Omens

It is a frequent occurrence that something in the spectacle of nature that surrounds us here at home snags my attention, and reasonably often it holds that attention long enough and with enough import or meaning to cause me to write something about it. If you were to be physically in my presence, it might be the kind of thing I would relate to you in the form of a passing mention or even spoken narration (which you may or may not rather I occupy the airwaves with). From time to time, the bits of writing accumulate, and I suppose this blog might be a suitable forum for the disgorgement of this accumulation. I'll start with just mentioning something I saw yesterday, and then include two poems written recently.

It was while I was mowing that I saw it. It was almost exactly three years ago that I last saw one of these. I don't believe in omens per se, but still the appearance of a particular creature can hold significance for me, and sometimes it can be a clue as to what the future holds, or at least something important about the present.

I am, in the background of my mental space, currently engaged in the process of preparing for the butchering of this year's extra roosters, which will take place in a few weeks. Three years ago, as I was walking down towards the chicken coops to retrieve the first chicken for butchering from that year's flock (which was our first here at Fruit Farm Lane, and the first chicken butchering I had done for nearly 8 years), I was privileged to witness a five-lined skink devouring, headfirst and whole, a large black cricket, the pondering of which sight helped ease my troubled butcher's mind. Since that sighting I do not recall having seen the skinks out and about.

This has perplexed and worried me, especially because I had previously seen them only in and around the old, decrepit solar greenhouse or along the old brick walk, both of which I have subsequently removed. I worried I had destroyed their home and would not know the satisfaction of their skittery, bug-gulping presence here again.

Because of the noise of the mower, I'm sure nobody heard my jubilant exclamation at having spotted a skink zipping along one of the siding boards on the old section of the house. I want to believe that humans can live among the other species as participants in the whole, rather than only the destroyers we are so crafty at being. And so as omens go, the re-appearance of the skink at our home seems like a good one.

The poems, then:


Enough

I am picking my sugar snaps in
the cool of the evening. It is quiet
enough that I hear the soft, familiar throb
and look around for it.

There, up on the bank, it’s the Coral Bells
that have signaled in the language of
plants and pollinators that they are open
for business, and

the dandy little red-bibbed fellow has
whirred on over. Now he is swimming
around the blooms, making them sway
with his little breeze and his licking.

Again it astounds me. All that humming
flight, all that giving away of nectar, the
feathers, the leaves, the fragile petals:
somehow—sweet somehow!—it all pays.


Jason Myers-Benner
June 16, 2009


Animated Me

If someone had been watching me
this evening, seen me tracking down
the slope to shut the chickens in, they
might have also seen the tawny form dividing
weedstalks, nearing me.

They might have seen akimbo me—my chore
accomplished—in the dimness turn my head
to face the sound of gentle hoofsteps. They might have
seen, through pulsing galaxies of firefly swoops, the velvet
buck along the treeline edge, pacing up the slope towards the
garden.

They might have seen me lift a foot, have seen him turn
to stare at me and then, deducing my ignorability,
move on. They might have seen me smile, stoop and
stalk him.

They might have seen him take deliberate steps up to
the brick walk, might have seen him turn and move
between the house and I. They would have seen
the furtive me

bolt into motion, giving chase to the extent my silly
slip-on rubber garden shoes allowed; the wheezing
snorts, the thudding hooves, the flying leaps could not
have been ignored. Would they have seen the few surprising
others, haired and breathing, which joined him in pounding up the
hill? The woods that rang their fading snorts was dark:
it’s doubtful.

But if they peer into this lighted kitchen now, they
will have seen me enter, stop, and speak.
They will have seen my child’s eyes
go wide, her smile wider. They will have seen my grinning
lover at the sink, her glancing at our faces. They will have seen
an animated me, my flailing arms, my leaps, my pointing
finger. They will have heard reverberating waves
of laughter.

Jason Myers-Benner
July 11, 2009