Risa Stephanie Bear's Blog, page 3

The Rhythm of the Work

The rhythm of the work is to set down
Her padded bench, a flat and trowel at the
End of a bed and drop as if in prayer,

Reach for the trowel (bent for her old
Hand at right angles), dig, then grope for a pot.
You may see each hole is deep and wide enough
To exactly take the root ball. She carefully
Holds this in her shade, tips the damp
Mass in, packs with trowel, repeats all -- three

Or four times -- then stands. Behind her, some
Four plants glow green in any six feet of bed.

The rhythm of this work, when best, resembles
How monks or nuns in supplication glide
Easily to the floor, centered, unconcerned 

With body or mind, then rise, then glide again,
Outcomes not sought, nor merit earned.
Right to the end of the bed she goes,
Kneeling to simply do with her rough hands.

Just About Her Favorite Thing

Just about her favorite thing is to
Unseal bright papery packets and 
Set out flats of germination soil
The length of her bench, then scratch in parallel

Along each flat, with a stick, five lines for seeds.
By and by, the covered infant sprouts appear;
Or don't, in which case repeat until satisfactory.
Under her grow lights, not great ones, but good enough,
The seedlings make two leaves and then two more:

Here she makes more flats, with this time in
Each flat eighteen pots, filled with dampened
Rooting soil. A hole in each pot waits

For one tiny plant; the soil to be pressed
Around the taproot and tiny rootlets, then
Very gently watered -- from below, pouring
Over the flat's lip a tea of comfrey.
Really she overdoes it, making hundreds,
In every kind, of vegetable starts, far more
Than she can plant, but is fine with that; most
Everyone she knows will willingly give them homes.

That's her means, in old age, of making
Happen a kind of revolution. There are 
In towers far away, those who would 
Not have us eat what will not make them rich.
Go, little plants! Feed free souls free food.

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 slugmy 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.

There Are Rooms in a Life

There are rooms in a life that may sometimesHave 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 starsRise up and fall like rain by every windowEven one's hands will shrivel soon enough
Right at the ends of one's arms, as handsOf strangers. But to fret at this discoveryOf 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, isNot 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.

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.

More

Rattling around in her potting shed onceshe 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 earlierthereafter, as springs grew warmer. Bits of greenappeared, 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 upwere 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.

The Grace at the Heart of the World

She's not much for recipes. The bowl sometimesinvites 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 wholehandful 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 intothe cool brown powder five -- six -- seven times. She stirs the makings between heaps
with a pair of chopsticks. Never quitethe same thing twice! In summer she'll oila 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 windowas the sun goes gold, then falls. Are you notnow the grace at the red heart of the world?

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, kenningto 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 blockof 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'swhole being the business of squirrels. Boundby the leash, that necessary thing, they two as one
take in, absorb, imbibe, inhale, entasteall the arriving and leaving of the living things.

The Things to Do

The things to do: bring an egg from herHens, 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, aSun rises, invests her eastern window, spills in
To caress and warm six thick maple boardsOf her grandmother's table. Whatever remains to be
Done's already forgotten: the meal an emblemOf all her morning cared to be.

Bucket

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.