POEMS & EXCERPTS
I Was A Shipwreck Scholar
from Nectar rising
The meadow’s buried and reaching heart,
the siphon and pump of change,
will swell roots with tissue and pith
and pressure their interlacing span to absorb,
will inspirit liquid up into narrow spaces,
nectar up stamen,
water up stalks and stems
that want to be structures of wood.
The field’s vascular schema,
its ducts and vessels,
its capillaries of intent
at last delivering its meaning in lasting stands and copses,
where change is lastingly slight.
from I hear my father in the meadow now
I hear my father in the meadow now
pleading with the milkweed
to ready for the monarch
that no longer arrives.
He is grumbling I told you so
about the unsowed seed,
the fade of the meadowlark,
and the dying in the hives.
Bats dazzling blackly
That long time ago
just after nightfall
standing in the wind
in the bygone sheep pasture
anchoring my feet
in the shallow grass
at the shelf of the bay
by the shoal of the town
looking over at the old white farmhouse
one naked spotlight burning on the outside peak
inking a geometry of shadows where it does not reach
throwing into relief where it does
the rounded green gleam of the ’49 Chevy
the slightly swinging tracery of the rope hammock
the billowing sag of the crab net left leaning
watching the bats dazzling blackly
through the drapery of light
hearing the oars and oarlocks
of a rowboat going back and forth
down in Cedar Cove
and the carefree voices carrying themselves up to me
all beaconed dimly
but enough
through the dappled sorrow of all the years that followed
from Whale fall
Down it should have sunk in a graceful spiral,
deflated and long songless,
now just a dirge singing itself into the abyss
through fathoms of descending verses,
delivering itself as bounty to the very bottom,
where the sixgills and hagfish, eelpouts and brittle stars,
worms and snails and shrimp
in their rolling and forever feast
would turn it into lipids and sulphides,
nutrients and minerals
from which new reefs would rise
and give breath to the sea.
from Saving eelgrass
Blind and chairbound is my aged mother
when I visit her with wounds freshly stitched.
She softly skims their braille with fine fingers
and makes her maternal inferences,
her sight line into my depths and shallows.
Deep under dark water is a meadow,
unseen acres of willowy green unsung –
no fluorescence of reefs in red and blue,
no eerie charisma of mangrove swamps.
Just a nursery for the progeny
of the sea…
from The seal rib candelabra
We reimagined the church of you.
Your skull’s empty pulpit,
the unbraced pews of your forelimbs,
the fallen steeple of your spine.
From the broken communion of your vertebrae
we made a mobile of their wafered disks.
When they are received on the tongues of the westerly wind,
they chime and remind us of you.
From the arches and buttresses of your ribs
we assembled a 15-armed candelabra
and sanctified you with tall, white candles.
Photographs by Sadie LeStage