[they went]

 This poem is fourth in a series unpacking a poem Derick wrote for me after we celebrated the release of Never Night, here in Palmer, Alaska. It was a wonderful evening at Sun Circle Farm, and Derick's poem from that night has always been special to me. 



[they went to eat and drink and listen to poetry. 
The children played and listened and spoke fell 
and were hurt crying for their fathers]
-Derick Burleson, July 2008

Is there poetry in the world, still? Suddenly
an angry chant, a roaring crowd's staccato 

is a brook. Listen.

Played over its lined and silvering rocks,
a melody spoken by fore-fathers

has a descant cried by their children's children's
children. 

And the mothers eat dried fruit from their purses,
stand and fall against concrete banks,

listen to one another, to a communal poem

about remaining free. 

Is there poetry still in the world? Hurt
with rocks, with thrown bricks, they still come, crying

stage whispers. Drink.

We've been told all this water
is fed by pure love, upstream of any violence,

fell from sky. Wait.

Is there poetry in this still world? Fathers
hurt by fathers who would not let them cry

stand with mothers hurt by loves who loved
too much drink.

Across this shallow, ice-cold water,
a bass line is being hummed by others.

Their throats are raw, thirsty. Listen. 

They've eaten bread, and salt. 
Folded cups from red paper.

A child drops her cup, which plays its butterfly
march 'til it sticks where tree-trunk fell. 

She cries. Water. 

Wind eats petal-pink rawness on faces-all of them. 
The child steps in 

to rescue her vessel. 
Both sides see her fall, see her begin drifting under.

Neither moves.





 

[sweet/alyssum]

[sweet alyssum and borage in azure bloom in the salad the farm feeds the people who live here and twenty-nine other families] - Derick W. Burleson, July 2008

If I owned twenty-nine acres of land what could
 be done with all that bloom under azure sky?
Sweet cut-grass chaff rising

after mower's rotating blades.
 Simple cuts-chlorophyll

and drying hay and musk of a few horses.

The farm would feed my people: whomever
gathers to live on purple potato,

on bitter baby greens, white alyssum.
On each other, dropping silver hairs into the carved

wood salad bowl. Sharing water dipper, sharing beds.

 If I gathered spring borage, who would eat it?
Who eats the mushrooms I bring now,

pock-capped, spongy undersides, creamy icicles
grown from rotting but still-standing birch? Silage

of Sitka valerian, fern fiddleheads, and dark

brown chaga conks, wrested from trunk and boiled down.
White alyssum on the windowsill, silver

mushroom knife in hand. Yes, whomever gathered to live
on this farm would eat well, it's true. Horses whickering for garden

carrots as sky darkens to azure. What Magic is it

to feed other people, to use one's hands as tillers,
 to turn up from glacial loam an elixir on which to live?

[heifer grazing beneath mountains/ invisible in cloud mist rain vanishing/ now though]

[heifer grazing beneath mountains invisible in cloud mist rain vanishing now though]  
-Derick W. Burleson, July 2008

 Another one drops off the list, daily: dodo,
black rhino, Pyrenean ibex, and you.

It's snowed for two days, a useless snow-dry,
light mist, too loose for construction.
For burying perishables under.

 In the woods, old spruce bearded
yellow-green, blacken their trunks and bend.

What will vanish next?

Stock like our neighbors' small shaggy
heifer, grazing innocently on winter hay.

Perhaps flocks of chickadees dee-dee-dee-ing
suddenly silenced. Me, cause invisible.

In my sleep.

Everyone knows a summer's rain doesn't make up for winter, though.
Nagoonberries, blueberries, bog orchids
spread tendrils beneath snowpack for months.

To feed our dogs, it takes wading
through clouds. Invisible underfoot
are the rhizomes, the runners. Mycelium.

Hope to stoke up vanishing hope.