Sweeping Away the Spiders

At the waterfall, raw ledge

grimaces with pain. Ferns thrive

in the huge geologic wound.

The rock shadow can’t darken

the exuberance of the foam,

but it deepens by dimming the pool.

From the footbridge, we admire

the clash of plane and perspective,

the falls angling past the rock-face,

the stream flowing off somewhere

in a huff of nodding hemlock.

You admire even more the spiders

webbing the lattice of truss

supporting the bridge. Spiders

with their octet of limbs busy

mapping the world to their needs.

Spiders charting the atmosphere

to ensnare the tiny innocents

they drain of fluids and discard.

You see the webs as rococo

décor imposed on vacancy,

while I read them as evil texts

that apply as cruelly as scripture.

Here comes a youngster with broom

to brush the webs away. You’re shocked

that a summer job could involve

wiping the natural slate clean.

Who has ordered this boy to wield

his broom so people like me

don’t feel threatened by spiders

dividing the world among themselves?

You can’t watch the carnage so

we head for the car, leaving

the waterfall pulsing, the ferns

waving, and the spiders crying

as their fey architecture fails.

Pumping Station, Fresh Pond

Behind glass, the tall blue pumps

that manhandle city water

look placid as the Buddhas

in the museum’s Temple Room.

I press my face to the window

as if pining to worship objects

far more useful than I am.

The building’s smug with silence.

The stages of preparation—

intake, filtering, ozone

discharge, sediment removal,

pumping to the hilltop reservoir

in Belmont a mile to the west—

occur in confidence like

espionage or adultery,

leaving only the subtlest clues.

I want to ride the water

from here to there and back again,

surfing through the massive pipes

with high-voltage tingling.

But in the sediment pool the scum

of organic waste conceals

water so thickly aerated

it can’t float the human body,

so anyone falling in would sink

instantly as if falling through air.

The orange life preservers

hooked to the railing are useless.

The plate glass clouds with my breath.

I wish I could at least hear

the hum of the pumps, but maybe

like the singing of the sirens                                                

it would foster that restless passion

that settles on any available

object and roosts there, crowing

over self-effaced success.

At the Grave of Edward MacDowell

With evergreen fistfuls of leaves,

mountain laurel vaults the path.

The gloom flatters me and eases

the approach, diffusing shadows

that otherwise might darken

into doubts about his music,

which hardly anyone performs

although a few recordings persist.

This pine-upholstered avenue

barely a hundred feet long

enters a stone-walled square

arched with a trellis. A boulder

bears a plaque, and the graves

of Marian and Edward lie flat

as graves most often do, gazing

up through layers of infinity.

Such an earthy location: stone,

lichen, pine and laurel, the woods

too dense to easily breach.

But beyond the trees the open

smile of the local country club

welcomes golfers whose cursing

dangle in the humid light

like panicles spilling pollen.

This reminds me that we remember

artists for the inflorescence

of their work, not for the shade

they cast on the people they love

and abuse in the name of art.

The flowers of MacDowell’s career

shudder in the breeze and shed

petals onto these lonely graves.     

I’ve come here for silence, not art.

I can’t play an instrument

and can’t hum any melody

written by Edward MacDowell—

although I have to honor him

for the vaulting of his laurel

and the plain little stone bearing

his first and my middle name.