The Here of Here
Storyknife, Homer, Alaska
There is a God of solitude. He covers me closely, like the air. I study Him blindly, by touch. Only His body is everywhere…
– Anna Kamienska, quoted in Eva Saulitis, Becoming Earth
1
The flowers that climbed to the top
of the fireweed are gone
now brittle stalks curling stems
a calligraphy of dying
those monks who practice for years
to draw a perfect Zen circle
are not more adept
than the backspringing arcs these stems make
2
Waves of cloud
sun half high
the snow
that marks the end of summer
sifting on the mountains
3
People have been saying the same thing to the ocean forever
I bring you my sadness, my little sadness
I bring you my grief, which moves in me as the waves rise and fall
and the birds that chase each other and dive, calling
I bring you my desire to be as the yellow leaves accepting winter
and the smooth or jagged rocks that line the shore
4
Clouds across the water
nearly hide the mountains
The only sounds are the far-off
chuff of a boat, and voices
fading along the road
The sadness I always carry
But raspberries, just a few,
and this wallow might be
the bedding place of a moose
5
Fireweed towers to my shoulder
flowers spent, stalks withered
as I walk this short, boggy trail
hoping to see a moose—
Seed tufts cling
or blow across the road
seeds by the thousands
fall to the ground
rise in the wind
caught in sunlight
6
Clear day, brilliant snow across the water
last night gusting/bucketing rain
My cabin door creaks and the spruces are blowing
7
I walk the gravel road
past junked rusting cars
spiky golden devil’s claw
uprooted tree trunks
now a pheasant skitters by
like a debutante
tail straight out behind her
why not let my heart be glad
for look
here comes a little dog
gray and frisking
8
Sunday, the tide pulled back so far
it seemed we could walk the whole way
to the mountains the wind howling
slamming spitting
a bald eagle hunched on the bitter sand
tearing at a fish when it finished
its heavy wings levered it slanting
upward as gulls rushed in to the flesh refuse
9
No words
just the wind swaying the fireweed
shadows long and the sun half high
far away a boat heading off across the water
and the curving wake
mosquitoes hover, light-caught
somewhere down there in the bog
two moose sniff the trail of a female
they walked across here an hour ago
though I have not seen them
I follow their path behind the house
where the grass is matted down
then drag my chair to my porch to watch for moose
fireweed grows up through the boards
one seed tuft that can’t shake free
crawls up the rough green wall like a baby spider
10
In this place of my brief stay
with the vivid sudden magpie
and the spruces
and the mountains
and the sea
whitecaps on the water
winter coming quickly
liquid blackness
once the sun goes down
11
No movement in the spruces
the fireweed
hushed as if waiting
A tiny winged insect
lies against the glass
outside my window
and another flits around
a year’s late mosquito
Behind the trees
a cloud-covered sky
a few dark shapes
against light gray
but even these dark clouds
do not change, not move
Ah—a small breeze
ruffles the fireweed
It comes and goes
The cold comes and goes
then deepens
Rain lashed my window
in the middle of the night
and now a small rain begins
slanting sideways
nearly just mist
It is impossible to remember the world
Write into your silence here where there’s only the small
whoosh of flame coming alive in the stove as the cold rises
Ann Fisher-Wirth’s seventh book of poems, Paradise is Jagged, appeared from Terrapin Books in February 2023. Her sixth book of poems is The Bones of Winter Birds (Terrapin Books, 2019). Her fifth book, Mississippi, is a poetry/photography collaboration with Delta photographer Maude Schuyler Clay (Wings Press, 2018). With Laura-Gray Street she coedited The Ecopoetry Anthology, published by Trinity University Press early in 2013; a third edition appeared in January 2020. Ann and Laura-Gray have begun work on The Ecopoetry Anthology: Volume II, which will contain poems written since 2010 by poets who were not included in the first volume; it will appear from Trinity University Press in 2025.
Read poetry by Ann Fisher-Wirth previously appearing in Terrain.org: “Corona Journal, Day 32,” a Letter to America poem, and “In the Kitchen,” plus Ann Fisher-Wirth’s first Letter to America, an essay.
Header photo by Kyle Waters, courtesy Shutterstock.
