Summer Snow by Robert Hass

Author:Robert Hass [Hass, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062950024
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

Nature Notes 2

Two seedling fir,

One died. Io! Io!

—GARY SNYDER

One brown-headed cowbird amid the blackbirds

In their iridescent breeding plumage.

Can’t mate but there’s safety in a flock.

The morning air is “all awash with angels,”

I.e., seeds of the cottonwood drifting in the sun.

The bits of cottony fluff floating on the mild morning breeze

And tumbling a little in the currents of it,

Hundreds of them, thousands, that the sun ignites,

Brightening the air above a drab blackbird juvenile,

Its mouth open so wide you can see

The sunset orange of its throat.

And an adult bird ambulates over

In that blackbird-Egyptian-frieze strut

And pops something in its mouth.

A bit of a worm, I assume,

Or a shiny little beetle going about its shiny beetle business

Until a moment ago.

People study everything. The excrement

Of beetles. The sonic niches of the blackbird’s song.

And the sexual excesses of the cottonwood

Which pours thousands of seeds into the air.

So I know that for one to germinate, it has to alight

In moist, sandy soil. A sandbar in the curve

Of a little alpine creek would be just right.

It’s a very slim chance, so the tree only exists,

Persists, because it is extravagant. The liver-covered mushrooms

Under the pines are the fruiting bodies of fungi

That send their roots fairly deep into the earth

Where they devour nematodes (microscopic

Animals like worms: humans study everything)

To feed themselves. Don’t know

What the nematodes eat, but it must be eating

All the way down until it becomes electricity

And tingles to be tingling.

The morning air is all awash with angels.

Information from a morning lecture: we have gotten so good

At getting soldiers’ bodies from the battlefield

To the hospital that a soldier can lose both legs and an arm

And survive, writing notes to the nurses

Because his throat is also ripped out.

Last night’s reading: a poet describing her alcoholic uncle

Who didn’t take care of himself and died too young.

He was the one, she said, who saw her and knew her.

She wrote some lines about this first adult sadness.

He liked reading about the stars, teaching her the constellations,

This kind man who wrecked himself, who seemed not

To be able to do anything about it. She watched him die,

Loved him helplessly. A poet’s task to find the words,

Though perhaps, she said, by writing about something else,

Maybe the night sky, maybe Lyra or the Bear.

This morning the pond is reflecting bankside willows.

The breeze rustles the willow branches,

Ruffles the surface of the water

And produces a dark green, light green, willowy wash

Of a yellow-green watercolor color

Across the pond underneath the dazzled air.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.