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The Transformation of Gaia’s Daughters

For Ann & LaDonna

Two chrysalises formed
separately, identically.
The prairie’s tall grasses
still grow between
everything we’ve ever known
and everything we’ll ever know.
Time has stood still for nearly two years,
and maybe our lives have been placed
in Aion’s ancient hands.
They’d formed those pupal shells
from two-seater pumpkins
borrowed from Thoreau’s own quill,
from the canvas tops of
their ancestral covered wagons,
from velvet cushions
left at their homes
for my uncle’s comfort,
and from red-lettered Bibles,
Jesus still reciting the instructions.
Outside, a chorus of children,
throngs of former students,
sing the songs they learned
when the two had been caterpillars
eating holes in the leaves,
dreaming of new plants
and of wings.
The students still wear the costumes
of philosophers and founders;
they are clutching small stones,
gold-paint chipping
from their rough forms.
The deafening joy fills the air,
heavy with heat.
Sunshine pools in one chrysalis,
vacant now in the stillness.
It glows like a stained glass lantern.
Inside the other, wings still form,
mimicking the shining pattern
projected on translucent walls.
They might have been
the Grimké sisters,
struggling toward a better world,
or they might have been
the mothers of us all,
here at the very creation,
the big bang jointly reared
in their care, set free to stretch
its infinite wings,
tempered by their brother, time.
The trees recall the cosmic story,
reveal the events in
ancient languages drawn on leaves.
It is also etched into insect wings,
in specific dialects of jellyfish,
and in the network of veins
spidering through our bodies.

27 February 2020

Notes

Brian Fuchs, “The Transformation of Gaia’s Daughters” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

Also appeared in Social Distances (Scissortail Press, 2020)Continue Reading

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Campsis radicans

That house still haunts me;
the absences I feel are extreme.
Brad has kept the trumpet vines,
electric and intense like himself.
He pulled the irises that were once
lining the paths and taking breath
away from visitors as they passed.
The enormous black-purple blooms,
now towering only in our memory.
He inherited too much and not enough,
spending time and money adjusting,
spreading out and stamping his energy
onto the places that had been our center.
He’s added alcohol to the room where
my grandma’s last moments began,
highlighting the permanence of it all.
Where there was once an annual
display of daisies and cleomes,
a chainlink box sits, overgrown with
those intense trumpet vines.
The garden is all wild and unkempt,
like he’s trying to preserve something
that cannot be contained or suppressed.
Life spills out from our dark spots.
The house was full of undue pressures,
now settled into a gritty beauty.
The roots will continue to grow,
the trumpet vines will spread,
and one day my nephew’s children
will wipe tears from their eyes when
they visit a house that meant so much.
And they’ll talk about the intensity
and how much they’d give to have it back.

Notes

Written 20 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Campsis radicans” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Stillwater, Oklahoma

4. PROMISES

I’ve seen life’s simplicity and it made me smile.
I’ve watched the horses in their fields on the town’s edge,
visited cattle lounging in shade in July.
I’ve waved at the farmers on their tractors, thanked them.
I’ve laughed at the new goats frolicking and climbing.

I’ve seen your fuchsia redbuds in bloom, buds bursting.
I’ve seen joyful petals pushing out of branches,
the promise of Spring and potential of April.
I’ve chased butterflies, paused to follow scissortails,
I’ve danced with grackles with their long velvet feathers.

I’ve felt the sun on my back, warm and oppressive.
I’ve wondered in late Summer if the heat would leave,
felt the scorched grass and falling leaves of September.
I’ve found joy in the heat, remembering Autumn.
I’ve daydreamed about the promise and chill it brings.

Notes

Written 19 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Stillwater, Oklahoma

3. THROWING SPHERES: A MIRRORED CLOGYRNACH

My boyhood never depended
on throwing spheres like all men did.
I so often mused
if I had confused
dead with bruised
God forbid

Days in parks,
I’d explore
searching woodland floors
for seed pods and more.
Imagined tree friends, their rough bark
I’d so much missed since our last lark.

“that scattered belt of forest land, about forty miles in width, which stretches across the country from north to south, from the Arkansas to the Red River, separating the upper from the lower prairies, and commonly called the “Cross Timber.” — Washington Irving

Notes

Written 19 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Stillwater, Oklahoma

2. THE WEATHER

I have stood under skies full of rain.
I have been a scared child, comforted
by the clouds which might burst into storms,
and by hail, the chaos of thunder.
I have seen the bright sun in the sky,
oddly close, maybe more than before,
close enough to reach up, touch its rays
if not for exhaustion from the heat.
Everything start to wilt on those days,
our spirits, slumped lilies still standing,
thinking back on Easter’s soft beauty.

Notes

Written 19 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Stillwater, Oklahoma

1. HEARTBEAT

“a vast and magnificent landscape. The prairies bordering on the rivers are always varied in this way with woodland, so beautifully interspersed as to appear to have been laid out by the hand of taste… to rival the most ornamented scenery of Europe.” — Washington Irving

I’ve felt your beating heart;
thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
Old folks still make weekly
pilgrimages to pray,
to seek God and solace.
Many hours of my youth
I spent rubbing the hands
of my grandma, wrinkled
and loose-skinned like mine now,
while the congregation
sang hymns from “the blue book,”
while old family friends
talked about love, dryly
reciting the red words.
Three times or more a week,
we’d gather to worship.
Thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
I have felt the comfort
of belonging there, fell
for empty dogma long
before my welcome stopped.

Notes

Written 19 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Echoes of Deer

The presence of deer fills space, their auras clinging to trees.
I walk where hooves must’ve been, down creek beds bursting with roots.
Ghosts haunt and whisper, rustle leaves; they watch us until we leave.

Written 16 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Echoes of Deer” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

Notes