Drifty
thoughts about the Driftless
region of Wisconsin
where the glaciers never were
& i live near
(Blue Mounds, Viroqua, Black Earth . . .)
The dog looks out the window at no dog
maybe squirrels
Don’t make the bombs dropped on people
into a poem
Don’t quote CNN
No going back to place names in Wisconsin or the dog
or any object on the table like the last
inch of honey in the jar from when the bees swarmed (went wild, left the hives)
and I shoveled scooped and picked it out of the combs, buckets full
& let it drip all summer into other buckets through wire mesh
colanders and plastic colanders and homemade colanders
to catch the bits of bees and other insects though there are always parts
left in—I got the mouse turds out
though these wouldn’t hurt you either in the honey
especially fermented honey which I imagined I discovered but did not
It’s Spring and usually it’s Fall
The first plum tree’s in blossom
what kind of plum tree ask Henry
I think there’s a ghost in my hair
And Customs Officer, the sooty blotch on Gold Rush (winter apples)
is harmless—you wash it off or leave it on, can’t taste it & it doesn’t spread
even though it’s sooty and blotchy like its name
and you can have it
*
James named the 5 new hens and I try to discern who’s who:
Mrs. Squeers, John Browdie, Mr. Crummles, Smike & Nicholas
based on their personalities
Modest_witness_meets the chickens
@s Donna Haraway might say
I borrowed her book from Solveig
whose g is silent on the end of her name
There’s a bird house under the tree
on the ground where it fell from a branch
for fifthly that’s where the cat poops
in the pine needles spread out like hair
*
After the rain there were 23 more
Shitakes than the day before
out on the logs in the corner
of the woods, edge of the orchard
The logs had been inoculated, which sounds like the reverse
of being injected or imprinted with spores
It’s good to have logs to grow them on
not sawdust blocks or plastic bags, thanks to the oak that fell
and Skinny Pete the mushroom
midwife
*
Then there was writing you couldn’t read
inside the tree and the rocks, and on the hairsbreadth stems
and the chickens’ claws
and the pads of the dog’s feet between each nail
where she loves to have pressure, where all her nerves come to an end
or start, like our own—
Go barefoot, I instruct James:
The gravel driveway down to the mailbox, Level 1
Rockier gravel between barn and hill: Level 2
It’s important to get to Level 3 for your feet to know how never
to step on a bee or a nail or something worse
Oh, intelligent nerve endings
where the experiment begins
*
Cash crops go by the windows
of the bus I’m lying down in like an onion
Spring buds, spring green at the ends of branches
where the writing went walking
“Off into the raptures,” Joanne said
So
an elegy appears
because I miss her
Didn’t know her
Right here she’d notice something
most likely alive or attached to
someone alive, like his hat
(Philip Whalen’s) or a mouse
or a bird, many birds
[name some from her poems]
FISHER NUTS
(I’ve just looked up)
FISHMAN WRITES
on the bus to Chicago
for Joanne Kyger
April 18, 2017
