New Poems: BACK TO THE GARDEN

The series is piling up nicely. These are first drafts; I won't go to revisions for a while yet. I love the way first drafts pile up, like raked leaves, that same dry scent ...


The scent of the autumn woods, a leafcaught in my hair – did we choose the place,or did it pull us relentlessly (it was alwaysmeant to be: this hunger you wake in me,this place in the chest where October lives).Once upon a time I thought each questionhad to be asked. Now, I only want your mouthagainst mine, your pulse, this answer,real as the twig caught against my shoulder.Say “maple.” Say “birch.” Say “yes.”
-- BK, 10/30/15  A Visit to the Old Place
Every year around this timewith the harvest in, oats, carrots, applesdry leaves crunching underfootwe pull the truck out of the barn.There is room behind the seats for the big thermosand sandwiches, whose fragrancefills the space between us: garlic, onion, salt(oh yes, salt asserts its own fragrance)and behind us the house diminishes untilthe road bends – we enter that wildernessof need and complaint. Why would God inventtraffic jams, road construction, yellow diggerssurrounded by supervisors in orange vets –things we have not missed during our autumn.But we missed the home place, the well of grace.He drives. I comment. “Things have grown up so much.”
There’s no answer to change, except to grow applessomewhere else. Shopping mall, parking strip,cluster of seedy brick shops. Declare MacIntosh. Cortland.Golden Delicious. Are we there yet? He watchesthe odometer, brakes, says “Here. It was here.”One iron gate hangs loose from a stone pillar,broken pavement beyond it. A red plastic cup and crumpled paper on shattered tarmac. Leafless branchesbare and thin as arms escaping a white gown. Some sad smell.“The angel stood: there.”
-- BK 11/7/2015
Hungry During Deer Season
Going “back to the land” meant hunting: the awkward feelof cold steel, balancing the rifle, checking the calendar.That first season of daily hunts, though, the man in my lifedid everything the hard way. No snow to track with.No high-tech clothing for warmth. Each day, perched in a treewith a bow and arrows, tested at the suburban archery range.And on the last day of the season, mid afternoon,he ran breathless out of the forest, arms waving, stumbling:“Come with,” he gasped, “need you. Carry.”I wrapped my coat around my swollen belly and followed.
It was a small deer, as deer go. But male, and with antlers,and the paper tag already fastened to the corpseas if it needed a toe tag but the hoof couldn’t cooperate:body, cooling, heavy with the day’s grazing. Close up,it wasn’t Bambi at all, but coarse-haired, wild, muscled.“Take the front legs,” my hunter directed me. “Don’t bumpthe head into any trees. Lift.”
Even dead, the round eyes shone, ready to capturethe last sunlight. The sun sank into cold twilight and we lifted, tugged, staggered. How heavy it was,that awkward, stiffening body. When I stumbled,he cried out, “Careful! Don’t hurt him!” But my handsneeded to release the hairy skin, the bony leg,needed to rub in habit and comfort againstthe baby bump. Oh child to come, oh little one,already it’s you, most important in my life.Not yet for him, bearing his first deer, his heartwild in triumph and joy – yet the little fists in my bellystruck outward, toward that man becoming a father.
“I need,” I said. “I need to breathe. I need to stopfor a moment to rest my hands.”  And my heart.Supper to make, but first the kill to report,and the body to raise high into a tree,its belly slit, its liver sliced and sizzling in a cast-iron pan.
From here onward, it’s all the other wantsthat I’m hearing. I cook. I feed. When the baby comes,it will be strong, healthy. Hungry.
-- BK 11/6/15