the nearer earth

poetry by Lucy M. Germanyphotographs by Robin Dru Germany

8

could not find myselfwithin doings and musings after days of searching

and combing through vicissitudesand pleasures.a year of walking barefoot over sand ridges where the earth had swallowed and then returnedpieces of itself.i moved to a shuttered place where, like bars of music, light shyly played,i sorted as if it were a game logic, tears, the whole self.spread out before me i saw questions i could not answer…better to draw more shutterson the unknowable than to wander further into a place of pure beginningsthe nothingness before creation.f

iself-exploration

hat are there…now… here?the moment that escaped from our

control years ago without our knowing itleft pieces of itself but no instructions.there were never any maps such as guided sailors over oceans; our need to know is never satisfiedearth gives us only what it cares to givenothing is required. [

walive but mapless

ime was concocted by a man with a clockthat had no earthly use.

because he could find nothing for it to docompatible with its beauty and complexity,he left it alone in a dark stairwell.in his sleep he heard its voice,foretelling some event he did not know.he rose, afraid. frowning he grasped and shook it,thinking he would tear it from its roots,reducing it to lovely springs and wires.he was too lateand the clock had discovered itself and the workit was made to do.it chimed and everyone rose from their beds and went outside. k

tmyth about time

here is a heart thrill in the early morningwhen vision stops at the mist bank

leaving a mysterywhen birds sleep beyond seeingand tears drop from the bare brancheshangers without clothesin a shrouded closetrich with the history of transformation.Q

tfog in the morning

he blind child in meholds an invisible hand

cries in the tone of the wounded flowerbruised under my feeti look for tears behind the dead irisfind only the hollows where they hidethe blind child wonderswhere the light iswhat is light?the act of seeing is disproportionateto wonder. v

tseeing

he news tells terrible storiesof old ladies in their nightgowns

sitting by space heatersfear stiffenedi would not mind living with a weapon on my tablehaving inspected dense nightsand read the newsi hear the tree rubbings with their hint of foreign passionmoving closer, their power more distinct.will i open the door to trees?one cannot die of dead leaves.for a time in the ripe afternooni am safe.what has been a friendly quietoverlapping the soft sighs of piano whose embroidered scarflies in a straight line like a strip of frostnow admits a small intimate counterpoint

like an insect burrowing beneath skin.a mist lingers in this house of many pictures,a sofa of risings and fallings, a gray kid glovelying gracefully as if it still contained a hand.a friendly quiet is an arrangement of known noisesfaucets dripping, bird song beginning, a clock strikingtrusted sounds, their sources known from birth.they reassure in that brief timebefore dark, without knocking, comes. k

tquiet and yet…fear

bronze windan ancient bell

brushed with verdigrisdented with historysteals into the gardenburnishing the stiff leavesof the red yuccaforcing them down intodisabled ruinsthey hang in puzzled disarraywhile the bronze winds sawand the ig- agged stripsof summer fall down likea demented window shade.the garden lies still,a rigid patient who has tasted etherwaiting only for the knife.night comes slowlyerasing history and shapes. h

afirst winter wind

z z

saw the plates of golden wingsburnished by receding fire.

the pines, sharp pointed spears,enclose a course as if wings dared not passtheir stiff forbidding wall.gold medallions on a stretchof silk so pure and clear it tempts your sightinto its private mysteries,invites your mind into its other worlds.the shadow, then the birdswoops without sounddown corridors of airuntil the plunge is done. then on the unseen slopeit beats its wings to rise again.the drama of an early eveningcloses with failing lightand far bird shapesfloating on unseen seas. b

ithe buzzards in early evening

scrolled back to the time when i was twelve

the time i owned a swampnot by virtue of inheritance or the passing of money but with my eyes i owned itall its ingredientsgray moss, a scrim to peer throughto see the old distorted sunsqueezed like an exhausted orangei can never remember dates or agesonly what i saw at the end and beginning of each dayit was my day, my creation fully ownedby my body and my eyesthe grass islands to get you over waterwith a skilled twist of ankle and grip of toesi trusted everything, i never sank below my body’s lengthi understood birds and willow branchesi knew where home wasfrom the deepest darks

i i stay there in my memorya long part of every daythere is a great noise in the distanceas if a world is being shaken to its edgesthere is distance between there and hereand here is all my countrygiven me years ago to fill my needs. c

i stayed out of cities

have done so muchput out the fire of my own light

with undistinguished weaponsaimed carelesslyat items i desired to possess.there were lessons in the processthat i welcomed, took in, but never learned.briefly i recognized another’s wisdombut like a hand shaken in a crowdit misted away to be caught in older mistsnot creating anything.still something reached for me things fell from high shelves to stun me.i spent my time trying to rescue what had fallen,to stand with imperfect replicas of works once loved working, talking, rearrangingthough not changing the colors of my mind.i knew in one imperfect eveningstunned with starlightthat i stood within all i had built

i a jungle of heiroglyphs, unreadable.in the manner of a captured being,as calendar and clock unwrapped timeI CRIED FOR MORE OF BOTH AND WEPT. JJ

random thoughts

here is a seed under every treethat does not grow.

it spends its whole existence being seed,a different kind of life.others from the tree feel movementunder their hard shells.they know what becoming is.the seed that never changes never burstsbut hides under its husk.the life that never lives absorbs darknessspeaks with no oice.the world is full of the unrealized waiting for a new time. over them tower the limbs and trunks of the achievers. they die, they see all die while within the silent seedthe unborn dream their dreams.as if there is no world and never was. a

t

v

to seeds under trees

f course it will not come.of course nothing will come.

you have found no way into the small heart where action coils.you have no proper friction makers to starta distant hummingand then a distant falling,and then a close coming,a touching of your hand.you are but an interruption of spacestaring at the treesthinking, knowing and not knowingthe nothing that will come. a

othe not coming of rain

he tree does not quicken when someone passesor says something that could be construed as love

or hate… it has no umbilical cord but many rootsthat go in various directions so it has many feeding sources.the tree looks at my haste and tastes my energyas i pass on the way to somewhere.my movement close to it stirs nothing, enhances noth-ing, changes no plans.the tree is satisfied with one place where everything exists for its being. it accepts cycles, disarrangement of its foliage, shedding of its bark, marks made by passing birds and beetles.i am shattered by movements, changes, cycles, by the hidden natureof events, by my vast power that makes me powerless.if i could have the same stillness of the tree i passperhaps i could find within me the knowledge of how and why i am, what things to value for my preservationand how to understand living silenc

t

e.

the tree’s lesson

s it acceptable while planting seedsto consider the importance of it

to yourself and to the inevitable shapesthat will come forthno, for you then consider yourself creatorof the flowers and you create nothingthe flowers create themselves and by process they give you somethingyou did not bring about.still the joy at seeing them is something that happens within youdeep in your organic secretsor god causes to happenso the result of your industrycan be discernedfinally, when you plant, that is all you doyou create nothingbut something is created all the samethat is the indecipherable mystery. d

ion the mystery of planting

he feeders are filled and ready and friendlytheir feasts rock gently in the rhythmic stirring

of the crisp air tidesa wing passes, its shadow scrapes the seedwhich stirs in response to the mystery.a yellow feather falls from a finch on itsway to bayberriesone of the family of fruits which has a greater claim on the attention of chipping birds.a romantic swaying like the movement of smalltethered boatsshifts the seed which falls in a final winter snowi regard the movement of the hungry bills among bayberries wondering at the independence of the simplest creatureswhose preferences i cannot help but judge. g

tdesertion of the birds

he yellow doesn’t stay on the trees very long does it?” she said, staring at the

long brown strings of stem, bare as if itwere never made to hang heavily with leaf.“no beauty stays,” her grandmother repliedlooking down at her own ridged hands.all color had long fled her body,moved on after resting, after pleasing.it was worn out now, past its useful prime—so were both foliage and woman.the young are pu led at the brevity of jubileethe holy joy of leaves at certain timesthe spirited flesh of women not yet old.they fix their guileless vision to the scenenot ready to give up on glowing color’s fusionnot ready to admit that all fierce burning soon shrinks down to candle ends. t

“t

zz

question for autumn watchers

y mind lazes and driftsit left my body earlier this day

i did not even hear a door slam nor a soft goodbye, it floated on the cleartransparent current of the riverall its history turned to the enormous skya smoky melancholy curled within its latitudeswrapped in the waters of the skyit whirled with unleashed joyin rapids; it brushed against green livestucked in the shallows watercress and upright grasses my mind made music i had never heardit spoke of wild things in notesunknown to one another, my mind became a leafon an indefinable journeythe river conducted, thoughts slept,i moved inside the body of the universenudged foreign lands felt a dazzling freedomi woke up, wet with river waves. U

mmind excursion

t is so stilli am in a forest of statues.

no movement, no hint of lifein the stiff limbs of the oaks and sweet gums.if passion moves in white-capped joyunder the bark there is no hint of it.even the leaves are pastedon the sky, a scrapbook page.the light of evening, a gentle robe descendingin kinder days drops harshly, holding bark,life energy, anguish, and desirein one tableau vivant.is this the forest dying,melting, falling in disarray,the undoing of years of patient life?i wait for a power greaterthan mine to come and heal.standing, in deep despair i watchall my leaves dry and fall. V

ia june that felt like august

f course it came.it always does.

it was there alwaysin the center of the flowerthe power to disturbthe golden yolknot permanentthough you would wish its perfectionto persist…pieces fallwearily as from a great heightto the solid th,(though it is but inchesto that which waits below)following that brief descentthe flower stands desertedall its gold in shredstime stops during the falling.f

o

ear

union: flower and earth

the nearer earth

poetry by Lucy M. Germanyphotographs by Robin Dru Germany

8

colophon

This book is the result of collaboration be-tween Lucy M. Germany and Robin Dru

Germany from 2006 to 2008. The pages are printed on Epson Premium Presentation

double sided Matte paper using an Epson 2400 printer. The primary font is Palatino with

drop caps in Palatino bold italic. The photo-graphs were shot with a Mamiya C220 using

Ilford HP5 film. All the images are either from East Texas, Central Texas or Galveston.

This book is ___ in an edition of 25.