I
Refugia (1)
The letter came, a white wing.
The envelope opened
like the sphinx moth
whose careening
maps the gardenās scrawled branches,
or the mourning dove
in the apple tree who calls
at dawn before lifting
from her nest.
Every evening the moth alights
on each blooming weed.
Every morning, that haunting
cry out the window.
I write back in pine needles, beetle wings,
say, look how far we have flown
in our flaming wreck.
Our trajectory a measure
of water stress,
tree death a status in three: plant, region, globe.
My hand in yours.
We have undergone, transpired,
and here we are at collapseā
Though sun reaches our faces
we hold ourselves apart
and name ourselves
after what we survived.
Dear Future Child
The winter the oil dipped
in the barrels and the desert was gridded
for drills and all the new wars began
was like every other except we learned
to sing harmonies as the children slept,
and now and then rain clattered the roof.
He found the notes we needed.
I held the melody lightly between my lips, lightly
as they say to do with questions
and other things that waver in our hands.
On nights we didnāt take down our instruments
I wrote a book of letters. Each one began
Dear Future Child.
In the distance between us, invasive roses
make the back passage impassableā
Bars of small leaf and barb.
The letters always end with a bouquet of purple asters that wilt
before I can weave them into crowns.
I drive to the market for more flowers
wishing that driving were already banned
and remember that at night when we sing,
the moment our voices separate is the moment they
become beautiful.
The Ashram at Leigh Mill Road
Imagine the herbarium I might have made
in childhood. Jewelweed houses
in the seep and furrow.
Paths winnowing verdant darkness.
Before we left those woods,
we gathered every sunrise
to pray and belong to one another.
In the green, dogwood arms of Virginia,
my own name was holy.
When we left, we did not take anything.
My name fettered into freight,
the warm creature of it held.
Every day I wake up and wonder
if I should trouble myself with belief,
and if so, in what. The world green
and long-legged out the window,
runoff guttering to the creek.
Guide to Flowering Plants
The old herbalist smoked Nat Shermanās
roadside amongst stands of ambrosia
and wild peony, and I would tell you
what he said, only it was long ago.
Ivey drew eighty pages of Asteraceae
in his guide, but I will never find
the name of these dried yellow petals
pilfered by felon winds.
My head covering unravels,
a white flag whipping across white-gray sky.
It leaves me bereft,
but able to pray with my ears.
Silence runs through
the house like seams of gold
mending a cracked kintsugi,
the bowl rendered precious
by its breaking.
A new vessel replaces the fractured one,
now filled.
Steam canopies
the room before vanishing.
Thunder barrows over our voices.
There are fields that hold fields that hold fields.
Blades of grass wind-bent to the ground.
Footfalls between now and the stormās first scattered rain.
The Trouble with Belief
We think we know the best place
to gather chanterelles,
how to sit out lightning bursts
above timberline. Iāve been waiting
for autumn to start singing,
and meanwhile the ash and elm
have quietly gilded their leaves.
Every time I talk about the trouble with belief,
my friends look away. All Iām saying is
what could it mean that the robes we wear
can be taken off and on?
Or maybe itās simple: trees go
from bare to bud, green leaf to gone
in tides of adornment and scarc...