a curse the darkness keeps

 

a curse the darkness keeps

But of course the darkness keeps

It's appointment.  Each evening,

An inscrutable presence, it has the final word

Outside every door.

                Mary Oliver

                The Lamps

he told me this story, genuinely

confused, which makes it

all the more unforgiveable:

how on the far side of the garden

on the edge of where he planted

some years squash some years

potatoes some years cucumbers

two apple trees came into 

their maturity and gave him 

their fruit.  came the doe and her lambs

year after.  occasional male

or female bear and their kin.  listen, he had

a wild circus right on his back

doorstep.  and while the fruit 

of the tree was small it was also

abundant it was also sweet so 

abundant so sweet he couldn't

carry it all in, and what the others

had finally satisfied themselves on

what they had moved off through

the season on, fell finally with the air

of a woman well deserving 

of all of her rest.  each tree fanned out

their skirts and knotted limbs

in shadows and full faces 

of suns and all manner

of moons.  they gave.  they

gave.  and gave and gave and 

gave.  taking simply the air.

taking simply the bee.

taking simply water.  taking

simply nothing out

of the ordinary.  tell me,

what comes over a man

to suddenly decide to cut down

one of the two.  just one.  what

does he have to be

missing to look out and see

nothing of the arriving

years, the simply unfolding

unremarkable days, like line drying

linens, like weather, like new

born, like growing up suffering and none

the wiser, like being simply enough

and carrying themselves right

on through and true in the world?

the possibility of taking in

different winds?  of kissing

unlocal lips?  But he did,

he did decide.  when we were all

gone any my mother was 

dead he set his blade against 

the trunk and sawed straight

through with little knots resisting,

hot knife through butter

he said later, with a laugh and simple

triumph to be at nearly 80

able and to be sturdy 

and to be powerful enough to kill

and come through winter warm

in the blood and then genuinely

wonder why, at the time of the blossom

and the time of the bees that

the one remaining one gave out

nothing had nothing to give

but bent and breaking limbs

abandoned branches revealed

finally at the time of the melting

snow.