Appalachian Ground

by Lisa Creech Bledsoe

  Though fate and fidelity

  are in the eye of the witch, one might say

  and she has found us reliable

  or is playing a quiet shell game of her own

  The rude izba at the border of the land of the dead

  has a stove of solid Russian works; what a nest

  the roof makes

  if you don't mind the grief and howl of

  death at your back

  Or, of course, the trophy bones —

  fancywork, fuel, sorcery of life

  and Yaga the shaman

  with a blazing skull in her closet

  If you are quite clever

  you might win the use of such a talisman

  but it is best not to cut your fingernails or

  wear anything new when you petition her

  Bring rye bread and apples for us

  or a fat silver fish

  but nothing under a spell (we have enough of that)

  and in return you might find us inattentive, dizzy

  or having an off night

  It isn't true that we never speak

  But you must pull your own weight, child

  find the brother you lost and

  build your own disenchantments

  All Night This River

  Open the enamel box

  underneath your ribs

  and draw out the white locket

  whose chain is a river

  whose river is you

  and you the ferryman

  deckhand, river horse, naga

  filled with fish wisdom

  belly full of gold bullion, legal papers

  and a sink full of dishes

  All night this river

  rises and rolls

  rises and falls

  There are boundaries to your landscape

  but not limits

  Lift the orange salmon sun

  from the roof of your bonehouse

  where it weeps and gilds

  your leaps, sleeping and climbing

  and you the satellites

  stars, stings, centaurs

  planted in the blue garden of night

  for your nine good deeds

  hummingbird eggs

  and a dozen pint jars of honey

  All night this river

  rises and rolls

  rises and falls

  Cross three times the watercourse

  over, back, over

  and find yourself in a new place

  Break from your frozen moraine

  the great stone who dreams of flying

  cracking the old songs into fragments

  and you the grinding slab

  the marzipan ice wolf

  turtle, lullaby, snowfall

  hunting the glacial till for

  black jewels carved into crows

  shist, then shale

  then silt in the firth, funnel, door

  How small you shall become

  before you belong to the sky

  Five Maps

  I've made trails with small white stones

  breadcrumbs, buttons, omitted commas

  pressed pennies, and paper fortunes

  I gave away

  a box of handkerchiefs sent to me

  singly, over years

  by my great grandmother and her sister

  laced, embroidered for a

  girl becoming a woman

  I gave away all the

  pink depression glass, too

  Now they narrate a different land

  with cotton lawn, silk, and

  engraved remembrances

  I've made trails with

  blackberries — wait,

  I ate those

  but the seeds, the seeds

  mark something, or will

  — with blackberries, virgin's bower

  blue crawdads, cornbread

  scuffing the leaf duff

  and chopping in a path with my

  round-point shovel, sometimes

  a mattock

  And how many leagues have

  flown along the page,

  busy-tangled, sleepily rumpled words

  charting trumpet weed and territories

  hunting and shining

  owls, bowls, and petals

  on how many pens and sheets!

  Today I sat and watched the erratic

  flights of bees, making no

  sense and perfect harmony

  their own algorithm of sticky love

  and hive-ness

  So many small cherished maps

  are folded away in my pockets

  and cabinets, along the lining

  of my shelves and tales

  including this one

  IV. The Storm and Home of Us

  Cabinet

  Inside my chest is a cabinet

  of a thousand drawers

  With them all shut for company I'd say

  it would be tidy except

  for the constant leakage and

  the strange grinding sounds

  The drawers rattle open on their

  own no matter what I do

  and randomly cave, coalesce, incinerate or

  cough clouds of spores

  Inside an entire row at the front

  (it's important to tell you this right away)

  are layers of brown confidence in

  thick sturdy pages

  Though one day I will have

  filled a dozen sheets with charcoal drawings

  and the next the drawer has swollen shut

  and refuses access

  Some drawers are stuffed with wool socks

  and baby bonnets

  beeswax and the amiable natter of crows

  a few blazing fast starts (not many timely finishes)

  the sweet perfection of cleanly splitting a chunk of beech on the first swing

  Row after row have stones under which there are salamanders

  But there are also tiers marked need to please and overthought

  (I scratched through the labels but

  you can still read them)

  The ones dedicated to precision I've never opened

  (smashed the edges with rocks — didn't budge)

  And the paint is lovingly worn

  from untethered, and deeply attentive

  and the attenuation that comes

  with gradually being spun into a glittering stream of light

  Released

  For weeks I called the cutleaf toothwort by the wrong name. It niggled at me, then suddenly I realized where I’d gone amiss.

  It bloomed all over the mountainside anyway.

  I remembered a moment back in our pale February — I was stricken to find a wildly curling orange and yellow bloom erupting along the bare branches of a tree like fireworks.

  “What is it!” I demanded, both elated and baffled.

  Mary Jo told me, of course. “That’s an Orange Squiggly with Eyes.” And it was.

  Just for today, you could let go of your need to be perfectly correct. Drop your guard, quiet your heart, and allow things to unfurl without your nomenclature.

  Watch for the things that germinate, or effloresce. In the name of the Carolina geranium, you are forgiven. By the power of the squiggly witch hazel, you are forgiven.

  You are living energy, made from stars, and cast wildly out again.

  Tonight, despite your efforts to prevent it, the deer will nibble at the tender young shoots on the blueberry bushes, and trample the false earthstar into clouds of spores.

  The Storm and Home of Us

  You were born, I think, like a storm precipitated from the breath of the thousand generations who came before, created of ancient queens and charm quarks, hippogriffs and wood sorrel.

  Hiking into the woods after a spring rain, I feel the salamander turning lazily in the mud of my genes. Did you know she is suffused with homing metals that call her to the water? When the sun shines, her body becom
es a glittering flame that loves the puddle, the pond, the great river.

  So there is magnetic dust in my gut that compels me to slide bare hands beneath a clod of sodden leaves, to turn over endless rocks in the creek surging down the mountain. I am looking for home.

  We are warriors and red algae, feldspar and manticore and garden mint. We are made of clouds and etched with holy meridians. Wave by wave our lives are called to their source in rushes and rivulets until the last burst of fine mist, then cloud again.

  Cherry Tree

  I have been studying the space between fear and grief.

  Last night before the moon faded, I climbed up to stand under the dying mountain cherry.

  Nine stone steps, slick with unease, then another short rain-soaked rise. I can see into our second-floor bedroom window from here.

  Thirteen nights more until the man comes to take down the tree; a feat that will involve harnesses in neighboring trees and a careful system of pulleys and ropes. The cherry is a hundred feet tall, three trunks splitting away from the main, badly rotted at the base.

  Death leans toward the house.

  Thirteen more nights, and sixteen inches of rain so far this month; nearly four times the average. I rearrange the numbers over and over again, but they aren’t my numbers, over and over again.

  Sometimes as you are carrying your laundry up or down the stairs, you will forget.

  At night, in bed beneath the moon-shadow of a dying cherry, you will remember.

  Shut the bedroom windows so that you can’t hear another inch of rain, or the whip of wind. Turn off the flash flood warnings on your phone. They aren’t your numbers.

  Stand in the slippery weeds with your palms and forehead to the tree. Allow yourself to grieve and fear, fear and grieve.

  The sharp, liquid arrow-song of the wood thrush will leave a silver scar on your heart.

  The Church and the Wildflowers

  I do not believe I must choose between

  the church and the wildflowers

  between the Apostles’ Creed and washing dishes

  while my son does homework at the table

  You can learn much about God from

  a weathered marriage or

  a bouquet of blue asters and goldenrod

  gathered from beside the gravel drive

  The world is a great banquet,

  tables set not with embroidered linens and

  polished silver

  but with coffee cups and some spring violets

  You and I have done nothing to make this happen

  but we can choose to be present, curious, glad

  For it is possible that our lives depend on it

  It is just possible that our lives depend on our presence

  and rapt attention to the Great Feast in our kitchens

  on our mountains

  with the people and creatures

  both lovable and reviled

  already gathered where we are

  Hit and Run

  Sometimes your heart needs more space to do its job.

  You know those calls you get, where afterwards you stand clutching the phone to your chest and holding back tears? That’s three for my year, so far. How grateful I am to still have my son. It can go either way, you know. The great tides sweep through our lives, triggered just as easily by the act of choosing between loaves of bread as getting into a car.

  When you draw close to a miracle, you sometimes catch a glimpse of the waves of horror and weeping against which miracles are often born. How tempting it is to build an understanding of life based on what hurts, or what’s missing. One despairs of human fragility.

  Instead, turn your face toward life, despite its constant proximity to death. The lone root still breaks through the stone, the single stone still changes the voice of the river, and the one river continues to shape and refresh the world.

  Boxes

  In a small box knit of moss and a murmuration of birds there is a wisp of duck down and a red jade Buddha from the day he was born. The stink of cigarettes and the resistance of the world around me I sprinkled with wild mint and rosemary for a holy fire.

  I had made the box earlier for the whispered name of a different child. The unsaid prayers and shorn locks of a saint I folded into bright origami frogs to scatter in the woods. The crows carried them back to their nestlings as toys.

  In the small box woven of larkspur and icy spring water there is a generous twist of pale blue thread, the kind surgeons use to cross-stitch two hundred sutures into a four-year-old’s head. My grandmother washed the blood-drenched winter coat (twice) and I shook out the down for birds’ nests and sewed a thousand sky-blue sails for toy boats.

  He doesn’t remember much of it, smiles easily, and isn’t afraid of dogs. I don’t love them any more.

  In a small box shaped of lichen and bits of eggshell there is a chunk of quartz carved into the shape of a deer. The terrible phone call and the hospital smells I mixed with dish soap and glycerine, and later we sat on the front porch to blow bubbles, letting the sunshine heal.

  For the next terrible call I cut a new trail into the mountain to the offering tree. It seems to be working so far. The thin folded shadow I may look at in 20 years, or never.

  Make ham sandwiches, hunt for salamanders in the creek, and tear the dark thoughts into strips for your bee smoker. This winter there will be honey.

  The Offering Tree

  halfway up the ridge, at the top of twelve steps

  not really steps, just hard mountain dirt cut into shelves

  there is an offering tree

  I’ve left there curls of grapevine

  nuts, a yellow violet

  broken snail shells

  yesterday there was a wide acorn cap

  not mine

  with the rest, rearranged

  a moment of startlement

  nothing like the hook in the chest

  you get as you parent

  when your children pull the cable

  thick as your wrist

  which you would love to disconnect

  not really though

  but you’ve chewed at it in misery

  wished it less firmly anchored

  you are a tree fallen in the woods

  with small gifts left

  by hands you love

  you cannot roll away

  from their hidden dark glory

  the futures you cannot protect

  Ablaze

  Coming in together

  at the close of day

  we surprised a young ringneck snake

  soaking in the last of the sun

  Seeing us

  she slipped behind the steps

  to hide under the deck

  Of course we followed

  both of us on our knees in the dirt

  whispering like excited teens

  hunched over

  inching deeper into shadow

  to catch

  a glimpse of silk and cream

  softly folded into a crevice

  between stone and ledge

  We quieted

  sensing each other’s heat

  and felt the secret unfold

  like we have years before

  and many times since

  Breathless

  ablaze in wonder

  as night dropped her cloak

  Moving Stones

  Yesterday I stopped

  trying to be useful and

  wandered out to the creek

  Where the wind had not yet

  come ahead of the rain

  and there was no need

  To haul stones

  and thump them down

  in the mud again

  for a crossing

  The sun licked her thumb

  turned one more page

  then gathered up her yellow hem

  and still

  I moved stones

  in the purpling woods

  rearranging my t
houghts

  with the pileated's

  periodic commentary

  Some things you will do well

  Some stones you must leave unmoved

  The stream sighs and gleams

  under a swelling moon

  and the rain soon

  will sing her compline prayers

  One Year

  It's a good day for a house-iversary and

  there are presents for everyone —

  though the bears I've left out

  for good reason

  We've made cakes in the shapes of

  little chocolate homes

  with no leaks, new gutters, and all the

  damage torn out and repaired

  with peanut butter frosting, delicious

  and wildflower sprinkles in every color

  For the crows a thimble, boot, top hat

  polished to a glittering shine

  race car, iron, wheelbarrow

  secreted in the moss

  (I lost the cowboy)

  A handful of cornbread crumbles

  scattered in the creek for the crawdads