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The Rain

I’m still waiting outside for rain,
hoping for sudden downpours from cloudless skies.
I’m wondering if she’ll join me when the first drops
start to fall and the birds fall silent.
She’s been delayed, I’ve told myself again,
or the rain hasn’t been enough.
It has never been enough
I’ve summoned more and more rain,
for over a year I’ve coaxed it from the air,
the ground sometimes swelling, saturated and marshy.

Brush Creek has filled to overflowing,
washing out parts of the road and clearing out
the debris of our distractions.
It has not been enough.
The Cimarron & Arkansas Rivers have been flooded,
swallowing homes and memories,
lives lost and inconvenienced.
Still she has not arrived.
I continue my incantations, calling for more clouds,
more rain — great hurricanes that try to find me,
creeping along the coasts, tied to the oceans.
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, The Bahamas, Puerto Rico,
they may all need to be sacrificed in my efforts,
and it will be worth the loss because I will
no longer feel like I am alone.
I am listening for those first signs, the drips on the tin roof
and I am ready to throw open the windows,
clench my fists, and try to push my dreams into reality.
I know she will join me if I keep trying,
and we will sit together on the covered porch,
resuming what should still be.

Notes

Written 5 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “The Rain” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading

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Cercis canadensis

for Dad

When we had tried
putting ourselves together again
we’d used the wrong parts,
made effigies of ourselves
with the piles of distorted junk,
left behind scraps of a once-full life.
We went through the motions of people
spoke like them, practicing their accents,
but did not understand our own words.
We got the phrases wrong,
the tones, the memories.
Periodically, we’d erupt into full color
flowers growing from every part
and our days seemed alive with joy.
But we would catch ourselves lost in time,
eyes fixed on a long-abandoned walker,
a long-absent bed,
a long-neglected garden,
at the things we find so important now
and the flowers would fall from our bodies.
I gave up on trying to find the parts
of myself I missed most,
stopped looking for who I had been before. I’ve been more comfortable with discomfort,
waiting for others to finally leave the safety
of their beds, the safety of their tears.
And we’ve started to share ourselves again,
imagining Spring, redbuds flushed fuchsia,
grief removed from our shoulders,
sadness washed from our faces
by the showers of April and storms of May.
We will remember how to be happy
and how to be sad and how to be,
and we’ll see the long-forgotten remnants
and we will understand who we are.

Notes

Written 19 April 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma. Rewritten 5 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Cercis canadensis” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading

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Welcome To My Oklahoma Family

I was looking for something fun to blog about in 2019 and I thought getting into my family’s history might be interesting. I’ve always been interested in the stories that make up our family, and I am particularly interested in the real lives of the folks without a strong an obvious record. I want to know the things I can never know. What sorts of things did my 4th great grandma think about? Was my 6th great uncle happy? What were the sounds and smells of the house of the young families? It’s unfortunate that legal documents form the understanding of the vast majority of our families. I long for journals or diaries, and maybe more of those will be discovered. Until then, I have only the facts and I will try to present as much as I can to try and help understand the various branches of my family.

I’ve been careful to avoid the words ancestry and genealogy until now, but after this explanation, I will use them. I consider myself a family historian and not a genealogist. I find DNA an interesting part of studying one’s own story, but it isn’t the complete story. Who I share genetics with in a lot of cases have less to do with who I am and who my family has been than close friends and communities, or even pets. There are more ways of facing what a family is than simply tracing one’s ancestry. And I’m also not saying that isn’t valid. If you are only interested in that, go for it. Do your thing. I am not trying to prove a pedigree or show how I am related to anyone in particular, so I’m going to look at the whole. I will definitely look at ancestry and trace my family lines, but I just won’t stop there or be defined by what that is.Continue Reading

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Duncan, Oklahoma

His fingers skip over piano keys,
his eyes close to take in the moment
or to imagine me more handsome.
He takes me to a dark restaurant
and I preoccupy my mind with
the notion that he is trying to hide me,
ashamed that he has made such an error.
I cannot enjoy the food or the conversation,
worried about returning to his house,
which he keeps too clean.
Why is it so clean?
Does he see me?
Does he know what I’m thinking?
The music he played seemed sad
when I thought about it later,
sitting in a car still scented with newness.
Am I messing this up? What is this?
The car is too clean and I don’t know
where to put my words.
He’s speaking with an accent of anticipation,
using phrases that clarify his disappointment
to me, even though I am not listening.
His eyes were closed as he played the piano.
Was he thinking about how much he wanted me?
Was he thinking about older men? Younger?
I don’t know how to be what he was expecting; I try.
I talk about my youth, my immaturity,
the words exposing the distance between us.
He’s thirty-six years old, twice my age.
We return to the sterile house, the gaps widening.
I stay, unclear why I have come here.
The night is uncomfortably quiet and cold,
I sleep in his house, in a guest room.
I drive three hours back to my own home in the morning,
back to a house that is never clean,
back to a life that isn’t filled with unspoken longing.
For weeks, the emails stop. I was not enough,
I didn’t know how to be enough,
did not understand what enough meant.
I regret being me when I arrived at his house,
convince myself that I have orchestrated a deceit.
He plays his piano at home alone, he closes his eyes
and thinks only about the music.

Notes

Written 1 October 2018 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Duncan, Oklahoma” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Luctus Herbarium

I’m counting the blooms,
tagging and cataloguing each one,
memorializing the specimens in photos.
I’m waiting for patterns,
counting petals and leaves to make sense of the passing months.
Routines form in my distractions, order.
This must be a sign.
On hot days like this, I sit in the heat,
water hose set to mist.
I watch the tiny drops of water float by,
dancing in the shifting breeze
while I clutch the trigger tightly.
I switch the settings,
long streams shoot into the sky,
pattering like hard rain on the metal roof of the porch.
I pulse the trigger,
tight, loose, tight, loose.
I’m wet from the water dripping down my arm,
and by the drifts of mist.
The hot sun dries my clothes,
nozzle retired to the floor of the porch.
Thoreau wanted to live simply and deliberately,
to test himself against nature,
to love it, to record it, tame it or be tamed by it.
I just want to get through the day,
to bury my head in my collection of information.
I can’t index my life in values and harvests;
my gardens are not for sale,
nor are they planted with very useful.
Maybe they should be.
Maybe they should be.
Maybe…
Soon I’m returning to my work,
counting the dead blooms as I prune
and noting which ones wilted first.
So many flowers remain beautiful without petals;
that seems important enough to note, so I do.
I’m still slightly damp,
enough to forget about Mom’s absence,
but she is even more present
in the sorted flora, the journals of growth,
in the fountains of sun-warmed water.

26 August 2018

Written 26 August 2018 in Payne County, Oklahoma.
Brian Fuchs, “Luctus Herbarium” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Crepemyrtle (Lagerstroemia)

When I moved to Alaska in 2005 I was struck by those things that were different from my life in Oklahoma.  After getting through that first winter, it became apparent that it wasn’t just the conifer trees that provided a striking contrast to the landscapes of the places I consider home.  The perennials that popped up in the gardens of the area were exotic to me.  They were plants I had known about, but had no experience with.  Columbine, dahlia, lobelia, rhubarb, bleeding hearts, raspberries, wild roses, poppies.  It was a fascinating experience to be surrounded by these new plants, as well as by the old familiar dandelions and lilacs.

I was in Alaska for a number of years and loved those summer months and the beautiful flowers of the area.  What I didn’t expect was how much I would fall in love with the plants of Oklahoma when I returned for vacation.

I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on 5 August 1979 and I lived in the state until 2005 when I left for Alaska.  My uncle is a landscape architect, my grandpa was a professor of agronomy and a consultant on soils.  He spent hours daily working on his flowerbeds and vegetable garden on his one acre lot, an oasis of green in the middle of ordinary yards.  Plants were a part of our DNA.  All parts of my family had been farmers, growing broom corn and cotton.  It had never been my world and I barely paid attention to the things growing around me.  I was aware of the various plants in the landscape, but I didn’t know much about those plants.

What I was most struck with on coming back to Oklahoma on a vacation in 2007 was how amazing crepemyrtles are.  They’ve long been a favorite, especially of my grandpa who had them planted heavily around his house and as a backdrop/transition between the trees and flowers in the flowerbeds.  It felt like I was discovering these plants for the first time.

In 2013, I loved back to Oklahoma and these crepemyrtles felt like a focus of my thoughts when I was at my parents house or at a business.  They are one of the most commonly used plants in Oklahoma, and it’s pretty easy to see why.

Crepemyrtles are native to southeast Asia, with some hybrids being crossed with a taller species from Japan.  They have been a common ornamental plant in America since before the revolution, with both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s gardens having at least one specimen plant.  They quickly became a staple in the South, but as they are not generally cold hardy past zone 6 or 7, they were not a part of the gardens of the North and as a result they do not feature in very many of the early seed or nursery catalogs.  When they do start popping up, it is clear that several cultivars have been established from the original pink flowering tree.  You see white, pink, purple, and red listed in those early catalogs.  The purples were what we now refer to as lavender and the red were dark pink.  It took a long time to achieve a true red crepemyrtle.Continue Reading

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Blackjack Oak

Quercus marilandica ashei

Just outside my bedroom window is a rugged Blackjack Oak.  She isn’t fancy or flashy; neither is she demanding.  She takes care of herself and has a pioneering look about her.

When my parents moved to this property in 2006, most of the native trees were cleared from the areas where they would be living, being replaced with more pleasing fruit trees, crapemyrtles, and one Bradford pear.  Along with a few other trees, they did leave one small oak tree.  That tree offered a shaded spot to sit and enjoy the property, while being a fairly compact plant.  It has not stayed that way.

I moved into this place in 2015.  At that time, the once diminutive oak had become a little more of a presence.  The branches had arched and reached the house, occasionally scraping against the siding.  Ultimately it needed to be trimmed a little, but it’s increased size had created even more of a shaded area, some of its lower branches now no longer putting on leaves.  She had started looking a little bit raggedy.  It made me wonder about how long lived blackjack oaks are, worrying that she had only a limited time left and that I would need to think about  what to do when a replacement or removal was needed.

Blackjack oaks are a type of red oak common from New Jersey to Eastern Kansas and as far south as Georgia and Central Texas.  They are small and hardy trees, happily growing is poor soils and dry areas.  They don’t represent the prettiest of trees, consisting of crooked and twisted branches, many of which stop putting on leaves when those above them block the light.  It gives them a distinctive half-dead appearance that my oak now suffers from, but it does not indicate any sort of problem with the tree itself.  It does have a tendency to droop the leafless branches, making it hard to walk under and requiring annual pruning, but it’s a manageable problem.

These trees are slower growing, but longer lived oaks, especially the western subspecies in Northern Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.  These individuals make up a significant percentage of The Cross Timbers, the oak savannah that bisects Oklahoma, separating the heavily wooded East from the arid West.  It’s a forest made up of post oaks, blackjack oaks, and eastern redcedars.  Blackjack oaks can live for more than 200 years, averaging about 80 years.  My fears of needing to replace my tree are unfounded.

No, this isn’t the world’s most beautiful tree.  It’s leaves even feel like they haven’t fully formed, as if they can quite figure out how to evolve into something clear.  The acorns are tiny, barely worth talking about.  The limbs are crooked and bare, at least the lower ones.  They don’t have the lush growth of most of the other trees that surround the house.  However, the tree is home to many birds and those tiny acorns are enjoyed by squirrels and even brazen deer who venture up to the house to graze on them along with the crabapples that grow next to the oak.  And it provides much of my house with shade, having expanded from a shady spot in the center of the yard to a defining feature of the property.

This tree has its issues, but I love her and I’m glad she’s here.