espiritu mirabilis

Finally, A Real Minnesota Snow!

2009-12-11T22:40:00.000-08:00

I love it when the big snow storms come because just about everything STOPS. The streets grow quiet, the schools close, town meetings are cancelled and rescheduled; it snows and it snows, and the sounds grow muffled and the streets and drives fill up, and people listen to radios wondering what will happen next. They have a few drinks, watch TV, read, play on computers, cook and then sit around with their families and eat.

A daughter may come home from Colorado--perhaps on a broom--the storm following in her wake. Her mother may realize she has given birth to a Goddess.

Upon waking at noon on a day when just about everything will continue to be closed, one hears the muffled groans of snowblowers, the growling of plows, and people are clutching brooms and shovels up and down the blocks, talking, digging together. Everybody comes out to dig; it is a great digging celebration.

And that's when we confront the things that did not yet get done: bicycles that didn't get put away, and slung over them, garden hoses, that now cannot be touched until they thaw. . .which could happen in five days or five months. Who knows? (Many say, "Wait five minutes.")

And the world becomes so lovely. Designs a person never noticed are suddenly embossed. The garden hose has been laying in such attractive coils. . .

and the bittersweet is frosted,

and the potted plants have all put on Russian hats,

and every single little bell--a nation of little bells--wears a crown.

Garage to Greenhouse: A Photo Essay

2009-12-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

"Turn the garage into a greenhouse?" my dad asked. "Where the hell are you going to park the car?" Well, I thought to myself, at least this year the garage will have a GOOD reason to be too full to fit the car in.

"You turned your garage into a greenhouse?" a farmer friend said, "What in the hell were you drinking?"

I'd been wanting a greenhouse of my own for 20 years, and for the past two years I had been eyeing up my garage. So, this year I hired one of my daughter, Holly's, friends--Joseh Hanna--to help and the first thing we decided to do was strip the garage down to its studs and beams, which, yes, required renting a couple of dumpsters. A funny thing I learned about renting dumpsters is that my neighbors wanted to contribute to filling it. It was a very slight feeling of "familial" annoyance and, oddly enough, warmth.

It was a scary feeling. Not only was I stepping off the edge of a cliff into a dream, but, like my dad pointed out, I was drastically altering a major structure. And where was I going to park my car anyway? Once the building was stripped down, however, I knew there was no turning back, and it began to feel exciting.

Around here (Southeastern Minnesota), you can't just run over to Menards or Home Depot and find the materials you need to turn your garage into a greenhouse. And the guys at Fleet Farm don't have any good advice to offer. You are on your own. I researched greenhouse supply companies on the web and, keeping my eye out for local businesses, I found Jr. Johnson Supply in Roseville, MN. That's where I found the materials for this polycarbonate roof. I rented a truck and we went to the Citie's "burb" to get it. My only other option would have been to order it from Washington (state), and the shipping cost more than the product--which, itself, was pretty expensive.

I used the internet a lot. I also looked things up in books. A good book for someone who is constructing a greenhouse is The Greenhouse Gardener's Companion, by Shane Smith. To convert the garage, I had to "imagine" what I was doing, rather than "know." Joseph, who worked for me, also had to have a pretty good imagination. I really lucked out with him.

These next few photos are of the inside of the greenhouse. The walls did end up coming from Washington, from a company called The Greenhouse Megastore that is a distributor for the Solex company, and that's is what I call the material on the walls--solex. It is a very thick double-layered plastic that arives in a roll. The green table in the middle of the room helped Joe and I get the plastic positioned. We stood the table near the outside corner of the greenhouse, put the four foot roll of solex on top of it, and then I held the roll steady while Joe pulled the end of the solex around the building. The material is held to the studs with neoprene screws--not cheap, and we bought every box Ace Harware had on stock to get the walls up.

Like most things, the solex is pretty easy to work with once you get the hang of it. I would recommend it to anyone who is building a greenhouse and wants a good plastic wall covering.

There is snow on the roof at this time. Once I start to heat the greenhouse, the snow will melt and the roof will be clear.

The solex is white and lets in about 75 percent of the sunlight. The clear polycarbonate on the roof lets in 90-95 percent. Eventhough the polycarbonate is clear, it is not a material you can see through, nor is the Solex. . .which means that if I put a hook lock on the door and keep a bathrobe handy, I can be in there naked--except for shoes, of course. Always wear shoes in the greenhouse. In the future, I will get a large cattle watering tank and fill it with water; thus, the greenhouse will also be a bathhouse. The water will help heat the building, and if I use biodegradable soap, I will also be able to serve the water to the plants.

The pots in the front contain herbs that grew outside all summer: calendula, chamomile, chervil, parsley, chives, sweet marjoram, lavender, and just a bit of rosemary. Amazingly, all of these herbs have frozen solid repeatedly, but once they thaw, you could never tell. As long as they thaw, they will keep growing.

Here are some photos of the outside of the greenhouse:

As for heating the greenhouse, that will be another "inventive process" because rather than slapping in some kind of furnace, which would take about a day, I will be building a solar radiant system myself with only a vague, general blueprint to follow. I already know that I will need some kind of gass or kerosine heater in the meantime, because it could take me a year to get the solor system running, but once it's in, I will be able to enjoy years of heat that I will not have to feed continuously at a high and unpredictable cost.

To build this system, I will need to install a double layer of R-20 insullation four feet up the sides of the walls. Then I will front that with a thin layer of plywood or some other material. Attached to the plywood between the studs I will run a zig-zagging line of high pressure hose. The hose will be attached to a 20-30 gallon hot-water heater "storage" tank on one end, and to a solar panel on the other end. (The solar panel will be located on the front of my house, facing south.) The water tank will also be attached to the solar panel by high-pressure hose. The solar panel heats a solution that is stored in the tank, and the solution is pumped throughout the lower walls of the building, producing heat. The system can be automated by a thermostat. I will likely have a couple of back-up batteries to store energy (generated by solar panel) for the days, and weeks, of overcast skies that we generally have in the winter here.

The greenhouse will need to be ventilated, and my plans are to install both north and south-facing, 16" exhaust fans near the roof peaks to blow hot air out; intake vents near the floors on the east and west-facing walls will bring fresh air in. This system can also be automated with a thermostat. A ceiling fan will be located in the center of the greenhouse to pull cool air up in the summer, or blow warm air down in the winter. A good ventillation system is extremely important in greenhouses to prevent diseased plants and/or dehydrated crops.

Urban Homestead

2009-12-05T13:40:00.001-08:00

I am pretty new to blogging, so what I have learned, and what it might help you to know, is that the posts that appear on December 5th, 2009, are actually backwards. For instance, I intended to put summer photos before winter ones, but that's not how it turned out. What appears below is a collection of photo essays about what I have been doing instead of keeping up with this blog as well as a lot of other things.

Now that things have died back and there is a smattering of snow on the ground, it's easier to see the layout of the place. The picket fence was added this summer and it separates what is lawn from what is garden. In the foreground I have started to plant (and transplant) herbs. What you see at the bottom of the photo is very close to the street. If a car pulled up to the curb and the passenger open his or her car doorall the way, it would come almost to the edge of the garden. Also in the foreground is an apple tree. Neighbors do help themselves to it as well as passersby. People with young children stop and ask if the child can pick an apple. That makes me feel good. Kids can see where apples come from.

Here is a side/angle view of the garden in winter. The middle section was the original garden. You can see I have been redefining it. We were lucky with a very late freeze this year, but frozen soil is going to put a stop to my redefinition activities for now until spring thaw.

This photo and the one below is what the yard looks like from the lawn side of the picket fence.

Summer Garden

2009-12-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

This is a trellis that I added to the yard this summer. In the photo you can see the tomato plants working their way to the top of it--which means the tomatoes are nearly 8 feet tall. Which is nothing, really--not to brag, but when I grew them in my friend Virginia's green house, they got to be 12 feet tall. In places where the glass had broken out of the top of the roof, they went through and kept on climbing. Fantastic. Last year before the freeze (I'm in Minnesota), I picked all my green tomatoes and they were still ripening into December. It's wonderful to have fresh homegrown tomatoes that late in the year. . .in Minnesota.

Here's me in late summer: the happy-half-Mexican-garden-Goddess with my arms full of French tarragon and fresh basil that I have just harvested from the garden. I will hang the herbs to dry for winter use or sale, as the occasion calls for.

Yeap--eggplant. I love the close-up of the rich, black soil in this photo. That soil was made on our own place and consists of a year's worth of kitchen scraps, oak leaves, pulled weeds, and last year's garden refuse, as well as additions from my neighbor's cut grass.

This year, I added five new raised beds along the edge of the original garden plot (pictured below). And that's one reason why I haven't written on the blog for so long. Here is one of the raised beds. You can see that it is growing yellow peppers and marigolds. The box in the back (you can't see the frame) contains brocolli and leaks. Bursting out from the original garden on the right, you can see nasturtiums. You can also see that I have been putting woodchips on the ground. Part of my yard is a lawn, but in the garden I put chips between all the garden beds, and that way I don't have to mow or weed there.

In this photo, Sohi's acorn squash overtakes the native prarie wild flower garden. The wildflowers occupy a central place in my front lawn. They attract the birds, bees (and yes, humming birds) who pollinate the plants in the whole garden. My neighbors stand in awe, watching those humming birds. They have been hanging plastic sugar-water containers in their yards for the humming birds, but if you were a humming bird, where would you eat? It's a little like us--eating at MacDonalds, when we really crave steak. . .or buffalo. . .or, by God, fresh tomatoes.

The is a view of the "original" vegetable garden in my FRONT lawn (yeah, "Food, Not Lawns"--that's me). This is a, roughly, 27 by 14 foot plot. Here, at the height of summer, it is in full bloom. Now that it's December, my daughter and I are making paths back to the grocery store--something we seldom do in summer. I have noticed that when our fresh supply of food dwindles, our garbage increases dramatically--because of all the packaging of factory food, of course. This year, however, I canned, dried, and froze more food than I have in past years, so we are making fewer trips to the store than in most Decembers. Oh, and yes, I have more money in my pocket. That helps. Anyway, in what you can see of this garden, there are tomatoes, peppers, sunflowers, a few beets, one squash, and a variety of herbs.

LOST

2009-12-05T11:47:00.000-08:00

Where have a I been? Have I foresaken this site? Why no! I have just been living life in such a focused way that I forget about writing blogs. . .for one: calling people, for another, leaving home, reading newspapers, checking email, answering phones--for others and others. Here I am, pictured at the end of summer in the vainglorious garden. My daughter, Sophi, planted these morning glories and the minute I got in front of them with a camera aimed at me, I just started letting my hair down, so to say. I guess it's amazing what a few blue morning glories can do for a woman! I know I NOT all that, but I'm definitely feeling pretty sensuous here.

You must bear with me though, because I cannot seem to get them positioned in the correct sequence on the page.

For photos of the how the garden turned out, keep reading.

--Jodeen

The First of May, Two-Thousand and Nine: A Moment in Flight

2009-05-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

In May that lusty season
To gather the flowers
Down by the meadow's green
A bird, it sang on every sight so merrily
It joyed my heart

(A chant from Renaissance England)

May Day. I need to write something in its honor. This particular May began cool and overcast in the tender grays of spring. By now the sky is blue and against it the year’s new buds glow the brightest green. In my own yard lilac and boxwood, red twig, apple, cherry, plum and oak push and their new leaves out, like wings flapping open and shut as they unfurl from within themselves under the big star. The air is alive with birdsong, and if I had time to pay attention—just a handful of days culled from all of my years--for perfect stillness, I know I would learn to tell time by their songs, by the opening and closing of flowers, by the streaming and gliding positions of the leaves of the trees. Is it so much to ask?

In kindergarten our teacher taught us to honor this day by teaching us to weave baskets from strips of colored construction paper. We stapled construction paper handles to the baskets and drew and cut out construction paper flowers that we pasted together and put in the baskets. Then we took such joy in walking through the halls of the school and hanging them on classroom doors. We took them home for our mothers. I don’t remember the teacher’s name—Mrs. Hellewig?—but I have never forgotten the day. Bless her. Bless any teacher that has her brood spend a whole afternoon in the deep and nurturing concentration it takes to weave a basketful of flowers.

Cookoo, as I mee walked in a May morning I heard a bird sing!
(Another chant from Renaissance England)

Rita's poem

2009-05-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

After reading my last entry, Rita, my friend of 27 years, sent me this poem. She says it's about me, but I think it's about us--it's about women and the questions we ask of ourselves.

Ode To My Friend
By Rita Adkins

Your life was so much better than mine
I dreamed of adventure and you lived one
Raised your kids alone, neither asking for or getting help
I had someone but he might as well have been no one
For all the good he did me
But I am needier than I am adventurous
I opted for the safety net
And while you built your life, he tore mine down

Got angry sometimes because I stood still, pining for the adventure, yet
Waiting for someone who was standing right in front of me
Offered advice and a shoulder from three hundred miles away
Understood what would keep me from the life you had
But wondered why I was afraid to live without
And you soared while I remained behind
Building my life back from the ground up
And dreaming still of the adventure you lived

But there is no adventure in conformity
And I rooted myself too deep to ever break free and fly like you
But if I asked you, you'd tell me
That adventure had little to do with it
You lived off the land because the land asked no questions
Sustained you when no one else would
And gave you courage to soar higher

...I still want to be like you...

Love always,
Rita

Friday, April 24th, 2009: A Day in the Life

2009-04-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

I woke up, drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, got dressed, and went to visit an old friend who lives just down the street in Rochester’s Federal Medical Prison. I went in jeans, a sleeveless top, and earrings, but the intake officer sent me packing. I was not dressed appropriately. Back at my car, I dug through mounting heaps of stuff and junk in the backseat for a jacket I was sure I had. Instead, I found my daughter’s Earth Day T-shirt, still smelling of her sweat, and about five sizes too small for me. Good enough. I stretched it on over the top of my inappropriate, sleeveless shirt, rolled up the bottom (that was not capable of accommodating my middle-aged stomach) and then—more appropriately dressed—I went back to visit my friend. I only had two hours to spend at “Club Med,” as it is called, because today I had the use of another friend’s pickup, and that meant an opportunity to haul compost.

Give me compost, or give me death! In my previous journal entry, I wrote about racing against merciless deadlines of continuous growth. Well, in this entry, the race is on. For one—emphasis on one—some 50 Czech’s tomatoes that have been residing happily in 4 inch containers, suddenly demand relocation into three-gallon pots. Yes, just like that. And when I say that the Czech’s are “just one” I mean that they are just one species in a torrent of species that need transplanting. People ask me how many plants I have, and my answer is usually, “Hell, I don’t know. A couple greenhouses-full, a porch-full, a deck-full—there’s a few in the garage; I’ve gotta get a few gardens ready, build some raised beds; I’ve decided to terrace my yard. . . I’m thinking about a victory garden, you know--something small and manageable in the face of ongoing plant insanity.” These journal entries help me keep inventory. What else needs transplanting? Five varieties of basil, two varieties of chamomile, onion chive, Chinese leek, two “ethnicities” of tarragon (Russian and French), a puddle of sweet marjoram, an ocean of three varieties of parsley, a pond of lavender, a river of Greek oregano, a flood of rosemary; a lake of borage. Other plants are lurking, not catching my full attention, but hiding out in the bogs of my consciousness: both summer and winter savory, for instance, and lamb’s ear. Meanwhile, cilantro needs to be propagated in regular waves, as does dill, a trickle of lovage needs maintaining, and hyssop—hyssop, for heaven’s sake. I see now that this inventory requires all the tools of punctuation that I possess and could stand a bit of revision. What I meant to write about, of course, is compost, but you see how one thing leads to another. I go out intending to move fence, and I spend the day relocating sage.

No. That’s not true. I spent the day shoveling compost, while various men took the opportunity to flirt, using the price of compost and Ginny’s fine, forest green, Ford 4 X 4 as a conversation entrance. When I weighed out at the recycling center, I realized I’d shoveled three quarters of a ton of compost, to be exact. I was amazed, and proud. (I was amazed that men flirted with me regardless of the fact that I was dressed in gardening garb, sweaty, and that my jeans were rolled up to my knees exposing a swath of calf covered in a winter’s growth of leg hair and my sleeveless work shirt exposed a winter’s growth of underarm hair—perhaps that’s why I was kicked out of the prison?) And I was suffering from heat exhaustion, or I would have shoveled a full ton, which is just a drop in the bucket of what I need and will use over the course of the summer. Three quarters of a ton—nothing, really.

I got home and sat down, of course, deciding to wait until the day cooled to unload the truck. But by and by, the 80 degree afternoon was insidiously surmounted by storm clouds and rapacious winds. I got up off the sofa, jumped onto the back of the pick-up, and began shoveling like the devil to get the thing unloaded before the rain poured down. I only made it halfway when, as it turned out, hail rained down, and my daughter Sophi flew out of the house to ask if we hadn’t better get all the plants moved under cover. So we ran to and fro being pelted by marble-sized hail as we moved plants. (“Ouch!” and “Oooo,” and “Wow, that stings!”) How many plants? Hell, I don’t know.

When the hail stopped, visitor’s began to arrive: Sophi’s friend Hudo—who finished shoveling out the truck for me—my daughter, Ezi, my grandson, Nolan, and my other daughter, Holly. Soon enough, my 800 square foot house was teaming with people who had come bearing food and wine. I fell asleep on the sofa watching Monty Python’s Holy Grail, and had to listen to George (the cat) growl at Lucy (another cat) for the better part of the night because she was sitting in HIS windowsill.

Journal Entry

2009-03-15T23:46:00.000-07:00

Sunday, February, 2nd, 2009: Time Again

Today Virginia and I shoveled paths to both greenhouses and began cleaning for soon propagation. Virginia started the furnace to see if it still ran, and it did. She plugged the dust-covered, non-digital radio in and the classical music of Minnesota Public Radio crept again beneath the glass roof as we worked together, quietly, each thinking her own thoughts to herself, on our own sides of the greenhouse. We readied our work places according to our own rhythms and repetitive rituals.

The first thing we did was staple a plastic sheet over the door whose glass pane fell out and still lies shattered on the ground. Broken glass is ordinary in a greenhouse. Then we did what we do every year: sort pots and clear tables. This has become a familiar pattern I carry out at this time only to forget about it as the seasons progress until this time comes round again. It’s joyful. The mind says, “Oh yes, I remember,” and the body happily bumbles along.

Every February I gather up pots of herbs I left to wither in September and carry them out to the snow . They might resurge as the spring warms. I try to convince Virginia to move some of her supposedly dead asters out there too. She says, “You and I—we’re always betting on another chance. Maybe sometimes we give things too many chances.” But I carry out a tray of culinary sage anyway, and then a pot of Greek oregano. “This is second year sage!” I hear myself telling a customer. And the Arabic language teacher never did get this pot of oregano. It would be nice if it came back for her.

I get a bucket and empty dead pots of dirt into it, and then I restack my pots according to size. I haul full bags of potting soil from one table to another, knowing that as my inventory increases, I’ll only move them back again to get more space. And next time there won’t just be two bags but likely eleven. I brush the dirt off the tables, raising a considerable cloud of dust that will begin exiting my nose before I even make it home. The wooden table along the wall where my new seeds will germinate is ready for the task.

Virginia asks, “When would you like to get this place running?”

“Next week,” I say.

She bulks. “But then I will have to start the watering.” As if we could put this off, we settle for starting the furnace up two weeks from now and laugh. Once the watering begins, the gardener is committed, and watering itself is only the beginning. There is a brief period of bliss when we see those first plants spring up green and fresh under the yellow sunshine, but about two minutes later the urgent need to transplant ever bigger plants into ever bigger pots begins to hound our thoughts and chew away at every free minute of our schedules. The joy we feel today at being out here again will soon be replaced by worry that we won’t have enough time to keep up with hundreds and hundreds of plants. We’ll be racing against merciless deadlines of continuous growth.

But we can’t stop this anymore than we can stop breathing. It’s February, and the gardener’s inner clock has been sounding its alarm since the beginning of January. Against all reason, I carry a sinking feeling that perhaps it’s already too late for slow-growers like rosemary, lavender, oregano, thyme, and seed chive to be ready for markets in May. Virginia says that everything will be alright. Well, she should know, even if I don’t. Hopefully, between the two of us we know something.

Really, the gardener never rests. She plants and harvests in circular motion from February to November. (In fact, this year I had tomatoes still ripening in December.) But even in the death months of December and January the gardener is taking inventory, ordering seeds, containers, soils, and researching species she has never grown before. What will she try that’s new this year? She is busy strategizing over her competition, maintaining and securing new markets, and always dreaming up more comely and spacious displays. She puzzles over weeds and mulches and composts and manures; she ruminates over soil quality, blights, aphids, late frosts and hail. She considers landscapes and draws up plans. And all the while she is amassing new ideas for better efficiency that she will most likely never implement because she will be too busy.

A foreboding mass of dead brittle thistles covers the entire top of the wide plastic tables in the center of the green house. Those thistles spent their summer creeping up from the ground and by late July when we packed up our plants and flew from the inferno of the propagation house, the thistles continued on gleefully. Up they came through the grated tabletop; there they died when the season froze; and here they are today as we stand looking at them. “What we need around here is a sythe,” I say. I would swipe through them both above and below the table and sweep the dry prickers onto the floor. By and by the floor would eat them, just as it eats the broken glass. I couldn’t ask for a better floor. “We used to get ______vines in here,” I say to Virginia, “But this year we get thistles.” Virginia says she doesn’t remember. I don’t believe her. But as I move pots and trays around, I realize the ___ vines haven’t forsaken us. They are here tangled all up in the thistles. I yank them. I break them.

Vines. Snakes. This entangled table is the very one that the fox snake sometimes crawls up on. She has been living here with us for two years now, and I cannot feel easy about her, even though she is not poisonous, she will not eat me, and she keeps the rodents down and the rattlers away. She is a lovely snake, but already I am anticipating the apprehension I feel about her and promising myself that this year I will not feel it. I make this promise every year.

A spicy, clean aroma spreads around me. I like it, and it’s coming from the vines I am tearing off the tabletop. I throw a handful across for Virginia to smell. The stem, frayed from my ripping it, is wick and wet and green. It’s starting already.

First Chapbook

2009-03-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

House of Tamarack:
The Poetic Memoir of a Twentieth Century Pioneer
by Jodeen Wink

Table of Contents

After the Fire
Pioneers 1
Chinking Instructions: Recipes, Words of Caution and Advice
Chinking
Some Wouldn’t
Liberation
Living Lineage of Chris Carstenson
Pioneers 2
Pioneer Mind
Mice
Ratmare
The Teacher
Mother’s Night Walk in August
It’s Sad When Flowers Die
The Seed Collector
Our Summer
The First Snowstorm of 1991
Welfare Mother’s Lament
Cabin Fever
Promises
As it Stands
Pioneers 3

After the Fire

Sunshine pours through holes
in your roof casting angular
shadows of charred rafters
down on debris.
How many times had I wished for this?
What a cold place you were
infested by mice and rats.
Like a prayer answered
old fuses in your attic melted
the tin box sputtered and fried
black smoke billowed
the town came running
yet none of us was hurt.

You’d been trying to burn down.
Your wood cook-stove
set its chimney on fire
the winter before
as if you were wishing riddance
to the lean-to kitchen
like a tumor grown on you.

Now even the heat of this day
cannot dry musty insulation
plaster, sheetrock strewn knee-deep.
Mice who once called you home
have fled to the fields
long-tailed rats gone too.
Bees make hives, centipedes
race toward dark cracks
bats dive and sway through rooms
and neighbors pass frowning
black water squishing under their shoes.
Their pitying eyes
pick at your wreckage and dread
your rusted nails, broken glass.
Soot fumes and scorched wires
trial from your walls in coppery twists.

But I don’t give a damn.
You were an ugly house anyway
and you knew it.
“It’s a shame,” I say
but I’m thinking “Good purge.”

The neighbors tip-toe away
and for the hell of it, I hook
my tire iron in plaster and lathing
and gouge down a dusty heap.
A tamarack timber peeks through.
I yank down more old plaster
to find log stacked on log
at the heart of cheap paneling
and linoleum you’ve become.
After more than a century
here you stand still
for a moment.

And in the quiet
I sit on a littered step
staring at those timbers
wondering how long
to liberate the whole place
and could I?
Wind wishes in branches
beyond broken panes
song birds sing and
I close my eyes and
my freaky mind imagines
some spirit whispering
make it so. . .
make it so again. . .

Or maybe it’s the wind.

Pioneers 1

That’s the landowner, poor as hell
with his wife, his eight children
his old house, and when it rains outside
it rains inside too. It even rains
inside his light bulbs and the whole family
walks in tall boots
mudded to the hilt.
And he keeps surviving, this landowner
on his dream--God’s dream
that he should speak to America
about its Vietnam War.
His wife stirs the pots and
he milks his cow by hand
morning and evening
says his prayers
home-schools eight children
in his rainy house.

And there’s the neighbor, a Polack.
A bit slow, they say, but smart enough
on his tractor to know how far
he’s come through his generations
and across the rolling fields
to a modern farmhouse with in-door plumbing.
He paces circles around the renter
who digs a hole for her outhouse
strikes water, fills the hole, digs another
strikes water again. “Get your landlord
to put a toilet in that cabin,” says the Polack,
“Won’t take no room at all,”
but the danged woman just keeps digging.

And here’s what the landowner calls
a Hardy Renter. A Welfare Mother.
She could survive fire
pry his charred farmhouse away
from the pioneer cabin at its core
and live there in return for free rent
because she does not fit
into subsidized housing. Her life is not
one of America’s projects
but everyone knows she’s cracked.
Soles of her bare feet so calloused
she spends summer walking
on nails and broken glass
and if she prays, it’s only to the weeds
but the landowner shrugs that away.
He has faith.

And these are the three innocents
she dragged with her, all daughters.
Too young to know where they’d be
if she hadn’t brought them here
or how other children live.
They eat peanut butter on bread
in the wreck of a burned home torn down
rising up again chink by
chink, like dream stuff.
They smile easy, playing in sheds and barns
with goats and cats, making nests
in grasses taller than they are.
Grime creases their damp palms
but out here grime is fine because man
was cast up from clay and
Jesus was a poor child and life is dirt
and they are seeds.

These are all the people there are
lined up along the winding road
just this side of the marsh
of snake and creek and red-winged blackbird
of cattail, willow, muck, and mosquito
and out there farther a tribe
of trickster tamarack stands dead but not dead
and up around them all the hugging arms
of Wisconsin hills roll into bluff and top field
where whippoorwill sings in summer
and wind howls down your shirt-neck
in winter. Keep a close eye
‘cos it’s likely God walks this valley.

Chinking Instructions:
Recipes, Words of Caution and Advice

Take crowbar and hammer to the old chinks.
Pound out loose chunks till the sun gushes in.
Note that some is mortar patch
and some is strung with long hairs, and some
is the same brown clay that sucks the shoes off your feet.
Now you know where that Irish settler got his.

If you buy yours, here’s the recipe:
three shovels-full sand
three shovels-full mortar
one shovel-full lime.
Mix thoroughly in a wheelbarrow
then add water slowly while stirring
till putty consistency.
You get the hang of it eventually.
Sweep logs clean before applying.

You will need:
a hundred pairs of rubber gloves
a hundred plastic bread bags.

Caution:
by the time mortar has eaten through gloves
it will also have eaten through skin.
(Put bread bags under gloves. Keep chinking.)
You will flake and burn.

You may sign your name
draw pictures, write poetry in it.
Chinking makes a cabin solid,
keeps out most weather and large critters.
It takes six or seven people one week
to chink the inside.

Caution:
if the six or seven people are children
they will tire after a week.
You will chink the outside by yourself.
Estimated amount of mortar: 3,000 pounds.

Advice:
When the cabin needs re-chinking, move.

Chinking

I mortared between these logs
white lime and sand grit stinging
finger tips rubbed raw
beneath ragged gloves.
Up and down the ladder endlessly
mind lost, time stopped
world gone, eyes burnt,
sweat diamonds
falling from my head.

Back and forth my hands went
sealing gaps, smoothing flat
eyes hunting for little cracks
days and days and days
mind fixed on a phantom
stalking my chinks.
January was coming
from a long way off
on silent feet.

Some ghost, I swear, watched me
that summer or maybe it was the sun
bearing down on my back.
Some mind lingered obsessed
where dirt swallowed sweat, walls
gnawed flesh, flesh
in crazed motion, flesh
against the wind, eyes
possessed.

Some Wouldn’t

Some wouldn’t live here
without air conditioning
without a garbage disposal
with no place to set a microwave.
Some wouldn’t walk outside
for relief in the night
or when it’s cold
atop a dark hole in the ground.

Some wouldn’t like
the rough tamarack walls
the dip and creak of gray
tongue and groove floors
the crooked sills encasing
leaded windows rippling
or the slant of the door-jamb.
Some couldn’t tolerate
the resident farm mice
rampaging cupboards
eating uncooked spaghetti
leaving turds in pancake mix
or the song of fat black cricket
ringing conniption under the stairs.

Some wouldn’t bathe
In the Rocket Steel Co.
cow tank under the full moon
out in the yard.
Some wouldn’t sleep
on a homemade bed
four feet from the floor
wind pelting rain
on the roof sway.

Some wouldn’t like
smelling walnut in autumn
or thunder rumbling
sinister in the distance.
And some wouldn’t trek
up the hill drive
when walnut leaves had flown
in deep snow
or live one minute
without a telephone. No.

Liberation

First of all, understand there’s no way to seal
a real pioneer cabin. It doesn’t matter
what you stuff, spray, pack, or nail.
Rain’s gonna’ fall, wind’s gonna’ drive it
through the walls to the middle
of saggy floors in dusty puddles.
There’ll be shafts of sun stealing
round the doorframe, winter sifting in
thread crevices where timber ends
and roof begins, winter under the quilts.

He’ll say, “Oh, it’s a nice little
summer dwelling.” He’ll say, “You have quite
the imagination.” You’ll ignore him, kind of,
and stay away, opting to visit him
on his high hill from time to time.
Then the furnace will break down
so you’ll visit him more often
and he’ll regard you with a smirk.

But come spring spiders hatch
and thistle tufts in clay do sprout.
You bathe in fifty-degree mist
while Orion slides down the black sky
and in June thousands of fire flies
star the marsh.

In summer he’ll stroll among your delphiniums,
declaring, “It really turned out bountiful. . .
in spite of everything!”
But, with the onset of autumn he arrives one day
meticulously squirting foam
in all the open places. He leaves content
he’s saved you from another bleak season.

But soon enough sleet beats the walls
rain trickles through air pockets
in hardened foam. You laugh
because not ten minutes ago
wind blew the chimney
right off the house, and because you know
there’s no way to seal a real pioneer cabin
and he could never save you.

Living Lineage of Chris Carstenson

Old Grampa was a spindly thread on the hem
and breeze was blowing him loose
by the time I arrived so more than him
I remember his tea roses,
a straw hat, a pair of suspenders, a pipe.
that he pissed in the garage & yelled in his sleep
and when his thread let go his stories
unraveled from his daughter’s mouth
and into my ears where they might be
one of the last places to catch.

He wasn’t going to be forced into the Danish army
on the eve of WWI, and
he liked to drink & chase, and
he outlived two wives: one gone in a wagon wreck
the other an Irish girl—Hazel Henry—mean & musical,
whose songs he helped broadcast vaudeville-style
along with the seeds of his gardens
that are still singing up through all of our flesh.

His daughter Loraine said, “When my folks
were ready to move they just got up
and walked out the door,
left the plates on the table.”

She wrote that her dad was a postman
and a cowboy and he built a railroad in 1908
and she was born a twin in a sod house
in North Dakota on January 1st in 1913
and she saw the prairies burning,
hooves burned off the cattle, and
when she was five, Old Grandpa
brought them back to the Wisconsin woods
in a covered wagon.

All my life she said when she got too old
to work, my grandpa Carl
would go out in the woods
and build her a log house, but
grandpa Carl got old and died
and then my grandma Loraine died
so I am living in a log house in Wisconsin.

Pioneers 2

Inspired by the writings
of Laura Ingalls Wilder and O. E. Rølvaag
with just a smidge of influence by Edward Abbey

His children awake in locust time.
By forenoon his mule
blows through a hole in the roof.
The sky is fire and lightning.
The milk-cow starves to death by noon.
By sundown the thin man gets up from table
and pulls the door open on a cyclone.
His wife goes mad and by midnight
the door drifts shut leaving her to freeze.
In spring the panic grass grows up through her mouth.
Silence sings up through that grass.

Pioneer Mind

I understand the inclination
toward starvation, storms, and illness
a lightening strike on a dry prairie.

I believe in hobo cats
the migration of robins
the slutty behavior of seeds.

I know human over-bright capabilities
the business of budgeting subsidies
pipelines to satellites, trenches to food pantries.

I recognize the need
to pit one’s self against the progress
of one’s insanity.

I long for a particular terror
a house with its roof blown off
my whole damned life burned to the ground.

I understand the inclination
to walk out leaving plates on the table
and shit in the mailbox.

Mice

There are mice in this house.
Each morning a speckled sink.
Turn over a cook pot and a pair dash out.
Their slight weight thuds over counter
as they scurry up timber walls
behind corner junk, behind the stove.
From behind cupboard door, they leap
prickly claws dust my foot-top
and turn to shadowys--my poor eyes.
If I had a weak heart, I’d be done for
but I’m not afraid of little mice.

There are quite a few mice in this house.
They’ve chewed a hole in Sophie’s purple jumper,
chewed holes in the knees of the honey bear bottle.
Late at night when I was sitting quiet
looking down into the trash can
I found him silver, shiny, soft.
I wanted to run my knuckle along
his smooth spine, but he jumped up and down
up and down, and ran in worried circles,
worried circles till I stuck my
broom handle in and set him free.
Then he lugged a corn chip up the steps
and sat crunching under my bed.

Still, there are so many mice in this house
that one day I opened the door and Big Ornery Cat
came in on her hind feet boxing the air, as usual,
so I let her stay and she lay on sofa, licking paws
watching TV, and purring herself to sleep
while the mice laid dark streaks
back and forth all over this house.

Ratmare

Black rats run humpy lines
along cold cement walls
All night I try to sleep
but rats keep running scurvy circles

Tails and teeth

They run round Sophie’s pink feet
In the dark a white nighty
cries, The rats are chewing on me!
beside my bed

The Teacher

Night.
Bedded child
practices whistling.
Outside window
whippoorwill sings.

Mother’s Night Walk in August

Full moon hazy and red-ringed
fresh cut hay, a hint of man sweat
sunflowers in moon confusion.
From grass waves a stegosaurus rises
with a snake slung in its jaws.
It flaps in wind, thins to bones, and decays.
Shadows of a woman and her cat pass over
glowing milkweed leaves and under
the still gaze of a fossil farm machine
stretching its phosphorescent neck
from its rusted carcass in weeds.

Packs of dogs howl up the fogged valley.
They plow wet tunnels through cattails.
She hears them coming, snapping vicious.
Cat hisses, tail twitches, and far, far
back down the road she sees the walnut tree
its long branches slithering against the sky
casting dreadful shadows down
on the tiny cabin, so squat and square
where her children lie sleeping alone
each one two three but a wisp
blown through a dream.

Why has she gone so far away?

It’s Sad When Flowers Die

All winter I lived on dreams of spring planting.
In April, before ground thawed
I dug the icy earth, gathered heavy stones.
Robins returned to walnut tree
chattering of their journeys.
Beneath a feverish sky
I sweat in the chill of first rains
but the sunflowers came up sturdy
with leaves like umbrellas.

When they grew breast-high
a wicked storm
broke one’s spine in two. Her life
dangled by a couple coarse threads.
Masking taped together with walnut splints
she survived until Mother Goat
pruned all of her leaves.

I thought of that flower’s death
but limbless and braced
she shot upward with the others.
And when they were taller than I
a herd of goats turned all my flowers
to sad shreds, jagged stumps.
Lilly buds hacked off
zinnias beheaded
gladiolas dressed in limp strips.
One of the few left standing
was the splinted sunflower
leaning against her sisters
face torn off.

And the children trod over them.

And when that man came to put a window upstairs
his chainsaw growled, ripped
through the timbers, mortar flew.
Deep purple petunias
blood-red nicotania bombarded.
Their broken faces smashed into the clay
looked like women trying to survive.
Even now young goats slip through a fence
I’ve cobbled with sticks and bailer twine.
After the damage they go away
wait for these flowers to recompose.
When that happens, they’ll be back hungry.
I know they will. I’ve seen it before.
It’s sad how women live.

The Seed Collector

While you were out gathering
wildflower seeds, you caught
the owl’s feather. I imagine your
hard, white hands plucking it
from pollen heads of golden rod
your tangled blond hair
falling across scarlet flannel
in yellow afternoon.
I see you bent at the rim
of the marsh running
your calloused finger along
the curve of owl’s feather
rippling into stripes hair by hair
your lips thinned to a grin.

In my brass base swamp grass flares
above burgundy pods
swollen and slit.
I barely touch and they spill seed.

This poem is to thank you for the day
I came in from tight places
to find a bouquet wrapped in
scarlet ribbons and the night
when my hair was still long
how you chose one curved lock
drew it down between my breasts
with slow, broad fingers
looked at me a long time
said I was beautiful.

Our summer

A heavy sky moves in
beneath the summer blue
absorbs the color
sucks the heat
and wind slaps the face
of a stiffening planet

Poor leaves turn under
wince
and give in
dust, the dried
whipped bits, the shreds
of things alight
for blown miles
of shifting journeys
with high black specks
of birds

Now into the ground
go the frost-wilted vines
the death-scythe sunflower
stands sentinel
at the cabin door

Wooly sleeves
and tall stockings
emerge from behind
steamed windows
out from the bed
into weak light
each morning
comes the pale face
the red lipstick
the fingers on cold hands
that brace the child up
and plodding slow
down the hill
two of us--small women
move careful
to cross the slick sheen
and let you go

The First Snowstorm of 1991

forced itself in round
gap-edged frames
of bending crackling glass
all the way to the center
of the small old room
shifted form in silence
danced again
that slow gray dance.
The land stiffened
stark and unyielding.
Its bony knuckle
still whines across the pane.

Welfare Mother’s Lament

Your friends
they call you lucky
call you free woman
because you’re out on your own
in the stars and the wind
the hills and the trees
and you sit up late at night
and you write your poems.
They sneer, “She’s prolific.”
Sometimes when you’re drunk
you think they begrudge you.
Your friends
sometimes they frustrate you
because they take it all for granted
tied to their ovens
chained to their TVs
their double incomes
and their sex lives.
They study women’s history.
They say, “The more things change
the more they stay the same,
but at least it’s not as bad
as it used to be.”
But you know
they won’t go without heat
this winter
and you know they can get
excited about working
part time for minimum wage
because hubby’s gonna’ bring home
the big stuff, the prestige
and they can afford
to piss and moan about boredom
or gloat about meaningful work.
When you work
for minimum wage
you’re still on Welfare.
You still embarrass America.
Your friends
don’t know anything.

Cabin Fever

I am a small room of rain-soaked logs.
Day upon day drizzle seeps in.
I am the rain streaming under the door.
I am the floor, splintered and soiled.
I am cobwebs thickening in corners.

I am the chill inside a shrinking room,
a handful of dried zinnias frosted on the sill,
the child’s torn snowflake glued to the pane.
I am a jar of cold honey collecting dust.
I am the break in a tall, straight mirror.

I am where The Starry Night dangles by one
rusted nail, the song of a cracked mandolin.
I am the way a woman wrings her hands
and one night sees her reflection in a window
against the blotting blur of a storm.

Promises

It was hard times.
The children hacked
under mounds of blankets.
The whippoorwill had long
quit whistling
her music a ghost.
The family huddled on a sofa
turned to face glowing coils
of an electric stove
breath always too visible
in this gray room.
Foot upon foot of snow fell
and I promised the girls
we’d leave come June.

So when he bounded over the grassy knoll
at the end of May, tall and strong
with this cabin reflecting in his eyes
I met him with a smile.
I claimed the place was enchanted:
Full moons magic enough
to yank him up from buried sleep
drag him down a blue road
leave him stranded in milkweeds
a lunatic.
I wasn’t lying.
I promised swamps full of fire flies
choruses of crickets, and steam rising
off the rippled lip of the cow tank
where he really could sit naked in daylight.
I promised this was nothing like Milwaukee.
He stayed for dinner.
Yes, those hills have caves in them.
Yes Man, spring water’s gonna’
Sparkle in your well.

Then he broke my heart
asking my opinion about linoleum
for floors, sheetrock for walls--
walls I chinked with bloody fingers—
and questioned my judgment about
the best place for a spice garden.
He planned to pull up the fences.

And I realized there were other promises
I could make:
In April his shiny car would get sucked down
in clay and stay till the sun got hot in May,
and those pretty goats the landlord promised he’d sell?
He’d never sell, and they’d eat every planted thing
not early on, but late, just before fruit, and the rain
was guaranteed to beat in threw the walls, and the furnace. . .
Should I make a promise about the furnace?

I bit my tongue.

As it Stands

When I go back now
there’s nothing but fields:
no stone, no sun flower, no foundation,
nor goats, nor barn, nor pile of junk,
no cabin standing up on the knoll
watching the marsh, and
only the Walnut remains
to know the long story.

I stand in a row of corn-stuble,
ghost in the gray-wind sky
waving her arms at a pick-up
tooling slowly down the road,
its driver staring up at me.

I used to live here in a cabin, I say.
So-And-So bought this place he says,
with suspicious eyes,
and he moved that cabin
back in the hills, and
I know where it is
but I’m not gonna’ tell you
‘cos aybe he don’t want nobody
walking around back there.

The red-winged black birds,
the whippoorwills and snakes,
the fire flies, the mad dogs, the bluffs,
even the full moon
that shines on milkweeds
reside on His land,
for now.

And the cabin has moved on
to live yet another life
somewhere quiet, I imagine
in the old woods
with wind howling,
through cold winters
and deep snow,
a home for mice and birds,
the songs of crickets
echoing in empty rooms,
chinks likely fallen out, and
the daylight likely seeping in.

Pioneers 3

What happens to people who aren’t team players
or corporate cheerleaders,
who won’t be appeased by shopping,
who want to leap from the tread mill,
for whom poverty would be a relief,

whose minds will not be silenced
by the white noise of computers,
or the continuous songs of cell phones,
who have eaten every antidepressant
insurance policies cover and still wither?

What happens to pioneers now
in subdivisions, on claustrophobic freeways
in Super Center parking lots?
Where’s the unpaved garden, the possible horizon?
Who--or what--should we kill to clear the way?

The End.