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CHAPTER 1
April Woods: Morning
Birth of color out of night and the ground.
Luminous the gatherings of bloodroot
newly risen, green leaf,
white flower
in the sun, the dark grown absent.
October 10
Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.
Under their loosening bright gold, the sycamore limbs bleach whiter.
Now the only flowers are beeweed and aster, spray of their white and lavender over the brown leaves.
The calling of the crow sounds Loud — a landmark — now that the life of summer falls silent, and the nights grow.
The Sorrel Filly
The songs of small birds fade away into the bushes after sundown,
the air dry, sweet with goldenrod.
Beside the path, suddenly, bright asters flare in the dusk, The aged voices of a few crickets thread the silence.
It is a quiet I love, though my life too often drives me through it deaf.
Busy with costs and losses, I waste the time I have to be here — a time blessed beyond my deserts, as I know,
if only I would keep aware. The leaves rest in the air, perfectly still.
I would like them to rest in my mind as still, as simply spaced. As I approach,
the sorrel filly looks up from her grazing,
poised there, light on the slope as a young apple tree. A week ago I took her away to sell, and failed to get my price, and brought her home again. Now in the quiet I stand and look at her a long time, glad to have recovered what is lost in the exchange of something for money.
March Snow
The morning lights whiteness that has touched the world perfectly as air.
In the whitened country under the still fall of the snow only the river, like a brown earth,
taking all falling darkly into itself, moves.
Woods
I part out the thrusting branches and come in beneath the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent there is singing around me.
Though I am dark there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy there is flight around me.
The Snake
At the end of October I found on the floor of the woods a small snake whose back was patterned with the dark of the dead leaves he lay on.
His body was thickened with a mouse or small bird. He was cold,
so stuporous with his full belly and the fall air that he hardly troubled to flicker his tongue.
I held him a long time, thinking of the perfection of the dark marking on his back, the death that swelled him, his living cold.
Now the cold of him stays in my hand, and I think of him lying below the frost,
big with a death to nourish him during a long sleep.
A Squirrel
Here's a fellow who leaves his hole On Sunday, to loaf and invite his soul.
He looks into a hollow beech tree To see what he can or can't see.
The day is bright. He's in no haste,
Although there was one time at least He should have hurried more than he did.
He should have run to his hole and hid;
Some hairs were missing from his tail Where a hawk just barely missed a meal.
This squirrel just barely kept ahead Of what he'd be if he was dead.
He's the proven perfect master Of his last meeting with disaster,
And now he has that bare pretext Not to worry about the next.
The First
The first man who whistled thought he had a wren in his mouth.
He went around all day with his lips puckered,
afraid to swallow.
Winter Night Poem for Mary
As I started home after dark I looked into the sky and saw the new moon,
an old man with a basket on his arm.
He walked among the cedars in the bare woods.
They stood like guardians, dark as he passed. He might have been singing,
or he might not. He might have been sowing the spring flowers, or he might not. But I saw him with his basket, going along the hilltop.
The Terrapin
The terrapin and his house are one.
Though he may go, he's never gone.
He's housed within, from nose to toe:
A door, a floor, and no window.
There's little room; the light is dim;
His furniture is only him.
He sits alone, says naught aloud;
Where no guest comes, a thought's a shout.
He pokes along; he's in no haste;
He has no map and no suitcase;
He has no worries, and no woes,
For where he is is where he goes.
Ponder this wonder under his dome.
Who, wandering, is always home.
Sleep
I love to lie down weary under the stalk of sleep growing slowly out of my head,
the dark leaves meshing.
The Finches
The ears stung with cold sun and frost of dawn in early April, comes
the song of winter finches,
their crimson bright, then dark as they move into
and then against the light.
May the year warm them soon. May they soon go
north with their singing and the seasons to follow.
May the bare sticks soon
live, and our minds go free of the ground into the shining of trees.
Walnut St., Oak St., Sycamore St., Etc.
So this is what happened to the names of the trees!
I heard them fly up,
whistling, out of the woods.
But I did not know where they had gone.
Her First Calf
Her fate seizes her and brings her down. She is heavy with it. It wrings her. The great weight is heaved out of her. It eases.
She moves into what she has become,
sure in her fate now as a fish free in the current.
She turns to the calf who has broken out of the womb's water and its veil.
He breathes. She licks his wet hair.
He gathers his legs under him and rises. He stands, and his legs wobble. After the months of his pursuit of her, now they meet face to face.
From the beginnings of the world his arrival and her welcome have been prepared. They have always known each other.
To Know The Dark
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Planting Trees
In the mating of trees,
the pollen grain entering invisible the domed room of the winds, survives the ghost of the old forest that stood here when we came. The ground invites it, and it will not be gone.
I become the familiar of that ghost and its ally, carrying in a bucket twenty trees smaller than weeds,
and I plant them along the way of the departure of the ancient host.
I return to the ground its original music.
It will rise out of the horizon of the grass, and over the heads of the weeds, and it will rise over the horizon of men's heads. As I age in the world it will rise and spread,
and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds.
I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights.
Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live when I no longer rise in the mornings to be pleased by the green of them shining, and their shadows on the ground,
and the sound of the wind in them.
Spring
A shower like a little song Overtook him going home,
Wet his shoulders, and went on.
The Unseeable Animal
My Daughter: "I hope there's an animal Somewhere that nobody has ever seen.
And I hope nobody ever sees it."
Being, whose flesh dissolves at our glance, knower of the secret sums and measures,
you are always here,
dwelling in the oldest sycamores,
visiting the faithful springs when they are dark and the foxes have crept to their edges.
I have come upon pools in streams, places overgrown with the woods' shadow,
where I knew you had rested,
watching the little fish hang still in the flow;
as I approached they seemed particles of your clear mind disappearing among the rocks.
I have waked deep in the woods in the early morning, sure that while I slept your gaze passed over me.
That we do not know you is your perfection and our hope. The darkness keeps us near you.
My Nose
I fear my dear nose May look like an onion,
But I have not asked For a second opinion.
Because I'm afraid I just could not bear it If I should hear, "No.
It looks like a carrot."
Falling Asleep
Raindrops on the tin roof.
What do they say?
We have all Been here before.
Fall
for Wallace Fowlie
The wild cherries ripen, black and fat,
Paradisal fruits that taste of no man's sweat.
Reach up, pull down the laden branch, and eat;
When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Terrapin"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Tanya Berry.
Excerpted by permission of Counterpoint.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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