Asters Like Lace

asters like lace tatted across my yard

lavender & white, pinheads of the not yet bloomed

raining, not raining, this cool gray day

loiters, late summer, not quite fall

I sit wrapped in an L L Bean wool blanket

not ready to latch the storms, light the boiler, admit

that summer’s winding down, winter’s drawing close

fifty to forty to frost, how what greens

flowers, seeds, so swiftly blackens

I rub stalks to scatter seed — mullein, bladderwort

hollyhock — may they settle deep, take hold

burst forth in next year’s cavalcade

No Shortcuts

Vermont's Rte 116 is washed out

detoured around, half blocked with barriers

bearing signs that say “road closed

local traffic only” — still, drivers who must

see for themselves [disbelieving louts]

speed past my pedal bike along a road

I never rode before this latest change

I study farms I’ve driven by — brand new

metal sheds, large machines, baled hay —

now the small marble house is up for sale

goldfinches bounce like grasshoppers

St John’s wort is burnt from green to copper

yellow flutters down from changing trees

great blue heron scouts the muddied fen

a local owner complains of “all the gas

she's wasted” to get to where she needs to

yet today, a sunny September Saturday

she too rides her bike, “it’s so much safer

“without all those pickups” — how many

drivers slowed to admire Dow Pond

before this season’s hundred-year rains?

how many knew the Muddy Branch ran

down the mountain into the pond through

a culvert under the 50-mile-per-hour road?

FEMA-funded town planners prophesy

thousand-year rains, but why repair? can’t

ours be the first state to see we’ve driven

so much farther than anyone should go?

The Stuck Window

propped open with a twelve-inch-long board

resists my attempts to raise it higher

in order to free the board

so I tap the bottom of the window with a rubber mallet

held in my left hand

the window rises half an inch

far enough for me to shift the board

though because I’m still holding the mallet

I’m not holding up the now unstuck window

so it slams down

onto the toppling board & onto my right hand

the flat side of the board & my right hand

lie wedged

between the bottom of the window & the windowsill

I drop the rubber mallet

try to pull away my hand — stuck

try to raise the window — stuck

I think about my phone

where I set it on the bed after checking the weather

rain, it said, from the north, it said

a good reason to close the north-facing window

now closed, or nearly so

again I try to raise the window

again I try to pull away my hand

I think about foxes & wolves

their paws stuck in man-made traps

how they chew off their paws

so I pull & pull, feel skin tear, pull

until my hand comes free

indented, numb

cold running water slows the bleeding

my hand throbs

my stiff fingers barely wiggle

I dry my hand, apply a bandage

I think for a long time about what it means to live alone