Tag: Poetry

Cow and Calf

~ Kat Couch ~ 1 Comment

For the third time in three years,
walking in the wilderness,
I surprise two moose,
a cow and a calf.

The cow complains, moves on
with a bovine grunt
calling the little one.

Her hair is edged with black,
the brown on her flanks so deep
you could drown in it.
She’s as tall as a draft horse and fast:
if she wanted to,
she could cover the ground between us
before I could stand up.

So I sit,
feeling a pinprick of guilt
for having intruded /

and yet,
how can I take my place in the wild,
how can I be — what’s the phrase? —
a good animal,
without lightly disturbing it?
Nothing here wants me passive:
the forgotten relation come home
to mope and grieve,
the one who sits at the edge of the fire,
the one no one speaks to,
not the sky
not the rock
not the water and the water hemlock,
and not the bat-faced calf
his eyes fixed on mine
reluctant to leave.

Once Occupied

~ Kat Couch ~ Leave a comment

The old man who used to own the house
is driven up by his niece
in a car with Wyoming plates.
It stops at the end of the drive.

They had probably come up just to see,
and then, me out on the deck
getting water to the spruce and daylilies
along the lines he had laid
even then, in his nineties.

We heard his wife had died,
but he didn’t mention her:
it was for the niece, to show her the view
and the tile and the wisteria,
to talk about the wild plum, the tame plum,
the peaches big as his fist,
the wrinkles in the road as deep as his.

He said when the house was new
the driveway was a solid piece of rock.

I pointed out how the lilacs
hadn’t bloomed this year and he nodded,
how the cicadas were bad,
how the wasps had left their paper nest.
I had taken it down,
afraid they would reclaim it,
though they hadn’t bothered us —
just flew back and forth along the deck
(he said I put those railings in).

We sat on the porch swing smiling,
time gone and the satisfaction of it,
the rings of the wasp nest
still white as death on the wall.

Because I Was in Love

~ Kat Couch ~ Leave a comment

I broke like rock in the Caribou mines
I was the earth and not the gardener
I was the apple in winter
I stretched my hand when the pine trees slept
I trespassed with the cloud
I painted my skin in the Colorado

the cowbird and the hummingbird stopped
the forest curled around me like a cat
the dark ridge was a compass
the hill replaced my heart
the stream replaced my blood
the path opened in the dark

but I lay down beside it
for another traveler
and set myself on fire.

Fawn

~ Kat Couch ~ Leave a comment

The turkey vultures were out
on the roof of the old stables
at the bottom of the neighbor’s lot;
another on the split rail fence,
another half dozen circling high above.
The magpies that had been nesting
in the ponderosa across the way
and chasing off redtail hawks
also made a fuss, bouncing and squawking,
diving into the dry grass:
mid-July in the high plains and hot.

I came within four feet of the fawn,
enough to walk into the shade
of the vultures’ wings and their deep pink heads.
He was mostly intact:
a big gash on a haunch,
belly open,
spots still running along his side
like a promise of sunlight.

They stay with their mother the first summer
and we had seen them
working their way down the hill,
stopping at the sumac and the peach,
the doe always wary,
the fawns in the great dome of her gaze.

The day of the vultures,
she appeared and lay under the apple tree,
her udder full, ribs showing,
head heaving rhythmically every breath,
and she came back for three days
eating apples and drinking from the bird bath.
Getting back her strength.

The magpies also flew over from the stables
where they were eating her fawn,
and drank and splashed
in the bitter heat.

Flood

~ Kat Couch ~ 1 Comment

The earth understands wearing away,
it understands wear,
and for that reason it loves me like a child.

Last month a river took houses
where there were towns.
Canyon highways poured into the plain.

It took living rooms and bikes —
kids’ bicycles, lawn furniture,
cars, and then the lawn.

The stream near the shop
ran for seven weeks. I woke up
hearing water and not the wind.

It carved new rivers, new pain, new people.
Sitting out, I hear it whispering
that it loves me, sweet as August,

because the leaves stayed on the plum,
the aspen, and the Rocky Mountain maple
that we lost on Halloween.

Three o’clock, the river whispers
that it loves me like a girl.
Loves me like the girls on Richards Street.

Insomnia

~ Kat Couch ~ 1 Comment

It’s too hot to sleep.
I get up
and walk out into the living room
where suddenly I am astonished
by the beauty of everyday things:

how the rubber plant glows in the half-light,
how the dust and fur balled
in the crevice corner of the guest bathroom
is a cobweb of myrrh,

and how, unknown to me,
as though by a vengeful spell,
I have been living with jewels.

With feet bright as hammered gold,
the nails of my toes
thick as button pearls,
the skin on the back of my hand like vellum
where someone has written
praises to God in lampblack,
in broad calligraphic strokes.

Where eyelashes are gold wire
and the trees listen for my footfall.
They have gathered at the door.
The moon picks out
the furrows of their flesh.

We sit for a while, breathing together,
in a kind of majesty
until, with the new sun
again the dread of work,
irritation of things undone,
weight of unanswered mail,
the cold toast and the missed alarm,
I come to my senses.

Poetics, Advice

~ Kat Couch ~ Leave a comment

You will learn that sonnets
will survive nuclear winter
by eating cockroaches
but that your best idea is frost
on a warm finger:
it never loved you.

From Patrick Lane
you learn to raise words
like sticks and bright embers,
from Maya Angelou you learn
cadence.
You learn humility and rage
from Mary Oliver and Adrienne Rich,
balls-out bold from Whitman and Ginsberg.

You will learn that you have cataracts
where Annie Dillard has eyes,
that you come to speak poem
the way you found your physical voice:
imitate, emulate, absorb,

until your pores sweat meter like garlic,
until your head hums a chorus
of Sanskrit crickets,
leaf-blade swords, chariot whispers,
parrots the color of pomegranates
and lime.

You will learn
that syllables eat like cats:
rarely when you want them to
and never what you have.

They want to eat doubt
and wild moss pink from your hands;
when you have fresh mangoes
they will want the salt and dead skin
from the corners of your mouth,

and when you have given up,
drained and dry,
they will run their
sandpaper tongues along the edges
of your sleeping thoughts.

What He Said to Her

~ Kat Couch

The earthquake of ’89:
those fifteen seconds in San Francisco.
An apartment collapsed
on a couple in the Marina.

They pulled him out
but she was pinned.
The glass was cutting her,
the fire was too close.

The firemen pulled him out,
but
that terrible lacuna,
the moment they knew it was too late,
how he climbed back in,
briefly spoke.
What he said to her.

I have come to think
something stopped then,
the world having
exhausted its cruelty.

Hoisted up again, he crawled
from the drywall,
the splintered wood,
cabinets she could never stand.

He grabbed a hand,
found an living sleeve;
in the park,
a long animal silence.

I fill the kettle.
It clanks against the ring.
I miss this remembered life,
where no-one wakes in fire.

Deer on the Deck

~ Kat Couch ~ 1 Comment

I was having coffee outside on the second floor,
remembering how the handyman had said
when you have a wooden deck in Colorado
you’ll be replacing that two by six fir
every couple years — they get
so twisted by the summer sun.

And because he was right,
when the doe walked out on the deck below,
between inch-wide cracks,
I could make out every hair of her forehead,
cocked and furrowed like she felt
something slightly odd
but seeing nothing, shifted, cleaned,
each pegleg step sounding up
as though through the boards of a ship.

She was pregnant
and the wood below was cool
so I watched her for close to half an hour
with a swelling sense — not of love exactly
but unfathomable care
racing out like water dropped from a height
in every direction above her head.

And it occurred to me
that this must be how gods are created:
the creature below, unsettled,
with its secrets,
with its exquisite womb,
and the accidental hunter above,
in agony, close enough to touch,
too far to know.

December, Taking Out the Compost

~ Kat Couch

I walk our kitchen scraps to the compost pile:
ragged red-leaf lettuce, long English cucumbers
forgotten at the back of the fridge
moist, soft as sponge.

The flu is going around.
I had congratulated myself that I escaped it,
that others were more mortal,
but it has hit me hard.
I glower: neanderthal, punished
and miss a step on the deer trail,
slipping on the rock.

It strikes me that this vegetable box full of earth
tucked away behind the woodshop
(overflowing now — too cold and too dry to decompose)
is the most important thing I own:
a memento mori masquerading as gardening.

There will be a time
when my body, too, will stop working,
when it will break down,
become a part of the cottonwood,
animate the catnip and the chokecherry
feed the mule deer in spring
take its place on the Hogback —
dissolve.

On the compost pile /
like my own hands
the cucumbers are familiar and strange.
Temporary.

I grab the haying fork,
mix them in,
and forget again.