May week 3: shadowy gardening

 Paisley Rekdal, “Happiness”

I have been taught never to brag but now
I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
from the stubborn earth: does it offend you
to watch me working in it,
touching my hands to the greening tips or
tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild
the living and the dead both
snap off in my hands?
The neighbor with his stuttering
fingers, the neighbor with his broken
love: each comes up my drive
to receive his pitying,
accustomed consolations, watches me
work in silence awhile, rises in anger,
walks back. Does it offend them to watch me
not mourning with them but working
fitfully, fruitlessly, working
the way the bees work, which is to say
by instinct alone, which looks like pleasure?
I can stand for hours among the sweet
narcissus, silent as a point of bone.
I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer
than your grief. It is such a small thing
to be proud of, a garden. Today
there were scrub jays, quail,
a woodpecker knocking at the white-
and-black shapes of trees, and someone’s lost rabbit
scratching under the barberry: is it
indiscriminate? Should it shrink back, wither,
and expurgate? Should I, too, not be loved?
It is only a little time, a little space.
Why not watch the grasses take up their colors in a rush
like a stream of kerosene being lit?
If I could not have made this garden beautiful
I wouldn’t understand your suffering,
nor care for each the same, inflamed way.
I would have to stay only like the bees,
beyond consciousness, beyond
self-reproach, fingers dug down hard
into stone, and growing nothing.
There is no end to ego,
with its museum of disappointments.
I want to take my neighbors into the garden
and show them: Here is consolation.
Here is your pity. Look how much seed it drops
around the sparrows as they fight.
It lives alongside their misery.
It glows each evening with a violent light.\

Paisley Rekdal, “Happiness” from Animal Eye, by Paisley Rekdal, ©2012. Reprinted by permission of The University of Pittsburgh Press.
 
 
A.R. Ammons, “The City Limits”
 When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider
 
that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest
 
swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue 
 
bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider
 
that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the
 
leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

“The City Limits” copyright ©1972 by A.R. Ammons, from The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons, Volume 1 1955-1977, edited by Robert M. West. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


POETIC THEMES
            I’d like to use this week’s entry to mark the seasonal shift from springtime flowering into something mulchier. What new habits, projects, connections, and modes of being have we been growing, and what is ready to return to the earth?
            “City Limits” shines an unflinching light on the darker side of nature, shifting the way we see the exploding blossoms on May bushes. A sharp, intense, transcendentalist-style “radiance” is the subject of every other stanza. The light is doing the action here. Radiance “does not withhold itself,” but rather “pours its abundance without selection into every / nook and cranny.” This flashlight of attention shines on bird bones, guts of a slaughter, and coils of shit. Ammons is challenging us to see our mortal coils, employing a laser beam that “will look into the guiltiest / swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself against them, / not flinching into disguise or darkening.”
In our attempts to grow something new, maybe there are also old habits, outdated modes of being or behaving, that are dying. Ammons offers that we open to shining a light on these inner demons. Our capacity is limited; we can accept into ourselves only “as much light as [we] will take.” But if we can build the resilience to shine a light on our darker side, the poem assures us that the “heart moves roomier.” The promise goes something like this: when we let the light in to reveal and maybe aerate our guilty heart-swervings, they are returned to their rightful place in the category of the transcendent. The final stanza—wherein the “leaf does not increase itself above the grass”—alludes to the pun of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” (leaves as pages of writing, and also the blades of grass they describe). The man perceives self-referentially the limits of the written word to capture the beauty it describes. We feel “in the deepest cells” of our body, rather than the leaves of our poems, the processes of deterioration happening secretly within the May bushes. Our body is one with it all, everything in Ammons’ Whitmanian list: “air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen.”
            I’d like to add daffodils to this list, as an early spring blossom that's already prepping to mulch in May. Paisley Rekdal’s mention of the narcissus seems to give a visual for the dying yellow stalks and the newly living green tips snapping off in her hands. It’s no accident that this lover of Ovid uses the term “narcissus,” a myth illustrating that “There is no end to ego, / with its museum of disappointments.” What is the lesson of the daffodil according to the teachings of biomimicry? I’m no gardener. Both my thumbs are black. From my friends’ reports, although cutting back the stems and leaves of daffodils after the flowers are spent makes the garden tidier, they shouldn’t be cut back until late in the spring when they have turned yellow. This is because the leaves continue to photosynthesize, producing energy that will be stored in the bulb for the following year. The life cycle of daffodils creates some unsightly dead stuff around this time, which gardeners strategize to hide. This mash-up of light and dark, life and death, echoes Ammons’ unflinching acceptance of the whole of nature. And the title “Happiness” must be partly ironic, for a poem that progresses from the image of a gardener wildly ripping out the living and the dead, to the offended, angry neighbors stalking away, to the seeds dropped around battling sparrows. This gardener shows open disdain for the dudes coming around to seek her pity, one “with his stuttering fingers” and another “with his broken love.” 
This naked (and not-so-tacitly gendered) view gives way to more savage accuracy in the lines to follow. Gardening might look like pleasure, but in this poem it’s fitful work, executed “by instinct alone.” The speaker chooses to work instead of giving her neighbors their “accustomed consolations.” She makes a case for the right to “only a little time, a little space.” Against the expectation that vitality should “shrink back, wither, / and expurgate,” she sets a modest plea: “It is such a small thing / to be proud of, a garden.” Even if there is pride, there doesn’t seem to be much peace for this gardener. Hers is a burning, dark intensity of view, where the grasses turn color like “a stream of kerosene being lit.” Still, she distinguishes between the unconscious working of bees and the compassion for others made possible by gardening. It’s not, the poem seems to say, that we can’t empathize, it’s that we can’t do it incessantly! We need time and space to regenerate, like the daffodils. The consolation to be found in the garden is the simple fact of life’s dogged continuance alongside human misery. The poem’s ending somehow rhymes with Ammons’ image of bird bones lying “low in the light as in a high testimony”: in the final line, the garden becomes something eerie and a little sinister: “It glows each evening with a violent light.” If this is happiness, it’s got teeth.
            Maybe the point here is that we not be too aggressive in our pruning. It’s akin to all the familiar analogies we’ve heard before: a snake doesn’t just rip off its skin on a whim, and butterflies need to strengthen their wings before they can come free of their cocoon. Our foibles and learned habits and little stucknesses can be fodder for new growth. The daffodil lesson: don’t sweep away your ugly dead leaves; they need to be broken down, taken apart, their life energy extracted, to pass on to the next generation.
 ​

PRACTICE
            Here’s one way to embody mulchification: reclining supine, rapidly flex and point the feet so that the back body scrubs up and down. Let your parts jiggle—that’s part of it. You’ll tap in to the root system of the feet, ankles, calves, and the musculature surrounding the shins. Imagine the sticky, garbagy habits and mishaps and blunders sifting down and mixing up with your magic and beauty. Generative moments of cluelessness are fodder for new stuff. Let them lie fallow for a bit before rising to greet whatever is rising to greet you today. Or, if it’s bedtime, try meeting each thought of regret or shame with an act of turning your body in the bed, as though mixing the mulch pile of your psyche.