fallow ground risen
on stilts of ice
how fun to crunch
in new winter boots
through a snow squall
the sun’s inflorescent glow
drawing me on with its
mirage of comfort
to find that fabled spot
out of the wind
Fallow
The Idea of Wallace Stevens in Plummer’s Hollow
reading in the woods
book open to the sky
wandering snowflakes
vanish into the text
which is after all
mostly white space
something like a cloud
downloading more cloud
a woodpecker taps
a dead tree creaks in the wind
a hunter’s trail camera
wears a cap of snow
i practice solitude
one day at a time
for how in the holy
hell of other people
could grief still surface
its ancient ice
where in the limbo
of this floating world
could a bear blank as death
still find footing
how in god’s name
is anyone not yet numb
i close the book to preserve
its idea of order
from all these freelance
asterisks and daggers
untamed annotation leading
nowhere but here
Our Lady of the Alleghenies
so often the sky looks more
maternal than the earth
i am listening to the traffic
of wind through bare trees
snow on the cliffs growing
roots of ice
from the drained lake
a mechanical thumping
I recall a feeder stream
in lurid unrhyming orange
what’s behind the allegheny front
but played-out coal
the late afternoon light
gains a hint of sunset
warm air dancing with cold air
the clouds turn voluptuous
and the distance even bluer
my own mountain included
on the way home
the apparition of an old man
bent nearly double beside the road
dragging a full bin of trash
the next day snow falls
soft and heavy even in the valleys
with winds off the front
molehills become mountains again
trees are striped white
on the weather side
down in the hollow i spot
the first winter wren in weeks
bobbing with excitement
at the end of a snowy limb
Les fleurs de l’hiver
in a brown study of a winter
anything bright draws the eye
one snowflake
wandering through the forest
the scarlet crest
of a pileated woodpecker
her knocks inaudible
above the ridgetop wind
working her snag all the while
i sip my afternoon tea
under a table mountain pine
whose sighs are endless
the sun almost comes out
but then it doesn’t
graupel ticking in the leaves
leads me to witch’s butter
a yellow rose turned
to enchanted flesh
feeding on the fungi they say
that feed on the dead
orange ellipses
on black birch
when bees are imaginary
any brightness can bloom
even green rocks held aloft
by upturned roots
or corrugated steel
chthonic with rust
below the ruin of a pine
sky filling the round holes
where limbs once stretched
toward the sun
Sacerdotal
the maple with a double helix
of poison ivy succubi
its branches that are not its branches
just as naked now
the beech with a hidden hollow
hoarding meltwater
skinny stalks in the meadow
fern tangles reduced to ribs
winter makes it easy to see
and miss the missing
*
but trees can shine
in an icy blue depth of sky
and church bells from town
remind me it’s sunday
so i walk among ridgetop oaks
as if through a cathedral
who can resist a bit
of sabbath-day LARPing
to my usual seat
on a stack of flat rocks
cue a coyote trotting in
from the other direction
who stops 50 feet away
and gazes past me
flag of breath curling up
into the sunlight
and takes a few more steps
as i reach for my phone
a flash of sun from
the reflective case
and coyote is disappearing down-ridge
tail streaming behind
a lapse in faith
i instantly regret
my consumer’s impulse to capture
to have and to hold
whatever sacrament may exist
apart from the encounter itself
i think of those who will never
see a carnivore in the wild
or walk in a true forest
or visit the ocean
too poor or too much
in the middle of things
either way a poverty
that should appall us
*
i finish my tea
begin to feel a kind of warmth
a split in the heartwood
of an old black cherry tree
opens with a ratchety cry
wound like a sideways mouth
taking all
the wind’s calls
no room for piety in this hymnal
the earth has teeth
Weather Report
it’s january just by the light
and the emptiness of the forest
with so few birds or insects
what’s left to hum or buzz
unfrozen earth under my boots
still has a bit of give
one day i’m in the fog
translucent and vague
the next day it’s wind
obsessively turning pages
fog lends the moss
a certain radiance
i step on it as if sinking
into the lushest life
wind brings percussion
to the treetops
creaking and clacking except
in the heart of the spruce grove
where a woodpecker taps
to the end of a limb and flies off
fog may make me
a better listener
but the wind shows me
how to breathe
from that still and empty place
deep within
Ground Control
all day my left hand has been
so much colder than my right
the sun barely rises
a plane circles as if lost
it feels like a mirage
this snowlessness in january
leafless treetops intricate
against the clouds
frozen bubbles in an old pond
where frogs sleep
i have been playing scholar
reading commentaries on commentaries
now i walk a trail that doesn’t bend
for more than a mile
as if i needed to know
what solitude looked like
beside the unflagging river
somehow older than the hills
yellow trucks lined up beside
a blue-gray mountain of gravel
where highways meet
under a clearing sky
hemlock trees have found footholds
in crumbling shale cliffs
at the trailhead an inverted canoe
shelters three shelves of books
i read the titles: a time to kill
to love again
i only know who i am when
i am somebody else
which could be a commentary
on writers of commentaries
but the sky seems like
a good place for canoes
all this walking i do
has led me to a delusion
that there’s such a thing
as solid ground
when it’s just my feet
learning how to take root
Burlesque
In a forest of headless trees, the one tree with a burl is Pope of Fools.
It’s no accident that burl rhymes with pearl. I mean, it is an accident, but one that makes you think.
If you’re ever in the woods and feel as if you’re being watched, that may be due to the presence of burls. Though to me they have more of a listening air about them.
Brain surgeons could train on them but don’t, as far as I know. Woodworkers could turn them into bowls, and some do.
Such a bowl wouldn’t do for an ordinary salad. It would have few if any practical applications. You’d just want to have it out on display where you and your friends can gather around, standing very still and whispering whenever there’s a wind.
On the Ownership of Mountains
We have our own private mountains, but are they already too tired from waiting for us?
Etel Adnan
a break in the rain
itself a break in the snow
i take a chance on a walk
on my own mountain
the one i live on but also
the one that lives in my head
without their leaves
and most of their birds
the moss-footed trees
couldn’t be quieter
where snow lay until yesterday
the forest floor glistens
the sun is a bright wound
that soon heals over
two ravens converse
from the tops of adjacent trees
croaking high and low
they fly off into the clouds
then the fluting of a goose
with 27 followers
so low over the trees i swear
i feel the breeze from their wings
the tiredness drains
from my legs as i walk
i’m stopped by gnarled
skeletons of mountain laurel
one still clinging
to a fallen oak leaf
what is this blight
where are the snows of yesteryear
i pass a hollow tree just in time
to see its resident porcupine
tail like a spiny piñata
disappearing up inside
below on the road a fresh litter
of chewed-off hemlock twigs
the creek is high but clear
boisterous but well-behaved
yesterday’s ice already seems
as far-fetched as a dream
but how is it that even in winter
a mountain can give clean water
to the mink and muskrats downstream
the heron and trout
a forest grows fitter as it ages
better at filtering water
better at storing carbon
even in steep mountain soil
so the oaks as they sleep
are making fresh compost
growing the mountain
they grow on
attentive in a way that i
alleged part owner could never be
whose woods these really are
i think i know
a land trust oversees their right
not to be destroyed
but the mountain belongs
as all mountains do to the moon
earth’s own private mountain
alive only in our oceanic bodies
which are made for walking
for circling like pilgrims or scavengers
for going from full to dark
to full again
January Thaw Walk
Bell Gap again
raindrops land with a random
industrial rhythm
on the metal roof of a trail shelter
wrapped in fog
a flash of white from a woodpecker’s wings
as i set out again
feeling parenthetical
under a black umbrella
at the two mile marker
a greenbriar vine’s final leaf
fog retreating up the mountain
doesn’t use the trail
the wet cliffs seem to glow
i page through shelves of blue shale
looking for fossils i find
hibernating lady beetles
and snow hiding below the rocks
protected by rhododendron leaves
that must’ve been stripped off
by high winds
in the place of white birches
i remember my former life
in a distant city
my own tongue gone strange
i walk through a river of cold air
flowing down the gorge
at the by-gone railroad’s
horseshoe bend up the mountain
entering the cloud
i pull on my poncho
to the accelerating pulse
of a ruffed grouse drumming
i’m agog at the beadwork
of rain on every twig
ridge lines begin to emerge
above the clouds
an erasure as selective as
a song dynasty landscape
hiding a highway
and half the sounds of traffic
four chickadees forage
in the trailside sumacs
a white birch appears
through a hole in the clouds
on the side of the next mountain
but i’m turning back
on the slope below me
stark naked branches
where a porcupine has been
exercising his teeth
feeling peckish myself
i pick up a bunch of wild grapes
that old taste of wine
left out too long