 |
||
Christopher Patton From Weed Flower Mind 1. A nature no one could tell you how to tend. Brown stalk and cracked pod. Spilt milk, blown seed. A waste of pain. A leaf-tooth gnawing the edge of noon. —In the yellow swaying heart-waste of August, an unearthed shout; buttercup at ankles, towers of white sweet clover, scent of yarrow from over-hacked, eroded bluffs; nameless, homeless, weed-mind 9. Haw-balked, thorn-touched, retracing steps, ditch-blocked: seeking the serene, mannered garden I stall, hedge in my blood. A block struck. We sit for a talk. A curled frond, shaken in rain, yields to the storm its blast, its shriek and blow. It knows what calm will be. —And is. —Drenched, whorled, pushing aside boundless grasses in search of the ox. . . . 16. —Break. —Refrain. —Work: pulling weeds from the gazebo stones: brown moss, yellow wood sorrel; three small heart leaves round a flower-bell are a bow, two-in-one, one-in-two: in rain they fold, paired hands, gassho. Or spread to the sun: we open, yes, just so, and what we need is not apart from what you need. 23. White walls of old bed sheets. A naked room. A tongue-house. Stirring tongues of leaves. They sip and slip. An odour of. Mouth of leaf-flame. Shhhhh. Your mom's not here. She shouldn't ever. I have nowhere to. Come air. Come nowhere. Come nowhere. —And here you are. —And here I am, an empty room where he comes and goes. I am not him. 24. The seed has flown. It falls to loose dirt. Down, gone, sown. —Forgotten. —In woods, no such as weeds, and the flesh, red mud, gives way with ease to the shovel; holes open at my feet for red oak, dogwood, white birch, sweet gum: loose teeth I pack in. But look what comes up: a weed-sprout, in hand, trembles, snail-tendril, seed testes. Bladder campion? 25. Touch-me-not? —Two bells. Rise slow. Break. —Sitting spent. Flowing in ditch-grass, a fresh trickle now, where coltsfoot lions pounce, and leafy new ladders climb of blue, wet nipples: the return of forget-me-not. I asked her to help me, she turned away, I don't know how to help you. (I turned away—I couldn't make . . . 26. I couldn't take it.) Outside the garden grew a dragon in my grain. Held high a steel shaft. Ached with weight. Made maw. Drove down again. To pry dirt wide rocked back and forth. To sledge young cedar (rag-strips of red bark, wet flap on wood) sharp the tip, true the aim, then broad the arc and down hard. Posts in, raise fence. Who knew 27. he was already in and through? A panicked fire newt darts through the weedage of my father's unused plot: squash vines, rampant parsley thickets, monkey weeds as children we grew there from seeds. His wisteria blooms a second time on the roof, modest in autumn, he sells the house, moves down the coast, remarries. Who knows? He may have found a future 28. to settle the past. Come gone love, come wisdom. Lost in the holly, a beautiful weeping lady: deadly nightshade, solatrum, soothing painkiller; misreading turned her solem atrum, black sun, eclipse: it isn't half as poisonous as thought. Bittersweet. The red berry darkens and dries: doe eyes. Once more, the old mistrust, 29. quivered, nervous. . . . Her gaze lifts and passes above human things. Soon it is dinner. My work is to prepare. I walk out to the garden in a light rain (the monastery needs it, too, a dry August) and kneel in the bed (I don't know why I am crying) where fawn and doe, gone now, flicked their tails and browsed grass, 30. and a web, abandoned, broken, gathers evening between a mess of oatgrass and a fencepost: slant stalks, turned tree, blast-place of long-past. Stars of insect shells and calls. They're all over. And now a verb-weed opening; the noun-flower has gone mostly to seed— to lose—to fail—to fall head over heels into the earth where a rough unfastening 31. power moves, wordless and generous, unknown. To know it moves and lives—oh, enough. I'm returning, early evening, with ordinary gifts: carrots, tomatoes, dill weed, sugar peas in a white beat-up bucket. A step—I shift my weight to test a flag we set down this morning. Each stone a path. We are not our own. |
||
     |
||