Let Evening Come Read online

with weeds—goldenrod, cinquefoil, moth​

  mullein, then blackberries, sapling​

  pine, deciduous trees . . . but for now​

  the dog rolls, jovial, in the pungent​

  disturbance of wood and earth.

  I summon him with a word, turn back,​

  and we go the long way home.

  We Let the Boat Drift

  I set out for the pond, crossing the ravine​

  where seedling pines start up like sparks​

  between the disused rails of the Boston and Maine.

  The grass in the field would make a second crop​

  if early autumn rains hadn’t washed​

  the goodness out. After the night’s hard frost​

  it makes a brittle rustling as I walk.

  The water is utterly still. Here and there​

  a black twig sticks up. It’s five years today,​

  and even now I can’t accept what cancer did​

  to him—not death so much as the annihilation​

  of the whole man, sense by sense, thought​

  by thought, hope by hope.

  Once we talked about the life to come.

  I took the Bible from the nightstand​

  and offered John 14: “I go to prepare​

  a place for you.” “Fine. Good,” he said.

  “But what about Matthew? ‘You, therefore,​

  must be perfect, as your heavenly Father​

  is perfect.’” And he wept.

  My neighbor honks and waves driving by.

  She counsels troubled students; keeps bees;​

  her goats follow her to the mailbox.

  Last Sunday afternoon we went canoeing on the pond.​

  Something terrible at school had shaken her.

  We talked quietly far from shore. The paddles

  rested across our laps; glittering drops​

  fell randomly from their tips. The light​

  around us seemed alive. A loon—itinerant—​

  let us get quite close before it dove, coming up​

  after a long time, and well away from humankind.

  Spring Changes

  The autumnal drone of my neighbor​

  cutting wood across the pond​

  and the soundlessness of winter​

  give way to hammering. Must be​

  he’s roofing, or building a shed​

  or fence. Some form of spring-induced​

  material advance.

  Mother called early to say she’s sold the house.

  I’ll fly out, help her sort and pack,

  and give and throw away. One thing I’d like:

  the yellow hand-painted pottery

  vase that’s crimped at the edge

  like the crust of a pie—so gay, but

  they almost never used it, who knows why?

  A new young pair will paint and mow,​

  and fix the picket fence, wash windows face​

  to face in May, he outside on a ladder,​

  she inside on a chair, mouthing kisses​

  and “Be Careful!” through the glass

  Insomnia

  The almost disturbing scent​

  of peonies presses through the screens,​

  and I know without looking how​

  those heavy white heads lean down​

  under the moon’s light. A cricket chafes​

  and pauses, chafes and pauses,​

  as if distracted or preoccupied.

  When I open my eyes to document​

  my sleeplessness by the clock, a point​

  of greenish light pulses near the ceiling.

  A firefly ... In childhood I ran out​

  at dusk, a jar in one hand, lid​

  pierced with airholes in the other,​

  getting soaked to the knees​

  in the long wet grass.

  The light moves unsteadily, like someone​

  whose balance is uncertain after traveling​

  many hours, coming a long way.

  Get up. Get up and let it out.

  But I leave it hovering overhead, in case​

  it’s my father, come back from the dead​

  to ask, “Why are you still awake? You can​

  put grass in their jar in the morning.”

  April Chores

  When I take the chilly tools​

  from the shed’s darkness, I come​

  out to a world made new​

  by heat and light.

  The snake basks and dozes​

  on a large flat stone.

  It reared and scolded me​

  for raking too close to its hole.

  Like a mad red brain​

  the involute rhubarb leaf​

  thinks its way up​

  through loam.

  The Clearing

  The dog and I push through the ring​

  of dripping junipers​

  to enter the open space high on the hill​

  where I let him off the leash.

  He vaults, snuffling, between tufts of moss;​

  twigs snap beneath his weight; he rolls​

  and rubs his jowls on the aromatic earth;​

  his pink tongue lolls.

  I look for sticks of proper heft​

  to throw for him, while he sits, prim​

  and earnest in his love, if it is love.

  All night a soaking rain, and now the hill​

  exhales relief, and the fragrance​

  of warm earth. . . .The sedges​

  have grown an inch since yesterday,​

  and ferns unfurled, and even if they try​

  the lilacs by the barn can’t​

  keep from opening today.

  I longed for spring’s thousand tender greens,​

  and the white-throated sparrow’s call​

  that borders on rudeness. Do you know—​

  since you went away​

  all I can do

  is wait for you to come back to me.

  Work

  It has been light since four. In June​

  the birds find plenty to remark upon​

  at that hour. Pickup trucks, three men​

  to a cab, rush past burgeoning hay​

  and corn to summer constructions​

  up in town.

  Here, soon, the mowing, raking​

  and baling will begin. And I must tell​

  how, before the funeral all those years ago,​

  we lay down briefly on your grandparents’​

  bed, and that when you stood to put on​

  your jacket the change slipped​

  from your pants pocket.

  Some dropped on the chenille​

  spread, and some hit the threadbare rug,​

  and one coin rolled onto the wide pine​

  floorboard under the dresser, hit​

  the molding, teetered and fell silent​

  like the rest. And oh, your sigh—​

  the sigh you sighed then. . . .

  Private Beach

  It is always the dispossessed—​

  someone driving a huge rusted Dodge​

  that’s burning oil, and must cost​

  twenty-five dollars to fill.

  Today before seven I saw, through​

  the morning fog, his car leave the road,​

  turning into the field. It must be​

  his day off, I thought, or he’s out​

  of work and drinking, or getting stoned.​

  Or maybe as much as anything​

  he wanted to see

  where the lane through the hay goes.

  It goes to the bluff overlooking

  the lake, where we’ve cleared

  brush, swept the slippery oak

  leaves from the path, and tried to destroy

  the poison ivy that runs

  over the scrubby, sandy knolls.

 
Sometimes in the evening I’ll hear​

  gunshots or firecrackers. Later a car​

  needing a new muffler backs out​

  to the road, headlights withdrawing​

  from the lowest branches of the pines.

  Next day I find beer cans, crushed;​

  sometimes a few fish too small​

  to bother cleaning and left​

  on the moss to die; or the leaking​

  latex trace of outdoor love. . . .

  Once I found the canvas sling chairs​

  broken up and burned.

  Whoever laid the fire gathered stones​

  to contain it, like a boy pursuing​

  a merit badge, who has a dream of work,​

  and proper reward for work.

  At the Spanish Steps in Rome

  Keats had come with his friend Severn​

  for the mild Roman winter. Afternoons​

  they walked to the Borghese Gardens​

  to see fine ladies, nannies with babies,​

  and handsome mounted officers,​

  whose horses moved sedately​

  along the broad and sandy paths.

  But soon the illness kept him in.

  Severn kept trying in that stoutly​

  cheerful English way: he rented a spinet,​

  hauled it three flights, turning it end​

  up on the landings, and played Haydn every day.

  Love letters lay unopened in a chest.

  “To see her hand writing would break my heart.”

  The poet’s anger rose as his health sank.

  He began to refer to his “posthumous​

  existence.” One day while Severn and the porter​

  watched he flung, dish by dish, his catered​

  meal into the street.

  Now the room where Keats died is a museum,​

  closed for several hours midday with the rest​

  of Rome. Waiting on the Steps in the wan​

  October sun I see the curator’s pale,​

  exceptionally round face looking down.​

  Everything that was not burned that day​

  in accordance with the law is there.

  Waiting

  At the grocery store on a rainy July day​

  I pull in beside a family wagon:

  Connecticut plates but no luggage—​

  summer people then, up for bright days​

  and cool nights, and local church fairs.

  They may have been coming here for years.

  Three little boys and a golden retriever​

  are steaming up the windows already smudged​

  by the dog’s nose. The smallest boy​

  pitches himself repeatedly over the seat,​

  arms and legs flying, like some rubbery toy.​

  From time to time the dog woofs abstractedly.

  Inside I look for their mother. And what​

  about their father—-is he here too, or does he​

  come only on weekends and holidays​

  from Stamford, Farmington, or Darien?

  There she is: of the right age, dressed​

  expensively, stiffly, carrying a straw​

  summer bag with a scrimshaw whale on the lid,​

  a hard little basket out of which she draws​

  a single large bill for the food. Clearly​

  this time she’s come alone.

  She will fill the cottage cupboards

  and refrigerator, settle the boys

  on the sleeping porch with one bunk bed

  and one cot, and arbitrate the annual fight​

  over who gets to sleep on top.

  And she will wait. Life is odd. . ..

  I too am waiting, though if you asked​

  what for, I wouldn’t know what to say.

  Staying at Grandma's

  Sometimes they left me for the day​

  while they went—what does it matter​

  where—away. I sat and watched her work​

  the dough, then turn the white shape​

  yellow in a buttered bowl.

  A coleus, wrong to my eye because its leaves​

  were red, was rooting on the sill​

  in a glass filled with water and azure​

  marbles. I loved to see the sun​

  pass through the blue.

  “You know,” she’d say, turning

  her straight and handsome back to me,

  “that the body is the temple​

  of the Holy Ghost.”

  The Holy Ghost, the oh, oh . . . the uh

  oh, I thought, studying the toe of my new shoe,

  and glad she wasn’t looking at me.

  Soon I’d be back in school. No more mornings​

  at Grandma’s side while she swept the walk​

  or shook the dust mop by the neck.

  If she loved me why did she say that​

  two women would be grinding at the mill,​

  that God would come out of the clouds​

  when they were least expecting him,​

  choose one to be with him in heaven​

  and leave the other there alone?

  Church Fair

  Who knows what I might find

  on tables under the maple trees—

  perhaps a saucer in Aunt Lois’s china pattern

  to replace the one I broke

  the summer I was thirteen, and visiting

  for a week. Never in all these years

  have I thought of it without

  a warm surge of embarrassment.

  I’ll go through my own closets and cupboards​

  to find things for the auction.

  I’ll bake a peach pie for the food table,​

  and rolls for the supper,

  Grandma Kenyon’s recipe, which came down to me​

  along with her sturdy legs and brooding disposition.​

  “Mrs. Kenyon,” the doctor used to tell her,

  “you are simply killing yourself with work.”

  This she repeated often, with keen satisfaction.

  She lived to be a hundred and three,

  surviving all her children,

  including the one so sickly at birth

  that she had to carry him everywhere on a pillow

  for the first four months. Father

  suffered from a weak chest—bronchitis,

  pneumonias, and pleurisy—and early on

  books and music became his joy.

  Surely these clothes are from another life—​

  not my own. I’ll drop them off on the way​

  to town. I’m getting the peaches​

  today, so they’ll be ripe by Saturday.

  A Boy Goes into the World

  My brother rode off on his bike​

  into the summer afternoon, but​

  Mother called me back​

  from the end of the sandy drive:

  “It’s different for girls.”

  He’d be gone for hours, come back​

  with things: a cocoon, gray-brown​

  and papery around a stick;​

  a puffball, ripe, wrinkled,​

  and exuding spores; owl pellets—​

  bits of undigested bone and fur;​

  and pieces of moss that might​

  have made toupees for preposterous​

  green men, but went instead​

  into a wide-necked jar for a terrarium.

  He mounted his plunder on poster​

  board, gluing and naming​

  each piece. He has long since​

  forgotten those days and things, but​

  I at last can claim them as my own.

  The Three Susans

  Ancient maples mingle over us, leaves​

  the color of pomegranates.

  The days are warm with honey light,​

  but the last two nights have finished​

  every ga
rden in the village.

  The provident have left: green tomatoes​

  to ripen on newspaper in the darkness of sheds.​

  The peppers were already in.

  Now there will be no more corn.

  I let myself through the wrought-iron gate​

  of the graveyard, and—meaning to exclude​

  the dog—I close it after me. But he runs​

  to the other end, and jumps the stone​

  wall overlooking Elbow Pond.

  Here Samuel Smith lay down at last​

  with his three wives, all named Susan.

  I had to see it for myself. They died​

  in their sixties, one outliving him.

  So why do I feel indignant? He suffered.

  Love and the Smiths’ peculiar fame

  “to nothingness do sink.” And down the row

  Sleepers are living up to their name.

  The dog cocks his leg on a stone.

  But animals do not mock, and the dead​

  may be glad to have life breaking in.

  The sun drops low over the pond.

  Long shadows move out from the stones,​

  and a chill rises from the moss,​

  prompt as a deacon. And at Keats’s grave​

  in the Protestant cemetery in Rome​

  it is already night,

  and wild cats are stalking in the moat.

  Learning in the First Grade

  “The cup is red. The drop of rain​

  is blue. The clam is brown.”

  So said the sheet of exercises—​

  purple mimeos, still heady​

  from the fluid in the rolling​

  silver drum. But the cup was