Three Poems for Whittemore Island, Thorndike Pond and Monadnock Conservancy
by Alice B. Fogel
Jun, 2021
For the Horizons
At the boundary of lake and land the sand’s
carved in fine lines and even clouds
ikat, tricked into parallel
ripples submerged in the water.
Mosses and bowed branches tint
the shallows a pallid
muddy green. Trees step down to the shore
and keep on pressing
their bodies deeper
into the muck below—and meanwhile
this pulse won’t stop wavering against
the earth, making
its small sounds
just beneath an overhanging ground.
An island
is an old nest woven into wet-winded boughs
that dress its edge in mulched debris—
fungi and larvae in bloom between
dead twigs and leaves—all stages at once
of becoming and dying and time.
There are no
horizons that don’t change or can’t change
us—depending
on when and where we stand
in relation to them
and to erosion and roots,
the rains and the droughts—
our boots skimming one surface, our boats
drawn up for now out of the pond,
our widening
circles spinning from the weighted center
all the way out and beyond—
For the Ground
With the great angles of the mountain just beyond the horizon,
the height of the white pines and hemlocks bearing sky,
and the circle of land around the lakeside’s distance,
it’s the spring ground I’m drawn to peer at most: its moss-muted
echo of new maple leaves’ green, its deep golden lichen a fake
fox fur, the fallen and dried cones and catkins sprinkling
soil into a texture akin to the flakes of bark on trunks,
or like the small criss-crossings of waves that moat the shores.
Here at my feet sink all the old beech’s cool shades
of browns and tans and grays as last year’s leaves age into earth
and fresh sprouts arise bright and lean into the tripletted forms
of trillium, the starbursts of sweet woodruff, red seeds
dropped and strewn and growing through blown-down branches:
all the piled plenty of loss left of the past,
all the tiniest hints and most insistent hedged bets of the future.
For What the Water Defines
Backlit and limited by the lake, this island woods’ range shifts
the context of woods: dark trunks
of varying angles and widths and bends don’t blend
but stand clear of each other, all their forms and more—
like the curved hillocks and dips of ground—
defined in bright contour by the lake and its light.
This is what water does to our sight on the island:
It changes how we see the space and shape of everything:
The way the sky seems blue and white because of the lake
and not the other way around. The way the contrasting
limbs and hedges hang over water and air, always at an edge.
Even the earth leans over its own eaves.
It’s the water’s dimensions between island and the land
across from it that defines the water, and the island, and the land:
Where a log that’s come to rest partly in the pond
becomes a new pier for growth. Where raised roots hold tight
or let go of boulders they’ve grown around.
The difference between the bleached tan pulp of the fallen half
of a pine and the deeper moist brown of the half
left standing. The ragged piece of sky that part pierces.
How the paler leaves point a path through undergrowth. How
sunlight and shade alternate on the forest floor.
Pauses between the seven ladyslippers. Between the visible
lines of branches, needles, and smoothed domes of stone. Lees
and peaks of waves, blinking dark and light.
The difference between the bird drifting toward the canopy
on the opposite shore and the bird dipping its wings into shallows.
Between when I remember the island and when I was there.
Alice B Fogel was the New Hampshire poet laureate from 2014-2019. Her collections include A Doubtful House, Interval: Poems Based on Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” which won the Schaffner Award for Music in Literature & the 2016 NH Literary Award, & Be That Empty, a national bestseller. Strange Terrain is her guide to appreciating poetry without necessarily “getting” it. Nominated twelve times for the Pushcart, she has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other awards, & her poems have appeared in many journals & anthologies, including Best American Poetry. She lives in Walpole, NH; works one-on-one as an academic support coach at Landmark College, a school for students with learning differences; & hikes mountains whenever possible.
As a land trust for southwestern New Hampshire, the mission of Monadnock Conservancy (monadnockconservancy.org) is to work with communities and landowners to conserve the natural resources, wild and working lands, rural character, and scenic beauty of the Monadnock region. We care for our conservation lands, and we engage people in ways that strengthen their communities and their connections to the land.