Birch Lane

Within this house, within this heat of home,
Hearth's heart, I grow, speaking a silent tongue
That knows no lies. I lie beside, among
These wooden wards. I wait in this bright room,
My words green as the sea and quick as foam.
The seven trees surround me. They are hung
With leaf and light, are limitless and young.
Back in the chickencoop a cool gloom
Of straw and dust offers an egg and three
Gray feathers while the rooster scratches, calls
His hens to him. I call my words to me.
They sound and settle well within these walls.

The living room at Birch Lane, 1975

Sprinkler System

I have laid the lines straight as a string.
When I twist the tap, the sprinklers jet
And spurt and spasm, building up to bring
Their drizzle down to green. I stoop to set
All heads aright. When I dug the stripes
Out of the lawn and laid the plastic there
And sealed the joints and brought the riser pipes
Up where I wanted, I could see the air
Already fill with mist and moisture. Wet
Was in the wind that wanted me to slake
This thirst. Underneath the walk I set
My iron pipe to pound and drill and make
A passage. I bring water where I will.
I can make the front lawn shiver, strain
The summer sunshine through a spray and fill
The morning with the sound of falling rain.

In My Garden

In my garden dig among the roots
Of vanished trees. The soft wood splinters
As the shovel chisels it away.
I use a maul to shatter histories
Of plums and apples. On my boots
The dirt of orchards and the winters
They have seen. I see today
The blossoms transformed into mysteries.
I wade among the buried trunks,
A bird of weight, my wait suspended
On the absent limbs. With shovel stem
I dredge and prune. I cut and carry
From my yard the swollen chunks
Of rotten wood, woods that are ended
And are dead. Alive, I wade in them
And in them find a sanctuary
For my growing. I am warden
Of the dying and the living in my garden.

My son Jon in our newly planted garden, 1976.

Apple Tree

The tree fulfills the basket. The green globes
Are splashed with red. I twist each from its stem
To stack like eggs in wicker. My eye probes
The dusty green leaves to discover them,
Earth’s first fruit and of my eye. There’s a job
To save for Saturdays, a search for rot
To use my paring knife upon, blunt blob
Of codling moth. I censor the black clot
Of eaten core. With my sharp knife I gut
The apple and with steel blade I grind
The crisp white flesh to juice. The apple cut
And saved and stored and labeled and defined.
Definitions that cannot acknowledge
What this tree has hidden in its foliage.

Our apple tree in bloom, 1976.

Garden

Sunlight in my garden stray and stumble
Down the paths, beside the plots where water
Drips and dribbles. As my cultivator
Chops and channels, so my plants assemble
In their vegetable splendor, their shows
Of shapes and shades and colors, textures strange
As any organs mammals boast. They range
Diverse, divulge their difference. Here grows
A jagged artichoke. There smooth green scale,
Asparagus. And lay the rich red rib
Of rhubarb underneath a poison bib.
See a carrot man in his earth jail
And sweet slick melon on his slip. I seed
The backyard soil and bring it to solution.
I bring my private order to confusion
And separate the greens to plant and weed.
A carnival extravaganza grows
In urban earth caged in my garden rows.

Our herb garden, 1979.

Metempsychosis

With my nine-pound maul I exorcise ghosts.
Beating the sheet out of this garbage can,
This den of dents, this rusted also-ran,
Unhandled, lidless. In its belly hosts
Of harmless discards served their time
Waiting for collection, rot, rebirth.
The endless cycle of our endless earth.
Enough philosophy. Now I must rhyme
These words as I maul and mash the metal,
Crumple a cylinder to crinkly ball,
Collapse convex capacity to small
Enough to throw away. I unsettle
Seam and rivet, flatten, bend, entomb
A rusty jumble in its brand-new twin.
The trash container's trash. End and begin,
Proving once more we are what we consume.
I knew that already. And so did you.
The old is always stuffed inside the new.

New garbage can, 1985

The Old Lawn Mower

I think I've had it, pushing this old lawn
Mower where the grass clusters rank and thick.
I jerk it back over what it skids on
And the damn grass catcher falls off. The slick
Coarse stems spring up behind me while I nurse
The catcher wire back on a rusty prong
That's forged in hell to be unfit. I curse
And sweat and yearn for other mowers, long
For silent swift suave electric snippers,
For one-lung loud gas monsters that disturb
Suburban Sunday sleep, Yankee clippers
That barber lawns from flower bed to curb.

Why do I trundle this stubborn steel reel
Edge to edge, rake what the careless cutter
Flings outside the tattered catcher and feel
Blisters break, longing for cocoa butter?
Sisyphus, I ceaselessly withdraw push,
Making my mowings into manicures.
Sometimes I fantasize lava rock, bush,
Bonsai, a static landscape that endures.

Dream on. I know this stubborn grass will grow
Again. And once again I'll grimly mow.

Where the Tree Fell

Watch the water as it winds
Its way over root, a tide
That clasped, unclasped, wound, rewound,
Drenching leavage, loam. Alone
This tree learned by rote the right
To root. Now broken branch, bough,
Trunk and terminus unknot.
Wild west winds brought this tree low,
As low as earth would allow.
Now wind blows where it is not.
Broken where it used to bow,
As tangled as words I write,
Giving to the living a loan
That opens earth, a raw wound
Where the tree roots were untied.
Roots too shallow for west winds.

Showing a green walnut husk from our tree, 1978.

The New Tree

Yesterday we bought ten feet of tree,
Sycamore (London plane) and laid it down
In the van – its top twigs poking me,
Tapping my top when I slowed in town.
Treefingers worried that the rootball,
Bleeding water through its plastic skull,
Would suffer a concussion. I drove all
The way home carefully, dug a hole full
Of future, released roots, pounded a stake
Close by. Then the new tree with its fragile
Branches, thin as pencils, ready to break
From a bird’s brief weight, from any agile
Breeze, stood–and was leashed with rubber ties
To the dead stake. Oh we’ll make it live
With compost, water, care, to delight eyes
And confound its keeper. It will give
Us leafings, pale peeling bark. It will show
Us how to root, to flourish and to grow.

The new sycamore tree, 1992.

Christmas Tree

You stand behind the couch like a big green
Dog, waiting to be petted. And you shed
Your shining needles. We must get a broom
To sweep up after you. The first thing seen
When the door is opened, your shaggy head.
You and your presence dominate the room.
What was it like before? Easy to clean,
Convenient. But now we find instead
Your bulky body and we must assume
That you have put down roots and that you mean
To stay forever. When we go to bed
We nod uneasily toward where you loom.
And in the morning we must squeeze between
You and the wall, brew coffee, toast our bread,
Share our Christmas breakfast with you know whom.

Our Christmas Tree, 1979.

Garage Door

Let my life lap with love the way these boards
Lap with each other. Let it no more move
From light than will the wood I hammer here,
Fastened with nails and tongue, secure in groove.
Let my life lap up light and then turn towards
The sun the way my silver dog laps
The jetting water. No thing hold more dear
Than how this dog drinks from her rainbow cup.
Let my lips love the lock and lilt of words
Enclosed in silence. My heart without fail
Tune to the tiny shiver in my ear,
And all my hammerstrokes dead on the nail.

Our house in 1983 had fresh paint and a new VW bus in the same colors.

Molly

I ask this dog for kindness. She will stand
And watch me wisely, move her ears, then bow
And settle on the floor, a furry sphinx.
A sphinx whose nose is in my startled hand
When I am least suspecting, maybe now
Or maybe later. If she ever thinks
Or what, is moot. Whatever I have planned
Is fine if she's included, never how
Nor why but only what. She shakes the kinks
Out of her neck. She waits for my command,
Limits her life to what I will allow,
And if I try to stare her down, she blinks.

Molly with my wife Susan, 1977.

The Old Dog

She used to bark the backyard clear of cats,
Rushing and roaring to the fence. Rattling
The gravel of the walk like a Gatling
Gun against the old boards in the back. That's 
Before. Last December when she went
To meet my son she stumbled on the front
Steps and fell. We laughed at her excitement
And helped her in. We didn't know it meant
This dog would lose her rolling rockingchair
Gait when she ambled along, that the climb
To the back porch would call for so such time
From now on. Approach, balk, try again where
The hind feet barely follow the sideways
Stumble up two low concrete steps. She's slow
Inside, sometimes uncertain where to go.
When she does find a place to lie, she splays
Her front paws forward and lets her hind end
Slump to the rug. Then she rolls to rest
On her side, sighs and groans. She does the best
She can. It isn't in her to pretend
To resurrection. Now it's enough for
Her to find a soft spot on a hardwood floor.

Molly, 1981.

Chicken Run

Within this fence the moulting chickens scratch
And shuffle in their run. They fill their crops
With corn and milo, while the rooster chops
The morning into meaning. He can catch
His pleasure and the hens'. My fingers snatch
His unborn children. I find malaprops,
Tomatoes with the blackened ends, their tops
Embroidered by some earwigs' koffeeklatsch.
I serve them to the chickens who detach
The parasite from host. They watch for hops
And eat those first. In their yard garden slops
All disappear before the bolt and latch
Shut down the coop. When I am done
With day, may mine be such a run.

Our chicken coop, 1979.

Pigeon on Her Eggs

Eye like a polished pebble, shiny, slick
And brown as earth, she raises a grey wing
And raps my hand. She fluffs her breast to bring 
Her size to angry and she hoots a thick
Short warning. I can see her eyelid click
On brown and glint of gold, can see the ring
Of darker grey around that eye. I swing
The lid shut on the eggbox, check the chick
Food and the watercan, decide to stick
As close to all my treasures, everything
I cover as that pigeon sticks. This spring
I’d like to lay my purposes on thick
And dusty hay and blink my broody eye,
Learn from the pigeon what to want and why.

Culling the Flock

I crouch low, left hand splayed,
A spray of fingers hard
Against the wire. I laid
These fingers down to ward
All space but this, this trap,
This corner, holding light
And shade and hen, a lap
Of feathers, grey and white.
I bear the body high.
The head and beak will reach
Far darkness down. I try
The stretch of neck for breech
On block. The feathers fill
With force, the dead head lies
Ablinking when I kill
To cull the flock to size.

The flock looking a bit nervous, with the chopping block on the right, 1978.

The Oracle

I hung the chain-sawed mask on the side wall,
Cedar against redwood plank. My sister said
It looked just like me. Mustache, bardic beard,
Blunt Norse nose, furrowed forehead. An old grape
Vine and Chilean jasmine loop their green
Lassoes. Ruby-throated hummingbirds feed
From a green glass bottle. In the late fall
When I prune I can see its poor rough head,
Its cracks and creases. And what has appeared
Between the lips? It’s a hole, a round shape
Leading to a bunch of buzzing bees. Seen 
But mostly heard. It is just what I need.
Carpenter bees inside a wooden mask.
Answering questions nobody will ask.

Temblor

What can you make of it when your own place
Shudders, shames you with dishevelment? How
Can you consider yourself grounded now?
Shaken, shocked, you realize what was space
For you and your workings may grow weary,
Weak-kneed, may shrug and turn away. You sigh,
Gather together broken trust. You try
Reassurance but find yourself leery,
Newly nervous. To a still stage you bring
Your own jumps, jitters, quirky queasy ways.
Imitating earth, you shiver. Your days
Now unfolded by the earth's folds. The thing
You will remember is how you found
That fundaments may come unfixed and shake,
Dissolve into the chaos of a quake,
Then settle into not-so-solid ground.
You will remember how the earth trembled
Before you and your life reassembled.

Older

And how could it all have happened like this? 
How could a spring day, a swim in a river 
End in a stucco house? Why do I shiver 
When I see the evening sky? Why do I miss 
Midnight and the solitary dark? After
The third drink, I fall to counting gray hair, 
Chores completed, chores undone. I and my chair 
Share easy conversation, soft laughter.
Finally I fill a clumsy tumbler
With morning water, set up the coffee, go
To bed heavy with hows and whys I know
Are halfway between history and slumber. 
Knowing my slow heartbeats will be strewn
Closer to midnight now, further from noon.

A drought killed one of the birch trees and a Honda Civic replaced our VW bus, 1996.