The Last Lost Cow of Baldwin Town

 

Mushroom season comes with fall rains, and then the early cool

Opens doors that have lain closed throughout our febrile summer.

Here, lingering within the cage of twining moonflower vines,

A tiny cow hovers on the rotor of hummingbird wings,
Thin and clear as a dragonfly's. Her hooves dangle in the dew

Sliding down the heart-shaped slope of the leaves.
 
Lost again in the vines, lowing. Tired in the rising sun,
Beating down the humid heat steaming like the breath
Of a great wyrm twisted around the base of the vine,
Training it to coil, training it to reach.
 
Lost cow in the vines. Last cow of Baldwin Town,
Where the Boettcher fairies summon slough and rain
Between the cypress's wooden parishioners in endless 
Pilgrimage to sacred pools. Cows gambol for water.
 
Boettcher fairies charm the dancing suburban calves
Away from the small fields cramped by concrete rivers
They leave memories of other towns caught
In their butterfly books and in their earth-deep carol.
 
But the cows begin to disappear. It begins with vine tips
Stirring like fingers, or thoughts begun far below.
It begins with the door opening, with the thin back wall
Planting the idea of a border, it begins here, in a backyard.
 
She puts the cow in a basket from the highest closet shelf,
On a stolen hotel towel from a high school competition. Remembers
The concrete hallways and the steel banister, the archways
Leading to sodas and ice, rooms kept open until chaperoned closed.
 
It’s thinner now, and smaller, but it holds the cow close;
The basket hangs proper from her elbow, nestled into her waist.
She feels like yesterday, once more careful—overawed by
houses and anxious for her future. She knows it, now.

A story that was only shown, the words all melted

Crayons in a wheel of color that scraped brick-red,

Yellow mornings, blue wisps dreaming in the muddle.

She pats the cow gently. It bumps her fingers.

 
Lost cow in the vines. Last cow of Baldwin Town,
Carried like a kitten, like a mythic loaf, like a rumor
To the twirling Boettcher fairies with ink-vein wings
Whom she knows.

Okay, that TL:DR. So, let's agree that we've "read" the poem and are ready for coffee and...toffee scones. It's a cool morning and the spider that has been working her way around the gazebo is over there, far enough away that everyone fits at the table but still within fly/mosquito catching range. One dog is chasing dragonflies around the yard, the other is dreaming of chasing dragonflies on the pillow nearby. If you sneak him a crumb, everyone pretends to not notice. It's been a week--my parents are currently living in the no-water-because-deadly-amoeba-in-the-pipes zone and I'm trying to not run screaming (in my heart, only, of course) around the house. Trying to not be afraid of my freaking tap water. On second thought, let's haul out a tuffet and invite the spider to have breakfast with us, too. Scone crumbs probably draw the flies like anything. Everything is totally fine. Have some more coffee.

Hrrrmmm. Yeah. Things are totally fine. Hoping that your upcoming week is truly fine. :) 

-- Chrissa  

I Heard Your Name

As the sun slumps into this weedy basket holding the just-purchased forest,

Beth, I heard your name.

Leaning into shoulder aches, I push this woodland book away from the waiter;

Beth, he said your name.

Moths myth smoke-black as we burn our world to sear our numb wings to our tensing backs;

Beth, they hiss your name.

All these aches, all these bird-filled brakes, myth-stained moths, our iron-on wings of singe and dross;

Beth, they called your name.

Beth, I called your name.

Beth, I heard your name.

Sharing today, somewhat tardily, with The Sunday Muse. It was odd--we've done so much straightening up lately that when I woke up, I was just grateful that it was sunny and cool, that there were scones and coffee for breakfast. After weeks of just seeing black linings around whatever image was placed before me, I just wanted to spend a few minutes of calm. There's that buzz that goes slightly dormant and you think--yep, just reached saturation. Did this last? Only as long as I refused to engage with anyone but the dogs. Seriously, she needs a dog. Maybe a three-headed one that likes chomping things and...limiting her interaction with others. Mine only has one head, but he has decided that if I bring a blanket, he'll adapt to the new writing space. He's a little elderly for chomping but he was heck on ponytails, back in the day. :) 

 

To Dream of Shopping in a Time of Pandemic

 

Every night you throw your bones on the mat, then
Voyage to shopping centers whose lights flicker “closing,”
To classes you’ve only visited once prior to exams,
To the job at the company that closed but still runs,
To great malls with ceilings skewed upward, crushing
their second floors; all these escaped by sliding down
piles of mattresses in the back of a department store
that folds into the makeup maze of a convenience store
and leaves you aching for pizza in a lost food court.
It isn’t cooked; there are no masks;
we’re too close together and eventually
there’s an empty parking lot. Someone sleeping.
Or a husk of a sleeper and a man saying all these
stores are closed. Can you believe it? Every one.
The parking lot, the storefronts, are all brown
and the car that dropped you off has probably gone
to the one place still open, several blocks that way.
But what’s a block in this time where days
become months in slug-contractions of space-time
Sliding over the oil-slick news of devoured days?
That place is open. There is food.

Thinking about how "normal" is slowly shifting away from where we've been. Dreams are odd for all their spatial and time displacements--but they're becoming odd through narratives of activities that aren't currently wise or possible. Maybe it's just the discomfort of squeezing through a chrysalis, but I'm not sure.

Sharing this week with Poets & Storytellers United.

Wishing you a week absent fire and flood, except in your writing. 

-- Chrissa

FoxFeathers

 

You can have a different skin, if the fairy of the forest

Whose penthouse of vines in the squirrel-tower pines

Blooms in response to your offering.

You can build a cozy nest from the feathers and leaves

Subtle enough for rain to cast panes of silvered glass

If it please the generous birds and trees.

You can write a fairy tale in a black-stocking wood

If a family of foxes gather your ink and your quills

And you share your food.

As far as I know there aren't any foxes around here. There are bats...which I discovered last night worries me when I'm in the backyard but don't when I'm in the front yard. Apparently, my brain has decided that backyard = wilderness or something. Anyway. I'm still waiting for the arrival of large moths. As with hummingbirds, 2020 is making me obsessed with attracting certain kinds of wildlife to my yard via planting enough vines to create my own little hut. #backyardhut2021!! 

Lesson #1:  Don't blog while sleep deprived. Lesson #2: I really do want a backyard hut. Except that I have a feeling the bees would take it over. Lesson #3: See #1, as now you're sitting in your chair buzzing quietly to yourself and the dog is evaluating whether to go get someone. 

Hope your week is full of adequate sleep & those wordy things that go into, you know, poems. :)

-- Chrissa

Veins/Storms

 

Lightning strikes heal and scar.
From the ends of my red, red hair to where
my feet soak up from the soil,
I'm the blood you call with the plow,
with the bulldozer and the excavator.
I'm the cut
where you fell upon me, 
claws catching up the thoughts,
then pouring your own into me.
I'm the billow in the air
calling the sharks, calling the clouds, 
calling the lights.
Maybe I'll scar, maybe gush, maybe rust away.
I'm hers but I'll never leave your hands,
rain or fire that falls.

Dead Malls

 

[Image by Forgotten Heritage]

Image provided by Writing in the Woods/Conroe & Spring NaNoWriMo

There were stores that had been stocked last week,

trucks that rolled before the cool front to the longer summer on our shore,

but the malls were closed.

Here levers and gauges and men and women 

Pulled and stoppered and stretched and dialed plastic fire until it bit

itself into shapes for the malls.

It was only last month that our cars sighed into the lines

you could see from the ladder through the shop's cathedral window; bow, quick,

Before the malls have closed.

We were talking about dinner at the handrail

When a monetary aneurysm staggered from the upper office downward

from the nerveless malls.

Ships rust, containers float offices into concrete weirs

We’ll find new stanchions under soaring highways, nest under rubber wings,

far from the closed malls.