Christina Lovin
The Invisible Present
Destruction is more likely to occur…
in the secrecy of the invisible present
John J. Magnuson
We arrive only to begin leaving. Our oaths
to this earth slide into the past like light
from long-dead stars, even as they are spoken
into being. We cannot comprehend
this current moment, for once we see
that it has come to be the moment’s gone
and we are rushed into the future.
So let this young Douglas fir stand here
for hope. Let its three-foot stump, forty years
hence, represent greed; the bark and shattered
limbs scattered around the clear-cut site
remind those to come that wastefulness is sin.
This battered old snag, low to the ground
but still honest in its lovely decay, can stand
for the righteousness of men; for all men,
no matter their hollowed souls,
remain upright in their own eyes.
Consider the roads through the forest
as necessity: the damage they create--
nagging doubt. The child dead from
the slide of rock and mud can embody
good intentions—undeniable, immeasurable.
Felled logs along the forest floor will be
our recompense and resurrection: they flourish
even in their deaths. Mosses and lichen
are small cities of industry, forging chains
to haul the green world back from the brink.
May this current hour show itself
until its fleeting fire goes out; the future
hold what we had hoped for the present;
the past again be filled with forests.
Let the invisible present be illuminated
by the strong light of truth held up
by those who seek the answer to the one
question of the woodland owl: Who? Who?
Dirt
A clean word: dirt. In the end, cover me
with earth, or let me loose as ash into the air,
returning to the soil as debris, useful
once more, as all things are when returned
to elements: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen.
Plumb my body, if you must, lay me out
against the ridge if there be any hope in it
for man. Use me, maker of the forest.
Use me as beauty, as necessity, as soil
beneath the Douglas Fir, the ancient yew,
the hemlock and spruce. Prepare me at last
for my resurrection high in the canopy
two hundred feet above this holy ground:
washed clean, my arms fully open to the sun.
East Blue
I am afraid, I admit. There are reports of mountain lions
in these woods. I am mortal, like the deer and the squirrel,
but I come prepared: large stick in my hand, a knife
from the kitchen in my pocket. A quick study, I stop
and turn as I have read, to act as prey would: wary
and watchful. But this quiet dell is softly green
as any open meadow: a blanket of moss covering
everything, living and lost. Soon I am at peace here
like the sodden forms reclining in this gloomy glade.
Around me the apparatus of measurement (researcher’s
trash, I’m told) is evident on the veiled mounds
of sawn logs: white pipes, blue flags, screens, and gauges.
Recent scrapings show bare tree flesh where scientists
have peeled off layers of the dead bark to calculate,
investigate, and adjudicate the aggregate decay. How long
does it take five-hundred-year-old wood to return to dirt?
And what is it about this place of natural decomposition
that brings to mind what lies beneath the ground?
My mother dead nearly ten years now, her mother
more than sixty, grandfather one hundred years gone this spring:
should I not take comfort in their usefulness since death?
We like to measure life in years like growth rings
on a tree: my daughters, thirty-six and thirty-eight,
grown and married, their children twenty, seventeen,
twelve and nine, soon. (Where has the time gone? Why am I old?)
Is the lasting value of one’s life actually death: how
we return to soil, even housed and sealed? We do return,
certain as the sun rises and sets. Dust to dust, just
as these geriatric giants do. Slowly, slowly. Listen.
The forest’s music is sweet: a balance of life and afterlife:
the slow insinuation of moisture and sigh of nitrogen,
the jaws of the beetle working, their frass dropping to the sod.
Listen. Your body is already falling away. As you arrive,
you are beginning to leave, cell by cell. Be joyful, then,
my friend. For at your end, your body’s final uses
are no more, no less, than those of these boles reclining
supine and prone across the forest floor: food, shelter,
fertilizer, and nurturing soil. For all I’ve been in life,
to all to whom I’ve been anything, I say: I will turn
my back to the forest without dread. Let the lion come.
May the deer and vole and squirrel find safety today.
I sheath the jagged fear. I lay my walking stick aside
to decompose. If you believe in resurrection, believe
in this salient truth, as well: our bodies have uses
to this earth, more than to any heaven you can imagine,
none more lovely than the many rooms of this jade mansion.
If I never rise, better to remember me here: earthbound
in my demise, a mound beneath some shroud
of moss, as much a part of earth.
A native midwesterner, Christina Lovin was born in Galesburg, Illinois, the hometown of Swedish poet Carl Sandburg, but has lived and worked in states as varied as Indiana, Ohio, Maine, and North Carolina. She now makes her home in Central Kentucky, where she lives with three rescue dogs in a town reminiscent of Mayberry RFD. After having several careers, including minister’s wife, retail shop owner, and VISTA volunteer, she received an MFA in Creative Writing from New England College in 2004. She began teaching college-level writing courses that fall, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the English & Theatre Department at Eastern Kentucky University. Lovin’s writing has appeared in over one hundred different literary journals (most recently New Millennium, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Contrapasso) and anthologies (Ghost Fishing, The Doll Collection, and Intimacy: An Anthology), as well as five volumes of poetry (Echo, A Stirring in the Dark, Flesh, Little Fires, and What We Burned for Warmth). She is the recipient of numerous poetry awards, writing residencies, fellowships, and grants, most notably the Al Smith Fellowship from Kentucky Arts Council, Kentucky Foundation for Women, and Elizabeth George Foundation Grant.
The Invisible Present
Destruction is more likely to occur…
in the secrecy of the invisible present
John J. Magnuson
We arrive only to begin leaving. Our oaths
to this earth slide into the past like light
from long-dead stars, even as they are spoken
into being. We cannot comprehend
this current moment, for once we see
that it has come to be the moment’s gone
and we are rushed into the future.
So let this young Douglas fir stand here
for hope. Let its three-foot stump, forty years
hence, represent greed; the bark and shattered
limbs scattered around the clear-cut site
remind those to come that wastefulness is sin.
This battered old snag, low to the ground
but still honest in its lovely decay, can stand
for the righteousness of men; for all men,
no matter their hollowed souls,
remain upright in their own eyes.
Consider the roads through the forest
as necessity: the damage they create--
nagging doubt. The child dead from
the slide of rock and mud can embody
good intentions—undeniable, immeasurable.
Felled logs along the forest floor will be
our recompense and resurrection: they flourish
even in their deaths. Mosses and lichen
are small cities of industry, forging chains
to haul the green world back from the brink.
May this current hour show itself
until its fleeting fire goes out; the future
hold what we had hoped for the present;
the past again be filled with forests.
Let the invisible present be illuminated
by the strong light of truth held up
by those who seek the answer to the one
question of the woodland owl: Who? Who?
Dirt
A clean word: dirt. In the end, cover me
with earth, or let me loose as ash into the air,
returning to the soil as debris, useful
once more, as all things are when returned
to elements: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen.
Plumb my body, if you must, lay me out
against the ridge if there be any hope in it
for man. Use me, maker of the forest.
Use me as beauty, as necessity, as soil
beneath the Douglas Fir, the ancient yew,
the hemlock and spruce. Prepare me at last
for my resurrection high in the canopy
two hundred feet above this holy ground:
washed clean, my arms fully open to the sun.
East Blue
I am afraid, I admit. There are reports of mountain lions
in these woods. I am mortal, like the deer and the squirrel,
but I come prepared: large stick in my hand, a knife
from the kitchen in my pocket. A quick study, I stop
and turn as I have read, to act as prey would: wary
and watchful. But this quiet dell is softly green
as any open meadow: a blanket of moss covering
everything, living and lost. Soon I am at peace here
like the sodden forms reclining in this gloomy glade.
Around me the apparatus of measurement (researcher’s
trash, I’m told) is evident on the veiled mounds
of sawn logs: white pipes, blue flags, screens, and gauges.
Recent scrapings show bare tree flesh where scientists
have peeled off layers of the dead bark to calculate,
investigate, and adjudicate the aggregate decay. How long
does it take five-hundred-year-old wood to return to dirt?
And what is it about this place of natural decomposition
that brings to mind what lies beneath the ground?
My mother dead nearly ten years now, her mother
more than sixty, grandfather one hundred years gone this spring:
should I not take comfort in their usefulness since death?
We like to measure life in years like growth rings
on a tree: my daughters, thirty-six and thirty-eight,
grown and married, their children twenty, seventeen,
twelve and nine, soon. (Where has the time gone? Why am I old?)
Is the lasting value of one’s life actually death: how
we return to soil, even housed and sealed? We do return,
certain as the sun rises and sets. Dust to dust, just
as these geriatric giants do. Slowly, slowly. Listen.
The forest’s music is sweet: a balance of life and afterlife:
the slow insinuation of moisture and sigh of nitrogen,
the jaws of the beetle working, their frass dropping to the sod.
Listen. Your body is already falling away. As you arrive,
you are beginning to leave, cell by cell. Be joyful, then,
my friend. For at your end, your body’s final uses
are no more, no less, than those of these boles reclining
supine and prone across the forest floor: food, shelter,
fertilizer, and nurturing soil. For all I’ve been in life,
to all to whom I’ve been anything, I say: I will turn
my back to the forest without dread. Let the lion come.
May the deer and vole and squirrel find safety today.
I sheath the jagged fear. I lay my walking stick aside
to decompose. If you believe in resurrection, believe
in this salient truth, as well: our bodies have uses
to this earth, more than to any heaven you can imagine,
none more lovely than the many rooms of this jade mansion.
If I never rise, better to remember me here: earthbound
in my demise, a mound beneath some shroud
of moss, as much a part of earth.
A native midwesterner, Christina Lovin was born in Galesburg, Illinois, the hometown of Swedish poet Carl Sandburg, but has lived and worked in states as varied as Indiana, Ohio, Maine, and North Carolina. She now makes her home in Central Kentucky, where she lives with three rescue dogs in a town reminiscent of Mayberry RFD. After having several careers, including minister’s wife, retail shop owner, and VISTA volunteer, she received an MFA in Creative Writing from New England College in 2004. She began teaching college-level writing courses that fall, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the English & Theatre Department at Eastern Kentucky University. Lovin’s writing has appeared in over one hundred different literary journals (most recently New Millennium, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Contrapasso) and anthologies (Ghost Fishing, The Doll Collection, and Intimacy: An Anthology), as well as five volumes of poetry (Echo, A Stirring in the Dark, Flesh, Little Fires, and What We Burned for Warmth). She is the recipient of numerous poetry awards, writing residencies, fellowships, and grants, most notably the Al Smith Fellowship from Kentucky Arts Council, Kentucky Foundation for Women, and Elizabeth George Foundation Grant.