Northern Appalachian:
Old Souls and Wolf Tracks
by Judy Platz
Table of Contents
Markers, for Mort
Naming Ourselves
Kara: Swan Maiden Fairie
“Maine Room”
Deer Yard
Sturdy Sounds
Archimedes Meets Einstein
Goma, Zaire
Survive
Imagine
Words are Acts
The Pieces
Seeing the Moon
Diagnostic Center
Markers
for Mort Krahling (1944-1998)
brother Bill and poets everywhere
The mystery is
that we are still here at all—
still beating our owl wings
under curved moon;
star-nose moles digging, digging
in the dark, toward light
bones, teeth, bits of hair to identify the others—
words left behind on pages for channel markers
in the deep ocean of soul;
our temporal homes that see us invisible
with pen and hand and paper to create
artifacts, for those yet who will search.
The journey unrelenting, absolute;
but look! Seed tendrils walk beside us
in damp darkness
toward the light, always toward the light.
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Watching the lake go flat black at sunset
I notice the circle of the year
has transformed the maple’s easy swing of summer green
for brittle, bright, burnt umber autumnal tresses.
Is it true, that tree whispers to leaf
on journey to the soil;
regarding loss as nature’s song – graceful circuitry –
no more, no less – renaming herself everyday.
Every morn new leaves have fallen in the night
every night maple steadies new, for coming day –
no more, no less.
I imagine her humming as she speaks to leaf
while her rings draw water up for winter’s slumbered silence.
Our moons intersect – the tree and me.
And like stout maple’s accumulated circle dance
our words which sing and prance around us on the wind,
name us new each day.
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Kara: Swan Maiden Fairie
You must want to
swim the cold, deep, reedy waters,
some early morning in a mountain lake,
just before the sun breathes into pine forest.
And you might swim far out into the water,
so far, you are no longer certain
you can make the shore again --
then they might find you.
First, you might see dark shadows as you stroke;
arm down, head down, holding your breath,
eyes open in the grey-green murky water.
Then you might stop swimming for an instant,
lift your head, and see two loons,
watching you. A third might emerge to pause,
and turn its red eye down toward your astonished eye.
Then you become their object;
you are in their territory;
they have found you.
As they circle, you see slivers of sunlight lift each feather
so that suddenly you understand the sixty million years
their bodies have floated around bones
and you hum to their water-smoothed snail song,
their fern, and their trilobite memory.
And you must want to swim,
so then it may happen,
so you will learn how the loons
evolved to glide, to fish, and to nest
on mud-reedy shores,
so frailty will ring in your ears
while around you the birds plunge,
call, dive, and watch you carefully.
Other loons will fly overhead;
their pierced cry drips of fern spore,
aches with dinosaur breath.
Only then, will you hear the loon call hover
over smooth morning flat black lake;
only then, will the dull human thought drain from you;
only then, your feet become webbed.
And, if all this should happen one morning on a flat black lake,
then you will no longer worry about reaching shore.
Around you, will be the water that is glistening;
beside you, will be speckled loon feathers;
inside you will be bones that grow flight.
You will look down to see your reflection--
a strong, grooved bill and sturdy neck;
you will feel laced netting grow between your toes
as you push on toward the horizon,
to the vanishing point.
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"Maine Room"
Andrew Wyeth- watercolor
In the painting two carved tern figures lift,
poised, ready for flight, wings extended in the white patch of light;
silence around them in their wooden coats they move out,
on the mantel above a fire long extinguished.
In that bare room chill air covers, hovers, seeps.
I imagine I touch the red metal kindling box with bare hand.
The cold always a surprise, shock to the system
even though to build a fire, a person must
first put hands to the cold.
I long to be in the cold season of that sparse room,
as if what I do not know of color mix,
of deflection, shadow, lean of light through window,
through cloud gatherings, through distillation,
may in time, be dug into
like post holes sought for in the rubble:
kindling which finally always blazes to warmth.
One corner of light around the birds on the mantle,
as if one small illumination were enough to sustain;
or one minute flicker around the thought of flight
contained human and bird. And for my part
I wish to lie on the blue cot in the Maine Room
directly in front of a blazing fire--
to dream, to watch flames lick at the aging brick
feel the wood's energy unravel centuries in its skin
and in my bones and hold that dreamtime.
The terns, the terns, mute in their oaken byrnies,
in their island sliver of light; their small silver corner.
Oil lamp light waiting, fire waiting; the terns dance perpetually,
wings pulsing in shadowed abundant joy.
Flight of the wooden birds,
carved in the very material which may consume them
and still they dance in ecstasy.
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It is my ritual now.
I’ve worn a track in the snow like theirs-
mine more awkward,
a heavy booted padding down of snow
packed firm 12 inches in: solid, hard, iced;
theirs a 6 inch wide hoof imprinted narrow trail,
a thin meandering through hardwood and conifer
to my apple tree, where at dusk I shovel out
four separate piles of pellets
assured by the friendly Paris Farmer’s Union store
to be nutritionally healthy.
At dusk I watch the silhouetted shapes appear-
heads alert, pinching their way down the hill
one behind the other
they fan out under the tree
each neck extended at a place hollowed out
in the 3 foot hard pack.
It is only mid-January.
My courses go well, but there is never enough work.
Thank goodness for summer’s canned garden.
Together the deer and I face down approaching north wind
together summer fat dwindles to an exercise of faith
and in the half-light together, we wait.
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A present from the radio--
without electric light, I am listening to flute, fiddle,
and Gaelic language on a chill winter night
with woodstove roar and full moon on drifted snow.
Water pot on stovetop for the night,
I wait to hear the deer’s crunch of snow under delicate hoofs
and to watch them as they carefully pick their way
down packed snow trail through the woods
to my apple tree in the valley.
It occurs to me that sounds too, of the Gaelic language
flung from voices and fiddle and flute
were invented to keep the heart alive in winter.
Music and words swirl about the room in the dark,
bump into chairs, spill over rugs,
and fall into snoozing cats;
sounds that warm the mind with their soft sturdy diphthongs
inside which I hear comfort for daily battle on the ocean,
comfort for fear and unease with nets cast into black icy whael-rod,
“A laoich goirmlinn” (thou wounded dark water);
sounds to keep alive what’s behind the eyes
the whisker of hope depended upon,
currachs that will find their own rocky beach,
and the daily climb up sheer wall barrier
at the edge of ocean to the land. It's sturdy sound
that guides through cold barren darkness.
They arrive!
I hear the deer crunching apples and hay
I had put out at the foot of the tree,
their teeth splitting unevenly the sweet fruit,
the three of them come as they have every year
when the snow piles up too deep for foraging,
walking single file through cold barren darkness
to the tree. Sturdy sounds.
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Archimedes Meets Einstein
It was the density that puzzled them--
Gold or The Milky Way
E=MC2 mass (times) speed of light squared.
Is it the “dis placement” then
that measures difference and
was R. Frost on the same track?
How unrealistic we are
to think our small bones
move thru our space/time
years upon years
without displacing energy--
our journey electric
“a threefold chord is not quickly broken” *
we move in darkness
our eyes see nothing--
in the distance, bells chime.
* Ecclesiastes 4:12
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Goma, Zaire
The young man who is the relief worker
is not used to his work--
there is sweat dripping down his forehead into his kind eyes
over his ebony cheekbones.
Intensity strung in every muscle of his face
as he unloads the precious rice, corn and wheat
sorting the smaller bundles
handing them as fast as he can into the crowd.
Angry thirteen and fifteen year old boys
fight each other to touch a packet of food
in his outstretched hands.
Later, he no longer sees who is taking the food from his fingertips
and as the crowd suddenly rushes into the back of the semi--
women and smaller boys struggle together for these small packages of life.
This young man who handles the food
is not fat but he is not thin.
He will get used to gaunt faces,
he will stop trying to hand out the food,
will park the semi to one side of the road
and as long as there is food inside
he will allow anyone to enter the back,
anytime and without reason.
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To be forced to be apart
to be driven from all you love,
ripped, torn, shorn of family, roof, food,
to live each day as a last fading dream of village, home, safety.
Your 10 year-old mind finds burning house, field, countryside
finds the bullets for your mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, cousin;
steel enters by the ear, exits by chin
enters forehead, exits back of neck
family members crush you beneath them as they fall.
Who knew bodies had so much blood in them.
You lay silent, still, your small heart beating
beneath fat and bone waiting for soldiers' voices to go away.
Two days later, after climbing nearby mountains, relief workers rescue you.
You shiver uncontrollably; place one awkward foot in front of the other
down the rubble strewn morass, to a sea of refugees;
white tents, sides fluttering in spring wind, winged witnesses;
follow you, alone to Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Germany, Norway, USA.
The television tells us many of you cannot speak.
I think, "How many children could I fit into my house?"
I feed goldfinches, plant tomato, bean and basil seed
plan which trees will be cut for next winter's fuel;
outside, here, the garden will be growing in a month.
Of what use is a poem except to remind us--where are you
on your 11th birthday, and will you have learned to sing
with finches and plant seeds in a garden somewhere by then?
for Kosovo, April 1999
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Imagine
Step lightly all around us
words are cracking
off we drift
separate and syllabic
if we survive at all.
Audre Lorde
It isn't that hard to imagine
but still, you would have to try
to imagine...
imagine
as a very young child believing
you're not as smart as white folks
because your skin has pigment.
Imagine hating yourself;
I mean, really hating yourself
because you are told you are not as smart
because your skin has color
you hate yourself.
And you do not learn letters very well
at school, because you believe you’re not as able
and in your skin the beautiful melanin.
Your mom notices
that really there ain't many pencils in your classroom
--even though Ms. Thurmond bring in her
own pencils an’ paper an’ everyday she try
real hard at school to keep th' kids learnin'.
An’ home?.. Mom tries, but she have ta work
so you by youself most times an’ no one t' show you
how to make the letters even if there was paper where you are,
or a pencil, a book, a magazine, but there ain't.
But there is TV, and rap
and pimps all ova' th' streets, pimpin'
drugs and whores, an’ anything that will work.
But you not dumb, you know
who is who; who to stay clear of,
who to stay away from, who to trust--
so you stay in th' kitchen of th' apartment
most times; sit next ta th' stove
on a chair with a blanket in winter 'cause
it off the floor where th' roaches an' rats be
an’ it warm there, an’ you wonder
'cause you told
you not as smart as white folk.
But you figure you still alive
so maybe you not so dumb after all--
one of them, sometime, should come here
an' try ta keep alive, you think.
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Words are Acts
The words are gathered
from all over the world.
They are remembered, saved,
written down, memorized,
worshipped, prayed over,
playing on the mother tongue
like a lover's kiss
awash in timeless transcendent joy,
in dream place/ space
and from this love,
the trance induced sound.
Here, mandala of Ankor Wat
there, kabbalistic healing
there, chants from Macchu Picchu
and sixteen ciphers of Eshu
with dream-dance of high plains Sioux
mother Druid stones and bone
her runes forming the sacred letters
and mystic journey of words.
Then, the words
breathed together their lace pattern
like frost on window, or ley lines
on spine crust of the earth.
From sea, from grass, from stone
to human heart
to word
to human heart.
Mother tongue found
and kneaded and given breath.
These words tell us to ourselves.
They are ours.
We send them away;
we keep them close.
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Sometimes there is this direct sense of ourselves
that descends—like fog vapor
swirling through our skin and into our very bones
so we believe anything is possible:
real love between people,
world peace.
Mostly this understanding occurs at 2 am
when the rest of our family slumbers
and only the homeless are awake out on the cold street
as I look out from the apartment window.
By the dim light of a street lamp I write
because I do not want to attract attention to myself
writing, as I am, in the middle of the night.
I cannot see the moon in the city
but I am imbued with my pure sense of being anyway,
and a reckless joy
that this poem should live.
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Diagnostic Center
In another life
I will be the person who operates the machines
that detect the slowing age and gathering lumps
a body forms in the accumulation of years.
There is surety in this job --
a magnificent sense of purpose, dialing pictures like sonar,
plumbing of viscera's inner surfaces, diving around bone reefs
the barracuda and shark lurking somewhere
those striations possibly hugging bone, hiding in bladder,
stomach, kidney, spleen ...
until the screen blips at unmistakable damage
and spits out papers the doctors understand.
Faith is in machine that does no wrong.
Dials are accurate. What the machine decides is absolute,
true without argument.
Pictures of a father's anger spent into his bones
bent from twisting the same bolts on the same frames
of the same metal for decades,
or the mother knitting her grief that hollows kidneys
from the death of a son returned in pieces from a war.
But today sitting on cold, stainless steel table,
in blue, backless cotton tent folded at the shoulders
waiting for yet another dial and picture to determine the future,
I picture a someday when I will walk down white hallways
confident to be among those
on the inside.
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She traces wolf track and deer and bear in the snow
as if the animal understanding of necessity for testing
beneath iced landscape signaled in the small of the mind
a whisper to continue the labor into fierce rooted earth
and will certainly find a place of food,
warm below the frost line.
How often has she tried to explain
that her grandfather attended the single veined purpose of a leaf,
listened to the moon in its several masks,
nighttimes working in the kitchen on cracked age lined oilcloth,
peeled edges to the world fashioning delicate wooden bowls
from snow storms, narrow roads, ice. Grandfather fitted pieces
sanding, re-sanding, moving into place each singular shading of brown,
each precise sliver which would gentle into the bowl,
the shape which was not there yet, but lived inside his mind.
"The pieces know where to go," grandpa would say,
"You have to get out of their way, to listen to them."
Do you remember the story of the young man
captured by the Snow Queen; the boy caught
inside a glittering ice castle empty room?
He could not be released until he restored
the word "love" from shattered pieces of ice
which lay scattered over an endless floor.
And snagged in the boy's one eye was a splinter of glass
ingrown like a hook festering and scarred over.
The hook held taut to a line pulled by some fisher
of his deepest fears, imbedded in the very heart
which wanted to be free.
And if the wounded child of so long ago could weep,
tears might wash the splinter from his eye, releasing the man.
And if the man knows this and he chooses not to weep,
she must go away somewhere where it is spring
where roads pinch off for a season,
where she can chase the slow progress of the moon,
see to thickening leaves, clear out underbrush,
and turn twig, thorn, and stone over and over
in mud soaked hands.
Copyright © 2002 by Judy Platz Email: j_pz@adelphia.net
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