V E R S E and I M A G E

Daylight illuminated, but only for those

who had some knowing in their seeing,

and night fell for everyone, but harder

for some. A belief in happiness bred

despair, though despair could be assuaged

by belief, which required faith,

which made those who had it

one-eyed amid the beautiful contraries.

Love at noon that was still love at dusk

meant doubt had been subjugated

for exactly that long, and best to have music

to sweeten a sadness, underscore joy.

Those alone spoke to their dogs,

but also to plants, to the brilliant agreeableness

of air, while those together were left

to address the wall or open door of each other.

Oh for logs in the fireplace and a winter storm,

some said. Oh for Scotch and a sitcom, said others.

Daylight concealed, but only for those

fond of the enormous puzzle, and night rose up

earth to sky, pagan and unknowable.

How we saw it was how it was.

Stephen Dunn (1939-2021)

Shenandoah, Volume 52, Number 3; Fall 2002

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Josh has taught me how to spot a sourwood across the meadow along the treeline. Always crooked. Curved and arched, clutching branches and trunk like an old man’s spine, in medical parlance kyphosis. It must be because the sourwood is grasping at something always out of reach. Always overtaken by shadow but always trying to edge closer into the light.

When we bought this house in 1983 the steep back lot was choked with hickory and tuliptree; in front, two weighty red oaks flanked the door, centenarian sentries. A dogwood struggled in their shade and at the northern lot line one sourwood straggled out from under. Crooked! That first summer I noticed, of all the trees in leaf, only the sourwood labored with tent caterpillars, messy tangled webbing and bare patches chewed out of its foliage. I though maybe I should try to save old sourwood from its pests, but they were too high for me to spray and I had no spare cash for an arborist. Oxydendrum arboreum, you are on your own.

After Hurricane Hugo walloped the Appalachians in 1989, we cut down those two oaks that leaned two threatening meters from our walls and roof. At the base they were bigger around than oil drums. A few years after those monsters came down I noticed the sourwood, not standing any straighter but now stretching a new arm pure vertical, due upward, sunward. Another thirty years along and that sourwood is still making flowers in the spring, champion of honeybees, and still sharing its bright summer green with any and all itinerant webworms. The dogwood and redbud look up and pay homage from around its knees. But even with all the newfound light my sourwood remains crooked as hell.

Teach me the same lesson, Josh and Sourwood. Life ain’t ever going to get cobbled together perfect. Most mornings I have to claw through a web of nasty wormsilk before I can struggle up from sleep. Most days I’m noticing the weeds and cankers I haven’t yet yanked from my beds more than I’m noticing the asters’ spiral floret emerging or bumblebees’ shanks stuffed with pollen. Step back. Look again. Forgive the mess of life just making its daily living. Forgive the darkness that less hides the light than shows it brighter. Forgive myself that I can’t fix it all, make it come out straight. Forgive my own crookedness. Isn’t that what makes the sourwood a sourwood?

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You have to let things

Occupy their own space.

This room is small,

But the green settee

Likes to be here.

The big marsh reeds,

Crowding out the slough,

Find the world good.

You have to let things

Be as they are.

Who knows which of us

Deserves the world more?

Robert Bly (1926-2021)

Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poem/what-things-want

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Bent from overshadowing,

+++++ crippled

by the broad red oak;

tent caterpillars, years

+++++ of limp submission,

robbed of flowers

by heartless shade.

Rocky soil, no tap root, many winters:

the big red finally kneels, prostrates itself,

and Spring delivers sun to sourwood.

Straight up tangent to the curve of trunk

+++++ new arms jubilate,

new fingers reach to pull down sky, bees

celebrate creamy clusters

and there is honey.

featured in Poetry in Plain Sight 2014 by the Winston Salem Writers.

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