WEBVTT

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So this is the last
Johnson, Vermont poem,

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which probably feels weird to be
bringing this bioregion to all

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of you who are like, pine trees.

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So this is called Granite,
Olivine, Quartz, Carnelian.

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On foot under thunder
heading in from the west,

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I wasn't thinking rain.

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But now I'm thinking rain on
Plot Road where it crosses Foot

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Brook doing its thaw thing--

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ropy, cold, clear water
pulling itself downhill fast,

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spatter and foam
lathering granite banks.

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Uphill, up the road, a
field mown flat gold.

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Its curves cut by horizon, a
veil of rain drawing across it

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slowly so it darkens
in increments.

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It's cold.

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I have neither
poncho nor umbrella.

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The good news is the way
Archimedes sought a place

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to stand to lift the world
and Descartes wanted just one

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thought, as certain and
indubitable as the point

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a lever turns into a
fulcrum, this dirt road

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is as good a place as
any to stand in the poem

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and get soaked.

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The bad news is El Niño.

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It's a bummer to
go all cogito here

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after the hottest winter and the
hottest year so far on record.

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All the thaw finished by
the first week of March.

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And yet I can feel the
poem gather inside me

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a color, the dry silver, brown
inside an empty milkweed pod.

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Everything outside it on
a spectrum of saturation,

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wet and getting wetter.

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As the front moves in
overhead, a little mist

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sizzling on the canopy.

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Its sound in the middle distance
between brook and thunder,

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a distance rusty
blackbirds fill also

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from a tree they flock
to, raucous and dominating

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the crown.

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When the rain hits,
they fall silent.

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Then there's nothing but thunder
in the hushed woods, and water,

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on water, on water.

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Above the sky, a sort
of crushed lilac.

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Around me, clay hill, an issue
of trickles gathering gravity,

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gathering mass, heading
down to the valley.

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Little streams,
even, under my feet.

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I want to say I
can feel the pull

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on my vertebrae,
occiput to sacrum,

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all the water in my bones
longing to join the thaw.

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And thought, too, alluvial.

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The way valleys slowly fill
with gravel the surrounding

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mountains send down.

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Granite, olivine,
quartz, Carnellian,

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each stone a distinct idea
washed, then carried by rain.

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Down the steep embankment,
I walk to sit on the ground

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and watch Foot Brook go
by at south by southwest.

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I like how walk and watch
almost rhyme the way,

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done simultaneously, one fits
inside the other until it

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doesn't.

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I trip or stop my
body, so my mind

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gets quiet at the point of
slippage and lets vision in.

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Over its rocky bed,
the water runs clear,

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leaving the
distortions and torsion

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makes flickering the
way musculature moves

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skin, all flexure and shadow.

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Don't move is what the
X-ray tech told me.

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So I stood and did
what I'm doing now.

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I watched the living
turned to image,

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a sort of bluish fluid on a
white screen the doctor lit up.

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I still have some
cartilage left,

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but I could have looked at
my feet for hours like that.

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Molecules locked,
integrating matrices

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where the joints meet their
calcified spurs turned pretty

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and affix any stripped of flesh.

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It's weird to be
always incurring

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injuries I have to live with.

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The process makes
a space in thinking

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like the space I make on
the brook's hard bank.

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Anthropogenic non-point source
pollutant, even my piss,

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an effluent of medicines
and pesticides,

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a pharmacopoeia of harm
for riverine species.

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I close my eyes.

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Rain on leaf litter sounds
like storm wind in the canopy

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and the brook throwing
itself downhill,

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a consonance that makes
the world briefly coalesce,

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comfortingly self-same,
endlessly rhymed with itself.

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Cogito makes it seem, it's only
missing my ears to make it so.

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I opened my eyes, I
get up and go east,

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back up Plot Road
muddy now with runoff.

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Off-road, the landscape
ranges from forest

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to field to dwelling and
back, rhythm of settlement

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and regrowth, logging,
and aftermath.

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My eye always drawn to ecotone,
what looks like ugly rupture

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and is richly liminal.

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I love what grows in thickets.

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Thistles there and
milkweed, and seed heads,

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and hundreds that luster against
the denser screen of trees.

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I love how sparrow-sized
birds forage scrub,

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breaking cover to
return to forest.

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The black cap chickadee loosing
it slow two-note sing song,

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sing song, only after
it lands a branch.

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I love how some things must
be listened into appearance.

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Thistles rustle,
sigh into sight.

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Where the poem starts
first as a color,

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I can hear stiff, dry stalks
silver, gray, and brown.

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So I watch and walk on, pockets
full of hollow pods, a few

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still stuffed with floss.

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It's almost
pornographic, the detail

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the world offers in excess,
a texture whose totality is

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beyond adequate, capture
and excites anyway,

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endless as the filaments of
lichen, the same bright green

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of olivine.

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It's almost as if
by walking, I can

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forget the harm that happens
where my flesh meets the world.

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It's almost as if
by watching, I could

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undo the human subject
I'd become and remain

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through undoing done to others.

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Between walk and
watch, the whole world

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slips, going missing,
my empty mind

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empty as the chambers of a gun
whose six bullets have already

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hit the intended targets.

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Residual heat and soft powder
all that cogito leaves behind.

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I never meant to fire.

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It's not my voice
crying, "Bull's eye,"

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but I find my mouth moves
too without thinking

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as the species go down.

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And then I do nothing
but think, for instance,

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of a cave in upstate New York,
spelunker's boots introduce

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there a fungus that plunders
hibernacula until they're empty

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of bats.

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The disease inducing
an inability

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to hibernate in winter.

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Mortality accruing roost
to roost across 29 states

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after a decade of infection.

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It's all bad news.

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It's the point the lever
turns to a fulcrum.

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Human life meeting
the lives that

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surround it are wounding
the world that lifts us up.

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And I keep walking the
way enthusiasm at root

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means the fact of being
possessed by some god.

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I don't know how else
to know what I know,

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but to put it on foot.

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A gesture as outwardly
useless as boots

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in a downpour on a
scale this total.

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Just before Plot
Road meets Clay Hill,

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an abandoned barn leans
into air where a stream cuts

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under its right back corner.

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Its floor strewn still
with tools and hay,

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license plates adorning
its aged gray facade.

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I like the look of it,
the way on Clay Hill

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I like the sound of passing
cars harped by frost

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heaves that rattle
their chassis.

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Laughable enchantment, the
sort of ruin that seems livable

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until it isn't.

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