Heat Indices

Sad broken angel

Bombs go off right across the world
from where I live, among a people who
look like me. This is news because
they are not at war — or at least,
not very much — & because they look
just like me. Meanwhile in America
we are blowing up mountains
& burning their black hearts to keep cool.
Meanwhile in America we are setting off
three & a half million pounds of explosives
every day in this undeclared war
against ourselves. This is not news because
it happens every day & is therefore
nothing new; because there is no easy-
to-tar enemy except perhaps for
the black-hearted mountains;
& because the people who die from it
die slowly & unspectacularly,
& are too often guilty of being poor.
Meanwhile in America it is hot
& getting hotter, & this is news
because it keeps us indoors, glued
to the news or at least to the sweat-
sticky couch. Meanwhile in America
the news anchors make a show
of indignation at the sun, righteous
& well-coiffed as fallen angels, &
never speculate about why we might
really be so hot, never mention
that we are blowing up mountains
& burning their black hearts to keep cool.

*

Note: I don’t mean to minimize the horror of the events in Norway, which now seem actually to be more about the massacre on the island than the initial bomb blasts. Every violent death, especially the death of a child, is a tragedy regardless of where in the world it happens — even schoolchildren in Appalachia who get brain tumors from having the misfortune of living too close to coal processing plants.

Dowsing

“…and at the iron’s point
there seemed to be a little fire.”
~ St. Theresa of Avila

Sunflower bowing to the east,
tethered to the blazing sun—

Sparse carpet of moss with hidden
tongues desiring volumes of water—

Tell me again the story of the saint,
her every shudder pressed in sensuous

folds of marble; and of the angel standing
above her with his spear of gold—

Red brick dust, planks of weathered
wood crumbling in the courtyard—

No golden dome here but relentless sky
under which everything’s stripped of rapture—

Pots of baked earth, each marked
sin cere, distinct, unalloyed—

I run my hands over the rough, dry clay,
loving best those surfaces whose cracked

veins might lead divining rods to all
the parched suburbs of the heart.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

John Davis visits Plummer’s Hollow as part of TrekEast

Cross-posted to the Plummer’s Hollow website.

John Davis photographing downy rattlesnake plantain in our 3-acre deer exclosure

UPDATE (6/22): Listen to Emily Reddy’s interview with John in Plummer’s Hollow for a news story on our local NPR station, WPSU.

(For the record, Bruce Bonta is Marcia Bonta’s husband, not her son! I’m the son.)

*

We’ve been honored to host John Davis from the Wildlands Network for two nights in Plummer’s Hollow as part of his epic, 6,000-mile muscle-powered journey to raise awareness of wildlands connectivity in the eastern U.S. and Canada. He started in Key Largo in February and hopes to make it to the Gaspe Peninsula by October, traveling by boat, hiking, and biking, visiting as many wildlands in the East as possible. You can follow along via the TrekEast blog on the Wildlands Network website and/or follow @TrekEast on Twitter for more up-to-the-minute photos and brief audio blogposts.

John pitched camp in the woods up beyond the garage, and uploaded three different audio posts last night and this morning, before getting underway around 7:00.

Woodrat (2:48)

Energy Assault (3:04)

Nature and Energy (3:21)

John Davis' campsite in Plummer's HollowJohn was one of the founders of Wild Earth magazine and the Wildlands Project, as it was then called, which together played a pivotal role in shaping our own thinking as eco-centric forest stewards, helping us see how our property fit into the larger conservation picture, and making us strong advocates for ecosystem recovery and large carnivore restoration, among other things. So we were pleased to be able to meet John and show him around the property, and compare notes about the environmental movement over the past 25 years. Also, as a long-time blogger and multimedia guy, I must say I’m very impressed by the electronic communications system John and his support staff have set up. He’s an excellent extemporaneous speaker, as the audio posts demonstrate, and also a gifted listener, so if you get a chance to go see him as TrekEast continues, don’t miss it. (His next appearance is this very evening in State College — see the Centre Daily Times for details.)

John Davis - heading out

Superb frozen drink machine (unsolicited email)

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Discordant

Dear jake-brake and tire whine
slicing like a stonecutter’s tool
through the scented dark, it’s been
a while but I know all about your

penchant for early morning throat-
clearing, those loud flushing sounds
you like to make from the outhouse
of out there. As usual they’re

reminders that beneath fleecy
cloud border or vivid blue veins
of water and sky, you’re hard at work
prying the tarp of summer loose.

Oh soon enough, soon enough: we’ll turn
a corner, and the avenues now flushed cerise
and heavy with crepe myrtle will streak
like watercolors left out in the rain.

There you are in the hot heart of pavement,
shimmering like the proverbial mirage. There
you are in every syncopated bird call; chilled
taste of winter tucked in every bite of sour fruit.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Among the Brambles

Brambly grave

Working through a black-
berry patch, you learn
a new way to move, step
high & slow as a heron,
pivot to trample back-
wards in your big boots,
& lean nimble as a lover
into the fiercest thorns
to get free. These are
not skills of widespread
applicability. But one
day when the sweat dries
& the mosquito’s skirl
dwindles to a soft wind
in the inner ear, you may
find yourself stretching,
stretching, stretching for
that last sweet berry
& wondering why in hell
your hand won’t move.

Real

My youngest girl asks for stories—
Real stories tonight, she says, not
made-up
. Like what I did, summers when

I was her age: mornings with the wash billowing
on the line, evenings too humid for clothes
but too buggy for bare skin (smolder and fume

of mosquito coils in terra cotta dishes).
And so I tell her again of sandals kicked off
on the wooden porch, reading Gasoline Alley

and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not in
the Sunday paper, while eating mouth-
puckering green plums dipped in salt

and sugar. Sputter and flare of kerosene
lamps, lizards skittering across living
room walls. Strident cry of a black and

orange rooster tied to the tree in
the yard (its heaped bones decorate
lunch plates the next day). I have

nostalgia for these things, not
necessarily for their pieties.
And she, she wants to smell

the camphor escaping from ancient
wardrobes I pry open; wants to taste,
along with me, the star-shaped indentation

on my father’s pinky finger where the nail
should have been; to imagine the ghost nun’s
shadow beside the bell-pull at school,

summoning souls from the other side.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Artifactual

Faceless statue

When a relationship dies, what happens
to the orphaned plus sign?
Might it live on as a cemetery cross
marking some otherwise dubious grave?
At one time it could’ve been reborn as
a TV antenna mast or the minimal
skeleton of a scarecrow. Now
even crossroads seem archaic,
& a crucifix is a piece of jewelry
to finger in times of stress,
finger & twirl on its chain
around the neck — a thing humans wear
instead of a bell.
In extreme cases, the plus sign
can lose its vertical axis
& merge with the horizon,
beyond which, as we know,
there’s nothing but subtraction.

Letter to Attention

Dear restless, wandering mind, sometimes
you really must try to chisel your focus—

Try to listen to the soft-spoken woman
who leads us through downward-facing dogs,

warrior poses and planks, steeple
mudras, salutations, lunges—

instead of to the growing industrial whine
of your belly, where no other breakfast

but the half-cup of soy latte now sloshes
around, a whirlpool of acids and worry. Keep

count of the breaths as they come through
the branches in the upside-down trees

of your lungs. Keep count as they exit:
the thing to do is turn them into things

with wings— cicadas, perhaps. Or tiny
fireflies throwing their low-wattage beams

at the dark. Effortless effort, the teacher
intones. So don’t let the ten year old’s

giggling distract you as you try and fail
to maintain your balance, coming out

of the dancer’s pose. Are you still with me?
I know you’re tired, and you want to press

your cheek on the mat or stay supine as a corpse.
But the voice nudges you back to the shore, saying

Open your arms and legs like a starfish, open
the cage of your heart; look at the unblinking sun
.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Defiler

Lymantriidae: family of moths, many of its component species referred to as Tussock moths; Lymantria means “defiler”.

Before Todos los Santos, the Day
of the Dead, armed with whitewash,
buckets, and brooms we visit
the graves of our dearly departed,

to clear the gathered debris of
the previous year— dry leaves
and bracken pushing up through
cracked concrete, bits of amber-

colored glass from broken Cerveza
Negra
bottles. Someone’s grand-
father’s grave has been spray-painted
with graffiti; and the stone cherubs’

wings have been chipped for sport.
What do we know of eternity? What
could we do to stave off the hardening
froth of days? In the groves of trees,

above rows of headstones, cicadas rub
their tymbals and sing their heated songs
of courtship. Two months later, all of them
will die, leaving behind eggs that will emerge

in seventeen years. Among the skeletal branches,
the tussock moth caterpillar is busily at work.
For every mouthful of leaf, a tufted crown; red-
light glands on its back signaling imminent

danger: dazzling mystery: inevitable conclusion.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.