The day always
opens wide,
always
peers inside.
Always wants
to know
what is near,
far & wide
& also
what makes
the crops rejoice,
beneath what star to plough,
and when to wed the vines to elms.
I ask the hands I hold
I ask the emerald
I ask the breath and the depth.
You can ask the rooster and the hen.
Though their wings span the breadth,
you can capture them.
You can hold them in your hands.
You can press them to your breast.
I have done as much and they haven’t struggled.
So too the lamb, the goat, the fatted calf.
Ask them.
But can the soul,
once gone,
be captured back?
Ask the dry stalks.
Ask the rattling pods.
*
I sleep and wake
to another way
in mind. There are friends
I ask. And children.
There are tasks I ask.
And plants.
I ask
the winter rye
it says I
feed upon
what will come come spring
and it isn’t only you
who sing.
The rooster too.
I ask the morrow.
It says, no,
I won’t
take care
of myself
and yet
I am not without
hope.
*
My girl holds one egg
up to her eye to ask
if its been fertilized.
Light shines through
glair and yolk both.
In this way, no egg
is singular once separated.
It being Sunday,
I thank the oysters
who gave their shells
to the chickens
who gave their eggs
to me.
I ask
the word
compensate.
I feel its weight
in either hand.
It says,
For some, I come all by myself
For others, with a friend.
*
I ask the plot of spreading sunchokes
none can eat
and in my cheek
a loanword stuck.
I ask the little mice lodge,
or is it a colony?
Mass of mice babies
founded in a bin
of chicken feed
made a mess of it.
For some, mess means abundance.
For others, there are no means.
I ask my large country.
It says, I’ve failed.
I’ve not lifted my lamp
by the golden door.
I’ve not
a teeming shore.
*
Today I ask the shard of glass
I swept from the kitchen floor.
I press it deep into my palm
and hold it there as if it were dear
to me. The palm throbbing
as I say my prayer.
I clean out
the garbage disposal,
the rotten lime rind,
the bottle cap.
The sound it won’t make
when it doesn’t rattle.
The ways in which
our compost
can’t hold
every piece
of food
we can’t eat.
The crisis of which
I am not even
a casualty.
*
I ask that which pleases
merely by being seen,
if it can begin to reseed.
I ask my thought undressed.
It says, Needles make good fodder,
Father, but my soul is a girl.
Mine too, I sing.
I’m a watchwoman of spring.
I bring my hail bin in
lest the hoes of unkind
hefts find me.
*
What work resists anger
all the day long?
I will not let you go,
lest you tell me.
Lest you bless
the reddish-brown bole
into which we are sown,
and the rain also,
and my cat with two
voles
on her pillow,
and the plum
pollinated by the bee
that previously
pollinated
the birch tree.
*
I ask the moon
so as not
to go to ground
too soon.
I ask the rhubarb high
about the rabbit’s eye.
Hornbeam, catkins,
Lamb’s quarters,
Goosefoot, Fat-hen.
The fecundity.
I ask the eaves.
I ask Eve.
She says,
Sun-up.
Night-fall.
It isn’t snowing.
The wind is blowing.
*
I ask the geneticist
who produced
a complete map
of the chicken genome.
Gallus gallus domesticus.
I ask the grapes which ripen
on a day when we are away.
I ask the skins and seeds
plump in the birds’ bellies.
I ask the daylight
how much its worth
to chip away at ice.
it says,
measure the shovel and salt
and by your own body
divide.
*
Every spring
I ask a whole year’s hope.
I ask the unwilling earth.
Tired of me
she says,
fate decrees
everything
tumbles into a worse
state
here, grain
there, grapes
olio of seeds,
ill omen all.
Tie your worries
round you,
she says,
like an ephod,
apron of God.
*
The land has its own memory:
the valley.
And also the troposphere.
You can ask them if you like.
You can take your kite
out the garage and tie it tight.
You can speak to its sail.
You can send it up into the air.
You can keep your feet
here
on this dry ground
near all that is dear,
and you can ask that
which swoops down.
The nightingale held
in the hawk’s mouth
pleading for its life,
may say,
she who sings,
prays twice.