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.

Memory

Memory

My mom was a singer
And a rocker of babies.
She knew what I needed.
A smile from deep
That crinkled her eyes,
Lessons in making bread;
The feel of the dough
Warm, pliant, smelling of rise.

When I had the cat dreams
I’d crawl into bed with her,
That body a safe landscape;
Curves and slopes,
Soft rises and mysterious canyons.
To hide in the wing of her arm
Was a time of warm, of full.

Cold mornings we’d stick
Our feet in the oven of the wood stove.
Forget school and the hard edges
Of buildings and frost.
We’d read and smile sneaky smiles
And rock, living on
Natural time.

Adaptation

The river wound about the foothills,
it flowed over rocks and slid lithely
through its high wild banks with brambles and branches reaching
toward her middle where the water was deep and silent.
Late summer haze yellowed the cornfields and hay stubble.
Goldenrod spears nodded to bees.

There was expectancy; perhaps that summer would end,
but that air was nebulous in the heat.
The only sounds were crickets whose rhythm was so subtle
in it’s seeping as to be no more apparent than breathing.
And the call of a blackbird from his reedy perch.

Fields and rivers I’ve always known,
and the line of mountains showing blue in the distance.
I’ve come late to hills, to the talking of trees,
the stone heart of the mountain.
Summers are short, and fall rusts and bleeds before the white of frost.
Lying nights awake, the darkness presses.
I hear trees cracking frozen as though their backs were broken.
The river is silent under her green ice.

Now I am the keeper of the fire.
I feed tree’s bones to the black and wait for spring.

1969 Beets

1969 Beets

Today my father gave me jars of beets.
My mother canned them two years ago.
The colors were glowing.
I opened one jar, the old type,
Glass-topped with orange rubbers.
The juice splashed my hand bright.

The stains are instant
And bring me back summers
When I would help by slipping the skins
From the gleaming hearts.

My mother’s hands,
Brown-skinned, wide palmed;
With slender fingers and long.
I remember how they felt when she patted me
And soothed, cool on my forehead,
Strong in my hand.

I miss her warm brown eyes,
Wide-toothed smile and the way she dropped her h’s,
Cha Cha hips she could shimmy.
But when I close my eyes I can see
Her hands.
Working the soil.
Pulling, rinsing, cooking, skinning,
Packing those red beets into clear jars.

Lying On Floors

Lying on Floors

One of my first memories was of lying
On the floor behind the wood cook stove.
It was a shelter there in the long, wide, drafty kitchen,
Warm with the brown smell of wood dust.

I could see beneath the stove my mother’s
Penny loafers and white anklets
And the floor boards stretching beyond
And narrowing with perspective.

The house sounds, clinks, rhythmic words,
The soft explosion of a laugh,
Intruded gently on my reality.

All was safe and misted in wool smelling steam
From the stove’s reservoir, my head resting
On the dog’s silky belly as her old legs
Twitched dreams.

Nothing bad could happen here.

Blueberry Management Area

Blueberry Management Area

Ringed by hills dark and darker,
Looking over humps and shoulders,
Sitting on prickly plants,
A rock at my back
With its lichen map,

The sun sifts through me
To my firm fleshed days,
A child at my skirt,
One asleep in the ferns,

Moving like a mama bear
Slow and wary through
The blue fruit, filling my tin,
Not for the economics of it,

But for the freedom of the high air
And seeing farther than a wooded dooryard.
A picnic of rough bread, cheese, and
Water from my spring, a feast
And we stain our teeth with blue smiles.

Now here I am still, those children
Gone from me; we were so thick then,
Waking, touching, moving through
The day, tied together with our needs.

But here, this summer on a hill,
All the same again. The calling
Of small voices, pines ringing the meadow,
Cicadas winding out their song.

Photo—1927 (To My Mother)


Who put you on that chair?
The high-topped, oak-backed
One in the year 1927 in Ontario, Canada?
You have your hand to your face
And your skin is brown and smooth.
The cotton diaper you are wearing
Is crooked and falling off.

Your father’s bare fields behind you
Stretch out of focus,
A land without trees, open to the
Wind and sun and sky
Falling all down around you.

Who took this picture, freeze-framing
Your child’s body so I could hold
The yellowed image in my hands
And know how your arms would grow
Long for hugging and your hips would
Be wide and swing in loose-limbed dancing?

I want to hold you, with your child’s
Limbs against me and look into your
Round brown eyes,
I want to whisper the songs I learned from you
Into your shelly ear.

You are many parts of many I know
In my bones.
Like the child in this picture,
Sometimes the ones I never knew
I love the most.