milk and honey

Could any tiger
Drink martinis, smoke cigars,
And last as we do?

Sunday in late December
calls for one, with a celery stalk
and faint taste of Worcestershire,
to be sipped while eating
poached egg and corned beef hash,
in a hotel dining room
with someone you love. Touch
the hairs at his wrist
as the warmth endorses
all bed-lingering, non-churchgoing.
It's the solstice, remember,
when your frugal father
would hand around dollar bills
so the day would last longer. 
Stir ice into the rich red
and consider such Celtic rituals,
as you watch, beyond the tall windows,
pilgrims traveling the paths
past snow-fringed trees in the park.

All day he’s shoveled green pine sawdust
out of the trailer truck into the chute.
From time to time he’s clambered down to even
the pile. Now his hair is frosted with sawdust.
Little rivers of sawdust pour out of his boots.
I hope in the afterlife there’s none of this stuff
he says, stripping nude in the late September sun
while I broom off his jeans, his sweater flocked
with granules, his immersed-in-sawdust socks.
I hope there’s no bedding, no stalls, no barn
no more repairs to the paddock gate the horses
burst through when snow avalanches off the roof.
Although the old broodmare, our first foal, is his,
horses, he’s fond of saying, make divorces.
Fifty years married, he’s safely facetious.
No garden pump that’s airbound, no window a grouse
flies into and shatters, no ancient tractor’s
intractable problem with carburetor
ignition or piston, no mowers and no chain saws
that refuse to start, or start, misfire and quit.
But after a Bloody Mary on the terrace
already frost-heaved despite our heroic efforts
to level the bricks a few years back, he says
let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset
and off we go, a couple of aging fools.
I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot
less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools.

Cards in each mailbox,
angel, manger, star and lamb,
as the rural carrier,
driving the snowy roads,
hears from her bundles
the plaintive bleating of sheep,
the shuffle of sandals,
the clopping of camels.
At stop after stop,
she opens the little tin door
and places deep in the shadows
the shepherds and wise men,
the donkeys lank and weary,
the cow who chews and muses.
And from her Styrofoam cup,
white as a star and perched
on the dashboard, leading her
ever into the distance,
there is a hint of hazelnut,
and then a touch of myrrh.

 
There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.  
All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.
So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.
The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

Quick now, come now
to where the veil grows thin,
where the border between 
real and more real—so real
we can't bear it—shimmers
like ghosts going silently
into moonlit mist, to 
enfolding fog, a cloud
of silvered saints hovering
over the waters.

"so much depends upon a green chair beside the brick wall ... "
WCW kind of morning. 📷

And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Trite, perhaps. But true. Often, the “tried and true” is trite. But, so what? The truth is the point.

My husband dreads the winter. Born
himself on the darkest day of the year
and disregarded, he sees nothing
but black ice, danger of pipes
bursting, other people’s cats freezing,
left outside like a name scratched
off the list.
                           But fish still swim
beneath the frozen surface of lakes,
and there are frogs that let their blood
ice over in the mud to thaw again
in the spring, green Lazarus come forth.
And even I, born on the last day of winter,
can see how the snow can cover this all up
to look cleaner than it ever was, for a moment
at least, while it is still falling in our hair,
in our up-turned, hope-filled faces.

 

I must admit, sometimes I find the daily lectionary to be a chore. Not today.
This, from Baruch (Baruch! - in the Apocrypha), is simply wonderful:

... the stars shone in their watches, and were glad;
he called them, and they said, ‘Here we are!’
They shone with gladness for him who made them.

Baruch 3:34

I can imagine someone who found 
these fields unbearable, who climbed 
the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust, 
cracking the brittle weeds underfoot, 
wishing a few more trees for shade.

An Easterner especially, who would scorn 
the meagerness of summer, the dry 
twisted shapes of black elm, 
scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape 
August has already drained of green.

One who would hurry over the clinging 
thistle, foxtail, golden poppy, 
knowing everything was just a weed, 
unable to conceive that these trees 
and sparse brown bushes were alive.

And hate the bright stillness of the noon 
without wind, without motion, 
the only other living thing 
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended 
in the blinding, sunlit blue.

And yet how gentle it seems to someone 
raised in a landscape short of rain – 
the skyline of a hill broken by no more 
trees than one can count, the grass, 
the empty sky, the wish for water.

Someone spoke to me last night,  
told me the truth. Just a few words,  
but I recognized it.  
I knew I should make myself get up,  
write it down, but it was late,  
and I was exhausted from working  
all day in the garden, moving rocks.  
Now, I remember only the flavor—  
not like food, sweet or sharp.  
More like a fine powder, like dust  
And I wasn't elated or frightened,  
but simply rapt, aware.  
That's how it is sometimes—  
God comes to your window,  
all bright light and black wings,  
and you're just too tired to open it.

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,  
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,  
With the little bright boxes  
           piled up neatly upon the shelves  
And the loose fragrant cavendish  
           and the shag,  
And the bright Virginia  
           loose under the bright glass cases,  
And a pair of scales not too greasy,  
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing,  
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.  
    
O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
           or install me in any profession
Save this damn’d profession of writing,
           where one needs one’s brains all the time.