The Shakers, and: The Mathematics of a Hill, and: Tanka Sequence: Appalachia

The Shakers (" . . . I will bow and be humble; yea the willow tree . . . ") like Unyielding designs: chairs, tables, benches, beds; they knew their lines by heart. To dance, they hung the chairs high, pushed back the rest, a worship they knew by rote. If they had played by their own numbers, they might have endured; their sunny seed catalogs and planting and harvest-times the necessary data. Poems by Judy Klare Mother Ann taught them to sing and dance, never never to love each other blindly. Too simple such promptings, even for willow trees. The Mathematics of a Hill Thousands of tongues recite the subject-matter of May calling gold gold: coltsfoot parsnip mustard groundsel. And one brown chipmunk eye patrols a lonely geometry: her nest of oaken twigs and mud. While we watch, unseen calculations drive her underground to hover, cover, feed. But the analysis of a hill depends on bees and boys, casual computers presuming time. Tanka Sequence: Appalachia speaking geologically, a prank— the glaciers ceased here Shawnee war chants . . . susurrations heard when a whippoorwill calls and calls from a hawthorn tree now as then company houses company houses single file along the ridges . . . a company store watching . . . their girls seldom migrate lacking inborn pheromones to guide them through unknowns their women quilt in hues they cannot see from the porches where they sit 8 ...