Class Notes columns from the New Millennium

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"So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens."

People have continually puzzled over this curious poem by William Carlos Williams. I used to be mystified by it too. But now I see what he meant in a purely straightforward way, for I own a red wheelbarrow myself and put it into motion most everyday. Originally I bought it to mix concrete in it to pour the foundation for the house. It’s been my handiest tool around here ever since. I use it to haul wood, spread gravel, move rocks, bring in groceries. It helps me lug soil & water to the garden and leaves & weeds to the compost heap. And when I’m done with it I make sure to stand it on end in the woodshed so it never gets “glazed with rain water,” because it would make me sad to see it rust out before its time. The wheelbarrow stands as the measure of the man. How often he uses it and how well he treats it is sure to reveal a good deal about what he cares to cultivate—or neglects to care for. And if his wheelbarrow is falling apart, his place is probably falling apart too. They go to hell hand-in-hand, to join the man already there. So I’d tell Williams: That’s a pretty poem & all, but unless that’s just some decorative wheelbarrow—I’d dump the water out of it and put it away.

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Gone with the Geese

Just round the bend from home, on a gray late afternoon, I noticed quite a throng of wild geese gathered over by Farmer Fred’s little lake. I parked my pickup by a flat grassy field and got out to go have a look see. Hopping over the locked gate barring the black cinder road that led to this large oblong reservoir, I tried to be as quiet about my movements as I could to get as close to them as I could. This was the biggest flock of Canada geese I’d ever seen.  There mightve been two or three thousand here. Maybe more. It was hard to grasp just how many there were. 
     There was a great mass of them on the broad expanse of scrub grass around the water, and there was another great mass of them settled in the water. And not all were Canada geese. There were a mess of ducks mixed in too—mallards, canvasbacks, blue-winged teals—and some all-white snow geese too.
     And when I got to within shotgun range of this great gathering, I scared almost all of them into the sky. There was a mighty drumming of wings that sounded like a swarm of bees, and scads of these big bombers lifted off right in front of me. Getting high in a hurry, they split into several groups that either went east or west, each group in its own loosely-held V.
     Standing at the lip of this long deep pool that had been formed out of a gravel pit, I watched two sizeable squadrons shoot toward the sun just as the sun broke thru dark snow-heavy clouds near the horizon. I watched them a long while, following their wavy outlines until they were as thin as strands of hair in the limitless air.
    The whole area was largely deserted now. Yet here & there a few independent-minded birds remained. Some still plucked at grass glazed with slushy snow, while others waddled about a good distance from me on the frozen part of the lake. And in the middle of the lake where there was a patch of open water—the part nearest to where I stood—a pair of very brave or very foolish ducks paddled about as if nothing was amiss. 
      By now I regretted coming here. Having had nothing more in mind than wishing to be near this birdfest, I’d rudely wrecked their tranquility—the cause of both their mass fright and their mass flight. Feeling more like a monster than a man, I squatted against a
willow near the water. Quietly staying put there awhile, I began to
be aware of a steady trickle of geese landing on the ice at the far end of the lake. There were maybe 50 there at first, then 60 or 70. Then I dont know how many. Then the inflow ceased.  
     And then . . . exactly when I couldnt say . . . but breaking in from the east, heading into the dipping sun, a huge honking host was storming back to the lake. All the different formations mustve formed up somewhere and decided it was time to reclaim their place. It was a great and beautiful show of force. And it was strikingly joined by another powerful force. For as the geese were flying in, the tracks that ran along the length of the lake near the opposite shore were shaken by a freight train also storming in from the east, sounding its stupendous horn as it approached the crossing ahead. And soon, by heck, that westbound train and those westbound geese were damn near side-by-side, runnin neck & neck.
    In this tumultuous convergence, it was a tossup between not only who was streaking faster but who was honking louder: the train or the geese. What a blast! I rose from my long stiff-kneed squat as hundreds of geese passed over the rumbling train and circled directly over me, squawking madly, some only a few feet over my head. They were really taking a gander at me with their large dark eyes and fluttering fannies. I had wanted to see them and now I was seeing them—and in a way that was stranger and more glorious and mixed up with mystery than anything I couldve imagined.
      There I stood staring skyward with hands meekly in pants pockets under a fury of beating wings with the train roaring in my ears. Wrapped up in some kind of wild rapture, all my defenses came down as they aggressively hovered over me. Seeing my dumbstruck face, they decided I was no monster after all, and soon they all quit their hollering and peeled off and let me be.
By now the train was gone and the sun was down, and most of the flock had settled away from me on the iced-over portion of the lake. I guess I hadnt entirely won their trust yet. There mightve been a couple thousand geese huddled there on the ice, maybe more. It was hard to gauge, just like before. I didnt know if they’d all come back but I wanted whoever was here to stay because it was nearly dark and where else could they find another place nearby anywhere near this nice to spend the night?
With only the wind to be heard, all was again in repose here as I had originally found it. So I was careful not to cause any new disturbance as I slipped away from this private pond I’d long been fond. My first movements ruffled a few feathers at the fringes of the flock, but the great flock itself remained calm. Striding well away from them now, walking the long walk toward my distant truck, my toes were stiff with the cold on this dark cinder road. Yet my insides were all warmth & light: gassed & goosed with the giddy feel of flight.
     The feeling was even warmer when I got into my truck and remembered it was Valentine’s Day, which was originally associated with the mating season of birds, going back to the days of ancient Rome. In Chaucer’s Assembly of Fowls he refers to this when he says:

             For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day,
             When ev’ry fowl cometh to choose her make.

And in Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare has:

        Good morrow, friends!   St. Valentine is past;
             Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?      

      I didn’t know how much coupling was going on among these birds, or who was cuddling with whom. But I did know that when those honking geese had hovered hotly overhead, and I was thrust into that trance looking up at their fevered flapping, some penetrating contact with the unknown had taken place. It had whispers of what went on between Leda & the Swan, and I knew it was worth whispering about.

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O My Lovely April

How full of the hint of highest expectation you are,
my darling April.
How fresh from the shower you come to me,
dripping dandelions & daffodils
with tiny purple violets caught in your hair.
You are all promise,
with your pussy willows and your wild onions
and your itchy little tree frogs singing in my swamp—
doubly blessed because you are so barely dressed.

You show no wear or worry yet.
You are the grass before anyone steps on it.
Still holding tight in your bud,
you incite the woodpecker’s jackhammer thud
and get the lovebirds to fling up their bed of moss & mud.
People say you can be too cool.
But you’re never to cool for me, April.
Even when you're flaked with frost or swept with snow,
your face always bears a trace of the fairest grace.

And when the sun’s jaw juts out to warm you
I see how fast you puff up all your flowers
and part all your petals.
You want for love—don’t you, April?
Well, not with me around.
Another poet said, “April is the cruelest month”—
and so you are—because you never linger
near enough long enough
for me, O my lovely April.

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Trillium time is a flash of white time,
morning time before shadow time.
Here under the trees,
before the trees fully unfold their leaves,
they rise in showy snowy stands
in the last fresh days of April's frost & freeze,
before the sweat, the mosquitoes & the fleas—
when the pure ideal is briefly visibly real,
before the bugs & worms come to steal.
Too soon the milky silky petals
suffer shots of dirty spots.
Then the bridal bloom takes on a purple doom
and bows to the flowerless ferns of a darker day.
So my soul tries to hold their glorious array,
tho I too am corrupted, often obstructed –
till trillium time again round the first of May.