Pastoral

 There are so many messages I can’t interpret.
The hundred maples at the edge of my street shout orange, orange, orange,
in silent voices. And may say more if I could decipher.

 How I want to understand the many calls of the birds migrating through
on their long journey. And what is the message of the shaggy
wave-curled sea quarreling around the black rocks out at the far point?  

 Perhaps words themselves wander off into other fields, like sheep lost
in the depths of the hills beyond the local hills so that the shepherd has to go climbing
up and down, his legs aching, his breath heavy in his chest until he spies them

 off there under that far evergreen, and wrestles them down and brings them home.

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Evidence

 When I walked in the forest it was April.
Deer pellets were mounded here and there
on  fallen leaves and under low cedar branches. 

 Twice I saw scat--I couldn’t tell what it signified.
When I stopped to listen, the wild was silent
except for the rumble of the logging truck far away.

 The duff was spongy beneath my sneakers.
I walked carefully, and as far in as I dared
trying to keep sight of the road and the field.

 But the forest drew me into its vast density.
I lost the road, the field, and all sense of direction.
Once I bent to touch two waxy fingers

 reaching up from the forest floor,
and once to run both palms over a stump
wholly green and soft with moss. 

 Near a marshy place, a wagon wheel leaned
against a hillock. It had been there so long
it was the antique green/brown of a Roman relic.

 It began to rain.
Once I heard hooves snapping fallen branches. 
They were always behind me.

 I turned in a full circle; and turned again,
I saw nothing
but I swear I heard some spirit go away
brushing its sharp antlers against the trees.

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Invocation

You came to me first as dawn hauled up on ropes
of apricot above the blackened wall of white pine.

You came from the south, from the highest places,
came down the mountain running.

You were announced by the crows, the shrill
calls of alarm from the uppermost branches.

You opened your throats in a high harsh singing.
I didn’t know what you were and rose trembling

from the deck chair, stood breathless and still
where the woods surrounded me, gathered dark

and darker as if to stall the light.
You came down, two of you: one young and red-bright

the other old, rust streaked with gray.
You pretended not to know me and lay down

beneath a small granite ledge, lay on the fallen
needles, licking light into your fur.

You came to me because I have wanted you.
You came though I had asked for nothing,

because I was full as a river at flood tide
with sadness.

You came to me, rested and then rose, first one,
then the other, and ran downhill into the morning.

You who assumed the guise of foxes, come again
as you did that morning on the mountainside.

And wasn’t that you who came last summer
as whale boiling up from the waters of Jeffries Shoal?

Wasn’t it you who came in September as wood duck
over the Stoddard marshes, who flew parallel to my car window?

Come to me again as moose invisible on the night road.
Come the way deer steal across the field at dusk

Come as raccoon, as coyote. Come carrying your burden
of blood and shadow--

come joyous and light with song, come in sleep,
in the unexpected reaches of the day. I am waiting.

Come red-tailed or black-winged; come fluked
and finned, come clawed and taloned,

renew my breath, come full of the mystery
I am only beginning to know.

Patricia Fargnoli
(published in Ploughshares)

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