Appalachian Ground Read online

  Appalachian Ground

  Lisa Creech Bledsoe

  More poetry, wildflowers, and mountain at

  AppalachianGround.com

  Copyright © 2019 Lisa Creech Bledsoe

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  I. Property of Salamanders

  Call the Mountain

  Night Message

  Broken Into Wholeness

  Emotional Clearing

  Song of the Spring Beauties

  Winter Love Poem

  Found

  Slough Stone

  New Things Born

  Siege of Crows

  Scarlet Elf Cups

  Advice

  Night Work

  II. Hive Songs

  Rescued

  Listening For My Life

  Neighbors

  Bluebells

  Blueberries

  Haven

  To My Crow Friends

  Winter Hive Song

  3 am, The Cats Want In

  Vixen

  One Thing Becomes Another

  Imperial Moth, Adrift

  The Ladies

  III. Star-Swallowing

  Seven League Boots

  Wild Tea

  Bluebeard

  Apologies

  Star Rise

  Earthsnake

  The Dirty Shepherdess

  Foundling-bird

  Leaving

  The Mute Swans

  All Night This River

  Five Maps

  IV. The Storm and Home of Us

  Cabinet

  Released

  The Storm and Home of Us

  Cherry Tree

  The Church and the Wildflowers

  Hit and Run

  Boxes

  The Offering Tree

  Ablaze

  Moving Stones

  One Year

  V. Maps of Light

  Clearing the Seep

  To Life

  Spider Flight

  Ode to Brown

  Stuck

  Thresholds

  On the Last Small Bouquet of Gentian and Boneset

  Riptide

  There Will Be Days

  The Same House

  Measured

  Begin Again

  I. Property of Salamanders

  Call the Mountain

  Call the mountain, and she will come

  with green-shadowed hawk

  and salamander

  Feel the land drop away from your feet

  and fly

  the song of all things, even

  wild cherry in August,

  bear sign and

  the praise of bees

  Call the mountain, and she will billow

  in on thunder and

  white slants of knife-rain

  You will be a vixen bolting

  for her hole,

  the scent of lightning

  stinging her nose

  Ask the mountain to attend you —

  this thing can be done, and will

  with savage gravity

  and the ordinary hush of moss on stone

  She will adjure you to

  the work of the land

  You will be wind-seethe of grasses over balds

  benedictions of the vireo

  ghost of elk and red wolf

  Then

  you can let your leaves give up

  and fall

  Night Message

  The same darkness rises above every house, and the same great moon. I have set out across the field to ask what music is left in the season, to let the hard white starlight blink out its flashlight message.

  Lying on the earth, I listen to the ticking of the weeds until my body is filled with gray night clouds; in the nest of dirt and leaves between my collarbone and ribs hums the small wild mink of my heart.

  Maybe we are here because it was our plan, or maybe we were called here by the deep green song of owls, or the flickering wing of a cabbage moth. Either way, the past breaks open and ghosts move along our paths.

  Here is a thing worth doing: Let your thoughts be turned under like a garden at the edge of winter. Heap wet black leaves and compost over your spirit to encourage whatever gifts and riddles will grow there in secret.

  Much has died and is gone, but like the two of us, the wild violets will grow their white bones and threads all winter in the dark forest soil.

  Broken Into Wholeness

  I waded into the creek today

  to sling blackening clots of leaves from the snags

  I rebuilt my stone crossing

  prying up rocks from the silt and minnows

  and laying them like careful plans —

  with a care for the black-shelled snails still attached

  I am not ready for summer to end

  The water is still warm and the color of tea in the sun

  but the creek bank is lined with yellow leaves and

  puffs of milkweed

  the bleached skeleton of a possum or raccoon

  Everything is larger than we are:

  the current, the seeds, the bones

  To give our full attention is to be broken into wholeness

  Emotional Clearing

  Today is a good day to rearrange your emotional furniture.

  Better yet, drag that chest of drawers — the one filled with neatly-folded grudges, tangled slights, clumped frustrations — out of the room of your heart.

  Shove it off the porch and let it crash its way down the mountain and into the startled woods.

  A year from now, or ten, it will surprise you as you wander through your inner forest. A mouse will have made a home in every drawer. Wrens will have woven your old insecurities into their nests, and honeysuckle will have turned your grief into fragrant cups for bees.

  The glass knobs from each drawer will long have come loose and tumbled into streams, dazzling the salamanders with sun-sparks and rainbows. Your anxieties and unforgiveness are leaf litter.

  Do this each year, and lay afterward on the open expanse of sun-drenched hardwoods in the home of your soul

  and breathe.

  Song of the Spring Beauties

  I intended to try them this year

  foraged and harvested wild

  enjoyed in a salad, or cooked

  And in March they emerged in thousands,

  scattered drifts of pink and white like

  confetti at a wedding

  their tiny round roots — fairy potatoes! —

  a flow of elfin river pebbles under the rimy mulch

  After a dragging winter, how bright

  these fair faces flushed in the rugged wind

  their rosy stems and green leaves glowing

  An unrestrained anthem

  on a muddy, frozen mountain at

  the end of the firewood

  the end of bleak sky

  and shivering

  Seven years

  it takes for each bloom to rise

  from seed to rousing chorale,

  ripened beauty

  I went warm-wrapped with bucket and trowel

  but gazing out, became rooted:

  an antiphon in celebration of this

  slow mastery and small wild praise

  You and I need these here — all of them! —

  feeding the psalm of the world

  Winter Love Poem

  Walking up the mountain together in the watery sun we saw two bright male cardinals and a small, fast female.

  We watched one energetic Romeo pursue his intended. He flickered and dipped, following her with zeal through the tangle of bare apple branches.

  The other male sat glumly in the briars. We walked right u
p, our hearts laughing and sore at the same time. “Get in the game!” you called. “Take it from me; if you don’t try, you can’t win.”

  I love the way you can so easily throw open the windows of my heart under a winter sky.

  Found

  Sometimes you are chosen

  by what you have not sought.

  The boundaries meant to contain you

  are upended by a thousand years

  of hard frosts and soaking rains.

  Every green and black summer —

  every dragonfly drifting over swamp milkweed

  remembers the things you weep for.

  Your griefs and wounds are kept in soft mud, then

  folded into the crease of the mountain

  recorded in slate, schist and quartzite.

  The unfurled universe claims you and

  presses down her favor.

  The white spruce will never forget your name —

  he spells it again and again in unhurried syllables

  each taking years to sigh.

  The wrens and veeries will sing

  down the darkness creeping up your twigs and ligaments, and

  you can not be unhealed.

  There’s no escaping this.

  You cannot tell the fiddleheads to rise but not unroll

  or remonstrate with the roots of yellow violets

  gathering their strength for spring.

  Your platelets and spinal cord

  your salty bones and neurons

  are the property of salamanders and colona moths.

  You have so amazed the blue crawdad that

  she has spun you into bright embroidery for the seep

  and that isn’t done quickly

  or without effort.

  You are a map of light, a river of electric charge,

  juice and gravity and tectonic plates shifting

  the voice of a thousand bells.

  You belong to all the earth and even more.

  Open palms or clenched fists

  bowed head or raised

  the blessing will find you

  and when your resistance is finished

  it will carry you tenderly home.

  Slough Stone

  in the fragrant bowl of the slough

  wanders a path I carved

  into the steep shoulder of the mountain

  down to the end, turning

  then a long walk straight into the middle

  through all that loves the wet, sodden

  loves the sliding mud

  to the tree bridge, which you must cross

  to get to the other rim-path and out

  ahh! the tree bridge

  one ragged root-end on the firm

  a stretch across the slickery stream bed

  to the branch end in the redolent, mud-glut center

  the branches are all rotted and gone and

  in several places the log is half slunk in mire

  no matter what

  your boots are going to get sloggy and wet

  but I have in mind — my secret! —

  to carry an ample, weighty stone

  to the middle of the slough

  a thundering mother stone

  lush with lichen

  splendid and wide-hipped

  enough to offer a lift

  over sludge and muck to the log

  it takes a while to find the right stone

  again some time to debate

  and look some more

  before prying the winner —

  the most fair and exquisite rock you ever loved —

  from the fist of the mountain

  and (this is the crazy part)

  tipping it

  on edge

  somehow

  steering or...

  (watch your feet)

  getting it down (surely not up!)

  the mountain without

  losing hold or getting (much) injured

  then wrestling, of course

  the runaway stone

  from wherever it lands

  hauling by pure stubborn and rope

  to the path, the end, the center

  smearing sweaty hair back

  hands and haunches aching

  but

  what

  a stone!

  the matchless ally to lay before the log bridge

  a muddy, scraped offering

  (which has gouged a ragged path) but

  a splendid step (just think of it!)

  until

  the sinking

  digestive slough

  claims this mass too

  and tree...

  but not yet!

  you must

  my friend

  be willing to entertain reveries

  on your mountain

  of the biggest, most sublime stone you

  can almost hold

  convince everyone

  to help you in your labor of love

  ignore words like absurd or pointless

  revel in the artistry of your choice

  the perfection of your calling

  the way you two found each other

  then make a thousand journeys

  a hundred thousand steps

  together

  while you can

  New Things Born

  The coffee-colored creek

  is foamed with white this morning

  the mountains wreathed in leagues of silk

  In this damp coolness

  this place where the sky rises and

  the earth yearns to follow

  new things are being born

  Trees have begun to drop their seeds

  to the sodden ground

  Hard green buckeye husks are turning dark and soft

  I know less than the water strider

  less than the crawdad turning in the clay

  but I know this

  From root to crown we are changing

  Siege of Crows

  I was dimly aware of the crows as I climbed. They vexed and scolded and beat the air with wing claps as I made my way up the switchbacks.

  At the top they were seething in one of the great boundary trees for no reason I could see. The understory is more open at the ridge top; the deer den down below where there is cover. Up here there are only the venerable trees and yellow violets in sun-shot gloom. And today, a siege of crows.

  As suspicion arose in me I stopped moving, feet stitched to the ground, breath frozen. The birds nettled and spewed.

  Suddenly a murky shape exploded from behind a beech and launched itself across my path and down the mountain, contours blurred with speed and unmistakeable power.

  For a moment, I knew the scent of a predator and my small rabbit heart seized with clarity.

  You carry the mark of blessing. You have brought the tender creature you are to the wild place you were called. You cannot be here unfaithfully, no matter what you think.

  You walk in light, trailing shadows and roots.

  May the damage you’ve done to yourself fade like the deer’s hoof prints in the muddy slough: they fill with water, glint a moment in the sun, then disappear.

  Go now in peace.

  The crows fell gradually silent, shaking down their feathers and staring at me, trembling in the wake of the coyote.

  Scarlet Elf Cups

  Below curtains of fog and sullen rain

  a spore sinks its creamy fingers into the crumbling rot

  and blooms in the black slough.

  As if a grinning sprite has overflown

  and dragged her sparking feathers in the sludge

  with no other thought but playful delight

  without even opening her eyes but here!

  and here! and hidden here

  the scarlet elf cups erupt

  and lay winking in the mire.

  You should hunt them too.

  Lace up your sturdy boots

  call up the cats and go into the woo
ds

  and fill your eyes with secret rubies.

  Who else in your life will venture out in the muck

  and find treasures no one else will see?

  Will your ghost go, when you have failed to live?

  Go before it’s pleasant and warm.

  Hope for once for a dismal rain —

  days and shivering days of it, if you can.

  Be greedy for the days and places no one else chooses.

  Look especially for dying trees still standing

  piles of sticks softening with decay

  and tangled, rotting weeds.

  That’s where your soft scarlet gifts will wait for you

  each one glowing.

  Advice

  “That’s nice, darling.”

  If you have an inner saboteur, this is what she tells you. Sometimes you’ll be hard-pressed to discern the sub-surface malice.

  “…But maybe you should leave art to the artists.”