that gap between
crowns of adjacent trees
and what goes on underground
just one fling
on the way up
fox grape
Solomon’s seal
withered leaves curl around
the glossy black drupe
crustose lichen on a rock
its complex inner life
The Hollow (25)
leaning
this way or that
forest-dwelling goldenrod
not a mere patch
but a stand
the black cohosh
fairy bells
berried
under their leaves
naked-flowered tick trefoil
“leaflets three” but only
the name itches
The Hollow (24)
salamander
under the lifted rock
that frozen moment
turtleheads
self-consciously closing
my mouth
borer-killed
woodpecker-stripped
white
ashes
left behind
the salamander’s tail
goes on wriggling
The Hollow (23)
spicebush fills
the opening the big birch left
that allspice scent
“heteromorphic
self-incompatibility”
partridgeberry’s red pills
END OF PUBLIC ACCESS
sun shining right through
the plastic sign
where the road crosses the creek
a crayfish
walking upstream
The Hollow (15)
touch-me-not
the invasive stiltgrass stops
just short of it
glasswort
jumpseed
enchanter’s nightshade
a distant rooster
that gurgle we dug
this pit to reach as kids
it’s still down there
wingstem
at the old dump site
the bumblebee’s long tongue
Beside the stream
A bed of foamflowers—
carrion beetles are mating
on the corpse of a crow.
Violet Hill
The first surveyor—1795—
labeled this mountain Violet Hill.
Did he study it in the blue distance,
or see right at his feet
the crowds of violets fluttering
under the attention of the rain?
A warbler just back from the tropics
sings quietly, as if trying to locate
all the notes.
Door
A haze of jewelweed sprouts,
the dimpled embryonic leaves
like conjoined twins.
From the valley, the sound
of horses pulling a buggy
in their eight steel shoes.
The crooked sassafras—
something has found under its bark
a blood-colored door.
Up in the hollow
A small cloud on the cliff
above the railroad tracks—
the shadbush is in bloom.
As I drive up the hollow on
our one-lane road, a red-tailed hawk
passes me going down.
All the spring ephemerals are emerging,
leaves wrinkled and damp
like freshly pitched tents.
In hepatica time
It’s cold. Mid-day
and the hepatica flowers are still
only half-open, nodding
on their thin stalks.
My mother tallies them up—
stroke-marks in her notebook.
At the top of a hemlock tree,
a porcupine sleeps in a sunlit
halo of quills.