvent themselves the way geese do
when they negotiate the sky
on the fixed
unyielding ground there is no end to hierarchy
the flock the pack the family you know it’s true if you’re
a take-charge kind of girl I recommend
houseplants in the windows facing south
the cacti the cyclamen are blooming on the brink
of winter all it took was a little enforced deprivation
a little premature and structured dark
BIRCH
before it’s too late I need to study the great religions time
is speeding up in the bad movie of my life months fly off
the calendar or the camera stays fixed on one tree
in leaf no leaves in leaf sunrise sunset
as the great Yiddish musical says
and then the chuppah the goblet smashed delirious dancers
parading the newlyweds in chairs like royalty but why
give up those beasts whose hooves leave valentines
for us in the muddy sty and why so much anxiety
regarding women ditto Mary’s
beatific smile but I like distinctive hats on those in charge
and I know I need a little intercession spilt salt
flung over the shoulder a daily lineup facing east
though some of us have to pray in our personal tents
like snails
a wedding in a garden
suits me fine the flowers left unsacrificed
it’s Adam and Eve except that Adam had no mother
no one who worried about that missing rib now incarnate
wearing white like a young birch beside my boy who’s grown
bewitched looking nowhere but at her I know that look
a Druid with his chosen tree he might as well
be on his knees he needs an altar something old something
once revered perhaps I could volunteer bring on the saw the guests
can bow their heads and count the rings the years
BEAR
pressed full-length against the screen unzipping it
for a better grip to help him help himself to the seed and the suet
slung high under the eave by the man
who has charged down from the bedroom onto the porch
in his white loincloth like David against Goliath
but only one good lung shouting swearing
and behind him the woman caught
at the lip of the lit kitchen
where was my sister
with her gun or would she be praying since she prays routinely
for a parking spot and there it is or would she be speechless for once
that this man so moderate so genial so unlike me
had put himself one body-length away from a full-grown bear
or would she be saying you my dear are the person who married him
which of course I did I did and I stood behind him
as he stood his ground on the ground that is our porch
you can see
the marks gouged by the famous claws on the wall inside new screen
now laced by a wire trellis on which nothing climbs
a vertical electric fence one of us thinks
the bear can hear it hum from the edge of the woods
watching us like a child sent to his room as we grill the salmon
we spiked with juniper berries the other one thinks
the plural pronoun is a dangerous fiction the source
of so much unexpected loneliness
CHAMELEON
beside myself in Texas the doctors asking my beloved
to give his pain a number one to ten his answer is always
two I tell them eight the holly bush
in the yard is putting out new leaves
which makes its resident lizard bright green also light brown
along its slender spine a plausible twig
except the lining of its mouth is red as it puts away
in three quick bites some kind of fly and then at its throat
a rosy translucent sac swells and subsides maybe peristaltic
pushing its meal forward or maybe preening for a mate or maybe
residual from the blooming hibiscus shrub or maybe learned from frogs
that also live in a tree but singing is dangerous if you mean
to replicate vegetation
O exquisite creature
whose dull cousin back in Vermont the brown lizard
navigates our dooryard by alternating pairs of elbows like oars
determined and clumsy moving across the gravel yet moving forward
I see you do not move unless you need to eat you almost fool
the mockingbird nearby in a live oak tree flinging out another’s song
which is me which which is me
LAMENT
absence neither sweet nor bitter
without the aftertaste of willfulness does it happen
as the dipper fixed in the northern sky turns
to lie on its side no longer facing east
where in late summer the bull rises with its bright red eye
or is it more like a rock in the swollen stream millennia
to bind its layered parts then battered cleaved
then one half tumbled away
idiopathic is what they say to say
no evident cause no trigger no blame except to blame
the way the world winds down winds up again shifting particles
as easily as pollen in the wind
stars stone lichen glued to the stone a human hand
and so one hand withdrawn from the other hand
what had been paired a left a right
every cell divides
in order to multiply it’s where we began
SPRING
years of unearthing the rocks out of the field and soon enough
you’ve built a stone wall the longer the marriage
the less the need for trying to agree but we’ve agreed
what will happen at the end of it nothing