Braving the Elements, and: Li/The Clinging, Fire

Braving the Elements

Lowe’s Lawn and Garden Center, 2002

Earth

Some days I'd wheel the clattering A-frame ladderInto place against the building, lock it fast,And spend hours stacking the great clay potsOn their shelves-two sets to the cubicle,Rims clamped each about a circumferenceEqual to their own. They'd take the full bruntOf the weather, objects at rest until I hauled themBack down, a wage-slave Atlas unshoulderingThe globe. I passed whole weeks in a jumble,Numb and newly widowed, with two sons at home.

Fire

I'd thought at first to fit her ashes in a lidded jar,Clay that had also passed through the flamesAnd been transfigured, changed back into earth,But now all such matter seemed too inert.

Water

Water-arum, trout-lily, salt-marsh aster were closerTo what I sought. Wild flowers the rains brought.Days when stabs of gladness could make me weep.

Air

In the crow's nest of the ladder I stood in a skyThe sparrows stormed, trapped inside the store.

Li/The Clinging, Fire

This hexagram, divided within and without,is an image of the meshes of a net in whichanimals remain snared.

-The Book of Changes

I

A tom in full regalia, tail fanned wide,Drumstick head at an angle, imperious and high.I watch him strut around the parked car,Affronted by what he's found thereMirrored in the clear-coat-Beard and wattles, the wampum-beaded throat.

On display, he's been trying to drive the otherAway from its covert in the fenderAnd now lets loose a flurry of quick hard pecks,But where he expected fleshThere's the glance, it seems, of one beakOff another, the taste of metal instead of meat.

Ruffled now and out for blood, he hones in againOn the bird that stabs back at him.

II

Again today I look to see if your likenessAppears on the Website, her pretty breastsAnd leanness and cascading black hair.

Without my glasses your face is there,And your presence houseled again in the flesh,And it is years again before your death.

III

The light, paper comb of the wasp's nestTacked in a corner of the jamb, cloud-Colored, capped like an acorn to its bough.I watch as she fashions the airy apartments

As though gathering them from the air,A first dusk filling the little cupsBeneath which she's suspended, tail upAnd delicate, berthed already in her labors.

IV

This evening, rain and some distant thunder,Clouds towering to monument above the river.The downpour drives me back indoors.The unlit rooms, a cold sky in the mirrors.

V

Across the road: bloodroot and twinleafAnd gill-over-the-ground,Purple clematis sending outThose vines for which there is no life

But embracing, a few wisps of last year'sMilkweed floating on the air . . . At our wedding you were the Primavera,A spray of baby's breath at your ear,

The bouquet you tossed the bridesmaids.There are still traces of fragranceIn the weave of that dressI can't seem to part with, the cyme of its lace.

"The Clinging is empty in the middle,"Says the I Ching, and cannot be filled.