Monsoon

amanita half-eaten
by a white fog of mold

what makes me think
i alone can stay dry

we appear to have entered
a monsoon season

and the spongy moths are mating
having prospered during the drought

the dusty-winged males flutter up
at my every step

through an ankle-high
grove of sassafras sprouts

to my seat against an oak
the sassafras in my thermos

and a seethe of traffic
from the interstate below

losing all its teeth
in the rain-fattened moss

a foot away from my right foot
a green stick caterpillar

clings to the end
of a ghost pipe

the way new beliefs
take root in a convert

held up rigidly
against the clouds

White Solstice

sun summoning from a white sky
the ridgetop oaks’ fuzzy shadows

gnomons enough to mark
the summer solstice

in one patch of half-sunlight
a box turtle’s red eye blinks

while a scarlet tanager flutters
in the canopy on dark wings

how cool the ghosts
of burning forests have kept us

it’s late morning and i’m still
in long sleeves

a breeze pages through the oaks
a revelation of caterpillars

and the tanager is a quick study
warbling as he hunts

one tree bears a vertical slit
of sky and leaves

crossed by a wide scar
straight through the heartwood

where two intertwined trunks
failed to fuse

and this cross made by a cross
bears an immense green crown

as it should for standing up
to all our weather

eyelids drooping i walk on
into a summer afternoon

the field has its sparrows
and the eastern wood its pewees

but i am melancholy as a catbird’s
parody of a wood thrush

for true refinement can only
be learned from the masters

which is perhaps why the sun
in firefly season

models itself after
that glowworm the moon

East of Eden

millipede under
the lip of my rock

curling into a question mark
as i stand to go

among mountain laurel blossoms
their sticky white cups

falling in the drought-stricken woods
with audible ticks

we’ve had a taste of rain
the moss is soft underfoot

the breeze carries the despairing
rage of a pair of birds

watching their children die
in the sunless tunnel of a snake

who is presumably savoring
her only meal of the week

knowledge of good and evil
extracts a terrible toll

while two trains
meet at a crossing

two broken chords disharmonizing
clear to high heaven

the way my two grandmothers
sometimes meet in me

the strident one
and the contemplative one

on bad air days when everyone
else also sees

this achingly beautiful planet
through a veil of ash

and i don’t know how it seems
to extraterrestrial visitors

but on earth the truth is bitter
it’s an acquired taste

Fire Weather Watch

the dead are not like us
they come in simpler shapes

with worm-eaten hearts
hot for fire, whisper the oaks

in the curling litter of their leaves
under yellowing bracken

a weasel out hunting at dawn
sounds as loud as a deer

on the ridgetops a slow dry rain
of caterpillar droppings

as the cloudless sky whitens
with ash from Canada

no wonder so many insects
seem drawn to my sweat

and a hummingbird comes
each morning to drink from the hose

my deep-mulched garden
will die when my well runs low

but not before I’ve been crowned
emperor of toads

Gestalt

sun in the crowns
of the oaks

ringing less
like a church bell

than the beeper on a truck
backing into a quarry pit

coming over top of the mingled
voices of birds

whose throats each mix
two vocal tracks

into a single braid ah
the wood thrush

redstart red-eyed vireo
and that alluring odor

from a bank of dame’s-rocket
trembling in one spot

i thought just as a chipmunk’s
tail was disappearing

into the lilies
of the valley

*

Natures are close to one another. It is by practice that they become far apart.
Kongzi, Analects 17.2 (tr. Brian W. Van Norden)

High and lonesome

Sam Pepys and me

The King’s birthday.
Busy all the morning writing letters to London, among the rest one to Mr. Chetwind to give me an account of the fees due to the Herald for the Order of the Garter, which my Lord desires to know.
After dinner got all ready and sent away Mr. Cook to London with a letter and token to my wife.
After that abroad to shore with my Lord (which he offered me of himself, saying that I had a great deal of work to do this month, which was very true).
On shore we took horses, my Lord and Mr. Edward, Mr. Hetly and I, and three or four servants, and had a great deal of pleasure in riding. Among other things my Lord showed me a house that cost a great deal of money, and is built in so barren and inconvenient a place that my Lord calls it the fool’s house.
At last we came upon a very high cliff by the sea-side, and rode under it, we having laid great wagers, I and D. Mathews, that it was not so high as Paul’s; my Lord and Mr. Hetly, that it was. But we riding under it, my Lord made a pretty good measure of it with two sticks, and found it to be not above thirty-five yards high, and Paul’s is reckoned to be about ninety. From thence toward the barge again, and in our way found the people at Deal going to make a bonfire for joy of the day, it being the King’s birthday, and had some guns which they did fire at my Lord’s coming by. For which I did give twenty shillings among them to drink.
While we were on the top of the cliffe, we saw and heard our guns in the fleet go off for the same joy. And it being a pretty fair day we could see above twenty miles into France.
Being returned on board, my Lord called for Mr. Sheply’s book of Paul’s, by which we were confirmed in our wager. After that to supper and then to musique, and so to bed.
The pain that I have got last night by cold is not yet gone, but troubles me at the time of pissing.
This day, it is thought, the King do enter the city of London.

wind give me
an account of the road

work is a horse
riding me

and in so inconvenient a place
high in the sticks

no one coming by
for a drink

I turn my book
into a bed


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 29 May 1660.

Bullshit Walks

found in a flower
one beetle’s quota of sleep

longhorned to graze
in pastures of white

Clintonia or Solomon’s plume
and soon the black cohosh

looking up i spot a raccoon’s
wide-eyed mask

returning my gaze from the crotch
of a dying hemlock

every day has its dog
on Thursday for a long moment

i walked with a yearling bear
ahead of me on the trail

whose walk is it then
one can only wander

on the steep slope
above the railroad

i find a patch of jacks-in-the-pulpit
that the deer missed

a train hurtles past with blue
containers of stink

our daily delivery of refuse
from the megalopolis

i climb through century-old quarries
rocks shift underfoot

still settling
where mountain holly blooms

the breeze wafts ambrosia
from some reclusive azalea

i pause for breath
a vireo chirps in alarm

i stop for lunch
a hooded warbler scolds

down-trail a second-generation
mourning cloak butterfly

circles its dappled
patch of sun

territory folks defending
their stake in the sticks

while a distant cuckoo
chants her own name

gorging on tent caterpillars
and spotted lanternfly larvae

letting strangers
foster her offspring

this is the background
i can’t include in my shots

whenever i stop to snap photos
of new or bigger plants

how green is my mountain now
with so much CO2 in the air

my ankles brush against
the Aladdin lamps of pale corydalis

rising through the still-tender
hayscented ferns

and a mosquito sinks her rig
right through my hat

the sun may descend into haze
but the light’s still perfect

the mountain’s shadow stretching
across the farm valley to my east

i watch a manure spreader
ply the rows of a sterile field

growing the dead zone
out of mind in the Chesapeake

until the wind shifts
and i beat a retreat

back from my walk i turn
the garden with a fork

straining out noodley roots
of invasive brome

dry fists of dirt
crumble at the touch

Beltane

and what if my photos lose
any center of interest
becoming pure tapestry

i want no subjects
i want the impossible world itself
without me in it

after a late hard frost
i want to stroke each velvety leafling
on the mountainside

nothing is realer right now
than this green
i get off my train of thought for it

for an enormous oak with tiny leaves
twirling on their twigs against the clouds
like larval dragons

as the wind turns rainy
as a dog’s tongue
and the green fades with the daylight

i count mountains to fall asleep
leaving room in my dreams
for their lost languages

before the Great Hill People
wiped out the People
of the Blackened Ridge Pole

and Scotsmen came from Ulster
enlarged the void with rifles
and whiskey made from maize

clearcutting and prospecting
shooting the cougars
trapping out the wolves

without whom an alien
far less palatable greenness
spreads over the land like mold

i have been battling it with both hands
pulling out rampant barberry
privet and autumn olive

stopping to listen to new warblers
still flying thousands of miles
just to breed here

that nasal buzz
of a black-throated green
or a black-throated blue

and my camera is only a phone
with so many missing contacts
i hold it up to the sky

Dispatch from a Warming Planet

an April morning turns torrid
it begins with a buzz

a rustle in the oak leaves
shed last fall

as a bumblebee emerges
spotless from the earth

below the damp bells
of huckleberry blossoms

and every dangling catkin
in the wind’s index

morels raise
their hitchhikers’ thumbs

each webbed with a maze
of forking paths

i find the remains of a list
in my back pocket

the washing machine has
erased every last item

and puzzled the paper up
like gray honeycomb

this is what happens when i try
to collect myself

better just to focus
on finding places

where i can step without crushing
fresh-leafed ephemera

a whiff of smoke from a forest fire
five miles away

i struggle up the hill in the heat
a black-and-white warbler wheezes

i find a spot of shade where
witch hazels have leafed out

sitting in gray among gray rocks
i’m invisible to a groundhog

who wanders past without
so much as a glance

soon i too resume sleep-
walking in the heat

my shoes turn
yellow with pollen

a bumblebee vanishes
into a vole tunnel

a mile down the ridge i find
a pile of owl feathers

just beginning to scatter
in the midday glare

Four Nights on Earth

1

the evening sky pulses
like an organ of light and void

the planets aren’t up
to anything i tell myself

a weasel’s shrill cry
behind me in the meadow

i recall the seething darkness
of tadpoles in a shrinking puddle

and the predatory newt who watched
over them as they hatched

east- and west-bound freights
pass each other moaning

a satellite crosses the heavens
without so much as a twinkle

2

dawn sky
through skinny branches

a thin blade of moon
in its halo like a fish on a platter

a quiet trickle from the spring
gives way to guttural trucks

the open range of the night
is closing fast

any minute now the birds begin
their summoning spells

3

if the earth’s ache for rain
should become my own

let me suckle at the root
of the lightning tree

for seventeen years
like a cicada

thunder might become
an antidote to numbness

there may be a howl
that holds us all in its bowl

spring peepers will keep up
their transmissions

4

ground fog and glowworms
build and fade
below the milky way

meteors leave
the briefest of trails

on the horizon the blink
blink of a red-eye flight

i try to picture other skies
elsewhere in the galaxy

what exotic stars
what mysteries of lifelessness

and how many more lives
might i have i wonder

as these stars start to fade
and tires resume
their dull rounds

giving the road called i-99
its red breakfast