New Year dreams of spring

Posted on January 4, 2022 by Dale Hobson

In some ways my property looks like the aftermath of battle. Blow down, cut-down, deadfall, invasive species, overgrowth, old farm ruins. But snow covers many sins and cold weather gives the armchair general a perfect chance to game out his next campaign.

New Year dreams of spring

It’s too cold to go outside (unless strictly necessary), but
not to peer out the upstairs window over sunstruck snow
at that stand of old white pine looming behind the yard.

Now that leaves are down and the rotting boxelder dropped,
I see how stately they are, upholding their bright white offering.
I see now how little labor it might take to fashion there a bower.

Just there, a trail cut through the mock orange and knotweed–
under the pines, a little deadfall and undergrowth to clear away.
Then a picnic table or some Adirondack chairs, a stone firepit.

I could write a poem there, perhaps about the does browsing
in the sumac. Clear of limbs for many feet, the pillars of pine
support a deep green cathedral ceiling and a nest of squirrels

that I could watch as they leap from limb to limb, chasing
each other around the circle of trees. Or you and I could kiss
there beside a fire while a big moon runs in and out of clouds.

This is just to say the old place has possibilities. But for now
the wheelbarrow is covered in snow and the ladder frozen
to the ground. Spring is far off as something seen in dream.

Note: unpublished draft

Posted in Poetry, The Other Village | 1 Comment

How Everything Didn’t Change

Posted on September 11, 2021 by Dale Hobson
Photo: Steve Crave, FermilLab

Terry called me just after the second tower fell. My first words to her were “We’re going to war.” And of course we did, several times over. The catchphrase was “Everything changed after 9/11.” But it all looked like business as usual to me. Just missing a little of the candy coating. Here’s a poem I wrote shortly after waking in the night to hear the endless line of transports carrying 10th Mountain troops to Afghanistan in October 2001.

How Everything Didn’t Change

Just after the shotgun blast the maple shakes off
its cloak of blackbirds. They shriek, dive and rise.

Three times round the field they flap,
wheeling this way and that, and all together.

But it doesn’t last—the flock returns and settles,
in order, each to the same accustomed perch.

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After Ida

Posted on September 10, 2021 by Dale Hobson
Photo: Zach Frailey, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

After Ida

A week later, I still can’t write the poem I wanted
to write about Cape Cod and the ocean, the storm
and after the storm. I wanted to write about fear,
being awakened at midnight and told “take shelter.”

But there was no cellar, nowhere far from windows.
I wanted to write about waiting out waves of lightning,
torrential rain and wind as long as we could stay awake, 
then giving up at last before dawn, to hope, faith, sleep.

And I wanted to write about the awe with which
I always approach the ocean – endless, infinitely
mutable but always itself. The cleansing simplicity
of sand and surf, its peacefulness and its violence.

I wanted to bring in natural history, how the Cape
was laid down by glacier, how the ocean was comet
melt and volcano breath from before life began
and long after the Cape washed away would remain.

I tried to write it four different ways and couldn’t reach
that point where I say “hmm,” say “done,” and turn
away. It was all too much for one poem. So instead,
this, the few lines that always rang true in every draft:

“Next day, when rain ends, we walk back through 
pitch pine, white oak and holly to stand again
above the beach where the ocean, wholly wild
now, pounds out its oneness on the drum of sand.

“My body, itself a bag of seawater, feels the drag
of the yellow moon rising at the world’s edge.”

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Jigsaw Buddha

Posted on May 12, 2021 by Dale Hobson

When dealing with a puzzle, the inclination is to take it one piece at a time, scanning, sorting, studying minute differences, getting frustrated, then boring back in. Finally, only when the last piece clicks in, do you draw back to fully see what one the many have made. It’s as much a puzzle as before you began.

Jigsaw Buddha

From random shapes and colors,
start from the edges and work in.
Here’s a half-closed eye, half a hand,
a fold of robe. Make mistakes; persist.
Face and form fill out emptiness.
Whose face?

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Second Spring

Posted on May 8, 2021 by Dale Hobson
Photo: Pixabay

It’s hard to start living a larger life again after more than a year of hyper-vigilance. But things are starting to look better, and the return of spring certainly helps. It also helps if you haven’t been in it alone.

Second Spring

The fever lingers like the aftertaste of too-long winter,
but tamped down now across this half-vacc’ed nation.
We begin to gather once again, gun-shy, in little groups,
and try to reweave the ripped warp and weft of living.

A yellow-green haze of leaves unfurls, trillium bloom,
apple petals. The river runs high with upland snowpack.
Still I blink at the too-bright light. It’s a hard awakening,
as after dreams of fleeing faceless pursuit, ears ringing.

What this life (to which I cling with fearful fervor) will be
is yet to be. The tide is slack; who can tell whether next
it rises or falls? All I know is you are beside me, sleeping,
as you have for half a century. I am rich, at least, in this.

Whatever else comes, we will get up and have our coffee.
We will talk a little and pore over the headlines, sharing
the best bits and the worst. Having made our little plans,
we’ll walk out together, however hesitantly, into the day.

Note: unpublished draft

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False Spring

Posted on March 26, 2021 by Dale Hobson

What a week – sunshine, shirtsleeves and more on the way. Though we all needed a break from winter, I can’t quite buy in. Veteran of 60+ North Country winters, I know it ain’t over until it’s over, and over it ain’t. Sigh. April really is the cruelest month and it isn’t even April yet. We’re in a second false spring as well. Our COVID numbers are better than they’ve been since the fall. But winter is not the only thing that ain’t over until it’s over.

Lilac buds. Lovely, but alas, doomed in March. Photo: oddharmonic, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

False Spring

Warm all week since the equinox. Blessedly sunny
until this morning. The snow has melted all away,
almost as if it had never been. Snowdrops bloom,
lilacs bud. So easy to be taken in, to cut loose again.

And now steady rain saturates the thawed soil. All day
it drums on the roof, waxing louder then waning softer,
as the thunderstorms come and go. Did I not know
better, this could be the end of North Country winter.

A mourning dove hoots softly from the apple tree.
Gray squirrels race each other through the side yard, 
up and down the gray, bare trees, frantic as tweekers.
Who wouldn’t love this moment, free of COVID winter?

Even though the forecast predicts days more the same,
I can’t shake off my foreboding. Winter bides its time,
raising false hopes in false spring. I won’t be fooled again.
The sleety snows of April would be twice as hard to bear.

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In the Winter of Fever

Posted on February 3, 2021 by Dale Hobson

We catapulted 2020 over the moat and into the dungheap of history only to discover 2021. Another year of yikes. And incongruously, a winter of stupefying boredom, stymied by the ankle bracelet of COVID. Sigh.

In the Winter of Fever

The snow blows down day after day–
shovel and drift, plow and plow again.
Icicles grow from the eaves, are knocked
down, only to grow right back again.

The pandemic numbers spike highest
(more than 200 in town now) as we queue
through the field house for first shots in arms.
The year has turned toward Groundhog Day.

And like the movie, each day reruns the last,
an indistinguishable chug of numb boredom
backed by a chaser of fear. The second shot
will come soon, if it comes in time. Then what?

Will I sleep the night through? Will everybody
be okay? Will the borders open? Will this still be
America? Hard to say. Like Tyson said: “Everybody
has a plan until you punch them in the face.”

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Advent 2020

Posted on December 16, 2020 by Dale Hobson

This poem is set on the night of December 8, 2020 after I drove home from the masked and socially distant village with the half moon shining high in my windshield. It took me a while to get it right, going through rewrites over the following week. 

Advent 2020

Snow blows through, snow melts away.
Things come and things go – but mostly
go as 2020 wanes toward winter.

Southeast hangs a hazy half moon
upon the falling gloom, like a lone lamp
at the edge of the darkened village,

like a white mask across a black face
in the ICU at night amid the twinkling
pea lights of monitors and ventilators,

like a heart half of hope and half of fear.
All winter the winnowing will run while
the world leans on luck and awaits its shot.

I lean against the kitchen window looking out
at this halfling light that sails upon the night
and send after it all my silent prayers.

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Election Reflection

Posted on October 21, 2020 by Dale Hobson
Photo: Mycatkins, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

While I was doomscrolling through the day’s news of politics and pandemic, the wind began to rise. I didn’t really notice at first, until I began to mistake it for a distant train passing through the village. Then the “train” arrived in a twister of maple leaves outside the window and the house began to shake. Each gust stronger than the last. The weather outside, the clamor on my screen and the weather in my head converged into extended metaphor.

Election Reflection

From far off, a low susurration heralds its coming.
On the next hill leaves fly, pennants of golden smoke.
Then louder, higher, the nearby treetops begin to 
bob and dance, the windows rattle, the studs groan.

Louder still, rising and falling, pines rock back
and forth, worrying at their roots. Saplings bow
and snap back. Wheelie bins flop open and topple.
Yard signs tear loose, cartwheeling down the road.

Hold tight; anything could happen – windows blow
in, roof rip away, hailstones the size of baseballs
pounding the car to junk. You never know what
big wind will bring, or what will still be standing.

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Another rainy Monday

Posted on October 19, 2020 by Dale Hobson

As we teeter on the brink of the election and a third peak of the pandemic, it’s the little ordinary things that stubbornly remain ordinary that I find so discombobulating.

Given the tumult of event and emotion, there should be fireballs in the sky, chasms collapsing underfoot, not one day after another, same as it ever was. Mind and world refuse to rhyme.

Another rainy Monday

On another rainy Monday the leaves show gold
and lemon and brown against the greens of pine
and cedar. Election signs drip in the yard. No
pressing business, I refill my coffee mug and sip.

On my screen, the COVID tracker tells me I live
in the current hotspot of the county. On my screen
the electoral map shows my guy doing pretty well.
In social feeds my virtual friends strongly urge me:

to pray, to vote, to wear a mask, to wash my hands, 
to send money, to feel outrage, to be afraid – very
afraid. They say the world is burning. They say we’re
all gonna die! They say their scream jars are full up.

It’s another rainy Monday morning in America and
flags hang limp, as if exhausted from all that waving.
But leaves are still leaves, coffee still coffee, and
there is leftover homemade apple pie for breakfast.

The ordinary strangely endures, the river and clouds.
But fear and loathing too go on and on – tightness
in the chest, hypervigilance, angry mind milling stone
to dust. Waiting, waiting on the advent of the awful.

On another rainy Monday the ragged crows perch
still, squirrels stash away their winter plunder,
business as usual. Cars go back and forth from home
to village. All things ordinary behind their masks.

Note: unpublished draft

Posted in Poetry, The Other Village | 2 Comments