live in the forest

Today, we turn to the sonnets, today.
Today, we turn to the haiku, today.
Today, we turn to the pastoral, today.
Today, we turn to the leaves, the leaves
of the forest:

so we walk down to the awkward stream
and the mudroot path,
and we hear the motorists, the highwaymen.

we, like fluids, travel under the hood
of trees. We make like the squirrels
and the pignose nutshells in a graceful
scamper, a settled print, or nestling
on turfy tufts of dirt breath. In this
motor of life, we make like greasey soot,
a neat cap on coolant or a waning dipstick.

As we travel, we perpetually pollute
our breath and sweat, like engines of oil
and prevent like natural dams and shades
of fungus for the sunburnt centipede.
We smoke like an old muffler, and breathe
with our whole belly like the chubby hare.

We are an intelligent design, an engineered ecosystem:
system within system, a matter of magnitude.
But let’s not forget the page before us.
Today, we turn to the leaves of the forest,
and we practice beautiful pollution with leaves,
trails, deer, cars, trucks, planes. We
practice on people, paper, places and things.

We are looking for verbs to thread
through these distant patterns called metaphor.

It occurred to me over the second read of Heaney’s new translation that Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon society love above all a good story. I don’t think any other English text actually repeats what occurs within a story so many times. It is, I believe, an active account of composing legend or myth-making. I have to admit that the recollection of Beowulf’s battles after seeing them first-hand is not something that I spend a lot of time on; however, the accounts of past battles and kings are spectacular: the beginning account of Scyld Scefing for instance or my favorite historical account in Beowulf the retelling of the death of Ongentheow by Eofor. I think this passage rather late in the poem is skillful because it maintains a seriousness that demands attention whereas the minstrels’ lessons seem rather trite and playful. I have to say that this is a great place to begin English literature because of the power of story-telling, the joy one gets from it as well as the teaching that comes through it. And perhaps the repitition is necessary as well. When I think of the greatest stories-fact or fiction, as if that mattered-they are always best told in repetition. The Beowulf poet is truly a craftsman in verse and meter, but I think above all, he enjoyed a good story that can stand repetition for the sake of the story.

the sweat has let loose
like blood from a slit vein

and it pours torrents
down my face. my skin

is sick and crying for
the cabin air.

I walk out into the garden
and the flowers all stick

their faces into the hose stream
like children trying to breathe.

the bees are big, black and fuzzy
ursine bugs with no expression but

the fury of wings over ears.
I stand here melting away

wishing I were a toad on the lily
singing to my love who is hesitant

to come out of the trickle of water
through the rocks. But she is confident.

like love should be, two toads
hesitant but confident, neither

aware but myself watering the daylily
and rose mallow while a brown beetle

lands on my shoulder like a nosy uncle.
He whispers that I’m too big to be a toad.

I brush him to the ground pondering
when I will get my lily.

the forest i walked today

was full of trees growing
together, poplar and beechwood

holding roots like separate races
with a firm grasp on time

with a leg each up in the air
joining at the crotch

in a single sprout of perfect symmetry
and descending the mountain,

the forest I walked today was full of
a pair of yellow swallowtail butterfly,

one waiting for the other to revive
with the hope of wings

in a continual iris articulation,
the hope of friendship on a dead bug’s still

folding of legs. So I tossed the quiet
bird of felicity to the leaves and soil,

a gentle bedside, there it rests like
a leaf of powder and fairy dust ashes.

the forest I walked today
was full of quiet hands holding

to prayer and moments.