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Rising with the Sap

Monika Cooper

Rising with the Sap

You would not call them blocks, those obscure streets
Where people live. Their driftings trace the hem
Of Manchester. I drove there once at dusk
My windows down, in the sleepy perfume
Of gardens and the insects’ dreamy jaw
And passed a house whose screen porch angled round.
The only lamps yet lit were deeper in.
It seemed a friends’ or family gathering.
A young girl, like a shadow through the screen,
Lifted her chin and tucked her violin.
I never heard the note and so it’s stayed
And lingered with me ever since, like smoke
From homestead stacks or purple lilac haze.
I had the silence of the violin
Before the flourished bow awoke the string.
An art you practice is an art not lost.
Here every season recollects far times
And roads less travelled keep faith with the past.
This Spring, I’ve driven past and watched the smoke
From piled deadwood, smokers, sugar shacks
And felt tradition rising with the sap,
Something that never died alive today.
Look up and read the signs. Our ancient friends
And enemies return. Much farther North,
Scientists watch a pair of mating wolves
That think they keep the sunlit glades alone.
And I myself have caught not one but two
Eagles aloft, at play with altitudes
And circles that don’t touch, while far below,
In full orchestral thunder and white burl,
Negotiating countless crevasses
In massive sides of mammoth granite blocks,
Bate the great waters of the Amoskeag.

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