V E R S E and I M A G E

The woman sensed that I now

looked down on her. That the earth

had turned slowly

into night. That her kin would only be

a distant moon. She watched

shards of light slice through the bamboo

thicket, the stars’ edges harden

and cool. In daytime she marveled

at the strength of a water buffalo, how

it shoulders could shift continents.

But I knew it would never be

enough.

We looked down

from the bamboo raft, and below

the glass surface saw

what flickered in turbid

darkness. Like my mother I thought

of the day when the river

would freeze over –

and how I’d give up everything

to feel its final stillness.

from Engrams, Seven Years in Asia, winner of the 2022 Lena Shull Book Award of the North Carolina Poetry Society; Redhawk Publications, Hickory, NC; © 2023

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Above the river a west-facing ridge, protected, always cool and moist, and a narrow rustic trail that veers from the main — this is the path I take the day after Christmas. Winter brown, mossy stones and lichen, these are all I expect today, but here and there are premonitions. Ruddy toothed leaves, foamflower will bloom in March; bright green variegated heartleaf hides beneath pine needles today but soon will hide its own little brown jugs. So much muted beauty to share, but what is this! Hepatica is blooming!

Right here along this little path is the first place I ever discovered native hepatica in Elkin. (I still clearly remember where I was standing when I added my first bird to my life list decades ago, a chestnut-sided warbler — do normal people hold onto these sorts of memories?) But this is December — the earliest we ever see hepatica in bloom is late February, preceding even the rush of trout lilies. Nevertheless here is one plant with a flower and two swelling buds. Too, too early. Winter too warm. I can’t say I’m filled with happy thoughts for our planet.

A few days later I’m back with a camera. I can’t say I’m filled with happy thoughts of botany and phenology. Last night my brother and sister and I had a lengthy conference about our Mom’s decline. Tomorrow I’ll be sitting down with her and Dad to discuss a palliative care consultation and possibly moving to a higher level of care. I have to watch my footing carefully on parts of this trail – exposed stones, roots, erosion. Going downhill is when you’re most likely to fall. Mom’s descent has been steady for years, gradual, but the path ahead appears much steeper.

This is interesting – a single clump of pinstriped leaves, Adam-and-Eve Orchid. And Cranefly Orchid with its magenta underleaf is plentiful here. When the surrounding trees lose their leaves these orchids make sugar from winter sun. Their own leaves will fade and disappear before spikes of tiny flowers appear  mid-summer. Similar for the hepatica: last year’s flecked and nibbled liver-lobed leaves are making way for new green even now. Diminished light, cold and frost, life makes what it can of every season. I bend lower for a better look at each delicate yet resolute little family of leaves. Not a single flower to be found today.

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In the evenings you fold your wings

in a hammock on the porch.

your jaw clicks in imitation

of car locks. Your hair grows dark

to form a nest, twilight clouds:

a puff of throat. Mangrove roots

of a slow entanglement; filaments of stars

hang above us.

Don’t forget you say with the fan-eyes

of your tail as you fly away

each morning. You’re known

to frequent other lives, exhale their smoke,

catch tiny deaths on the temple’s

low wall. You’re known

for your camouflage, the concealment

of thoughts in daylight.

But I’ll still hold you, hoping

you’ll stay. Even if your ones are hollow,

fragile – I know one day you’ll roost

on steady ground.

from Engrams, Seven Years in Asia, winner of the 2022 Lena Shull Book Award of the North Carolina Poetry Society; Redhawk Publications, Hickory, NC; © 2023

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Where does a memory live? Where does its root take hold, where is its safe repository? The sudden intake of breath at one sepia photo slipped from a pile of many others? A brief waft of scent upon opening a long-closed drawer? A word spoken in an unknown language ferrying meaning beyond its meaning? A phrase written in a notebook long misplaced? A dream?

Perhaps our memories are truly embedded in biochemical engrams deep in our hippocampus, hard-wired each in its own bud of synapse, but where is the map to its local address? Ana Pugatch knows to follow the narrow alleys and unmarked streets. Her poems are visions, aromas, sensations that may chill or warm. That may be fearful and unsettling or openly inviting. Her memories weave a world for me. Her world opens me to my own alleys, dim at times but becoming brighter; she opens me to streets I had forgotten. Or have yet to travel.

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Is it because the world is so big and there are so many of us in it that we react by closing ourselves and retreating? Are we threatened by the rush and clamor of ideas, practices, cultures? Is that why we draw a line around our tribe and push all others away? We imagine that to survive we must deny, even destroy, everything outside our comfortable patch of expectations. To my mind, humankind’s survival depends on just the opposite. We can’t close the door but most open it. Perhaps we do feel frightened when confronted with anything that challenges our assumptions, whether a person, an artifact, an idea. Perhaps. And perhaps responding to novelty with imagination rather than rebuff is what allowed Homo sapiens to expand while Homo neanderthalensis dwindled and disappeared (except for the handful of Neanderthal genes we’ve acquired and still carry!).

Within poetry is concealed the map to our local memories. And in poetry we encounter shared memory and experience, doorways that may lead us out of our cloister and into the embrace of the different, the foreign, the alien, the frightening. As I read Ana Pugatch’s sensitive and sometimes ephemeral visions of her years in China and Thailand, and now of her presence in North Carolina, I am not an impartial observer watching a travelogue. I connect with those struggles. We are human, she and I and all the people she encounters. From the strangeness I feel a common thread winding around my heart. May that thread continue to pull me forward, and outward.

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Engrams, Seven Years in Asia is available from Redhawk Publications.

The Lena Shull Book Award for a full length poetry manuscript is sponsored annually by the North Carolina Poetry Society. Submission period opens June 15, 2024.

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I would write down the date if I knew

which day it was.

It’s Tuesday, I think,

and the baby cries upstairs.

I’ve never seen the family;

I only know them by

the red and gold characters posted

on their door.

Their laundry hangs

on the lines above mine;

Cantonese echoes through

my empty rooms.

We share the same view of Zhuhai.

We share that space of sky and trees

and we open our doors

when it rains.

from Engrams, Seven Years in Asia, winner of the 2022 Lena Shull Book Award of the North Carolina Poetry Society; Redhawk Publications, Hickory, NC; © 2023

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