Minks
The signs left behind remind me
that you are here: the ripples
generating from under
the riverbank, webbed prints in
the damp sand and wet snow, piles
of crayfish remains. But you
watch me the entire time. In
the thickets and woods, I move
around you with the stealth of
a bulldozer. A quick scan
and you know instantly that
you are done with hunting for the
time being. Patience is the
only way that I will catch
a glimpse of you, but you are
more patient than I am. With
your short legs, elongated
body, small ears and snout, you
can fit the invisible
shapes. With your rusty brown fur,
beneath the moss-covered logs
on fallen trees, even your
squeaks and screeches and growls and
hisses would hardly be clues.
In fact, your whole family wants
nothing to do with me. The
mustelids all think that I
am a creep. The otters and
weasels and fishers and skunks,
they all agree that I should
be avoided at all costs.
Will I learn to be OK
with this shunning? It is not
altogether a bad thing
to be so unwelcome here.
The Nomad
We must try sometimes
to see how the sun
does not merely rise
and set: it rolls, too.
On the side of huts
in the Nubian
desert, like an egg
yolk tumbling down a
pitch black cone-shaped roof.
With our lens for eyes,
we can line up the
sun any way that we
want. We can take its
picture and make it
move along the tracks
of our barren dreams,
pushed and dragged across
the jungles and up
our mountains, hauled by
a hundred thousand
hungry men. The sun
will never go any-
where with us alone.
A Spring Soup
In a large clay pot, pour
the fresh spring water, place
it over gentle heat:
an eternal flame from
the rocks. Add the mint and
thyme, allow their fragrance
to infuse the water.
With grace, sprinkle in
the sunlight, the golden
saffron threads, to add warmth
and brightness to the broth.
Carefully mix in a
pinch of earth, the grounding
and nourishing of soil.
Chop the ripe tomato
into small pieces of
ruby-red acid bursts.
Along with the garlic,
stir in the snow peas, their
alpine crisp freshness to
add texture with sea salt
to taste; the Himalayan
wind bringing balance with
a dash of balsamic
vinegar, a hint of
sweetness and depth. Let it
meld together. Serve hot,
garnish with dried rosemary.
Take a bowl and a seat
by the window in the
kitchen, outside by the
creek’s marsh where herons fish,
their jewelled feathers wet with
the crisp taste of apple
breeze, a core of the Earth
holds us all in the flora.
Abstractions
Rage is a jammed
front door and order
is children slaughtered
in Gaza. Justice is a
feeling that a judge has
after lunch and common is
talking about the weather,
hoping to talk about something
that matters. Solitude is sitting
at the Walmart bus stop, looking
at a girl in a car asking, “Who are
those people sitting there?”
Ecstasy is buying a pizza
for a party of friends and family,
walking it in the front door.
Evil is the story in the paper
that I can’t read, I see the headline
and flip as fast as possible.
Gratitude is fresh air. Bobby Bare
is on the radio at 2:22 am.
My mind is a number. My children
at the zoo. Mercy is knowing me.
Faith is believing in me. Hunger
is the way I feel I am doing
something better than me. Peace
is swimming with my kids in a pond,
the snapping turtles never appear.
War is a dream. History is a dream.
An angel who helps my little crises.
Support Group
Despair is knowing
that you are too drunk
to keep writing. Gratitude
is knowing it is OK to stop
writing. Soul is the word
left behind. Hope is the word
that gives soul soul. Breath is
how I keep going. Vice is a way
to know that I am breathing.
Names are just pebbles
on the beach. Brotherhood
is just a title I wear when
I go out to bathe on the beach.
Veracity and compassion,
such stupid ways of being.
Family, grief and loss:
what keeps us together.
Theology
Silence is the moment you know it’s too loud.
Stability is a good piss.
Hospitality is a good guest.
Normal is how I feel when I am not doing anything
that makes the world feel worth living.
Public is what the world does when everyone
is trying to be normal.
Excitement is when normal goes to hell.
Kindness is love. Contentment is being kind.
Understanding is the contentment of being loved.
Love is fulfillment, and atheism is the love of death;
the youth know what it means to be past all that.
Lovage
Pop told me that he’d been shopping here for 35 years. Looking over the table of greens, he asked me if I’d ever heard of “Bubble and Squeak.”
“No,” I said. “Tell me more.” He went on to describe a sausage and potato recipe with lovage.
He said, “It comes from the sound it makes when cooked over a fire. We often prepare this at the farm where I live in Mumford, New York.”
“What’s lovage?” I asked.
“Look all around you; this market will tell you,” he said.
Lovage is more intense than celery. Traditionally in Ukraine, it’s known as an aphrodisiac. Women would rinse their hair with it to attract men. In ancient Rome, it was used to deodourize shoes and scent baths.
In the sunlight, its chartreuse leaves flicker like emerald butterfly wings. In the shadows, its pale iguana belly green leaves wave in the breeze like river trout fins. Everything about this plant can be eaten or used in some purposeful manner. The hollow stem of the plant—smooth as bamboo—was used by sick children as a straw for sipping broth. Cultivated for its rhizomes, which are used as a carminative in domestic remedies, the tea is called Kao Ben.
The flowering tops yield an oil used in flavouring and perfumery. Yet, it attracts very few insects and is almost entirely resistant to rabbits. The oldest of our English brethren and sisters called it “love parsley.” Levisticum officinale, “Love ache.”
Little maintenance is needed, and it doesn’t need feeding. It can even survive below-zero temperatures. In late autumn, it dies down, its bright stalks disintegrating into a forest spice of withered algae. Yes, God has made everything beautiful in its time.
In early spring, the resprouting begins, starting as ice crystals, growing into howlite stone squash blossom pendant necklaces of roots. Its tadpole skin coloured leaves prefer well-drained soil but tolerate even the most waterlogged and sandy birth bed.
As I grabbed a stalk from the farmer’s table, Pop was gone. All around me, buzzing shoppers. How ordinary they looked in their bunches, all tied together in tight cords of small orange rubber bands. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was truly looking at each one of them. They looked so beautiful that my heart ached.
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image 1: George Payne; image 2: Kathleen Farley