walker-blagg-staples - Hello Poetry

Never forget there is poetry in dirt in greens, in beets, especially in rutabagas. Three-dollar-a-bag spinach, you are a symphony of compost with which an old man’s teeth are smitten; Rosemary sprig, beneath all your flavor you are the staff-lines of a madrigal written in loving anticipation of the mason jars, weighed down with water where you will grow and swell and bud and spread out strong purple flowers which elate that you are part of a song which sings every year a little louder. My beautiful, daredevil vegetables, This coming September, I will miss you dearly. I will be days of travel away from your world of roots, of mist, of six-in-the-morning-before-classes tonic of rain which saturates my skin so good I’m surprised when I shake the dirt from the leeks all over my bare feet, that you don’t crop up green & white from between my toes, that my arms don’t grow heavy with peppers after they cake with jalapeno & bell seeds from all the half-rotten miracles to whom I have given baptism in shallow plastic tubs of water floating like elations of fire in the grayness of the morning. Know how to tell if a pepper’s rotten? Wash it & shake it & if you can hear the water swishing inside, if you can make a maraca of its innards, then give it back to the dirt. This is the wisdom of peppers: when you grow soft when you have been chosen & plucked, & washed & thoroughly loved & shaken, when you have called out like fire beside your brothers in a basin, lay down in the compost the kindly compost, & listen, just listen, (there will be nothing left to do but listen) to the poetry of dirt.

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May 24, 2013

May 24, 2013 at 4:15 PM UTC

The Wisdom of Peppers

Never forget there is poetry in dirt in greens, in beets, especially in rutabagas. Three-dollar-a-bag spinach, you are a symphony of compost with which an old man’s teeth are smitten; Rosemary sprig, beneath all your flavor you are the staff-lines of a madrigal written in loving anticipation of the mason jars, weighed down with water where you will grow and swell and bud and spread out strong purple flowers which elate that you are part of a song which sings every year a little louder. My beautiful, daredevil vegetables, This coming September, I will miss you dearly. I will be days of travel away from your world of roots, of mist, of six-in-the-morning-before-classes tonic of rain which saturates my skin so good I’m surprised when I shake the dirt from the leeks all over my bare feet, that you don’t crop up green & white from between my toes, that my arms don’t grow heavy with peppers after they cake with jalapeno & bell seeds from all the half-rotten miracles to whom I have given baptism in shallow plastic tubs of water floating like elations of fire in the grayness of the morning. Know how to tell if a pepper’s rotten? Wash it & shake it & if you can hear the water swishing inside, if you can make a maraca of its innards, then give it back to the dirt. This is the wisdom of peppers: when you grow soft when you have been chosen & plucked, & washed & thoroughly loved & shaken, when you have called out like fire beside your brothers in a basin, lay down in the compost the kindly compost, & listen, just listen, (there will be nothing left to do but listen) to the poetry of dirt.

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Before I breathed A young man held my mother coaxed her with unpracticed grace from Irish Catholic garments between rough sheets that smelled like carpentry and dirt. In photographs from back then we have the same wrinkled eyebrows, the same reddish beards, but different creases kissing the corners of our eyes. There are canyons in my knuckles carved out by cold. Not New Mexico cracks in too-hot soil, but staff-lines of the song New England skin sings— I cannot deny I was born here. My father wears gloves now when he works outside Says he never used to, but the pain maybe got too much Too many winters laying palms flat against elm, ash, sycamore, feeling for a pulse counting on his wrist, waiting for a murmur, subtle hush in the rhythm; telling symptom of a faulty valve. I work weekends at a veterinary clinic and the doctor there does this, too, though sometimes, being held, cats purr too loud to listen and I must reach across the room and turn the handle on the faucet; Most cats fear water. Well Father, I cannot drink from the soil and I do not always land on my feet But father, listen to my heartbeat Put your hand on my chest and don’t fear as my body creaks in the wind— Hear it? Father My boughs, my winter-catchers are thin, but it is not root-rot, moth, parasite; I am not felled like the beard you hacked from your chin the day you decided to love, to suffer the rest of your life with that Irish Catholic girl— This is merely my first season. Brush the snow from my shoulders. Please comfort me quietly, like skin, cracking: *“My son my sapling you’ll grow.”* Walker Staples 15 March 2013

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May 4, 2013

May 4, 2013 at 4:10 PM UTC

For My Father's Hands

Before I breathed A young man held my mother coaxed her with unpracticed grace from Irish Catholic garments between rough sheets that smelled like carpentry and dirt. In photographs from back then we have the same wrinkled eyebrows, the same reddish beards, but different creases kissing the corners of our eyes. There are canyons in my knuckles carved out by cold. Not New Mexico cracks in too-hot soil, but staff-lines of the song New England skin sings— I cannot deny I was born here. My father wears gloves now when he works outside Says he never used to, but the pain maybe got too much Too many winters laying palms flat against elm, ash, sycamore, feeling for a pulse counting on his wrist, waiting for a murmur, subtle hush in the rhythm; telling symptom of a faulty valve. I work weekends at a veterinary clinic and the doctor there does this, too, though sometimes, being held, cats purr too loud to listen and I must reach across the room and turn the handle on the faucet; Most cats fear water. Well Father, I cannot drink from the soil and I do not always land on my feet But father, listen to my heartbeat Put your hand on my chest and don’t fear as my body creaks in the wind— Hear it? Father My boughs, my winter-catchers are thin, but it is not root-rot, moth, parasite; I am not felled like the beard you hacked from your chin the day you decided to love, to suffer the rest of your life with that Irish Catholic girl— This is merely my first season. Brush the snow from my shoulders. Please comfort me quietly, like skin, cracking: *“My son my sapling you’ll grow.”* Walker Staples 15 March 2013

63

the ecosystem that young children wake up on Tuesdays before dawn to try & save treading muddy gray roadsides spiriting away cigarette butts faded azure beer cans thin shopping bag ghosts with tiny gloved hands— this cracking frost-heave pavement landscape is my body my body is the first gasping crocus the first chanting insects, the first murdered fieldmouse after waking is the first meal of a young owl, all fluff and down and bone, high in a skinny birch tree and still a-feared of foxes my body is hot loam is fevered asphalt is a feeding garden & my soul… my soul is the beating sun, undecayed, though tarnished by weeks maybe months behind curtains of Winter my soul separate from my body for so long… and yet it could have dined with God and married His Daughter before anyone thought to go looking

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May 4, 2013

May 4, 2013 at 2:31 PM UTC

my body is a restoration effort

the ecosystem that young children wake up on Tuesdays before dawn to try & save treading muddy gray roadsides spiriting away cigarette butts faded azure beer cans thin shopping bag ghosts with tiny gloved hands— this cracking frost-heave pavement landscape is my body my body is the first gasping crocus the first chanting insects, the first murdered fieldmouse after waking is the first meal of a young owl, all fluff and down and bone, high in a skinny birch tree and still a-feared of foxes my body is hot loam is fevered asphalt is a feeding garden & my soul… my soul is the beating sun, undecayed, though tarnished by weeks maybe months behind curtains of Winter my soul separate from my body for so long… and yet it could have dined with God and married His Daughter before anyone thought to go looking

37

Scuttle, little fingers! Peck out permanences like finches kissing. Follow your nerves, little heart-endings— Oh, you are the scores left by gentle rain on the piques of small mountains & resurrection ferns brushing shoulders with each other & lovers walking. 3 May, 2013

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May 4, 2013

May 4, 2013 at 2:21 PM UTC

Wrists & Kunckles & Then...

Scuttle, little fingers! Peck out permanences like finches kissing. Follow your nerves, little heart-endings— Oh, you are the scores left by gentle rain on the piques of small mountains & resurrection ferns brushing shoulders with each other & lovers walking. 3 May, 2013

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