Raccoon Welcome
Welcome
The Threshing
I trace her charging through the cornfield
shaking the timbers of the ready crop
startling up the blackbirds,
and surprisingly, a jay.
It’s the jay who startles me—
who with two quick pulls
wrests itself from the transient green,
screaming back from its familiar scrub of oak
at the frightening impermanence.
The corn still holds the coolness
of an August night.
I’ll lay in that coolness until I feel
the teethy madness of Mark Duffy’s combine
charting back the careful symmetry
of the spring planting—muddied hopes
bloating udders of meager herds—
somehow managing the dream alive.
I really don’t wish to be the sileage
of his desperate Holsteins—
the off-taste
they’d accept with a begrudging equanimity,
waiting out the emptying
of their ponderous sacks.
But still, even after all these months,
I practice the strangest exorcisms;
you have become strangely
peripheral to it all.
I will tell you when I know, what it is like
to be scooped up in a strangers dream,
shredding every part of what I am.
Maybe then I will recognize myself
in the stubble of this field,
and will find a dignity in remembrance—
enough to take our hound for another run,
and retrace the joy
she hides from me now.
Molting
I am always molting;
leaving my hollowed skin
in awkward places, scaring
people and making them
jump.
They touch me and think
I’m real; then laugh
and say things like
“What a riot.”
I’m tired of this changing
of skins.
I’d rather stumble
on myself and be fooled;
and grab
my dry and scaly shell,
and feel it crumbling,
and laugh and laugh.
Goathouse
Goat house
In reaching for the scythe
I’m reminded of the whetstone
and the few quick strokes
by which it was tested–
the hardness of hot August;
the burning of ticks
off dog backs.
It’s winter now
in this garage made barn,
and the animals seem only curious
that I’d be here so late
on a cold night lit dimly
by a single hanging bulb.
They don’t bother to stir
and disturb their warm huddle.
Cudchewers, we pay each other
little attention.
The curve of the handle still fits.
The blade shines,
its edge oiled against rust.
The loft is full
of Jack Mattison’s field.
There’s nothing to do —
my content is preparedness,
the simplicity of knowing.
~Fitz
Williams Rd. Farm
1983
I wrote that poem when I was in a “farming” stage of life, and I soon realized that being a farmer was not a big deal–it was a whole bunch of “little deals.” If I took care of the little things, my life was infinitely more simple and more rewarding.
Dad
Moaning like a lost whale
the thin ice
bellowed behind us
then cracked and rang
as if spit from a whip.
The sharp steel of
my over-sized skates
etched unspeakable joy
into the slate-grey,
reptilian skin
of Walden Pond.
Our mismatched hands
gripped together
in the fading light
of a January afternoon,
And you pulled me
onto untouched darker ice
where fathers
should never take sons.
You circled tighter
and, spinning like a bullfighter,
you let me go,
splayed across the ice,
arms outstretched,
screaming to you
into the black hole
of memory.
Thanksgiving
I am surprised sometimes
by the suddenness of November:
beauty abruptly shed
to a common nakedness—
grasses deadened
by hoarfrost,
persistent memories
of people I’ve lost.
It is left to those of us
dressed in the hard
barky skin of experience
to insist on a decorum
that rises to the greatness
of a true Thanksgiving.
This is not a game,
against a badly scheduled team,
an uneven match on an uneven pitch.
This is Life.
This is Life.
This is Life.
Not politely mumbled phrases,
murmured with a practiced and meticulous earnestness.
Thanksgiving was born a breech-birth,
a screaming appreciation for being alive—
for not being one of the many
who didn’t make it—
who couldn’t moil through
another hardscrabble year
on tubers and scarce fowl.
Thanksgiving is for being you.
There are no thanks without you.
You are the power of hopeful promise;
you are the balky soil turning upon itself;
you are bursting forth in your experience.
You are not the person next to you—
not an image or an expectation.
You are the infinite and eternal you—
blessed, and loved, and consoled
by the utter commonness
and community of our souls.
We cry and we’re held.
We love and we hold.
We are the harvest of God,
constantly renewed,
constantly awakened,
to a new thanksgiving.
*Have a great Thanksgiving!
