Cover

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

Title

Acknowledgments

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

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

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

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

or turn back it had a yellow apple in its mouth

and the little ones chew on the bones-o

NOBLE DOG

behind our house down to the brook and the woods

beyond the groomed grass and flower beds what we see

are brook and woods and sometimes mild creatures of the field

we thought when we bathed in the claw-footed tub we could pretend

we stayed inside the natural world no shutters no shades at night

beside the mirror over the sink the windows darkened into mirrors

where my daughter at thirteen admired her tan her new body until she felt

or thought she felt something move outside in the yard and asked quietly

up the backstairs for us to come down here for just a minute please

come down here now we couldn’t tell how much was fear

how much was shame we thought she needed us to be calm

we tried to be calm like the trooper we called who said without alarm

to the handsome noble dog where is he buddy where is he buddy

at which as if in a game of fetch the dog went straight around the house

to the one smell that didn’t fit to the one smell that crossed the clipped grass

into the ditch beside the dirt road where the dog went too the dog

tracking the smell the trooper tracking the dog the dog

not barking or baying until the scent stopped

inside the culvert bearing the brook west under the road

a large metal pipe that amplified the dog’s whimpers and moans

dog of righteousness dog of retribution

we heard it from our house where soon the shutters would go up

we sat in the kitchen the summer air soft as a damp rag we knew

this was a moment of consequence but we couldn’t tell

whether the world had grown larger or smaller

MOLES

where is his hat where is his horse where is his harrier my beloved

is distraught he made this yard each blade each stem each stalk except

the mounds of fresh dirt like little graves it’s moles that make the mounds

when they make holes they’re worms with fur the cat

does not do moles she’s stalking rooks and mice beloved

has scattered human hair across the sod it keeps the deer away

he has installed a high-pitched hum in the lily bed it keeps the dogs

out of the yard who might have otherwise unearthed a mole too bad

traps don’t work the way they do for squirrels my father

used to thrust the hose into one hole and flood them out my beloved

does not care what my father did this greensward is his joy his job

my job was children food house the rest of what I did stayed underground

GARTER SNAKE

hibernaculum a hole in the earth

from which in spring the snakes ooze forth the males

much smaller than the female stretched out like a tree-limb

among the tulips not moving not rippling or flinching preoccupied

a film over her eyes along her body the smaller snakes

flex and extend they may be helping her shed or may be

roughhousing like little boys which is what I thought at the pond

when I saw three mallards jump another duck they stayed underwater

a very long time she never did resurface the female snake seems

oblivious sheathed in ribbons one of them shudders off

and shimmies toward the lilac hedge our friend

wants to show us he can catch a snake at the top of its spine

and reaches into the grass but even a garter snake

has teeth we see it flung then reinvented half erect

on its coils hissing or taking soundings with its tongue

swiveling its head to follow the enemy

that’s us

GROUNDHOG

not unlike otters which we love frolicking

floating on their backs like truant boys unwrapping lunch

same sleek brown pelt some overtones of gray and rust

though groundhogs have no swimming hole and lunch

is rooted in the ground beneath short legs small feet

like a fat man’s odd diminutive loafers not

frolicking but scurrying layers of fat his coat

gleams as though wet shines chestnut sable darker

head and muzzle lower into the grass a dark

triangular face like the hog-nosed skunk another delicate

nose and not a snout doesn’t it matter what they’re called I like swine

which are smart and prefer to be clean using their snouts

to push their excrement to the side of the pen

but they have hairy skin not fur his fur

shimmers and ripples he never uproots the mother plant his teeth

I think are blunt squared off like a sheep’s if cornered does he

cower like sheep or bite like a sow with a litter is he ever

attacked he looks to me inedible he shares his acreage

with moles voles ravenous crows someone thought up

the names his other name is botched Algonquin but yes

he burrows beneath the barn where a farmer once

dried cordwood he scuttles there at speech cough laugh

at lawnmower swollen brook high wind he lifts his head

as Gandhi did small tilt to the side or stands erect

like a prairie dog or a circus dog but dogs don’t waddle like Mao

with a tiny tail he seems asexual like Gandhi like Jesus if Jesus

came back would he be vegetarian also pinko freako homo

in Vermont natives scornful of greyhounds from the city

self-appoint themselves woodchucks unkempt hairy macho

who would shoot on sight an actual fatso shy mild marmot radiant

as the hog-nosed skunk in the squirrel trap both cleaner than sheep

fur fluffy like a girl’s maybe he is a she it matters

what we’re called words shape the thought don’t say

rodent and ruin everything

HOG-NOSED SKUNK

because she’s half blind and thus prefers

complete not partial darkness and because

she cannot raise her tail entirely over her back

in order to use her one weapon her one defense

when you come to the squirrel trap from behind

and cover with a blanket the wire box

although my beloved won’t believe it

she just gives up she just gives up

HOUND

since thought is prayer if hard and true I thought that thought

could lead me to compassion for my fellow creatures

insects excluded contrary to the Buddha the wasps

might show a little compassion too I do include

the hound next door it moans all day all night

a loud slow lament a child can make itself sustain

to dramatize its misery this dog was once

the neighbors’ child but now they have an actual child

he’s been cast down to be a dog again chained outdoors heartsick

uncomprehending why can’t he just buck up remember his roots his lot

not more special than any other

sad hound look up

at the fledglings’ wide mouths look over here

at the cat teaching her litter how to hunt all sleek all black

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