“Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice…”

[This is the fifth part of a yearlong poem about moving from the city to the country. Inspired by ancient and medieval calendar poems, it appears here as I write it, in monthly installments. First read the prologue and then September, October, and November. To read later entries in this series after they’re posted, click the “Beallsville Calendar” subject tag.]

THE BEALLSVILLE CALENDAR

DECEMBER

The dark extends a dreadful wait.
A bristling veil divides the heavens
From the baffled and weary who warble songs
About purpose and fate; so the fourth month looms.
Nursed by drizzle and dreary wind,
The dimmest stars stir and waken
The God of the Cave. He gropes in the murk
To draw around him a ragged pelt
Threaded together with grim sinews
As he heaves himself up on his hindmost legs.
His naked snout sniffs the treetops,
And when he senses something wanting
He ambles out to the open sky,
Where his grisly claw clutches and raises
A torch, to hallow a turn in the world,
To comfort and guide his golden heirs.
In the gloom beside him, the glimmer quickens
A tender form. With its first exertion,
A vital shrug, it sheds a caul
Of sizzling pips, silver and orange,
That blanch and harden when they hit the air,
Reeling and clacking with erratic ticks
As we face straight up on a foggy morning
With empty vessels in our open hands
And softly cheer when chance ordains
That they plink in our dish. Promises ripen
From simple patterns. Put them away;
We save them to scatter if summer returns.

But love, maybe I remember it wrong.
On a dish by the window, you dried the seeds
From a blue pumpkin—no blessed spark,
Just the graying excess of an aching vine
That shaded the gate of a grinning witch—
Or no, not a witch, just a woman who smiled
Though we valued no shred of her village of junk.
And wasn’t it warm? I walked—no, I drove
To a dank, nettled plot to undo my old work.
I ripped out poles. I pulled down fences.
Scrap-wood trellises scraped up my forehead.
I wandered through twilight to the walled garden;
I paced the flagstones, and feeling bold
I twisted the fruit from a defiant branch,
A squishy medlar, and mumbled a prayer
For the barest inkling of an ancient rhyme.
I wrote it here. But how did it go?
“Now pray we bless the bletted mess—”
“Of course they rot, then ripen at last—”
I strained to remember my medlar song.

“Come sit by my side,” you sang that night,
“And let the world slip.” Your sly foreboding
Had noble ends: “we shall never be younger.”
You knew some months leave us no other choice
But to settle for stories by somebody else,
So I argued the grace of a grubby old man
With lice-riddled wings and waterlogged eyes
Who rose from his coop “with the risky flapping
Of a senile vulture.” I sighed, envious.
Then a flash caught my eye on the edge of our grove,
A whirl in the woods like a wobbly hubcap,
A circle of bears with blazing torches
Stacking up cordwood and kindling bonfires
On the grassy edge of the interstate ramp—
I turned the pages. We talked for a while.
You banked the ashes for better times.
There was, you assured me, one real herald:
A rusty mantis emerged from a hole
And fiddled away at the foot of the door.
He would not speak. I expected couplets.
You sized up his sense with a scientist’s poise:
“He drinks in the light of a dwindling month.
See how he stands up straight on the brick?
He comes to witness the calendar turn,
Not to grieve over words in a work without end.”

When the fourth month turns, the townsmen defy
The sprawling dread; they dare to unravel
Their own constellations. Along the road
Between the ferryman’s slip and fallow ditches,
They reach in the air with easy grace
To twist new sparks into twinkling sockets
And straighten the fraying strands anew.
These stopgap stars tell a story they love,
A claim that the heavens roll closer to earth,
A promise pulled nearer in perfect lines.
Then two lost donkeys return to their barn.
The wind blows homeward a wayward goat.
The weaver, the potter, the painter, the wrencher
Of limestone and iron all open their gates.
On hillside porches, hungry mothers
Hurry to root through a harvest of packets
And precious cans. The country mud
Is giddy with sunshine, golden and white,
And hunters nod. Nothing is dying.
Like flies that emerge in confused expectation,
They shed their jackets and shake their heads.
The winter is weirdly warm, a cockroach
In a taped-up box, biding its time.
For now, be here. When the night dispenses
Its spattering rain, risk disappointment;
Run straight downstairs and stand alone
On the open deck, dry and blinding,
As dunes once harbored derelict monks.
Though the morning office is hours away,
The sun surrounds you; it rises wide
From all directions, reeling out shadows
That arc from the tree line to tremble and bow
Toward the fleeting sight at the centermost point
Of an infinite wheel. The waiting ends:
Like the long, low rumble of reluctant strangers
Exhorted to pray in a packed cathedral
Who stir in chaos but stand as one,
A field of living fire heaves skyward,
And all the words you ever needed
Inflame the air with urgent news.