Headwaters Read online

  Also by ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT

  Poetry

  Claiming Kin

  The Forces of Plenty

  The Lotus Flowers

  Two Trees

  Kyrie

  Shadow of Heaven

  Messenger: New and Selected Poems, 1976–2006

  Prose

  The Flexible Lyric

  The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Speech, Rhythm of Song

  CONTENTS

  Headwaters

  Privet Hedge

  Stones

  Oak

  My Mother

  Owl

  Milkmaid

  Yearling

  Cow

  Fox

  Noble Dog

  Moles

  Garter Snake

  Groundhog

  Hog-Nosed Skunk

  Hound

  Lost Boy

  Maestro

  Geese

  Birch

  Bear

  Chameleon

  Lament

  Spring

  Sleep

  Larch

  Roof

  Storm

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the editors who first published these poems:

  The American Poetry Review: Birch, Garter Snake, Hound, Lament, Milkmaid, Moles, Noble Dog, Oak, Spring, Stones

  The American Scholar: Headwaters, Larch, My Mother, Sleep

  The Atlantic: Fox, Hog-Nosed Skunk, Yearling

  Blackbird: Lost Boy

  The Cortland Review: Maestro

  Granta: Geese

  The New Yorker: Bear, Chameleon, Cow, Owl, Roof, Storm

  The New York Times: Privet Hedge

  HEADWATERS

  I made a large mistake I left my house I went into the world it was not

  the most perilous hostile part but I couldn’t tell among the people there

  who needed what no tracks in the snow no boot pointed toward me or away

  no snow as in my dooryard only the many currents of self-doubt I clung

  to my own life raft I had room on it for only me you’re not surprised

  it grew smaller and smaller or maybe I grew larger and heavier

  but don’t you think I’m doing better in this regard I try to do better

  PRIVET HEDGE

  first frail green in the northeast the forest around us no longer

  a postcard of Christmas snow clotting the spruce or worse

  fall’s technicolor beeches sumac sugar maple death

  even the death of vegetation should never be

  so beautiful it is unseemly I prefer the cusps

  they focus the mind

  which otherwise stays

  distracted knowing things when my friend said

  knowledge does nothing for him I felt at once superior

  and chastised I’d just deduced the five new birds in my yard

  woodpecker size and stripes and red blaze but feeding on the ground

  five yellow-shafted flickers can the soul be known by its song who hears it

  what keeps it aloft what keeps it whole what helps it survive habitual

  pride greed wrath sloth lust a list compiled by a parent always

  needing something to forgive you for I meant

  to ask the nuns to straighten this out for me

  while I was among them in Minnesota their earlier spring

  but I couldn’t guess which ones they are they dress

  like everyone else no veils no starched white

  no kneeling boards I was left on my own

  to study the graveyard behind the privet hedge

  their markers all alike as on a battlefield immense and calm

  beneath an open midwestern sky nothing between

  the pilgrim and the scoured horizon

  STONES

  birds not so much the ducks and geese okay not horses cows pigs

  she’d lived in the city all her life some cats and dogs okay as part

  of someone else’s narrative the posted photographs are someone’s

  pets the figurines less figurative than graceful to behold the same

  with carved giraffes and camels no reptiles no amphibians nothing

  from the sea although she loved the sea her passion was for stones

  I don’t know why the parquet floor never buckled and caved collapsed

  into the rooms below her rooms all the horizontal surfaces were covered

  with stones the bureau the cupboards the closets were full of the precious

  stones she wore at her throat her ears her fingers her wrists the inlaid

  tables held ceramic bowls of polished stones the antique desk a basket

  of stones a bushel of stones on the floor on the windowsills more stones

  each one unique each one a narrative the étagère held up to the light stones

  hewn from the source and hauled up here still jagged refracting every

  shade of amethyst her birthstone like my mother’s crystals shimmering

  as if alive rescued from the field the cliff the shore the riverbed I found

  a single cufflink by her bed a tiny diamond set in silver did her father

  sift out at his flour mill the dangerous stones I stretched out beside her

  in her bad time thinking to help her sleep I held her hand her fingers wore

  a few of her favorite rings the two of us lay entirely still atop the quilt

  a stiff sarcophagus she didn’t sleep her mind was an etched plate

  from which she drew off print after print the framed prints on the walls

  were all interiors our talk had always been a stone kicked down a hill

  no purpose no destination her father her mother my mother my dogs

  she never said she was leaving me in charge she wasn’t my mother why

  put me in charge I put the jewels on other throats and wrists I threw away

  the bushels of cosmetics and perfume her chosen armaments

  against the world who loved the world I sold the breakfront

  cabinet full of cut-glass bowls and blown-glass figurines but who

  will save the living stones she loved I have so many already

  in my yard half-in half-out of the earth immovable

  she’d seen my yard she’d seen those heavy stones

  OAK

  not to board the bus but wait for the last bell

  like those who live in town shuffling ahead of her the clumps

  drift apart drift back shifting boys in a cluster now a boy and a girl

  a dance a recess game as each is subtracted one by one into the houses

  she passes the windows half-lidded by half-drawn shades

  or framed by curtains and sash she likes

  walking alone

  along the verge of the lawns no fence no field the leaves

  drifting out from under the oaks while in the woods

  they would only settle and rot she likes the way a passing car

  releases them across the grid of the sidewalk a solid math

  for a solitary girl the small steps into the larger

  world of strangers wholly indifferent houses cars rust-colored dog

  she passes the hardware grocery pharmacy beauty salon every Thursday

  you’ve noticed such a child content to be invisible

  scuffing the leaves

  toward the bungalow the hushed backroom

  where someone is propped in the high bed her webbed face

  her halo of hair past humankind and all its suffering

  past seeing now past death too old for death

  and waiting for this girl

  who thumbs the latch

  who lifts the lid of the black box lifts from red felt those silver pieces
<
br />   fits them together the trick is to breathe across and not

  into the small round hole as her arched fingers hover

  over the other open holes each finger knows its task she’s fixed

  to one purpose Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee

  dark out in the street the wind ruffling oak leaves the dark

  window lit by the silver flute the white ghost hair the brighter

  lights is it her mother come to drive her home

  MY MOTHER

  my mother my mother my mother she

  could do anything so she did everything the world

  was an unplowed field a dress to be hemmed a scraped knee it needed

  a casserole it needed another alto in the choir her motto was apply yourself

  the secret of life was spreading your gifts why hide your light

  under a bushel you might

  forget it there in the dark times the lonely times

  the sun gone down on her resolve she slept a little first

  so she’d be fresh she put on a little lipstick drawing on her smile

  she pulled that hair up off her face she pulled her stockings on she stepped

  into her pumps she took up her matching purse already

  packed with everything they all would learn

  they would be nice they would

  apologize they would be grateful whenever

  they had forgotten what to pack she never did

  she had a spare she kissed your cheek she wiped the mark

  away with her own spit she marched you out again unless you were

  that awful sort of stubborn broody child who more and more

  I was who once had been so sweet so mild staying put

  where she put me what happened

  must have been the bushel I was hiding in

  the sun gone down on her resolve she slept a little first

  so she’d be fresh she pulled her stockings on she’d packed

  the words for my every lack she had a little lipstick on her teeth the mark

  on my cheek would not rub off she gave the fluids from her mouth

  to it she gave the tissues in her ample purse to it I never did

  apologize I let my sister succor those in need and suffer

  the little children my mother

  knew we are self-canceling she gave herself

  a lifetime C an average grade from then on out she kept

  the lights on day and night a garden needs the light the sun

  could not be counted on she slept a little day and night she didn’t need

  her stockings or her purse she watered she weeded she fertilized she stood

  in front the tallest stalk keeping the deer the birds all

  the world’s idle shameless thieves away

  OWL

  the sign for making the most of what you have

  on the human hand is a thumb at full right angle to the palm

  for the owl it’s two talons forward two back a flexible foot

  that crushes the prey and lifts it to the beak to the eyes

  which are legally blind this is why the owl

  hunts in the dark in the dusk when nothing is clearly seen

  and why the owl’s eyes are fixed facing ahead to better focus

  so its whole face swivels in each direction like the turret on a tank

  the round plates of feathers surrounding the eyes collect the least sound

  when it turns the owl is computing by geometry the exact

  location of the mouse or snake or songbird

  that moves imperceptibly in its nest toward which the owl

  sets out from the hole in the tree the burrow the eave of the barn

  and crosses the field in utter silence wing-feathers overlapped

  to make no sound poor mouse poor rabbit

  last night

  from the porch obbligato to the brook and the snuffling deer

  intent on the gnarled worm-bitten apples we leave on the tree

  I heard what must have been a Barred Owl or a Barn Owl

  or a Lesser Horned Owl close by not deep in the woods

  what I heard was less a call than a cry

  a fragment repeating repeating a kind of shudder

  which may be why the country people I come from

  thought an owl was prescient ill-omen meant to unspool

  the threads they’d gathered and wound I was a grown woman

  when my father took the key from under the eave

  and unlocked the door to the darkened house he had grown up in

  and stepped across the threshold and said as he entered the empty room

  hello Miss Sally as though his stepmother dead for weeks

  were still in her usual chair

  in the Medicine Wheel

  the emblem for wisdom is the same for gratitude at dusk at dark

  the farsighted owl strikes in utter silence when we hear it

  from the tree or the barn what it announces

  is already finished

  MILKMAID

  white froth overnight on bare ground brown leaves

  no yellow bus on the snow-slicked road so I could help my father

  deliver the mail his other job begin at six finish at two then farm

  my part was laboring through the drifts

  toward the red flag the widow’s flag meant

  dried-apple pies fried pockets of fruit to sweeten

  his usual bitter thermos his usual two sandwiches

  one butter sliced in a slab the peasant’s cheese one meat

  maybe headcheese the leftover parts of pig snowdays

  I wore his fishing boots rolled at my waist

  I waded to the metal box put something in took something out

  I still believe getting the mail is the best part of the day my beloved

  disagrees he says he has enough bad news but what about finding

  among the trash a piece of smooth beach glass today a postcard

  a milkmaid’s royal blue emphatic apron

  not dulled by many washings not stained by milk or mud the blue

  Vermeer’s ennoblement he lets her pour a pure white stream

  from the lip of the pitcher into the earthbrown bowl

  what’s rich has been set aside for butter or cheese

  what’s left enough to soften the week’s stale bread a peasant’s

  Sunday supper Milk Soup my father’s favorite

  YEARLING

  Thanksgiving Day was the day they slaughtered the hog the carcass

  hoisted by its heels from the oak the planks across sawhorses holding

  the hams the buckets catching the blood the shanks the organ meats

  the chunks of white fat for biscuits the feet sunk in brine as the yard-dogs

  whined for the leathery ear and my grandmother napped

  with the baby always a baby needing a nap

  my neighbor

  at ninety-six claims she’s never had a nap she has no use for dogs

  she used to spend Thanksgiving in the woods getting her deer

  and strung it up outside the shed where now droops

  head down rack down her son’s deer her knives

  stay sharp one year her son brought by

  not venison a yearling bear glossy and black

  dressed out there wasn’t much underneath its thick coat

  a scrawny frame the paws so much like hands she said

  when she looked through the window it startled her

  hanging there the size of a child

  COW

  end of the day daylight subsiding into the trees lights coming on

  in the milking barns as somewhere out in the yard some ants

  are tucking in their aphids for the night behind

  hydrangea leaves or in their stanchions underground

  they have been bred for it the smaller brain

  serving the larger brain the cows eat so we will eat we guarantee
<
br />   digestion is the only work they do heads down tails up

  they won’t have sex they get some grain some salt

  no catamounts no wolves we fertilize the fields

  we put up bales of hay we give them names

  but again this week one breached the fence the neighbors

  stopped to shoo it back a girl held out a handful of grass

  calling the cow as you would a dog no dice so what

  if she recoiled to see me burst from the house with an ax

  I held it by the blade I tapped with the handle where the steaks come from

  like the one I serve my friend a water sign who likes to lurk

  in the plural solitude of Zen retreat to calm his mind but when it’s done

  what he needs I think is something truly free of mind a slab of earth

  by way of cow by way of fire the surface charred the juices

  running pink and red on the white plate

  FOX

  rangy loping swiveling left then right I’m thinking

  nonchalant but the doves flutter up to the roof of the barn the crickets

  leap from the grass like fleas a fox is in my yard-o my yard-o

  plenty of songs in my head

  to sing to my child’s child if she were here

  she wakes in her wooden crib and sings to herself

  odd happy child so like another child content in her pen

  with a pot a metal straw a lid a hole in the lid a glass hat

  for the hole a metal basket with smaller holes

  one hole the size of the straw for hours

  I made the pieces fit then took them apart

  then made them fit when I got tired I lay me down my little head

  against the flannel chicks and ducks then slept then woke then took

  the puzzle up my mother had another child sick unto death

  she needed me to fall in love with solitude I fell in love

  it is my toy my happiness the child of my friends

  is never ever left alone asleep awake

  pushing her wooden blocks around the rug they cannot bear

  her least distress their eyes stay on their sparrow poor happy child

  last year I startled a fox crossing the road the tail

  more rust than red the head cranked forward facing me

  it stopped stock-still as if deciding whether to hurry forward