New Hampshire Spring
       

I.

A whooshing passed over us—
and perched on a branch—something
see-sawed in the bright dark air,

sailed the clearing sharp-
eyed through pole pine sapling,
beech, maple and hemlock

Blake says are threatened beyond saving:
"Once we were too far north to worry
about infestations but now we must,

I guess. Earth's breath is fast as hyper-
ventilation, and no one—
not even scientists—knows why

or what will come."
I tell him spirits we walk among
steal glasses (last week mine

whisked off and weirdly
found soon after in New York),
or frizzle our lines

until they squiggle
and we wonder what we've made
or if it can be fixed.

II.

Yesterday, I watched an ant hauling
a burden across the drive before me.
It dropped the object

to trek in ever-widening circles,
coming back to resume the task
once it had found the way all clear.

The ant built small piles of spruce
needles to camouflage its find which,
when I went to look, was a spider

too big for the anthill's opening.
That had to be dug out.
I showed Blake when he stopped,

who carried with him
two books on animal symbols, the ant
being patience and the spider creativity

(though maybe not a dead spider).
Later I found beside the entrance
the ant excavated for hours

a little mound of dirt and both
ant and spider crushed by a car.
Today: no trace that they had been.

III.

Blake will not speak of ghosts.
He'll talk of animals, trees, weather
and angels but only briefly.
Spirits are not the same

as ghosts and angels of course
are very rare, didn't I know that?
He has to go.
At night, down the alley of trees
the low-reaching, feather-like boughs

suture the air as we draw
the efflorescence from this wound
on which the world's stretched

Tweet
Copyright © 2012 Cynthia Hogue All rights reserved
from The Common
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission