(Johnson, VT)
On foot under thunder
heading in from the west,
I wasn’t thinking rain
but now I’m thinking rain
on Plot Road while I watch
Foote Brook do its thaw thing :
ropy cold clear water
pulls itself downhill fast,
its spatter lathering
granite banks with foam. Up-
hill, up the road, a field
mown gold. Its curve is cut
by horizon, a veil
of rain drawn across it
slowly so it darkens
in increments. I left
the house without poncho
or umbrella. I’m cold.
The good news is : the way
Archimedes wanted
a place to stand to lift
the world, & Descartes sought
one thought as certain as
the point a lever turns
into a fulcrum, this
dirt road is a fine place
to get totally soaked
in the poem. The bad
news is : el niño. It’s
a bummer to go all
cogito here after
the hottest winter in
the hottest year so far
on record, all the thaw
finished by the first week
of March. Yet I can feel
the color the poem
gathers inside me, brown
silver interior
of a dried milkweed pod,
everything outside it
on a spectrum of wet
& getting wetter as
the front moves overhead.
A little mist sizzles
high in the canopy,
its sound in the middle
distance of the sonic
landscape between Foote Brook
& thunder, a distance
rusty blackbirds also
fill from the oak they have
flocked to, so raucously
dominating its crown.
When the rain hits, they fall
silent. Then there’s nothing
in the hush but thunder
& water on water
& water hitting wood.
Above : the sky a kind
of crushed lilac. Around
me : Clay Hill an issue
of trickles gathering
gravity gathering
mass heading south downhill
to the river. Little
streams even in the mud
under my feet, I want
to say I feel the pull
on all my vertebrae,
occiput to sacrum,
the water in my bones
longing to join the thaw.
& thought alluvial
too, the way valleys fill
slowly with gravel sent
down by the surrounding
mountains : olivine, quartz,
granite, carnelian,
each stone an idea
washed then carried by rain.
Down Foote Brook’s leaf-slick steep
bank I slide the way walk
& watch begin in rhyme
then fail the way those same
activities fit in-
side each other until
they don’t : I slip, hit rock,
my body stops, the walk
stalls, & I sit, my mind
rising toward quiet
as the brook goes by, south
by southwest. I watch, let
the current take over.
Over its rocky bed
the water runs clear, leaves
the distortions made by
its torsion flickering
the way musculature
moves its skin, all flexure
& shadow. Do not move
the X-ray tech told me,
so I stood & did what
I’m doing now : I watched
living turn to image,
a bruised sort of bluish
fluid on a white screen
the rheumatologist
lit up. You might have years
of mobility left
if you’re careful, he said.
I could’ve looked like that
for hours at my spine,
the molecules locked in
degrading matrices :
where the joints meet up, spurs
curve small bone hooks honed to
catch on flesh the X-rays
see through, causing the doc
to write in his report,
soft tissues unremark-
able. It’s weird to be
always incurring off-
screen injuries I have
to live with. The process
makes a space in my thought
like I make a space on
the brook’s hard bank : anthro-
pogenic nonpoint source
pollutant, my urine
a potent effluent
of medicines I need
& pesticides I don’t,
a pharmacopeia
of harm for riverine
species. I close my eyes.
Rain on leaf-litter sounds
like storm wind high above
& the brook thrown downhill
by its own force, the world
coalescing briefly
in an unending rhyme
with itself, consonant
& comforting. I know
it’s cogito that makes
it seem my ears make it
so. I open my eyes.
I get up & go east,
back up Plot Road, muddy
now with runoff. Off-road
landscape ranges from field
to forest to dwelling
& back, the visual
rhythm of settlement
& regrowth, clear-cutting
& aftermath, my eye
always drawn to eco-
tone, richly liminal
& ugly where forest
meets field grown over stumps.
I love what yields green there
then dries in thickets : bull
thistle, milkweed, seed heads
in hundreds that luster
against the denser screen
of trees. I love how birds
the size of sparrows hunt
in the scrub, break cover
to duck between thin trunks—
the black-capped chickadee
loosing its slow two-note
sing-song sing-song only
after it lands a branch.
Some things must be listened
into appearances :
the thistles for instance
rustle, sigh into sight,
vatic static in wave
patterns that predict wind
that hits my face; the rain
insinuates itself
slowly into puddles
of an abalone
silver, iridescent
as a rock pigeon’s neck;
& the poem starts first
as a color I hear,
its stiff dry stalks shaking
gray & brown. It’s almost
pornographic, detail
the world offers, texture
whose totality is
far beyond adequate
capture, & excites me
anyway, as endless
as the filaments of
beard lichen the same soft
bright green of olivine.
So I watch; I walk on;
I fill my pockets full
of milkweed pods, a few
still stuffed with floss; I watch
as if I could forget
the harm that happens where
the world’s flesh meets my flesh;
I walk as if I could
undo the human self
I’ve become & remain
through undoing done to
others. Between walking
& watching the whole world
slips, goes missing, my mind
empty as the chambers
of a gun whose bullets
have hit the intended
targets, residual
heat & soft black powder
all that cogito leaves
behind. I never meant
to fire. It’s not my voice
that cries out bull’s-eye! but
I find my mouth moves too
without thinking as each
species goes down. & then
I do nothing but think,
for instance, of a cave
in upstate New York : there
a fungus introduced
from Europe infected
bats whose skin spread through touch
a syndrome inducing
the inability
to hibernate. Awake,
sick bats use up winter
fat stores & starve, thinned wings
torn, riddled with lesions.
As hibernacula
emptied in the east, spores
moved mortality cross-
country to thirty three
states in the mere decade
since the fungus first jumped
the Atlantic on some
spelunker’s boots, perhaps,
or on infected gear—
extinction follows us
whether we mean it to
or not. We are the point
the lever turns into
a fulcrum : by wounding
the world we lift ourselves
up. So I walk the way
enthusiasm means
I’m possessed by some god—
I don’t know how to know
what I know except to
put it on foot, gesture
as outwardly useless
as boots in a downpour
on a scale this total.
Just before Plot Road meets
Clay Hill, an abandoned
barn leans over a stream
that cuts under its right
back corner, its skewed floor
strewn still with tools & hay.
A few license plates hang
on its aged gray façade.
I like the look of it
the way I like the sound
of the passing cars harped
on Clay Hill by frost heaves
that rattle their chassis :
laughable enchantment,
the sort of ruin
that seems livable
until it isn’t.
