In the year of my birth, a mammal preserved in amber was identified by scientists for the first time. When they spoke of its age, the scientists broadly estimated 18 million to 29 million years—referring, of course, to the age of the fossil itself. What I’m curious about is how long the tiny mammal lived, how much time was cut short when it fell indelibly into the resin. There’s simply no way to know. I know that in hindsight its lifespan seems ludicrously insignificant. An eon spent in amber turns the time before preservation into something like prehistory, like a half-life, or less.
The day before school started Gina told us about her brother taking two buses to seventh grade. His balled-up angry fists got expelled last year right before the first graders taped their turkey hand prints against the classroom glass. The principal told her mother that there wasn’t room in his small brick building for anger that large. He probably looked down at his shoes when he said it. He told Gina’s mother that her son hurled chairs onto desks, pounded fists through closed doors. That her son needed a school with bars on the window. Gina’s mother studied the route that would take him twelve blocks and a climb up a steep hill. The second bus would drop him across from a gas station and a dirty park. …
Back then, the seller told me that it’s made of a buffalo’s horn, (didn’t I know then that it wasn’t a cool idea?) and would last a hundred years or more (though I didn’t get the connection). Its base came off in five months, and I had to fix it on a block of wood. The two carved birds, with intricate details, eyelids and all, could have elevated it to a pure work of art but for their perch, a stunted tree branch that looks like a cross between an uninspiring schistose structure and concrete. I still like to look at the birds when I wake up, to reflect on their gaze upwards, as if they’re looking eternally at a taller tree branch, or for some rain that falls slanted in the dry wind to rekindle a horn that’s not dead yet in their core, breathing a glow to those eyes
Author’s Note: My poems are inspired by the sensory and emotional experiences of individuals who negotiate the political and ideological spaces they live in.…
Take the plunge Head first into the rich lanolin Twenty gallon bags of many wools, waiting
The three day workshop: A roomful of women and fleece Spinning wheels set, a teacher from New Zealand
To craft woolen and worsted Short draft, long draft, twists to Crimp and staple— The wool cards are plied, combs straightened and The ditz comes to play— Cute as a button in horn, center holed for the finishing top— As fiber is spun on hypnotic wheels Mingled talk and laughter
We plunge, hands first into the skeins of warm water Pull out strands of wet yarn Into the outdoors, draped O’s on the bushes A calligraphy of branch to weave
I flee city, virus, loss, spin, re-compass, choose west. Forest, stream, sinuous, deep, I camp, rig rod, fish. Cast Gray Ghosts
to the far side, expect no strike. I begin to breathe, hope hope revives. Presume zip, nada, zilch, live frugally, on surprise.
I daydream I die, come back not old, not spent, eager to learn to fish again. The sun weighs down, light dives maroon from gold. Dusk swallows tamarack,
aspen, cedar, pine. Riffles gone to eddies swirl to black. I trace path back to tent, the remains of fire, accept dark coals, revel in the ebb.
