.... as if they were painted
on a green landscape the animals
descending to their black shelters
come to a standstill
at the edge of our gaze....
– W. G. Sebald
in a slough or backwoods
as if I’m undeterred by wildness
come for me
in scintilla/ storm flash/ shred or shadow cinched
high or low come for me
in a clough/ in the treat of warmth of a shallow ravine
in the narrowness of my imagination
come for me as a hole for filling
that may be mine of blood & slick
femina
or something somewhere else of grasses & reeds & snowy
swaths as yet slid oblique to one side in opacity
in this particular
place for hiding come for me in the paltriest or in row upon row
of a gayly painted canvas tent striped
red & orange & blue
as I’ll come for you (don’t you mistake me for how
what where I appear dreaming of green
of paradise of home where pilgrims never set foot
that was never
the point nor leeching the land of blood red rust staining the rims
of my fingernails)
come for you in your need in your
restlessness by which I mean in a sleepless trough of the westernmost
pomme de terre rising & falling with each breath
riverine not
vegetable (yet named for the potato-shaped root
of turnip grown wild) her feral rapids rushing fast
over a sandy bottom this singly segmented
river (beginning clear & cold in Otter Tail
County emptying muddied by eroding banks
into the likewise unhealthy Minnesota) but not the first
favorite bankside sycamore (growing everywhere
east of the Great Plains – except wouldn’t you know it
not here)
the largest of them all alongside streams beds & bottom lands
as down in the old growth (so we call it) specimens – so difficult to reach
so long ignored – round their chalk mottled girth beg admiration
in this our living natural history museum untouched (we so want
to believe) by plow or spade so we imagine & so
we wish considering our own loneliness at the center
as self-appointed hub & cynosure
of all multitudes (notwithstanding any creature/ beastly
or mild) swung in dugout canoes drafting shifting waters below
or hollowed for shelter above or sturdiest worked
for a three-legged stool in another life altogether
come for me
in my companionless weald & by that I mean only
to be without fracas & discord nor anarchy living amongst
near centuries old wood of these trees never taken & used
for such things as a musical instrument (specifically a violin
of sycamore back & sides & scroll) aberrant certainly
as the wood is one-third less dense than the mostly preferred maple
(& in resonance deep as the uncontrolled
flatulence of my very elderly mother likewise full
of plaintive apologies alongside my own mute
misgivings/ imminent inasmuch as I’m more like her than any one
of her five children)
but not unknown in makers’ workshops
the world over yes
come for me with the varnishing brush in my hand
& oldly – from the Middle English aldelike –
set aside now in craquelure glaze unmitigated – near worn
away – yes come for me in the naming commonplace whereby
I measure control & reserve to dominate
to watch the mounded snow as it swims
toward spring in a tension between unblemished sky
& ice blistered late autumn grass – big blue stem & switchgrass
& sideoats grama & still to in vigilance
wonder at – feebly in the mystery of my lonely
possession – a melody unlearned/ unfolded/ the riddle
of the mortal the uncertainty of practice
& the practical what I hear in scanted application anticipation
come for you too
Mara Adamitz Scrupe is a visual artist, filmmaker, and writer. She has authored eight award-winning poetry collections, her work has been published in international literary journals, and she has won or been shortlisted for many visual art and literary prizes and fellowships. Her installations, sculptures, and artist books exploring the confluence of social, land, and environmental narratives and histories are held in permanent museum collections and showcased at art parks worldwide, and her documentary films about rural places have won significant national awards.