recent dreaming

the movement of groups

first, the nuns, running.

they were not fleeing,

though they flew by

night, a pack along the

path below the hills.

i mistook them for monks.

jacob corrected me in

my sleep and said, nuns,

running, not fleeing, but

flying, their cassocks

behind them as ribbons,

as branches, as wings.

and then the two stags, in

union with the four does,

running and fleeing,

through the beets, the echo of corn,

over the remnant of onion grass

and clover, past purslane

and potato skins, muddled in earth.

each leg plucking a string of the cleft,

the sound quick and strenuous,

then vibrating, fleeing,

as ribbons, as branches, as wings.

last night it was children,

skating on the ocean where

it had frozen, somewhere between

the first and second bar.

when the whistle blew, they

turned their bodies to seals

and swam to shore, catching

the still nodding waves of

movement, of salt water.

i was present, up to my neck

in the bob, but unconcerned

for myself. rather, as an onlooker,

i fretted over the kids as they

flew, ran, swam, and fled,

in unison, as birds, branches,

nuns, deer, ribbons tied

about antlers, as wings,

waving.

november horses

i crossed the path of a white cat,

this friday november 13th.

Am I more or less lucky now?

It's the season again when carrots come out

hugging one another tightly,

around the neck, belly, and ankles.

The crops know what's next and

they seek comfort in each other.

Similarly, leaves hurry to take

part of the collective sleep on the floor.

I find myself in the familiar pattern of sucking up

and deriving my own pleasure.

Mack Mead, a farmer, spoke last Saturday of returning home

this time of year, after working outside all day.

You swallow browns and crisps and purples,

decays, endings, mutings and fadings.

Then it's night and it's five and you've finished

because you can no longer.

You walk home. You see light.

and the world is awake and almost too much inside.

The walls are textured, colored, alive.

The smells are wet, comforting, like horses.

Pleasure is standing on the threshold between the two

and recognizing the stern outer angles

and the soft inner auras.

I put one boot inside while I keep my other out.

for goat's goodness

i dig my hand into you, goat,

for softness' sake and my own.

i look for the determination to smell

as sweet as you, goat,

to find an oil that coats too my fiber.

if only i were to possess horns,

not for gauging but for itching 

the scratch on my very own back,

just as you do.

one week's memory

i read yesterday morning

(while drinking coffee with cream on the backporch)

of how human's capacity for memory has changed.

and i say changed, not evolved.

in this book, they talk of images and memory.

no mention of solidity, but viscosity.

this past week, since returning home from the west coast,

has been all images and experience.

i stepped out of the shower and was wiping the mirror

clean of condensation to look at how blood shot my eyes were.

jacob stood on the other side of the door, somewhere

about where the large mirror leans.

he had found lassa, the ram, or the remains thereof,

buried his skull in the compost, marked it with grass.

a hot air balloon landed by our onions yesterday,

the sound of gas pulsing.

a van came and pulled up along the drying stalks of corn,

the image of a balloon painted on its side,

bumping along the grass to pick up the riders.

we watched the events from the drive, each with a watermelon 

between our sides and elbows.

the sky filled with grey on wednesday and thursday.

the light would break and hit half the fields.

that finally, after august, are beginning to look neat and tidy,

like paper stacked and organized on shelves.

neat plants growing in the deep colors of autumn:

all purples, hunters, almost blue.

certain trees have decided to turn, 

all purples, hunters, almost blue.

i picked apples alone on thursday;

i ate bites from five and my belly burned.

he said yesterday that we shouldn't be scared to try the new.

that we should take our collected images and apply them to the

present, shift and change them, pour them, viscous,

like syrup, over the situation, and delight in the sweetness

of what was, memory, and what is, the image.

soil not sand

Have made it now to the west coast.
Why, look at all these rocks.
If I were a geologist, I'd drool
(if my mouth were not dry).
This landscape homes the language of
'from dust to dust'
Were we once?
I always imagined us as soil, not sand.

an answer to the events of a rainy thursday:

a phone call, the gardener, and the first ever

gift of 'stay home this morning; i'll go in myself

and turn over the onions'

so now, books letters blankets

wet morning

it's difficult to imagine what will happen today,

this rain and yesterday evening's, all these weeds

to pull but not from mud, 

not from the wet leftovers of some previous month

it's easy, once away, to forget the grip of fields, how

they own us here, how horse nettle and pigweed snicker

and even purslane blows hot air around our ankles,

setting traps of inconceivable work days. three days of

virginia and my palm was reading tidy, what amendments?

what deficiencies? what sorting and planting and cultivating?

i was enthralled in social relationships and upper lips,

shoelaces and breakfast bills. 

now, back, we lean over our crops. 

the land group asked

the subtle bowhunter to triple his shots, peppers are

blushing, onions clipped, heavy, curing, and now, it's

raining, and where my feet touch, the soil will part into

two equal clumps of obligations and  necessities, only

fulfilled partially, the rest will wait till drier conditions.

august first, who remember rabbit rabbit

august

it comes 

and sits, stale and green,

like gingerale from june left

on the back railing of the boat's deck.

friday's harvest brought the finale of early summer cabbage and chard, well washed beets

and carrots, head lettuce separated and washed, lemon basil and thai magic, parsley (which

i can't help but find boring) and others, washed, sorted, in green and gray crates. lael and

sebastian are away in colorado for a wedding and the weight of the acres falls on the shoulders

of jacob and myself. we both worry we will be transformed into killing machines, mechanized

and tubed, due to our inexperience and independence. i fret over the green house, open and 

close it, open and close, peek in, open, glance, close. water, once? wait, two passes? 

jacob uses the tractors and rubs his head nervously with suspicion. wait, too close? too wet?

is it everything? nothing? of course, it's both, and if the two of us aren't careful, we'll pray to

the physical world alone and forget to bow to shadows as well, and the space between the 

objects and the shadows. those realms we make fists for, we water for, we weed.

the routine of the summer and the necessity for carefulness leads to urges of recklessness.

i want to take naps and work on the odd tan lines around my body. i want to take the hyacinth

car and drive to find jackie. i want to make mixed drinks for twenty people and read out loud

prose poetry, set off fireworks and then fall asleep underneath them, waking to confuse

fireflies with sparklers: stale, green, like gingerale, like august, in the palms of my two hands.

round about now

everything changed here in the garden a few weeks ago when the third apprentice, jessica,

threw down her water bottle and tendered her resignation in the heat of a friday afternoon.

we went on weeding the carrot patch, but her two hands were missing and we felt it as

we combed through the rows like slow, wet, manatees. 

simultaneously, two other gardeners left, as they had planned to, and over the course of

a few hours, we lost three helpers, six hands, sixty fingers to pull up the many weeds and

harvest the many summer squash and basil buds we have about our garden.  we did not

panic, but the garden sucked in its stomach collectively and we've grown tighter and

closer since then. 

the garden is comprised of many inhales and exhales. the main breath is sebastian,

our head gardener-farmer and lael, his wife, who conducts and plays the garden-oboe.

jacob and i now fill in the air about them as apprentices. the four of

us have slightly different pulses and therefore beat separately, often independently.

 in any given moment i may be leading in the goats, lael, watering the seedlings, sebastian, setting out irrigation, and jacob, spreading compost over recently tilled fields. in another flash,

lael will be digging beds for thyme, jacob spraying a preparation over the fields, i will

be weeding for tomorrow's harvest, and sebastian will be cultivating the sweet potatoes.

sometimes, we will all breathe together, while planting strawberries or sorting carrots.

sometimes, i'll look up and be alone in the peppers. sometimes, i'll be surrounded by 20

people, all pulling up pigweed from the raspberries, like birds about low tide shores,

bustling, shifting.

i work in a biodynamic garden. we view our land as an organism. it breathes as we breathe.

it's comprised of organs with their own sensitivity. it's not silly. it's sacred and science.

therefore, the metaphor of blood and oxygen works. how else would anything grow?

the summer is reaching its high point. sebastian said so over beers at the sly fox post work

last wednesday. i drank and wiped my wet mouth with the back of my hand. the sun was at an angle that i had to shade my eyes to see him, and even then, the small hairs about his jaw line shone individually golden and straight. 

at the height of the season, we must sustain ourselves. how do we do so? 

we inhale, then exhale. 

july has another two weeks, then comes the creature august, in an altogether different

colored coat. almost everything is planted in the garden and there is new help. 

carrie from washington dc has come for a week. anna, for longer. a new apprentice

arrives from germany at the end of august. 

the toads work too, eating up insects at night. 

at dusk, we free ourselves from the breath of the fields and come inside, bearing marigolds

and cherry tomatoes.

sometimes, i bring home these little weeds with these little flowers and photograph them

on my desktop fabric of blue, pink and white.

i think of the letter A and drink milk before i sleep at night. 

ready?

raspberries, carrots, beets, sunflowers, marigolds, chard, kale, spinach, head lettuce,

salad mix, asian greens, watermelons, turnips, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, beans,

blackberries, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupes, summer squash,

zucchinis, peppers, eggplants, onions, scallions, corn, winter squash, rutabagas, apples,

asian pears, wildflowers, bees, donkeys, sheep, goats, pigs, and us.

here we go

let's try not to forget, folks, that life's building

and continuing, and we can pick to our heart's delight,

because more will grow in the place of those.

she said last night that at one point she looked down

and realized she was eating herself thin.

they all laughed when i suggested peace and health

could be the baseline, the norm, and we don't need

to strive but rather ease back into it.

when they finished laughing, she grew serious

and said 'that was called paradise and we mussed it up.'

but, from this perspective, the one bent down to

view budding cucumbers head on, pushing up

through vermiculite and wet potting soil,

we're fortunate enough to have the continuation

of peace to be, of creation, quiet.

life being moist, moving.

ewes alike

chris is a fourth generation sheep shearer, 

who speaks in a shout regardless of environment,

as if always a bleet and the buzz of clippers were in his ear,

as if always he had to talk over a lamb, through the wool.

there was rain hitting hard against the barn's ceiling,

as we clammered over the ewes and grabbed one at a time,

a handful of sweater, 

the sweet odor of lanolin and fear.

now lambs and ewes are alike,

 same sized:

small and round bellied, 

bleating into the water,

into the spring.

one, thirty six, fifty

count trees

up to fifty,

then fifty more.

shake the red of cardinals

out from behind your eyebrows;

it's not needed there.

pigeon shoot take one

as soon as jacob got the 'go ahead,' he went:

steadying his aim on the barn's beam, raising

the gun, bringing down one of the many pigeons

that roost up in the eves, 

over our tractors,

over our tools. 

if i were alone with a pigeon that just

fell, single gems of blood which clumped

and beaded in the dust of the ground,

i would have spread out its wings 

in desperation and naivety, smoothed

and soothed its neck feathers, and placed

the bird somewhere in tall grass, to be 

found later by sankanac's cats, by tamed tigers.

rather, i wiped my nose and witnessed others

spring into action, elbows, forming Vs with

nails on chunks of raised wood, finding axe,

finding the head between two fingers,

finding a bag and the freezer, finding everything

ruffled, rumpled, nothing smooth, only finished.

groundhog fever

twenty bucks for a groundhog trapped,

thirty, if skinned.

i ride my bicycle past the green house over gravel,

sand, and thursday's percolated rain,

to check my trap of chickweed and chard:

green, yellow, pink stalks of deceit.

there's no sign of interest, only fresh claw

marks from the mound of earth by

the thin birch tree, by the creek, below the garden.

twenty bucks would buy me new toothpaste,

vanilla ice cream, two kiwis.

thirty, goodness knows.

every day i've waved and greeted the groundhogs.

these hands that hello now are

setting traps,

rearranging temptation.

so a cowboy walks into a bar and says...

sometimes working in the garden feels like going to a costume party

l.s. mother, upon hearing of his day trip to philadelphia,

instructed l.s. to wear 'sunglasses and a large hat.'

no one told me to wear mine, except the voices of reason and softness' sake.

'light is more important than the lantern'

nizar qabbani

but continue to hold it carefully!

for a careless swing will knock both

light and lantern out of your hands

and then you'll be singing of darkness

and the even more important empty

a visit to my old friend

she and i have spent some time together.

i think that if i lived with her, i'd daily

invite myself onto her lap to eat a sandwich.

as it is, i only pause, eat at my knees with my fingers,

and find my body in her body, well fed, rested.

building

she wakes to the image of two plastic lego blocks,

one yellow and one blue, placed perpendicular to one

another, slotted, building not up but beside.

this is what she thinks of: constructs, monads.

seeds germinating in the greenhouse, birds.

news and newness, the crossword before words,

the morning after a good night sleep, the first in

a bed, her bed, her room, with all its funny angles.

and she angles her perspective so that triangles

become rectangles, have corners for which she

can place beside one another and fill in the

current vacancies of space, of synapse.

so she wakes and crowds her moment with the

cement between the bricks, the gaps above, 

below her now.

snow hare

that's all really that needs to be seen:

it's all ears, eyes and seeking

tuesday before the garden

"Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact."

-judith butler-

However, how often can we tighten our seams, hem up our edges?

Let's try, at least, to push up the sides of one another for now, 

swaddle and feather, tuck each other and both our feet in,

at least through the end of this winter, at least until an aura

of blues and pinks form around the empty branches of buds.

at least until this world all starts to smell of undoing, of being,

of loosening cracks, saps, and syrups. 

let's tighten our belts and backs until the honey starts to flow freely,

come april, june, or so.

The birds this all morning are all fat with winter, as it's 19 degrees.

you're all cold, right?

a voodoo priestess left me a chicken foot on the back of my bicycle.

this is alarming, as everything else yesterday was easy, even the 

batting down of brush and brambles in the woodland pasture,

even the directions printed and copied, even the sun, easy.

what, then does today offer me, 

if sunset collided with such hardness as that grizzled leg?

should i be nervous? or should i pick it up and wield it 

swiftly, with ease?

challenges met

we feasted through the week, and now we're finished.

i suppose some like to consider sunday the first, but

i rather enjoy lavishing it as the last, the hem of mid february.

potting soil was mixed and bagged, chestnuts baked and ground, 

valentine's day enjoyed with a small chocolate heart, sweet coffee,

some paper flowers and a meal of friends with straight backs.

some mortal fight left these blue feathers in the dead grass.

a week of losses, gains, triumphs, challenges, horses released

through gates 

by us

lassa's new

we constructed for lassa his own pen, now separate from the pregnant ewes,

now no longer able to ram the others away from sweet fermented grain.

he spent his first few hours pacing, tossing his horns about in a nervous fashion,

as you may twirl a pen cap in between your fingers, as you twist the paper napkin.

what does the animal need?

a tier in the hierarchy of shared space,

or isolated ownership of his own?

certainly not the wind or the blue tarp,

both which hung within the upper barn,

knocking and shoving at the calm.

we respect him and his hooves. we kneeled

to hammer in (i, crookedly, of course)

our gratitude and the nails of corrugated tin.

we spread hay, observed, watched not over,

but through, on eye level, the gates.

an outside lecture day

he made the distinction that birds appear to move through the cosmos,

as compared with moths, who move as part of and therefore with the cosmos.

the little king koennig told farmers in a lecture series that

insects are the elemental beings as seen through a looking glass. 

as alice, it resonates.

i observed a honey bee on the hem of my pants,

a woodpecker, stating his arguement against the solid nature of wood.

Cy est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et les Unze Mille Vierges

 Ursula, in a garden, found
 A bed of radishes.
 She kneeled upon the ground
 And gathered them,
 With flowers around,
 Blue, gold, pink, and green.

 She dressed in red and gold brocade
 And in the grass an offering made
 Of radishes and flowers.

 She said, "My dear,
 Upon your altars,
 I have placed
 The marguerite and coquelicot,
 And roses
 Frail as April snow;
 But here," she said,
 "Where none can see,
 I make an offering, in the grass,
 Of radishes and flowers."

-wallace stevens-