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- 04/06/2023
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Fountain, Field and Forest - 1. Chapter 1
Three birches,
Despite their advanced age
Stand tall and graceful, like thoroughbreds,
With supple limbs and green manes stirred by the warm breeze;
At their feet, the brook whispers a song
To charm the daylilies
Into bloom.
~ ~ ~
About halfway up the rise,
on the east side of the meadow,
my grandfather found a spring
bubbling out of the granite stones;
there he dug a surface well
and encased it in cinder blocks
so to save only for him
its cold north-country clarity
and unique mineral taste.
He ran a line of one-inch pipe
down to the old house he bought
to bring its dry bones back to life
and to mix in his bourbon.
But water being what it is,
a new stream escaped its pen
and flowed out between two maples;
on one of these, Granddad hung
a blue enamelware ladle,
so a thirsty explorer,
emerged from the primeval woods,
might thereby slake a fierce thirst
without first wiping dirty boots
on Grandmother’s clean-swept porch.
And what could tempt bold heroes
indoors on such bright days as these
when a world of adventures
like none Lewis and Clark heard of
waited in the woods and fields;
when great feats of engineering –
monstrous dams, unyielding forts –
lay unbuilt beneath the blue sky?
And where to fill one’s canteen
On a winding, arduous trail
Is better than a clear spring,
With its old, sky-speckled ladle?
~ ~ ~
Horsetails grow
Where the brook becomes pond,
and on the stones which mark its border
frogs rest from their exertions and soak up the sun
while they watch with wary, bulging eyes
for bold, tanned summer boys
on the hunt.
~ ~ ~
In the smaller side meadow,
beyond the reach of Grandma’s voice,
a wild patch of blueberries
grew over a rocky outcrop,
sharing the space with lichens
and circled by everlastings.
By tall grass time in July,
one could find a sanctuary there
behind a timothy screen
hidden from prying adult eyes,
in which to read undisturbed,
or snack on nature’s offerings
and listen to the swallows’
gossip with every swoop and dive.
And in my midsummer’s hour,
I brought another to that place,
to circle one another
as we shared the tiny dark fruit
which stained our fingers purple
while we talked about everything
and nothing that mattered most,
though we lay so close together
on the warm ground, our arms touched,
our laughter rising like incense.
Even though it was my wish,
there was no star yet visible;
thus I left his lips unkissed
and for that afternoon undared,
my secrets still in hiding
beneath the sun, in the tall grass.
~ ~ ~
Cicadas
Told us that blackberries
Would soon ripen where fallen trees
had opened a hole in the forest canopy,
And beckoned those who would brave their thorns
To come fill their buckets
With the sun.
~ ~ ~
If you looked, you could discern
a small gap in the wall of trees
where grass stopped and forest grew
and a curious soul could stoop
to follow a narrow path
deeper between spruces and pines
growing in what was pasture
seven generations ago
that twisted through the woodlot
to emerge on a logging road
where fresh-cut conifers once
began their trek to the sawmill.
Those on the path encounter
the oddity of a stone wall
made from glacial granite rocks
dug from the earth, dragged by oxen
into their last fixed places
in an adolescent era;
now they mark no field, but draw
a line to bisect the forest
and make shelter for chipmunks
beside wide mats of deep green moss.
A fair piece beyond the wall
and uphill on the rutted road
the power company cut
a right-of-way, the straightest in
all of northern New England,
where from underneath their frail lines
one could see rank upon rank
of blue-green mountains forever;
but surviving the decades
stood one singular grand white birch,
out of reason older than
any of its kin and brethren
in which one could yet make out
faint initials my parents carved
so anyone could see them,
and where I added yours to mine.
~ ~ ~
Grandmother
Planted yellow iris
Beside the tall, old-fashioned lilacs
which flourished behind the house by Granddad’s bedroom;
when she passed, I dug scions and corms
to help them grow in my
memory.
~ ~ ~
I must drive from dawn to dusk,
through mountains and back in time
to visit that place again,
between the bend in the dirt road
and where it disappears
over the hill by Hooker’s fields.
My grandmother’s kitchen perch
where she watched each car on the road
and her living room rocker
are all gone, burned up in the fire
that left nothing of the house
my grandfather bought and restored
except a forlorn chimney
and the barn, with its weathervane
of a horse in full gallop
that he made in his own workshop.
The back field, though overgrown,
Still rises toward Libra at night,
while a persistent searcher
can locate hidden blueberries
near the spot where I beheld
a fearless adolescent wolf
two years ago, come last June.
Echoes of whispered young voices,
are carried on some zephyr
to a heart once filled and broken,
later restored to itself
by the symphony of silence
where meadow and forest meet.
And if one tunes old ears with care,
it’s possible to follow
the music of water at play
to a clear spring emerging
amongst the ancient mossy stones
where a blue-speckled ladle
still hangs from a tree on its nail.
~ ~ ~
Clear sweet notes
still ring across that field
when the white throated sparrow sings to me
of endless summer days and crystal-clear cold nights,
when I belonged to that new green world
before necessity
bade me leave.
Thank you for spending time with me under the sun and amongst the trees. Any comment or remark you care to leave will be valuable.
-
19
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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