Advent 1

Dumb as Oaks

It is wind that speaks,
not the branch, the leaves
now gone, silent unless
trampled. Cry out.

When the branch breaks
it is the ice that sounds
the crack. Its tiny fingers
cannot help but hold or fall.

Melt will be months coming,
a long hibernation, unslept,
beard grown to length,
urge quieted down to resolve.

What is it we wait for,
dumb as oaks, gone as the grass
beneath swayed hills of snowdrift?
Certainly, there is something in that light.

The slant the birds know means:
nearly there, just wait for the
winds to shift, the familiar call
of that place is home too:

That branch that won't break.

Letter 1, October 17th

Particularly when

turning the corner

around the pond,

dried by half—

even now—from

summer drought,

I am compelled

to expect to see

you :  magically

reflected in the

darkest shadow

of wing in water.

Sometimes a dream

sneaks through a

morning haze,

sun a quarter hour

high in the rounded

distance, like a

foggy road slow

to burn, your

face appears,

as saintly as

the tall blue bird

keeping warm

in the golden

slice of new light

in preparation

for a long flight.

Let me beg you:

don’t stay gone

too long this year.

Proof

”[...] Everything in me
Wanted to bow down, to offer up,
To go barefoot, foetal and penitential,

And pray at the water's edge.”
[Seamus Heaney, ”Triptych” III: At the Water's Edge]


It wasn't the picture I was after,
the picture was proof.
The truth is: proximity was all
I desired.

That somehow closeness could prove
friendship, connection,community
led me to the side of the road,
against the barbed fence,
to the edge of the water.

Sometimes seeing is all prayer is.
Or is it: prayer is what seeing is?

Of the three prayers:
praise, forgive, & need,
I prefer the blue heron,
two legs in the water,
bill stabbing southward,
crown raised or fallen.

The moment wings stretch
into lazy flight is
prayer answered
& prayer denied.

There is no sense in waving
as you disappear.
But I have this picture,
& this poem as proof
against the slow current
of doubt.

Love Poem, December 1st

I am a seabird, you are the Arctic Ocean
I know your seasons, and your sanctuaries
And when I’m wheeling over your wild white horses
I know there’s nowhere else that I belong

[Stornoway, "Cold Harbour Road"]

The view from up here, soaring,
the view as only a sleeper sees,
not what is given for viewing
but what is wakefully missed
though unavoided, yet unseen.

Here your body curves into sleep,
the perfect contour, familiar lines
etched into my sleepy mind
wishing these wings were hands,
I'd give all this watery world for an island.

But to wake would be to fall,
to fall would be a graver loss,
a loneliness more pitiful than
even birdsong out of season,
hidden still behind skeleton trees.

To be awake, to be alone,
when the house sleeps,
when our children purr out dreams,
when even the coyotes stop their howling:
this is the time to hover above & look & look.

If you knew how I saw doubt disappear at each tide:
the breath's rise & fall through this not quite longest night,
through this beautiful untouched quiet,
you'd understand the more:
what this collection of feathers means to me.

Seasonal Invective Confession

Day 29

Everybody knows that September is the month for dying 

& October for being born. It's already November, 

already another number past the biblical midpoint, 

another pile of pages past the midterm, 

& again the worry of a wasted life 

still hammock free & temporarily hawkless.

What do birds know about disillusion anyhow,

that they show up to ghost a disenchanted morning?

What do they know of misplaced dreams, 

ill-timed despair, or the hunger of another plan?

They know the migratory urge, the seasonal pangs,

the Attic need to roost, nest, dally, & fly.

This is November. I know this feeling welling:

not regret exactly, but reproach, a weariness

of purpose that never works out as planned.

Is it that November is the polar twin of May:

the return of illusion with the migrating birds?

If only it was as simple as lift, flap, & glide.

Then again what do birds know about deadlines,

about stacks of unloved paper-hearted words,

about rushed poems that cannot find their ends?

Out of Cover

Day 28

The life outside this window
is larger than any metaphor's
circumference: fox on a hay-bale
or family of early cardinals,
decked in matching hats with
downy coats in stunning scarlet,
or perfect golden brown
& tints of every subtle pink.

What goes doesn't always stay gone,
what returns doesn't always make up,
but most of all, what hides someday
runs out of cover.

There's no need of metaphor then.

Watchers, US-69 South

The gnarled trees, mostly
cottonwood, rosebud,
& sycamore are lousy
with watchers: red-tailed,
red-shouldered, or
broad-winged raptors.

At the Miami County line
they start to turn dark-winged,
their light autumn bellies
shining in the midday glow.

These are not the same
frequent fliers of my daily drive:
these sentinels stay their posts
suggesting: we know you,
we've seen you before.
It's been too long.

Hide or Seek

November Poem a Day Challenge: Day 9

There are so many ways of playing:

each of the last two mornings

a mystery bird of prey in enormous

grey pinions has appeared on the

northern side of US-59 at the westerly

bend five miles north of the Kaw & Lawrence.

Once on the wing lifting its flight-feathers

up into the shedding tree line & out of sight

before I had even begun counting.

This morning she perched upon a half cut

& nearly petrified cottonwood staring

into my driver’s side window as if I were

just what she had risked the sun up for.

Tomorrow I’ll be ready to find her.

I’ll offer no sporting call but pull my little

silver car over to the side of road & walk

the hundred yards to her spot & wait

for her to give herself away.

                                           Like tonight

as two little boys learned slowly that

patience & stillness leads to that line

between excitement & fright that proves

that being temporarily lost is worth the

anxiety if only for that instant of recognition,

the elation of locking eyes from across a room,
in hiding, under a blanket or table or bed.

You hide this time, I’ll count.  Ok, pal,

you be the owl this time.  

                                           1, 2, 3,…

I’ll see you in the morning, bird,

I’ve been practicing.

Six Ways of Looking at Wallace Stevens

(who is looking at blackbirds)

1.

a once thin man, carrying

a thing:  a parcel of uncertain

particles, though obviously

not a blackbird’s wing,

his footsteps being

much too slow.

2.

a man in a plain grey suit,

with a somber imagination

& a difficult sense of humor:

a stagnant pond that off & on

again reflects an almost silent tree

in a cold month before the muskrat

sleeps, it sneaks into the poem

her sad reflection smiling a bucky-

toothed grin changing everything,

except for the topmost branch

still trembling from its missing blackbird.

3.

a Connecticut Homer visiting Florida

to smell flowers through a broken nose

finds himself infatuated not with the sound

of a blackbird singing, but with the innuendo

and diminuendo of the foam-cloud surf,

& magically all his well-fed monsters vanish

as so many fizzling stars, smoke-ringed fireworks,

a cigarette disappearing  across a low blue bay.

4.

one man crossing twenty bridges

into one village of twenty men

all of whom hate poetry,

especially poetry about metaphor:

blackbirds, fruit trees, uncertainty.

5.

a miserable liar, who speaks of poetry

as if it were a lion asleep in the sun,

waiting to rip itself apart line by line,

phoneme by phoneme, bit, bit, bit.

a man in a lion costume sneaks into

the poem about blackbirds to scare

them away, only to prove that poetry

is a destructive force, at its best only

knowable in the traces left behind.

6.

a dead man, a handsome ghost

in a white nightshirt pretending

to fly, a blackbird in white feathers

drunk, falling into a green-gold sky

over & over, as if death were a dream,

recurring each night in the purple hour

of 10 o’clock, & life started over again:

a yellow ring in the blue-black—

as if every morning is Spring.

Phase Three

When I started this space nearly a year and a half ago I called it All Shall Be Well.The thought was that I wanted a place to post non-news (poems) that suggest the world wasn't crashing & burning. I still don't think it is. A few months later I changed it 1606 & 231, the numerical markers of the two places I most often write (besides my car). Although these two "real" spaces are still very much important to me & what I write, I have decided that they no longer represent what I'm up to with this project. Therefore, welcome to Field Marks.

FIELD MARK

noun
a visible mark or characteristic that can be used in identifying a bird or other animal in the field.

I am no naturalist; I am not a birder. But my relationship with nature, with birds in particular, is similar to my relationship with words, with poetry especially. That is, I seek them out eagerly, I cannot imagine not paying attention to words, not being willing to locate the poetic in life, in thought, & in "real" experience in the world, in birds even.

In calling this space Field Marks, I am locating these writings within the field that is theworld where I live. It encompasses room 231, the hill on which 1606 sits, the 52 miles of Kansas highway between them, and the landscapes I travel, both "real" & imaginary. So that's the field; here I will post some of the marks.

Thanks for visiting, please feel free to leave your own marks.

P.S. Sometimes ghosts leave the best marks.

*************

What is & What seems

Sometimes it's difficult to choose
which to believe in:

Between the certainty of knowledge
& the whisper of doubt.

The perception of identity
& the palimpsest of memory.

The blur of distance,
or proximity's cues.

Field Marks: Between Three Seasons

I. Winter


"He knew it must have been a goose or a heron, but he decided that it was a crane. Its neck was tucked under its wingpit and the head was submerged in the river. He peered down at the water's surface and imagined the ancient ornamental beak. The bird's legs were spread out and one wing was uncurled as if it had been attempting to fly through ice." (Colum McCann, This Side of Brightness, 1998)

 

Happy Birthday, J. J. Audubon

a friend fishes
the same spot
each time winter
breaks the ice
enough for
catfish to rise
to meet
the dangling
trickster-curve:

above him,
huge, stately,
beautiful,
the white giant,
un-frozen,
lurks, looking
intodark water,
hungry for sun
in the shadowy
shallows:

let this be the
sign that every-
thing loved well
returns.



II. Spring


"The cardinal grosbeak calls out "what cheer” “what cheer;" " the bluebird says"purity,” “purity,” “purity;" the brown thrasher, or ferruginous thrush, according to Thoreau, calls out to the farmer planting his corn, "drop it,” “drop it,” “cover it up,” “cover it up" The yellow-breasted chat says "who,” “who" and "tea-boy" What the robin says, caroling that simple strain from the top of the tall maple, or the crow with his hardy haw-haw, or the pedestrain meadowlark sounding his piercing and long-drawn note in the spring meadows, the poets ought to be able to tell us. I only know the birds all have a language which is very expressive, and which is easily translatable into the human tongue." (John Burroughs, Birds and Poets, 1877)

from the Dusty Bookshelf's tiny books basket

sometime,

when the

winds come

& the grey,

green rain

settles all

arguments

about time,

listen for

a minute

to the shrill

chorus of

an acre of
county-land:

how many
voices does
it take to come
to terms with
togetherness?

if the poet
is to remain
employed,
let her ear

be strong,

let his eye

forgive itself:

there is nothing

worth writing
that doesn't
conform to
birdsong.



III. Summer

"The Western Blue-bird possesses many of the habits of our common kind. The male is equally tuneful throughout the breeding season. Mounting some projecting branch of an oak or low pine, he delivers his delightful ditty with great energy, extending his wings, and exerting all his powers as it were to amuse his sitting mate, or to allure attention to his short, often-repeated, but thrilling lay." (John James Audubon, Birds of America, 1840)


I know by sight the field-marks
of summer:

         blue coat                
                  brown band
                           mermaid tail

That travels take me to the taller places,
I rejoice:

               to know the peep peep of  hungersong.

Let there be eyes for seeing & a heart to hear;
May the little men,  my charge, find fruitful the search for the lost familiar.

from The Birds of America plates collection




April 11th

A Family Affinity

My father's books on birds rest on several shelves,
an inheritance I did not wait to be assigned.
Each year one or another is pulled from its place
to double-check the facts on a familiar friend
or on luckiest days to search for color, spot, & song.
My wife endures our chants & putterings
from window to window to catch the best glimpse.
Tonight, talk of a diet of worms & bugs
sent the biggest brother to the shelf for research.
Out of a grandfather's collection,
a grandson's career as a naturalist is born,
one more beautiful case of collaboration
between the gone & the growing.

April Poem #1

The family of cardinals still
Home in the hedgerow,
The mother robin is already
Fattened with expectation.

A January Notebook [2011]

1.4.2011

because it is winter & I’m tired:

the cold dark sky outside the window

of this moving vehicle

steals away all the light

& it seems that on the cold horizon

there is always a toothache

waiting to nestle in to a snug bed

1.10.2011

there is little that comforts

like waking to a white world

you did not expect but welcome.

a phone rings too early, waking,

& it’s not an emergency,

but the warning that says:

go ahead, stay home.

the little ones that remind you

that you are every age you’ve ever been

beg for the old fun that,

once a year, never gets too cold.

1.13.2011

the cold lingers as smoke

around citylight that bends

in hazy vertical bands.

there is a physics of cold

that will not suffer

the unprepared,

& those who know

know how to avoid it.

1.20.2011

the winter finches know

something I can’t figure.

somewhere the cardinal

waits for me to look for him.

that sparrow hawk,

the one that just headed east

across the embankment,

out of sight, is not out of mind.

there is so much of winter

that I don’t know what to do with,

but I am thankful for the companionship.

there is something about snow

& the company of birds

that takes some of the sting

out of winter’s slow days.*



*Note: I have to say that I always enjoy snow days. I like the snow; I love being home with my family. Today is a good day, and today is not one of those slow, winter days. But looking out the window at the snow, the birds (even though today is a great day) reminded me that winter always hurts--at some point it gets to be too much and we ache for spring. I'm not there yet, but these birds reminded me of the long, slow cold. Now, I am back to enjoying my day. Next order of business: Hot Wheels Criss Cross Crash!

Off the Grid

turning, a face in the wind:

as if there was nothing left

that the earth could hold,

no need or want that

couldn’t be found some

place else, some sky:  far.

-----

we meet here, daily

it seems you wait for

me around this corner,

near the tracks, near

fields that rise & then,

again, fall—or, rather,

are taken down:   cut

short,   like a life that

served & in going gave

["Off the Grid #1" US-59 Spring 2010]

where were you this

morning when I looked

to the lines for your

sign & found nothing

but someone else’s

power surging into

morning light?

-----

this too is a made place:

dreamscape, without

grid or track or high-

way, no need for

wheel or wing, but

only mind, eye, &

sleep: here, where

 irregular is nothing,  

we travel together,

flitting, fleeting,  &

until all has flown.

when I wake, will

it be unmade, dis-

integrated, lost?

will I be permitted

a return?

-----

there is little left

to say that hasn’t

crossed a line

somewhere, or

that a mind won’t

soon send across

space to rebound

near me as a

figure of glittering

text: moveable,

removable, &

mostly un-noticed.

there is nothing

new under the

sun, but your

wings as they

gather upwards

& away: allowing

shadow to reach

across the span

of your farthest

points, between

you & I, between

acceptance & need.

After Schuyler: Three Poems

I. [1.28.2010]

I am writing again.

I am writing because

Schuyler wrote about

Korean mums.

Because I found him

at a garden table

in October near

where an owl was

dead.

I am writing because

another bird, smaller,

flew across me with

two bands of white

flashing, a shaded

stripe between.

As the owl returned

minutes or days

or months later,

(one cannot tell in a poem)

so returns the urge

to put things down.

To collect, like feathers,

days’ floating news,

fear, dependences.

Birds scratch,

at the rich soil,

knowing & not-knowing

which places have

had seed and might

again, here, where

I start scratching,

too.

II. [For Jeff]

A highway of birds,

not for birds,

(they are the way they go)

knowing as much

by instinct as by sight,

or memory.

It’s  rush hour,

each evening in late March,

while you sit  or stand

smoking, before or after dinner,

front stoop or back yard,

wife & dog near or not near,

(the details not mattering)

you, at least,  there

being in one place,

below them like a

single ant as a jet

takes its cargo home,

standing & looking,

smoke rising up,

but never reaching them,

as they move towards

whatever next rest they

need.

When you tell me

about them through

miles of invisible wire,

or bouncing off  orbiting satellites,

I have just seen a highway too,

as I and the boys played

insect family to a vee of

Canadian geese,

52 miles North

of your street,

as the crow flies.

It is something

to be stationary

while other things

move, to be reminded

of the impossibility

of staying still.

To remain connected

to an earth that

won’t stop turning,

knowing that if it did,

we’d all fall.  And yet,

those highways of birds

must sense that motion,

seeing us spin so slowly,

like tiny ants marching

almost in place, as they

glide looking down at

our continuous failure

to achieve lift.

III. [Lawrence High School East Lawn, Tuesday, April 20^th, 2010, 11:15 am]

The fact that birds are singing is must likely lost on them, because they are not birds and neither are the others they are looking at, listening to, thinking of, and there are cars passing, and the faint echo of loud music, and they are barely alive.

The institutional walls still hold them, even as they take five to ten steps outside the heavy, glass door propped open by a flat rock.

They were asked to write. To go outside, find a solitary spot, and to describe what could be a harmonious place, thinking about how the space surrounding them could come together in such way that things go right: tree, bug, house, road, bird, wall, rock, wind, cloud, humanity.

I suspect that their restraint has as much to do with confusion as it does disdain.

All the while, a wren is still singing.

Birds (Three Stories)

Bird # 1: Clare's Hawk


The adjacent image is a selection from the text, The Poetry of Earth, New York: Atheneum Press, 1966. This selection pictured here (click to open larger copy) is from the "Nature Notes" of 19th century, rural English (no, not Irish) poet John Clare. Clare's first book of poems, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was published in 1920 by John Taylor, also a publisher of Keats. An article and readings of one of his most remembered poems, "I Am" can be found at The Atlantic's Soundings page. More Clare poems can be found at The Poetry Foundation including one of my favorites, "The Skylark." Sadly, Clare spent the last twenty years of his life in an asylum, which was the location of his death in 1864.


Clare's "Nature Notes" (to my knowledge and the aid of Jonathan Bate's biography of Clare) were from his personal journal around the year 1824. In this passage from the journal, which contains little punctuation, variant spellings, and the grammar of rural speech, Clare tells the story of a particular hawk that he describes saying: "not quite so large as the sparrow hawk their wings & back feathers was of a red brown color sheathed wi black their tails was long & barred with black & their breasts was of a lighter color & spotted their eyes was large & of a dark piercing blue their beaks was very much hooked with a sharp projecting swell in the top mandible ..." Clare's striking description of the birds is interesting in both its knowledgible birder's detail and its awkward, almost manic, syntax.  


However, what is most interesting in this passage from the journals is what comes next:

Clare's depiction of the relationship between the hawk and himself is quite compelling in that the hawk is both interested in and seemingly wary of Clare, in the end both are for good reason: Clare is exceedingly kind to the bird and yet it is the friendship with Clare that leads to the bird's demise. One can see in passages such as the above evidence of both Clare's potential as a different sort of English Romantic poet and his eventual mental disintegration and ultimate committing to an asylum.

________________

Bird # 2: St. Benedict's Raven

According to St. Gregory's Dialogues, Book II, Italian monk, later to be known as St. Benedict, writer of The Rule of St. Benedict, a raven that frequented the cave where Benedict lived, was charged by Benedict to remove a loaf of poisoned bread and take it "where it cannot be found." Eventually the bird did as he was told and returned. There is another story in which the bird rids the cave of a chalice of poisoned wine. Here again, a bird and an eccentric man are friendly and  engaged in a form of communication--and in both cases these hermetic men leave a written legacy behind them after their cloistered deaths.

________________

Bird # 3: Dad?

My father was an amateur birder, very amateur. In fact, actually, he liked looking at birds, owned binoculars (I now own them), and several bird-books (those are mine now too). He never went on outings, took notes, or did extensive research, but he passed on to me a real respect and interest in the feathered flyers of our neighborhood. In fact, just today during dinner I located our neighbor, a still-red male cardinal perched in one of the highest branches of the tallest tree in our back yard. I took a picture and made my oldest son look for him too; he found him more quickly than I thought he would. 

I do this a lot: look for birds. 

My dad died, fairly young (63), in 1995. I have been looking for him ever since: in dreams, in pictures, in letters, in hidden manuscripts in desk drawers ( I did find one once.). But mostly in birds. Interestingly, since January, I have had several interesting bird related experiences, three of which have involved bald eagles that are currently nesting North of Lawrence. 

The first had just captured a meal on the east side of 59 highway and allowed me to pull my car to the side of the road and watch him secure the prey, spread his wings, and fly, low above a still snow-glazed stubblefield before rising quickly to a perch in a far cottonwood. 

The second eagle was noticed by one of my creative writing students during class one afternoon flying circles above Lawrence High School, a very odd and rare sight that far into town. 

The third experience was a couple of weeks ago on my morning commute, again on 59 highway, heading south towards Lawrence and the eagle swooped across in front of my car and behind me, slowly gliding as I pulled the car over and turned around to follow him. He landed in a bare maple on the east side of the highway. There was a convenient farmers drive-in that allowed me to pull my car in off the highway and watch him sitting there in the tree, the still-winter sun rising, nearly white, behind the tree and above the pasture that stretched for miles to that place on the horizon where, eventually my two rivers (The Missouri and the Kaw) finally meet.

Though I spend a lot of time, alone, in my movable cell of a car, I am no eccentric, ascetic monk, and I have most of my sanity, most agree, but there is something about the continual connection that I feel with these birds that seems to to suggest that their closeness to me is important. That they carry some meaning or message that might just be the same thing that Clare and Benedict found in their birds and that I am always looking for in little legacies my father left behind. 

Maybe I am little more crazy that I give myself credit for. For now, I'm not too afraid, and I'm going to keep reading the bird signs that flutter and fly my way.