Vermont Woman (For my children who wanted me to write something about myself.)

Vermont Woman

I am the blue-green edge

Between the cloud and mountain.

The fog rolled from the dark valley,

Pressed against summer hills.

The streams running silver over their stones, bearing

Light and clearness to the smallest grain of color

Between the shadows of slim, quick trout.

The quiver of bird song in afternoon meadows where

Seeded blooms droop in the yellow haze and the fox

Smiles over her shoulder as she moves away,

Weightless and tail straight.

I am people in celebration, music and dance

Under thunder rolling, warming the ground

While warm sheets wash winter grey,

I am plowed land,

Fresh-cut hay in windrows,

Tender corn in clean aisles,

The pear tree’s swarm, a fuzzy, golden cell of the hive.

I am the face of a milkweed flower,

Pregnant with vulva mauve mandalas.

I sleep naked under the rising moon,

Taste grain in the field, warm and nutty,

Stand where the continent slides under the sea,

Salt on my tongue.

I am my grandmother’s hands,

Soft and brown and wrinkled--working hands and holding.

I am the flowers they have grown, the food made, the babies

Held against her, humming and rocking to their fiddle touch.

I am the clean sweat of your labor

And the sigh in your sleep.

The ache in the throat of sorry,

The calm of death after a struggle

And the warmth in the crease of an infant’s neck.

I am the curve of a girl’s cheek,

The tug and red of her menses,

The soft, dark night she walks.

I am the young man’s dreams

And the old man’s memories,

The liquid of tears and desire

And of milk letting from the turgid nipple-

As smooth as sex and warm skin and

The shine in a lover’s eye.

I am a bridge, a white flag of surrender,

The wrinkles in the damp sheets of lovers,

The pun in your dream, your first step,

The magic of dragonflies over the pond,

The gravel in your knee,

The ragged edges of anger

The question behind hatred and fear.

I am the soil of blue slate under the mountain

And the yellow sandstone of lake cliffs.

I taste of grit and strength,

Smell of new bread and death,

Rich for corn and wheat,

Thin for juniper and cedar.

I am the cattle and deer and round woodchuck.

I wear rows of elms like a bone necklace,

I am the sweet in a bud of red clover

And I am its long, noduled roots.

I am the choreography of a mare and her foal.

The dance of the crane.

I am the tang of raspberries

And the bitter of pine in the darkling wood.

The faded periwinkle of the cabbage moth

And the sting of a wasp

The heart-spring of peepers in May

And the insistence of cicadas in August.

I am the up and down rhythm of the French in my grandfather’ voice,

A guide for my daughters, a sister to my friends,

The first woman of my sons

I run through the chambers of your heart

And flow in the rhythm of the vein.

I am the brave in a mother’s good-by smile and in her unshed tears.

I am the wish for you to walk in light,

Holding the hands of one another,

Tasting joy and feeling what there is to feel.

Vermont Cold

Vermont Cold

My father was fostered out at eight,
A farm worker, milking cows by hand
In the cold cracks
Of mornings and dusks.

They watched every bite
And valued the horses more
Though he was whipped equally well.
He swallowed the silence
And saved for a getaway bike.
Simply pedaled away
And someone kinder took him in.

He forgave the ill mother,
Eight brothers and sisters,
The father with a bottle,
Potato soup and greens
Against the hard labor.

He has only a little bitter streak,
From the meanness,
It’s very thin though,
Like a wavy line of rusty iron
Through gold.

Forida, Mid-50's

Florida, Mid 50’s

We left winter behind and drove south where
My father could work as a carpenter.
No cold or snow
Or grumpy great-aunts here.

The light stayed long and we went to the sea
Every day when my father returned from the housing boom
In Naples where stick frames littered the palm-meadow
Like whale bones.

The aqua sea rolled on the white sand
To my brown legs foaming and sinking my feet.
My bucket held shells and branches of coral.
My mother lay like a curved bronzed sculpture in the sun.

Old women smiled here; they bent to me,
Their hats shading us.
One told me she liked to eat cold potatoes
With salt, another gave me a lemon the
Size of a grapefruit.

I roller-skated on the patio in the garden
Between the strawberries and the finger bananas.
We drank juice from oranges growing in the yard.

I was allowed to put a thin silver dime
Into the big red coke machine and a shapely bottle
Dropped down: beaded light green glass.
I drank it all myself with my feet dangling
Just above the terrazzo floor.

Big boys walked by, cutting slices of coconut
Into their mouth with sharp knives.
There were snakes in the palmetto but they had
Paths and secret places in there.

My mother wore dresses and sandals and red lipstick.
My father’s shirts were crisp and pressed and
Smelled of sun and Old Spice.
I wore ribbons in my chestnut hair and took my first
Communion next to Billy Door.

Taking Down Barns

Taking Down Barns

We took down the barn at Homer Noble’s farm.
It was a large post’n beam, falling in
with stuff from another life strewn like garbage.

Mack’s old pick-up pulled out the center beam,
cracking the hand-made pegs, tumbling swallow’s
nests. In the settling dust we worked,
snaking out rough-sawed beams like trees from the forest.

There were horse harnesses, of rotted leather
and great rounded collars. I found a tin basin.
It wore the name Blueberry, after a horse
I imagined as a roan or dapple grey, working
his life out on the slanted fields in the 1940’s light.

We saved the tin from the roof and made our stairway of beams
and our flatlander friends referred to it as the Robert Frost Memorial stairway.
They filled the hole and from the foundation, made
a stone wall straight across to park the visitors.

There’s a plowshare at the edge of my garden and a
wind chime made of farm implements. It clangs like
ghosts singing, rusty. Reverently we stood in the dim stalls
as though to say a grace before we gleaned
and it was gone.

Airman's Wife

Airman’s Wife


My landlady slapped a cockroach to death
on her table without missing a word
of the story she was telling about an old
drunk niggra her daddy scaped up off
the tracks in Biloxi in 1923.

And I was 18 then in 1966 and fed the bread
she was kneading that day to the birds
even though we didn’t have enough money
for food at the commissary.

And nights the train would rattle
by our bedroom window, shaking the glass
and cause the fig tree to drop
her ripe fruit to the spongy ground
and the shrimp fisherman sang, coming home loaded.

I was homesick for Vermont
even though it was January and
the mountains would come up white
in the dawning;

And here, the Mississippi Delta
heaved and oozed into the sluggish sea
where dogfish swam and young
airmen from anywhere stopped
me at my walking, just to talk.