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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226644141 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 04/02/2004 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 136 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Elk in Winter
By Robert Pack
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2004 The University Of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-64414-1
Chapter One
Place
LATE IN THE ROCKIES
Here in the Rockies as dark clouds descend, Gray sky and snow upon the peaks contend and merge, Partaking of each other's shadows in the lake Where sleek ducks circle and then separate; Their luminescent wings reflect Bright breaks in the black clouds, and I forget Why lately I moved here. In this new place I can reflect on what I see in the still lake, The reassembling ducks, called goldeneye, that merge White wings with snowy sky, so I can't separate These swirling whitenesses Or tell this house from rooms I won't forget. The whirling seasons merge In just a single image in the lake- The gold eye of a duck-which like gold sky Between black clouds reflects My eye as one still image on the lake. And now I have no need to separate Sorrows of empty doors I can't forget From vistas darkening-all merge, Merely by being gone, into a white glow On a lake where rowing with my father I reflect my rowing with my son, For I forget which day is which; I cannot separate lake shimmer From gold light spans in the sky. And staring up Between dark closing clouds, I can forget Why I can't separate Where we were coming from or rowing to-they merge, Just as a duck's eye can reflect my own. Now only the closed sky is home. Ducks on the lake reflect themselves, and yet Their shadows merge with doorway shadows And with window glistenings That I have still forgotten to forget.
OCTOBER LARCHES Across the mountainside in evening sun Golden October larches flare, As if they could delay dark days to come, Winter encroaching everywhere My momentary mind can reach. And in the lake, silent as brooding inwardness, The larches now are doubled, each With a true partner in itself, A multiplying plenitude of one, Repeated and repeating in my mind. Reflecting on its own reflections, stunned With bold illumination of a kind Beyond what golden sunlit larches teach Of how to face the all-dividing dark, I find A multiplying plenitude of one Across the mountainside in evening sun.
DEER AT THE GARDEN Even asleep, I hear them stirring in the woods, Restless like me, and hungry, Their large ears alert to danger sounds, human Or merely wind, though since there never is enough To eat, they'll trample down my garden And devour what's mine. True, they're just deer, But when I watch their eyes I don't see deer As creatures with no rights, enough Of them already in the woods, I see what they would feel if human Understanding told them I was hungry, That the purpose of a garden Is to fence those out who failed to make a garden Though their children, just like deer, Through no fault of their own, also are hungry. But I'm not to blame, and I reject that human Sentiment, because there's not enough Where many people live, the same as in the woods, As fear too is the same within the woods Or out, and since I can't help everyone, it's human That I first take care my children not go hungry And can sleep at ease within my garden, Though they seem wary just like deer When I gaze in their eyes. It's good enough If I can keep them safe; it's good enough If I can keep my garden Flourishing while more and more gaunt deer Keep coming from the woods, And though their limpid eyes look human, Don't blame me because they're hungry. Don't blame me that people too go hungry For there's only so much room within a garden Whether filled with people or with deer, Some must make do within the woods Where there can never be enough, Though knowing that can cause more human Misery. Hungry at heart for there to be enough In all those teeming gardens and lush woods- Are we most human when we see ourselves as deer?
FIRE SEASON, 2000
A dull, wan, puzzled look, human And recognizable, showed in his eyes. The baby black bear lay there with his paws Professionally bandaged in the photo Of his rescue. I won't let myself imagine All the creatures trapped and then incinerated In a million burning acres, worst in a bad century, Here in Montana and neighboring Idaho.
Whose fault-there's got to be someone at fault- What other consolation do we have but blame? Maybe the logging industry For cutting down the largest ponderosa pines And leaving the combustible dry brush; Or maybe we should blame the government's Short-sighted policy of slashing funds For needed caretaking-like thinning forests Of young lodgepoles and dense undergrowth And making cleansing burns we can control, Restoring to the soil much needed nitrogen As Nature did before Mankind arrived. But maybe it's the drought that we should blame, Not something we ourselves have caused, But Nature, in another of its many moods, Just doing what it does, impersonal, Not retribution for our sinfulness
As when the flood wiped most of Mankind out. Yet I suspect such versions of apocalypse Contain a hidden wish and thus reveal A failure to confront cosmic indifference- A wish behind the fantasy of punishment, Of water gathering or lunging fire Fanned out across the valley by the wind, That we are really in control, Since if disaster has been caused by us, Blessing, likewise, is also ours to choose. So let's get on with blaming Human failure Not the drought, and not the fickle wind; Let's seize upon Promethean blind hope, Changing our anger into useful work, So we can save both forests and our homes, So ponderosa pines will thrive And silent elk still make soft passage there, If only we reform, as surely it's within Our power of will and reasoning to do. And if, meanwhile, a puzzled bear Is fated to endure the consequence Of Nature's droughts or floods or flames, We will assume, well, that's just how it is; We'll bandage the poor thing, forget, and then Get on with other things to do. We have ourselves to care about, that's natural; We cannot change things in a day. And yet, as I look at those blackened trees, That leafless landscape bleakly desolate, How can I be indifferent to Nature's Blameless, vast indifference without Making it my own? The bears, I hear Their seared flesh sizzling in the blazing night.
EAGLE At dusk, I see an eagle's silhouette Drifting around her distant nest, And think how close to stark extinction She has come, the ultimate defeat, Contingent on some human whim Or human greed that would usurp her space. And yet she floats so seemingly serene As if the tides of air were everything That needed to be understood, As if the whole accumulation Of the past were now, And now again, and now forevermore About to be with nothing Unfulfilled to long for, nothing To regret. And without envy, only With a kind of love because She helps me almost to forget myself, I watch her tilted wings glide off and lift, Swooping in some smooth current I assume she uses and takes pleasure in Without the need to say how she enjoys Herself to make joy true. And so I listen to my thoughts take flight, I watch a second silhouette Give further depth and amplitude to space, Circling as if their hidden nest Were the sure center of the universe- A universe with purpose And unchanging permanence, Complete by being only what it is. And so I try to think myself released From thinking of myself By fixing on the eagles' dips and swerves Around their nest, my mind filled with their forms, The angles of their silhouettes, their curves.
FULL OF SUMMER This is the full of summer, this is all Bold bumblebees have always dreamed about; This floating is my rise that has no fall; This steadiness my in that has no out. And this my body's happiness-the call Persuading me to pause deep in today As purple clover scents the swaying air Bold bumblebees have always dreamed about. I watch more ripeness ripening the way A whirling orange blur of oriole Blends with lake water blazing everywhere; A hummingbird suspended at a rose As if in mimic of the sun whose flare Holds her eternal moment in my mind. This is my opening that has no close; This is my now with then now left behind And icy wind a thought thought can forestall: This is the full of summer, this is all.
WHITE HORSE
There in the middle distance in a field Surrounded by a sagging fence, A white horse canters head-up with an ease Suggesting that he thinks he's beautiful. On the south border, stacked between two trees, A year's supply of split wood waits, And from the north a stream runs toward me Where it feeds a large trout pond In which the white horse is reflected When he drinks, his neck bowed in an arc. From where I watch, among dark firs, Upon an elevation of my own, I see the streaking whiteness of the horse; I see the Mission mountain range, Its chiseled peaks across the broadened sky Already glistening with early snow, As if a theme had been expanded To a magnitude beyond what meditation Might have thought impossible. Let light, I say out loud to no one But myself, illumination of the scene And of my mind, become a theme That out of need I make my own: The white horse in the field, the vast white Of the mountain range, the spawning pond Now shimmering in midday sun With white wings on its coasting ducks; Let them reveal nothing but what they are, Horse, mountain, pond, without purpose, Without meaning, without hope; yet let them join In one white theme because I will it so. Horse, mountaintop, the leaping trout, All share the mirrored light as if Their flashing whiteness can compose the scene, Can gather it together so a horse, Poised in the arc its bowed head makes, Might mean more than in fact it does, As if somehow translucent consciousness Really were part of a design In which the flow of undulating light, Whiteness connecting everything I see, Were not my own invention out of need. What need? What am I saying here That does not falsify the scene itself With hinting impositions of my own? Only horse, mountain, pond, the silent ducks, Each in its lone existence separate From mine, actually dwell there, And yet shared whiteness, which my mind Construes as part of a design, shines forth In this suspended moment when I can believe, With that horse stationary in the field, All whiteness in the world is beautiful.
HARVEST And so I make myself at home at last Among depleted fields, wan evergreens Hunched ghostlike under snow-wherein I see my image which now means I still find meaning in chilled bleak remains, In breath contending with blank sky, In rhymes asserting my companionship With dull, indifferent light. No doubt that's why A harvest of relinquishing the past Restores the late least hint of what remains Yet to be lost, and why a solitary owl's Fixed stare repeats what my cold mind contains. I choose the growing bounty of things gone, Sad light diffusing everywhere, Vague faces reappear and merge, bestowing Care on those no longer in my care. I choose the growing bounty of things gone, A harvest of relinquishing the past; I still find meaning in chilled bleak remains, And so I make myself at home at last.
RAVEN Black, luminescent black, not black Betokening black night or blacker death, This raucous bird is bringer of broad day, Expanding sunlight through sheer glistening, Making brushed air feel more abundant With his serial cacophonies. Predator, scavenger, brute survivor, And thus no less convincingly immortal Than the fabled nightingale Or less symbolic of harsh nature's grim design Suggested by the grackle's strident squawk, Raven is also the abiding muse Of myth-makers: One story goes That when the housewife, Earth, Grew jealous of free birds and animals, Mischievous Raven Transformed himself into a wind-blown seed So that tricked Earth, asleep and dreaming, Breathed him in and in due time Gave birth to him as her own baby boy. When Raven had grown old enough to play, He stole the sun Earth sullenly had hidden In the cellar of her house And rolled it out the wooden door. When finally outside and free again, He turned himself back into Raven as he was And loosed the sun back to the sky- From where Earth first had snatched it- In order to restore the blessed light To all the shivering and hungry animals. And so black Raven still remains The bird of light, buffoon of happiness, Brother of my bleak mood when my bleak thoughts Are black with personal decease, Black with desire to expunge the sun And bring down smothered peace on everyone.
THE DARKER GREEN Dark green, and darker green-bleak, bleak, Even in fertile autumn shade, But good to fit my gloomy mood A continent from you-with yet to come More gloom before green dark can reach its peak As it must do for everyone. I call this forest gloom my own Though it takes cause from your dark grief, For I can't bring your straining breath relief Or find relief myself in blame; Old age, not care, has crushed you to the bone, And gloom keeps every latitude the same. The loneliness I know you face Cannot be measured by my dark larch trees, My bleak home, muted by the numbing ease Of green's soft darkening so far From you in my gloom's colder place. Though it's still summer where you are, Only bleak weather swirls your mind With nothing left there to express Except the gloom of your late emptiness- Blank hope for what comes after life, A green you know you'll never find As daughter, lover, mother, wife.
THE SEA IN THE TREES Usually still, sometimes the trees Are lashed to uproar by wild mountain wind In this larch forest underneath a roiling sky, But what I hear is the dull echo of the sea Piling upon itself, stomping the shore, Which makes me shudder so that my stirred mind Demands two scenes to dwell upon: The thrashing sea not present in my sight, And the contorted trees, like waves blown by the wind. Here the torn sky swirls like the ocean My twin brother sees, which opens as a surge of wind Contrives a pathway for streaked golden light. My mind whirls with the sway of swirling trees, Yet I can spy my brother on the shore As if my life were not enough, as if the sea With all its flying foam and salty wind, Its fractured shells strewn on the shore, Suggested journeys to console my mind For losing touch with him. Perhaps he pictures trees With me beneath this stormy sky Which looks like ocean water even as the clouds Part for an instant when bare wind Makes way for golden light, a pathway from the shore Right through the lunging sea That leads to my own house. But now my mind Attends to the shrill noise of swaying trees, Though I recall them absolutely still, the larch In autumn when my autumn mind, Ablaze in bronze, imagined sunlight fled the sky And entered them, imagined wind Had gone back to its home within the sea And left my brother stranded on the beach, Hearing the cry of trees that gathers to a roar, Trying to read wild wind words in the air, Sea riddles of debris on the scarred shore.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Elk in Winter by Robert Pack Copyright © 2004 by The University Of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments1 Place
2 Person
3 Perspective