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1. Embed this notice
   Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:27 JST Moira

   clearing the knotweed

   Commonly, this is done with herbicide.
   Leery of that, she tried a chain saw. That was
   Easy enough, but made fumes and sets fire to
   All the earth's air over time. Electric clippers
   Ruled the roost awhile, but that, we know,
   In the scheme of things is but a longer tailpipe,
   Neither the labor direct nor personal. She's
   Going to have to simplify further. She takes

   The hand pruner with her to the patch. It means
   Her time in blighted shade, bending, will be
   Extended, reaching to each stem in turn,

   Killing with a snip and twist, dragging four or five
   Not so much weeds as small trees outward
   Or upward from the dry wash, toward hot sun,
   Toward the roasting garden, into the paths
   Where they'll be tossed as instant mulch
   Entreating the drought to respect their shade,
   Entreating irrigation not to evaporate,
   Dimming, in sacrifice, the roving eye of Death.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:16 JST Moira

     in reply to

     more than luck

     Padding along among roots and stobs in shade,
     I take the north-slope path to see old friends:
     red huckleberry and mountain hemlock

     subsisting on nurse logs amid moss; vanilla
     leaf, false Solomon's seal, sword fern, bracken,
     sorrel, twinflower, wild ginger, salmonberry,

     maiden-hair fern, ninebark, viney maple.
     They seem well; it's steep shade and deep
     mouldering duff. Enough rain has alighted

     upon this slope for centuries to build tall firs,
     straight cedars, twisted, hoary, wrangling maples.
     Yet the riverbed below seems troubled, shrunken.

     Stones I never see have suddenly shown
     themselves, shouldering past dried caddis cases
     and empty snail shells, standing in desiccated air.

     Here no trout hide from tiring current,
     awaiting mayflies. No osprey hovers above,
     awaiting trout. The river has shifted from

     its bed, lifted past every thirst, and gone
     to fall somewhere in the world as flood.
     A slug has blundered into dust in broiling

     sun and is in trouble. Not one for caressing
     slugs, I break two twigs for chopsticks, and move
     the mollusk to, I hope, a better place.

     In fellow feeling I expound to the slug
     my sunstruck orchard, panting flock,
     failing well and kitchen garden hard as ice.

     We'll all of us start shifting soon, I tell it,
     as ants shift from a burning glass. From here on
     you and I will need what's more than luck.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:17 JST Moira

     in reply to

     wassail

     In August, but this year in July, Gravensteins:
     golden fleshed, generous, kind to cook,
     ciderer and ring-dryer. She tries everything,

     but mostly butter: a large crockpotful
     of peeled rings, quartered, lightly cloved,
     cinnamoned and nutmegged will make

     six pints and one short jelly jar. After
     that, the old Egremont Russet, Cortland,
     Honeycrisp and Jonagold come all together;

     what can she do but slice them all in quarters,
     toss them into her dedicated shredder,
     pour pomace into a burlap bag

     and hang that, with her father's pulley
     and old hemp rope, to a maple branch?
     Juice will run for hours, collecting

     in a tub beneath; at evening she dips gold,
     pouring through filter and funnel into quarts --
     forty-five glass jars or more, most years.

     Last, she'll think of cider (but not too much),
     making in a cool jug by adding wine yeast.
     In seven days or less she will sing to trees.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:17 JST Moira

     in reply to

     There are rooms in a life that may sometimes
     Have someone in them; but they are guests there.
     Even when one most loves, one may find,
     Really, a solitude that begins at this wall,
     Ends at that wall; the rest is not entirely ours.

     As years turn and suns, moons and stars
     Rise up and fall like rain by every window
     Even one's hands will shrivel soon enough

     Right at the ends of one's arms, as hands
     Of strangers. But to fret at this discovery
     Of emptiness arrived at and emptiness
     Made clear by moon's dance with water,
     Sun's dance with dust, by endings never sought

     In even that one room that is one's own, is
     Not worthy of even that we call our life.

     All our guests deserve from us restraint.

     Little enough we can offer them as it is;
     In a short while each vacates each room,
     Feeling for the light switch as each goes.
     Evening comes. Do not grieve the door.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:18 JST Moira

     in reply to

     She's not much for recipes. The bowl sometimes
     invites her, and she oils it, cracks a duck egg
     or two, throws in a bit of stock or well water,

     maple syrup and leavening, and says to it:
     sit there and I'll be back with something for you.
     "Something" might be a beet leaf, or an apple,

     or a spray of young mint -- once it was a whole
     handful of chives. Chopped and thrown in,
     the whatever might vanish under oats or rye,

     buckwheat flour, or crumbs from the last loaf,
     and then salt -- late, so as not to insult the yeast.
     Last, she may tug the spelt barrel from beneath

     the counter, and dip a porcelain bowl into
     the cool brown powder five -- six -- seven
     times. She stirs the makings between heaps

     with a pair of chopsticks. Never quite
     the same thing twice! In summer she'll oil
     a crock pot and turn the lump in to bake;

     in winter, a Dutch oven. In either case,
     the secret is prop the lid onto a chopstick,
     letting a little steam out over time.

     The end is not the prettiest bread you'll ever see,
     nor the best tasting, she'll admit. But slice it,
     add a little butter to it still hot,

     and sit, eating slowly, in a western window
     as the sun goes gold, then falls. Are you not
     now the grace at the red heart of the world?

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:18 JST Moira

     in reply to

     more than she

     Rattling around in her potting shed once
     she came across packets five years old;
     had not heart to toss the things away.

     Popping the lid from an empty parsley shaker,
     she tipped the packets' contents in and stirred.
     Ten flats she sowed at random with this mix,

     come March, that first year; a month earlier
     thereafter, as springs grew warmer. Bits of green
     appeared, some here, more there. She'd prick out any

     that went to a second pair of leaves, and give them
     each its own square pot. What might they be?
     Some Red Russian, curly or Lacinato

     kale, some radishes, turnips, beets. Six kinds
     of lettuce, collards, cabbage -- Dutch or red
     some spinach, also chard. Carrots, kohlrabi

     and parsnips never showed, but she allowed
     enough's a feast. Those that proved up
     were hardened off in April, then set out

     in beds on a grid, each as its turn came next
     from the flat. That shaker lasted half a garden
     half a decade. Nothing the catalogs

     had taught was even tried. Whatever she thought
     they'd said to do with seeds, well! The seeds
     knew more than seedsmen, and much, much more than she.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:19 JST Moira

     in reply to

     learning to walk

     It's not that she hasn't been doing this all along:
     She'd walked to school as yellow lozenges, oozing screams,
     fumed past her along hot asphalt. She'd splashed the creek,

     anxious for a path, then built it herself, kenning
     to use her father's axe without lost blood.
     She'd walked from Springer Mountain north, chatting in

     her offhand way with bears, a big cat and a ghost.
     She'd walked the halls of academia and then the hills,
     big ones, bringing seedling trees to snug up to

     the raw stumps of firs machines had eaten.
     She'd walked to a job for decades, block after block
     of homes with eyes of black glass inching

     past her tired, angry shoes. Now, late in life,
     she keeps a small dog bereft by her parents'
     breathing stopped. The dog has taught much:

     when to stop and sniff; how to attend with one's
     whole being the business of squirrels. Bound
     by the leash, that necessary thing, they two as one

     take in, absorb, imbibe, inhale, entaste
     all the arriving and leaving of living things.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:20 JST Moira

     in reply to

     Chiyono married very young. She gave one child,
     then lost her husband, and, as was the custom then,
     she was dispatched to an abbey to begin anew.

     Thus vanished, she married wood and water,
     chopping, carrying, blowing through a tube
     to brighten fire beneath the rice and tea,

     hoeing radishes, sun and moon her companions.
     Work done, which seemed seldom, she would sit
     as the black-robed women sat, hands folded,

     and this attracted kindness from an elderess.
     "What are you doing?" "Gathering Mind," said she,
     "as I have seen them do." "There is no Mind,"

     the Old One chided, "that is to say, none
     to be grasped, either by sitting or not sitting.
     What's to be done is the same sitting or carrying

     wood to the cooks. Do you wish instruction?"
     She did, and studied with this nun for years,
     while not neglecting any menial task.

     One night, while making use of moonlight
     to bring to the cistern her ancient bucket, full,
     she watched in horror as it sprang apart and spilled --

     then stood amazed, free. "This," she later
     said, "in spite of my ceaseless effort, was
     how it was. No bucket. No water. No moon." In

     after years she shook the world of Zen,
     founding five abbeys, taking in
     homeless women, teaching strength and grace.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:20 JST Moira

     in reply to

     The things to do: bring an egg from her
     Hens, a found apple, beet leaf, cat's-ear foliage,
     Ensuring freshness even in October.

     The skillet she heats, oil frisking.
     Here's egg: break yolk, turn once or twice;
     Insert chopped fruit and greens, with salt and pepper;
     Now turn again, wait, remove from heat,
     Give all to a spelt wrap. As she sits to her meal, a
     Sun rises, invests her eastern window, spills in

     To caress and warm six thick maple boards
     Of her grandmother's table. Whatever remains to be

     Done's already forgotten: the meal an emblem
     Of all her morning cared to be.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:21 JST Moira

     in reply to

     Nothing can stand still. If it were to do so
     absolutely, I could not see it; if I
     were to cease scanning, I could not then see;

     therefore change is all. These were my thoughts
     as I walked a dog, watching my year run down.
     Apples were falling; I chose one to eat.

     Hips blushed fiercely; I stuffed my pockets full.
     Ash and maple and willow turned and turned.
     Restless mice and voles risked their all

     for seeds. We reached the river; a trout rose, an
     osprey plunged; they met and flew as one.
     An osprey will turn a trout head first in flight,

     you know -- for improved aerodynamics. I
     disbelieve it; surely the bird is kind.
     It turns the trout to show it what's to come.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:21 JST Moira

     in reply to

     The first few fires of autumn laid by me
     Here in this stove aren't much; I acknowledge
     Even the hummingbird's still caressing blooms, so I

     Feeling only a brief dawn chill, build accordingly.
     In thickets of summer I range about,
     Ratcheting my long-handled pruner among stout sticks,
     Stealing from oak and ash, letting in a little light.
     These I pile in the long room where that stove squats.

     Fueling it with paper and a stack of twigs, admiring
     Even the least hints of gold and vermillion therein,
     We sit back, warm enough for one dark cup of tea.

     For awhile; then day overtakes us, ready
     In sweater and chore coat to see to hens;
     Really, we shuck those soon enough, sweat on our
     Ears and eyelids, summer reborn briefly in our knees.
     So; until the ground grows cold that will hold our graves.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:22 JST Moira

     in reply to

     She likes red in September: viney maple, poison oak;
     Her plum trees dress well in it. Where she lives, all
     Else goes brown. Except the dog roses

     Leavening hedges with their hips. She stuffs these
     In her pockets on every walk, then does research,
     Kindling a ken of potions, liqueurs, oils.
     Easily, drying comes to mind; to prep for that
     She'll split each pod and rake away hard seeds,

     Removing them to her freezer to stratify;
     Else they might not emerge come spring. She
     Digs out also myriad tiny hairs,

     Irritants if retained. It's a slow business,
     Not for the impatient, which well describes her;

     She know of this but means to tough it out.
     Each hip's a silent mantra: she'll
     Push, pull, twist, scrape, sort, and set aside
     The emptied husks for drying or infusing.
     Eventually the pile is done, just as light fades.
     My eyes, she tells herself, are getting on,
     But this I can still do. I'll make rose tea;
     Evening will fill my cup of mindfulness.
     Really, there's nothing more than what there is.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:23 JST Moira

     in reply to

     It is quiet out there now. She
     Takes her hat, stick and forage bag,

     Into which she slips her pruners, then
     Slides her feet into green clogs, feeling

     Quite exurban-agrarian, ready to look
     Under brush piles and into cottonwoods --
     In every place that might consent to harbor
     Even a hint of birds' music. They have flown,
     The silence tells her; those that haven't died.

     Out along the roadside she waves to cars,
     Understanding her neighbors have to drive,
     Then pockets up her apples, rose hips, leaves

     That now are turning away from green: cat's ear,
     High mallow, chicory, plantain, sow thistle, her
     Ears pricked for passing flights of geese.
     Really, thinks she to herself, there ought
     Even now to be more birds. There are

     Not so many feral cats round here as that.
     Or could it be the sprays? She supposes
     War has been declared. A war on song.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:23 JST Moira

     in reply to

     just-enough

     The ubiquity of Queen-Anne's lace annoys her;
     it's not the plant's not doing its job; her soil
     is loosened and enriched; in time of human

     hunger, roots, young leaves and even umbels
     would have table use. But there is so much
     of it; her chickens dislike the stuff, especially

     in its second year, allowing their yard and moat
     to fill with cohort-ranks of pungent spikes.
     Her friend keeps bees and tells her they will feed

     on this exclusively, bittering his honey,
     bringing down its price. So he watches;
     when the umbels bloom he moves his hives.

     She'd like to query those who thought of Anne;
     these tiny droplets in a sea of lace
     Need not have been a queen's: she tells herself

     her own blood has fed this thorned and rock-
     embedded acre thoroughly. So, queen
     of weeds, she! Or queen of just-enough.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:24 JST Moira

     in reply to

     Terrified of them she was through long
     Experience being swarmed with stings,
     Running, her hands over eyes and mouth,
     Running to the house or jumping in the lake,
     In whatever way possible to stop the punishers.
     For years, she made herself their nemesis
     In revenge, setting nests afire! Or in
     Evenings inverting a glass bowl upside
     Down over their holes to watch them starve.

     Only in recent years, as her ways have slowed,
     Finding in books their part in the scheme of

     Things as helpers in garden and orchard,
     Has she learned to move more gently
     Even as they light on her cidery hands,
     Milking fingers for juice, never stinging.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:25 JST Moira

     in reply to

     these are highlands

     These are highlands, in a region of highlands, so
     not especially notable. It takes a long
     time to get there, though the graveled road

     is short enough; park and walk -- not far,
     but bring a lunch and water. Sign in; it's wilderness
     according to the kiosk and its map.

     Immediately you have shade. These are
     Douglas fir, mountain hemlock, perhaps
     some red cedar. Beneath, on both sides the trail,

     a scattering of vine maple, ocean spray,
     rhododendron, and, in the draws, willow.
     Sometimes bear grass is in flower;

     not this year. As late season turns, first
     vanilla leaf, then devil's club, then red
     huckleberry, then the blue, will shade through

     gold to sienna to cranberry: cool nights.
     Kinnickinnick under foot will be your sign
     you are straying; do not lose the path.

     Along the way are springs, but they are dry;
     near them are holes of mountain beaver,
     a town like that of prairie dogs. You will

     not see them; they go abroad at night.
     Admire twinflowers and trilliums, though
     they are past bloom. So it is as well

     with gooseberry and false Solomon's seal --
     they are tired now, and long for snow.
     As your path turns upon itself and climbs

     rocks and trees will change to andesite
     and alpine fir; soil to red dust, shrubs
     to ceanothus. Now you discover that view

     eyes come here to see; a mountainscape
     of scree and scarp and what remains of ice,
     not far away as the crows fly, yet leaning

     over miles of air, blue with smoke and firs.
     You may eat, and drink your water, leaving some
     for your return. Wait here for me a bit

     while I go to see a stone nearby
     where both my parents' ashes lie at rest.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:25 JST Moira

     in reply to

     She stands in wet and likes it; drips rolling
     around the brim of her split-bamboo conical
     hat to fall on thirsting clay. Here's

     weather at last, there having been sun,
     sun, sun, a lip-cracking and tree-splitting
     dry, since the vernal equinox. Nothing

     had been vernal about it, and her land
     knew so. The very fir limbs sulked;
     willows on creek banks browned up and died;

     birds fell everlastingly silent, dropping
     on needle-sharp tufts of what had been haymow
     beneath their perches in rattling cedars;

     fish sought pools deeper than any there were,
     crowding in together, fin by fin,
     gulping and grunting, then rolling over

     to bump along hot, slimed rocks and lodge
     somewhere, stinking. Her crops had miniaturized,
     flavorful but insufficient to pay her labor;

     She'd lost heart and let vining morning glories
     into her cracked farm at last. And now here
     comes weather. Not enough to top off the well,

     maybe, and certainly not enough to start the creek.
     But here she stops, catching chill -- watching
     a goldfinch settle on fence wire with a twist

     of foraged thistledown. It drops the meal,
     opens its beak, cranes skyward. And now it sings.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:26 JST Moira

     in reply to

     where are the potatoes

     Where are the potatoes, she wondered, watching
     Heat shimmer across her corn block, its leaves
     Each rustling against other, turning brown.
     Right here they were planted, next bed over,
     Evenly spaced, in two long lines, eyes up

     And covered in soft soil, mixed with compost --
     Really exactly as she had done these fifty years.
     Early next morning, she reached for her mason's hammer,

     The experiment with the spud hook having failed, and
     Heaving her old bones down onto her gardening stool
     Exactly at the end of that mysterious weedy bed;

     Pulled block after block of solid hexagonal clod
     Over, busting up each as she went, feeling for
     That coolness she knew as round starch balls
     All her life she'd depended on. It's not
     That she hadn't watered and weeded, no,
     Or fought those gophers well, newly arrived.
     Earth could not drink for once, it seemed.
     Some spuds appeared. They were even

     Smaller than those from last year. Some felt
     Hollow. Some were cracked. Some were
     Even green with poisons though they'd grown

     Well deep enough never to have seen sun.
     Oh, well, she thought, I'll take what I can get;
     Now we'll have barley for every other soup, with
     Dandelion to help stretch out my kale. This
     Earth, she told herself, never did all,
     Really even in days of rain. Barley I bought.
     Ere I go forth from here as buried flesh or ash, I'll
     Do as I have done: work with what is.

   • Embed this notice
     Moira (moira@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:36:27 JST Moira

     in reply to

     She has work to do, establishing
     Her anchor threads, her frame threads,
     Even her bridge thread and all her radii,

     Hub to be ready by dawn, herself resting --
     All-powerful, so far as any lacewing can
     See. Seeking out the ripest berries, she

     Works not to eat drupelets, but entirely to
     Offer them as bait to fruit flies and their ilk.
     Right away along comes another
     Killer, a ladybird beetle, seeking the berries

     Too, and for the same reason. He's caught,
     Offers resistance, is overwhelmed, rolled up,

     Done. Whatever comes in, if protein, her
     Ovum will accept. Death it is brings life.