Feast Days: Thanksgiving-Christmas

I

Three things are too wonderful for me;
four I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a serpent on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a maiden.
-Proverbs

Today I saw a wood duck
in Tinker Creek.
In the fall flood, look
what the creek floats down:
once I glimpsed
round the edge of a bank
a troupe of actors
rained in from Kansas,
dressed for comedy.
The ffood left a candelabrum
on the lawn.
With a ten-foot hook
we fished from the creek
a bunch of bananas, a zither,
a casket of antique coins.

Or,
in the creek I found a log,
a tree trunk rotted halfway open.
Lord, lover, listen:
remember kissing on the stair
dancing in the kitchen-
I crumbled the wet wood away.
Inside the tree a row of cells had grown,
sealed chambers, smooth, elongate.
I slit one open, found a book
hand-bound in yellow thread:
a child's book of wildfowers
sketched in ink
and washed with watercolors.
Come take a walk, you said.
And if I reached out
my hand could feel your shoulders move,
thin, under your shirt.
What newness, what surprises!
Once I dug a hole to plant a pine
and founda ruby growing on a stone.
One thing we've got plenty of
here on the continents
is soil. Out of the soil
the plants are taking substance, edges,
like a tomato moving on its stake,
ten pounds of tomatoes, and the ground
blowing them up like balloons.
We walk on the soil
here on the continents
among the plants, and eat.

Thanksgiving: the men
are watching the game.
I wash, and dry, and dream.
I dream of a firelit room,
a tipi of eighteen buffalo hides,
of skins on the floor
and smoke curling up
the bark of the trunk of the lightwood lodgepole pine.

The Mandans in North Dakota
along the Missouri, prayed,
Co, flying birds, to the southern horizon,
to the old woman who never dies.
Return at the end of winter.
Carry sunshine, carry water
on your broad backs.

And in your beaks,
and in your beaks,
bring her blessing like a berry
to the crops you symbolize-
"The wild goose to the maize,
the wild duck to the beans,
the wild swan to the gourds"

Thanksgiving, creation:
outside the great American forest
is heaving up leaves and wood from the ground.
Inside I stand at the window, god,
with your name wrapped round my throat like a scarf.

Today I've been naming
the plants of the southem forest:
arrowwood, witherod,
hobblebush, nannyberry,
and the loblolly, longleaf
and shortleaf pine.

Today I've been naming
the plants of the southem forest:
arrowwood, witherod,
hobblebush, nannyberry,
and the loblolly, longleaf
and shortleaf pine.

Lean through the willow, look
upstream, and see wha?'s floating down!
I see camels swimming
with long-lash, golden eyes.
I see trunks and telescopes floating,
a canopied barge with silk scarves ffying,
a peacock on each post,
and three crowned kings inside.
Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar,
I suspect you're on to something.

You tell me your dream
and I'll tell you mine.

I dreamed I woke in a garden.
Everywhere trees were growing;
everywhere fowers were growing,
and otters played in the stream, and grew.
Fruit hung down.

An egg at my feet
cracked, opened up,
and you stepped out,
perfect, intricate lover.