Pearls of Fear
Radio says four to six more inches of snow,
it wakes me up in the middle of the night,
stringing shallow pearls of fear about
what can go wrong even with snow tires.
Leave me and the girl dog sleeping until nine,
boy dog’s with you. Mound horses’ hay in
the graveled corners of the inside turn outs.
Goats, bristled like pine cones in cold, race
bent double, duck under the fence, rushing for
particular morsels in vacated stalls, leftover hay.
Thirty years ago I left this snow for rain.
What was I thinking, some kind of replay?
The only chance to survive is to stay outside.
Let me clean the stalls and at least I can
snow shoe to the pond where its angry coyote
never stopped barking last fall demanding
just who do you think you are?
Now the pond is frozen gray, silent.
When I leave the cabin, you are
lighting the Christmas tree. Horses walk carefully,
heads down, chestnut stands against the gate.
I call you on the barn phone: This may be a mistake,
rushing words into the backs of each other:
I’m letting the horses free. What? You yell back,
to say, quick, run down, close the lower gate and
I do with snow balls clinging to my jeans while
my gray and red horses bring up the rear.
Pies in the Oven
I heard an eighty year old woman on
the radio say she is trying not to blame
her husband every time, at least she says
she’s game to give it one more shot.
The point, I explain, is really listening,
not simply words spoken but translating,
between these and those thoughts, then
you say I forgot the camera for the kids.
But before this, before you came back in
this morning, left the door ajar, and before
I opened the barn to find the tack room door
wide open, heat flying out. Before you didn’t
listen to thoughts polished like a silver platter,
carried like a gift that you will have no recall,
no appreciation, these sentences enjoined,
marked fine as cross stitch then abandoned,
we did not jump out of bed, gloved, booted.
First, I made coffee, back to bed, turquoise
covers and the snow falling outside and
an old woman, a poet talking on the radio.
I said I dreamed my grandson, bright red parka, his
first attempt to find the exact words at five years old
to say: Wait, I will be back - before driving off
with the rest of his family through the gates.
You said yesterday, such a good meal, turkey,
first stuffing ever made, everyone had seconds,
green beans with three fresh lemons and
Cathryn’s homemade pecan pie, my apple.
Or was it Nana’s apple, my mother’s gravy,
Grandmother Harriet’s etched hurricane lamps,
reflection of my father in my son’s face
laughing as the snow tumbles out of the sky.
And even back before that, the horses escaped.
Walked right down the road where they stopped
at the neighbors and us, snow half to our knees,
stumbling hurry, to get home before the pies burn.
Bread Recipe
Big bowl, four cups of water. Bare elbow, neither records hot nor cold. Sprinkle two tablespoons yeast. A tablespoon of sweet and enough whole wheat to turn into a spring slush. Stir two hundred times. Underground, bubbles will form. Leave it alone.
(Baptism of a countertop no one has ever used. This house, smaller than a two bedroom apartment, hugs its red roof dead center twenty five acres, sage brush. Creek, wild iris in the overflow. A box of ashes and two live border collies.
House, better or worse, until death.)
A soup spoon of oil, salt to fill only the lifeline of your palm and then a few cups unbleached flour. Oats, cornmeal, cardboard box of yesterdays take-out rice. More flour, one cup at a time. Mix until stiff using my mother’s wooden spoon, the chip in the lip.
(Thirty years, the city. My hair is black. My hair is white. Three husbands, come, go, each time, rearrangement. A new wall, a new bed, the second bedroom, back to the first…Then, no changing rooms , the dogs that die, finally this dog, in my arms I carry down to the river for one last afternoon.)
Cup of flour over the counter, spill the dough out. Press your palm and pull with your fingers. It is a separate entity, not clinging to any surface. Nestle in the oiled bowl. Cover, a clean towel. Sit in sunshine, yellow upholstered chair, wood arms.
(Stainless flour mill, stone grinder, long handle spinning. Out front, scorched circle, see that tree was struck by lightning. The sparks flew. Rows of windows: asparagus, pink peonies, the kids play by the creek until the noon alarms blows from the roof of the cheese factory.)
Leave it in the sun. It will grow. Fill a universe. Don’t watch. It knows its own tune, dance steps. Toss it down. Let it live its life, inhale and exhale, overflowing its space, lapping into yours. It will exceed its bowl. Spill it back on the counter.
(A mantra I tell myself: never get used to these mountains. As if I already know that I am about to be derailed off the main track. Never take for granted the nonchalance of mountains against the flash pan of life. Here, the bread always
has a hollow core. You could fit a hard boiled egg inside.)
Cut the dough, do not tear apart the elastic, cherish the gluten’s give and take. Three loaves, two oblong and one round, side by side. Bake at three hundred and twenty five,
for forty minutes. Knuckles rap hollow against each of their skulls.
(The Haight: remember the time you went downstairs looking for the cat, found meth junkies. Never went back. And the house with the pool? Thickening hips of girls and the sunburn of boys’ bodies cast off bravado with socks and shirts. Night, the churning fog gripped window.)
Turn it on its side to cut through the crust, the sole, these chunks of bread so hot it takes a serration and still it will crush if you are not deft. All the yeast has now died but a testimony remains, hot and moist. Gnaw on this bread. Layer it with butter.
(Beige step stool, green ceramic bowl next to the hulk of an oil furnace. It’s round hatch will always flames in hell. It is a snow day my mother says from behind as she searches shelves, grape jelly in a jar sealed with wax. Pushing with her thumbs, a purple lake explodes)
