by Natalye Childress
after philip good and bernadette mayer’s “alternating lunes”
in east nassau, we congregate in
the big red house, the one that
brought them upstate and out
of the city. she had to sell her books
to afford this new life in a converted
church, or synagogue, its beams reaching
toward the heavens, its bathroom cast in
hues of gold. we’re the last to arrive,
traipsing across the front porch and inside.
it’s a saturday afternoon and we’re
in the library of the house. the man who
loved this woman is telling us about her,
and i can’t help but think there is
nothing more intimate than to learn
about someone through the lens of the
one who loved them most. in front of
us are floor-to-ceiling archives. to the
side, boxes not yet archived. there’s
knowledge in these words — maybe
more knowledge than that contained
in the wild bergamot and milkweed
that grows in columbia county. but
it’s a wisdom unübersetzbar,
untranslatable, that lives in the flowers.
i’ve never tasted amaryllis, and
at easter we don’t get lilies, for
fear the cats will suffer toxicity.
but if i placed a petal on my tongue,
swallowed, would it tell me all i needed
to know, translate the untranslateable?
like how the fig, or the etrog, brought
about the downfall of man. will it give
me colors, forms, shapes for words?
i’m afraid it’s been nearly ten
years and the politics have not
improved, and that's par for the
course — first, second, third. we’re
eating at a progressive dinner, and
each house is worse than the last.
but this house is something special.
it once had 24 doors, there’s a bathroom
under the clock, and a creaking staircase
leads to a museum of typewriters in the
attic. there’s a stack of books on russian
poetry, a bird-kite, a slanted roof, a
plastic bag on a shelf with frank o’hara’s
“lunch poems” inside. on the back
porch, the coronet super 12 sits on an
aged wooden desk, surrounded by
trinkets: stamps and scraps, a half-
written poem, ink bottles, a marble
composition book, a cookie
monster cookie jar, a cup full of
feathers on the white windowsill.
i can’t find a field feather guide, but
the idiosyncratic poetry guide tells
me to make sure my diet is rich in
cardinals and pomegranates, in
ribollita and etymology, but to
use hummingbird and sparrows in
moderation. it’s easy enough; i
could make reboiled tuscan soup
every day with the vegetables from
the farm. we got the csa box leftovers on
wednesday, and tonight we will roast vegetables,
though this year, sarah says the potato crop
might fail. we’ll have to whirl, quake, shake,
pray for a miracle, for the tubers to pull
through, persist, hope that the sacred
soil of the sufis, and the shakers before
them, and the mohicans before them,
does not fail us now. now we are ambling
across field, to kinderhook creek, in dutch,
the bend in the river where the children
are. where we are was once called
machackoesk, and there is a fragrance
in the fact of this stream that cuts
through the taconics. we venture
out on slippery stones coated in water moss,
flat feet and curled toes, precariously balancing
beer cans, to sit on rocks large, smooth, flat.
out here i can’t hear the sunrays, but
i can feel them. they’re celebrating
halloween in august at the valley speedway
today, but we haven’t yet heard “god bless
america,” so i know it’s too early to hear
the engines. if i listen hard enough i
think i can hear hector bark. but i
open my eyes and realize it’s burl, sweet
old boy who fought a woodchuck
on monday and is now plodding
paws in water. i think the phrase “all
bark & no bite” was penned after him,
unless you are a rodent. we keep him
on a leash so he doesn’t run down
-stream to tsatsawassa creek, but who
could blame him if he tried? a small
part of me wants to follow the stream
to see where it takes me. it’s the same
part of me that thinks every body
of water is a baptism, every tree a
mystery waiting to unfold.
here in poetry state forest, give
every body every thing. it’s not
utopia, but it sure comes close.
****
Natalye Childress (she/her) is a Berlin-based editor, writer, translator, and sad punk. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears or is forthcoming in Querencia Press, Frozen Sea, wildness, Anthropocene, Bruiser, and elsewhere. https://www.natalye.com