Poetry

Inarticulate

I’m afraid to say anything so I mumble

thinking if you’re lucky, listening,

or interested, you’ll catch it

but if it doesn’t come out right,

sounds stupid or boring, and I’m lucky

and you’re not listening, you won’t hear

what I’ve said anyway.

I have a great distrust of words

and depend much more on my eyes

for expression yet this has backfired

because people constantly urge me to speak,

“You look like you are full of profundities,”

they say, but when I open my mouth

my mind goes blank.

My mother, on the other hand,

will shout her dullest thoughts
to the world clearly

confident that every clerk or passerby          

will be enthralled.  I watch in horror

as the universe goes glassy-eyed

while she rambles on oblivious to her effect.

I met someone the other day with very good hearing

who seemed to take great interest

in my mumbling.

He’d laugh and repeat what I’d said

and sometimes when he heard me wrong

I could tell by what he thought I said

that he imagined I had a great sense of humor.

Warblers

In spring they wash
over hedgerow, park and woodlot
in slow bright waves
high-pitched songs and trills
pealing through trees.

In fall they flicker
as light through swaying leaves
now whispering thin chips and seets,
now darting through hawthorn,
now gone.

Shorebirds

Hundreds in unison
Chase retreating moonlit water
High twittering calls
Counter waves booming

To be safe

A note in my mailbox today,
crumpled, waterlogged,
saying, “Tonight mosquito poison
will rain down on your town.
Stay indoors. Close windows.
Turn off air conditioner.
Do not worry.  It is perfectly safe.”
 

I think of this afternoon's butterflies
found in smallest last wild place
here in my town.
Is there a note in their mailbox?
“Between 7 and 9 pm July 6, do not breathe.
Hide under leaf.  Do not drink from flowers!
 

Hummingbird on nest –
where is her mailbox?
Honestly,
who would exchange an old woman or even
the small sick child for several hundred birds,
insects, fish, or frogs cavorting,
safely, all over town?
 

Wilderness

        for Kathleen Raine
        and all who love the earth
 

Our land isn't totally swept of song
but I can see that it will be, Kathleen.
Daily it is sheared and scraped so
increasingly bare that soon
there will be nothing for us here
but to don binoculars and boots
and escape to lowland or ravine
too wet or steep to go to,
too wet or steep to be yet destroyed
where the earth could slide or swallow
but to go anyway lured and enchanted by what might be there:
Once common, mysterious things
fragile survivors that cling to shear rock
or hide in deep shadow
shapes and patterns so varied they amaze.
No, we have not yet razed everything!
Beyond vast suburban runways,
past garden, park, and farm field, there lie
tiny earth pockets, remnants of what was
whose inhabitants dance and sing
of former more intricate worlds,
living testimony to nature's richness,
shining reminders of what we will not keep
in forgetfulness and sleep.