Oct 29, 2010

Patricia Monaghan

Getting To Black Earth

Start with ocean.  A shallow sea, populous
with plankton, and giant fish that feed on it.
Let storms and sunlight flash across the sea.
As bodies die, let them drift down to mud.

Then let there be light. And fire.  And heaving:
rock on rock.  Let the sea sink.  Let it
Pour away into other, younger seas.
Let the land rest, damp, exhausted, rich.

Now, let ice appear from north and east
and west.  Let it move south to form an isle
of green in a sea of snow. Let this happen over
and over and over for half a million years.

Let low pink granite hills hold back the ice.
Let lakes appear beyond, inland seas
with coastlines of blue snow.  Let eagles float
above the blue and icy waves, fishing.

Now, catastrophe:  Let water break
through ice, drowning sleeping bears still
in their caves, and wolves, and fleeing deer, and mice.
Let a great pathway open on the land

marking the pathway of the flood.  Let creeks
and rivers deepen crevices in rock,
and gullies form and soften under wind.
Let oaks take root, and shagbark hickory,

and elderberry, yarrow, bee balm, clover,
big and little bluestem, rattlesnake master,
downy gentian, boneset, dogbane, ragweed,
and thickets of sumac, blackberry, blackcap, rose.

Let black soil deepen over limestone seabed
except where it erupts on crowns of hills.
Then let people come, not long ago. 
Start with ocean. End with Black Earth.
__________


Celebration of the Ordinary

“Rule,” it means: “the order
of things.” From Latin ordo,
“a row or rank,” from
an even older syllable

meaning “to assemble
skillfully.” Ordinary:
sustaining tasks, how we
move through the day,

turning now and again in
comfortable familiarity, in
familiar comfort, to hold
each other’s gaze. And

especially: the way of nature,
not just a garden’s straight
rows but the winding paths
that deer cut on the prairie,

not only the season’s patterns
but a week’s changing weather.
“Ordinary” does not mean
predictable, unwavering,

routine, for there is order
seeded into chaos, whose
gorgeous twining patterns
are too huge to discern

from this garden on this day
when we plant ordinary
seeds in ordinary soil,
row upon row upon row,

while across the valley
deer skillfully assemble
networks of pathways
connecting the apple trees.
__________

Planting the Vines

An act of faith:
that thin brown sticks

will soften and bud;
bring forth new leaves;

climb to the trellis
and flower and bear;

to plant, we kneel
in black earth.
__________

Confiteor: A Country Song

Evening.  Red sky.  Standing at the door
I sense a shadow presence here:
the one who loved this land before.

These harmless hills bear scars of war.
Someone stood here, full of fear.
This is not a metaphor.

Above me, turkey vultures soar;
below the garden, seven deer.
Someone loved this land before,

loved it as I do, maybe more.
She did not simply disappear
and she is not a metaphor:

This was some woman’s home before 
pale soldiers came to clear
a land that someone loved before.

What to do with facts like this? Ignore
them?  Hope they disappear?
Someone loved this land before.
None of this is metaphor.



from The Grace of Ancient Land, forthcoming chapbook from the Voices from the American Land series.

All Poems copyright by Patricia Monaghan

Biography
Patricia Monghan is a full professor at the School for New Learning at DePaul University, where she teaches classes in arts and environmental sciences. Patricia is interested in the intersection of folklore and science and continues to study ways in which artists dialogue with science. She has published on the French poet Rimbaud's objection to Descartes' division of mind and matter. She is a founding member of the Black Earth Institute,"a progressive think-tank dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society."  Patricia's four books of poetry include Winterburning, Seasons of the Witch (winner of the Friends of Literature Award for poetry and the COVR award for best multimedia work), Dancing with Chaos and Homefront. The Grace of Ancient Land uses the framework of the traditional Mass to express the power of rural life in America's heartland. Patricia recently republished a two volume set as The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines. She has edited a three-volume collection of essays entitled Goddesses in World Culture, to be published in late 2010 by Praeger. She is the author of The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit, a travelogue of Irish heritage sites and their relation to goddess figures. Her other books on this subject are The Goddess Path and The Goddess Companion.

A longtime member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), Patricia is also a companion of the Fourth Order.

No comments:

Post a Comment