Living History

Were he still alive, he might tell me

if the stone piles in the woods

near here are Indian graves,

as rumors of massacre have it.

::

Nearby, a dairy farm,

a turf farm, a casino.

Five miles away, the steeple

of an incinerator; thirty miles,

a nuclear power plant.

New York, two hours by car.

The prevailing wind brings

pollution from the Ohio and Michigan

steel mills, car manufacturers,

and tire factories, which merges

with the fertilizer smell of old farm fields

and an occasional sea breeze

from the southeastern Connecticut coast

just ten miles off.

::

And then, like a wolf tree in high wind,

the narrative cracks

open.

Without

alphabet or logic, I begin to howl.

Take me, the howling translates.

Take me, wind. Take me, fire.

Take me, flooded coast and city.

Take me, tornado. Take me,

eye of the needle.

All you statistics, take me.

Plague and parasite,

take me, wring me out.

My heart’s dry as beef jerky.

Take me, eat me, shit me out,

kick over me dirt and leaves.

Hide every trace of me.

Hide the cities yet to drown

in the oceans spilling over us

as the ice sheets melt

and the sky catches fire.

a lover’s mind

flush with birdsong and berries.

A mind as passionate as sunrise,

as still as a shaded pond

whose water houses fish—

Ah, my dear, it whispers,

and I can’t describe the tone of this voice—

an ache that adds to regret and reprimand,

compassion.

It’s an old, old love that whispers it.

Old love looks at death and ruin,

takes a hard look

and begins to remember

long-legged birds

blue dragon flies

wild iris

in the spillway of the pond.

It remembers the cry of a kingfisher.

It remembers rain,

and the taste of rain on skin.

Old love heals itself. And begins again.

::

For better or for worse, this house

was more than once

abandoned. The first farmer

moved west, also the second.

It was a debtor’s prison—

then settled into ruin as a den

for critters, its steeply slanted roof

caved-in by rain and snow.

Snakes in the cellar, a flourish

of trumpet vine on the roof

like a flash of fire.

::

Restoration—I take that as my metaphor

for history that refuses to go extinct.

I’m here, and I hear you. I do.

More than a ritual, that howl of mine—

it’s history, living history. And a vow.