Poetry

My poetry reached its acme from 1993 - 1994 under the tutelage of Larry Raab at Williams, but with a piano again stimulating my left brain, I hope to begin writing again. A few selections below:

Hoffman’s Fault (Special for Geologists) Wind    White Pine       Standing Water      Pathetique  
 Suggestion    Reverberations    Cabo Peñas

 

Hoffman's Fault

Now, you could never find the rows
in Sackney's old orchard. Blackberries
were already filling in between the wormy trees
when we spent summers in the fields,
searching for the best patches.
One day, at this old farm pond,
I pulled thin shale slabs from the bank,
opening each bed to find the tiny graptolite shells
that would tell me the age, or how far
each fault block had moved. Next to me,

you sketched the dull, brown bulbs of the cattails,
the few branches of the dead elm
until the lines went wrong, and you slammed
the pencil down into your hand.
What should I have said as I pulled out
the broken lead burrowed like a large tick
in your palm? That this scared me?
How could I have been surprised
when I watched, two years later, the dark body
of your casket lowered into the ground
after you threw your life at the largest rock,
along the road one clear evening?

Even now, halfway down hillsides, in the middle
of fields, boulders are waiting
to be put away, rolled to the mouth
of some brook. When the glaciers
drew back their icy hands,
they left things scattered: kettle ponds
in the pasture, dry ones in the woods.
What is still connected? I used to sit for hours
tracing the layers of rock
deep under the stream,
where the water learned its way down,
following the weak tear of the fault,
each year slipping deeper into it.

Heather Stoll 1993

Wind>

The snow has pretended to fall
all day, amounting to nothing,
and across the room, the stillness
of your face accumulates the silence
between us. In the distance, I hear the wind
pulsing like water over its rocky bed,
the hard crests of Pine Cobble, Bee Hill
Stony Ledge. I can’t live with you
so obsessed with being perfect
 you said, but I remember the night
when we sat behind the church in a field
flickering with fireflies. Honeysuckle petals
perched like pale moths. You held me, you said,
in awe, and when the long shadows
of branches made the gray walls seem marbled
as Hagia Sophia, we were sure
we, too, were clasped in the fingerings
of that Holy Wisdom. Tonight, the moon is already
overhead, and the branches are loud
as one stiff limb stretches against another,
edgy, creaking. For months, I have stacked apologies
between us. There is nothing new for me to promise
except the inconsequential: later, when the wind
gets closer, it will lose the undertone,
sound sibilant, blameless. Now, by the window
the rasp of the oak leaves is the same as the wind, or it
becomes separate. You would believe either
if I told you, as in this silence, I believe
that you can’t love me, and that
you do.

Heather Stoll
1993

 

White Pine

I don’t remember that small white pine
dying, losing its branches, but all year
it was a struggle, on the edge
of the swamp, white sap bleeding down.
It's hard not to want to grow there
where the water is close

beneath the moss all the time,
although the swamp is old, acidic.
Now, the woodpeckers have pierced through
each knot of bark. Their black holes grow in
to the heartwood, unlacing the dendritic
paths of insects. I meant to love you.

But in the evening, when you’ve left
your seat in front of the window, and sometimes
when you haven’t, I imagine long days
without you. I'm following fields where yew
spreads vigorously, dark, tangled. Tonight,

the twilight deals crisply with the edges
of the mountains, leaving the winter sky wide open.

Heather Stoll 1993

Standing Water

It rains for the third day. The fields are full
of standing water. Only the tips of wild iris
break the surface, swaying like tall fins
as if the mulch of leaves and roots were still alive
below. Water slips in through the basement.
The pile of old onions we left drying
in the corner winds hundreds of green tentacles
through the wicker basket. All these things
which should be dead are not. Under the cold winter
and its long hypnosis, under the snow, the lawn is strewn
with sandpails, old planters, debris we never realized
was there. In the woods, the new clutter
of underbrush makes it hard to move certain ways
toward forgiveness. You insist
that things can change, and I want
to believe you. But here the rain
on the window still wants in,
and the quivering of puddles
like static on the screen,
is persistent and inscrutable.

Heather Stoll
1994

Pathetique

From the snow, dark things precipitate.
First the dirt and stones and then
the live debris of footprints hard with ice.
The couple falls out last,

two shadows, his arms gesturing
wildly like the wings of a bird
who's skimmed the water and decided
not to settle on the pond after all. He never meant

to be so critical, so controlling,
he explains. He can hear
her feet rearranging the gravel
and the thin flecks of broken porcelain
near the drain, but not the voice

that's saying It's over, it's over
in her head as if it were a name
she was trying to remember, an unusual one
like Brienna or Chantelle
which took her a few times

to be sure she had it right. So he goes on,
he's just not sure he wants
the children she wants, the ones
she can almost hear swiveling on the stool
as they lose and find

shreds of Pathetique. They can't have
a piano yet either. She bends
to pick up a silver coin from a puddle,
full of so many words,
so few she can actually use.

Heather Stoll
1994

Suggestion

At the Last Supper, as soon as Judas swallowed
the dripping bread, Satan came into him.
This first morsel was the customary honor,
except Peter had begged to know
who would betray Christ, so Christ said
I'll dip some bread in the sauce and pass
it to the man. And after, when Christ turned
toward Judas and said hurry
and do what you must, Judas thought Christ
was speaking to him, not Satan,
and went out at once
into the night, which was opaque
and starless. The palms along the road
shifted like fingers into strange patterns,
and if you were alone and there was
no moon, you would have been frightened also,
and confused.

Heather Stoll
1994

Reverberations

Nothing changed, except the woods
are more still than when you ran
these trails
now they reverberate
with veery thrush, the canopy
in full vibrato, and on the cobbles my steps
are just another reverberation,
like the pale cabbage moths
parting from the white honeysuckle,
and the fireflies reflecting
the last yellow twilight, still later echoed
by the fluttering of stars.

Heather Stoll
1995

Cabo Peñas

From the cliff, the rocks
walk out into the sea,
four children arranged by height. Farthest out
the smallest gets lost
in the foam of her breath, and perhaps, beyond her, there's one more
like a tenth planet, a companion star. Given a few
repetitions at an edge
we postpone the end
of what we know by symmetry. You saw me turn to leave
a trail of kisses on the runway and I tell you
to believe the distant ones
you can't quite
see.

Heather Stoll
1997

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