The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square

With the new city street it has to wear

A number in.  But what about the brook

That held the house as in an elbow-crook?

I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength

And impulse, having dipped a finger length

And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed

A flower to try its currents where they crossed.

The meadow grass could be cemented down

From growing under pavements of a town;

The apple trees be sent to hearthstone flame.

Is water wood to serve a brook the same?

How else dispose of an immortal force

No longer needed?  Staunch it at its source

With cinder loads dumped down?  The brook was thrown

Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone

In fetid darkness still to live and run—

And all for nothing it had ever done,

Except forget to go in fear perhaps.

No one would know except for ancient maps

That such a brook ran water.  But I wonder

If from its being kept forever under,

The thoughts may not have risen that so keep

This new-built city from both work and sleep.

--Robert Frost

They are going to daylight a river here—

that’s what they call it, noun to verb.

A stream turned out years ago from its channel to run in cement tunnels,

dank and airless till it joined a sewer,

will be released—to sun, rain, pebbles, mud, yellow iris, the sky above it 

and trees leaning over to be reflected!

At night, stars or at least streetlamps will gleam in it,

fish and waterbugs swim again in its ripples; and though its course, 

more or less the old one it followed before its years of humiliation,

will pass near shops and the parking lot’s glittering metallic desert, yet

this unhoped-for pardon will once more permit the stream to offer itself at last

to the lake, the lake will accept it, take it into itself,

the stream restored will become pure lake.

                                    --Denise Levertov

                                      Sands of the Well, “Sojourns in the Parallel World”

Ode to Peter on Our 15^th Anniversary

Grunts of satisfaction.

Ah, another weed uprooted from the wilderness.

I didn’t have to get behind the wheel, jaws clenched,

to find this tranquil place

where birds call out and breezes waft between big leaf maples.

I walked here with my husband.

Like a father unmindful of his child’s growth,

he needs a pal to remind him

of the great, natural beauty

a small band of volunteers have re-established

in this corner of Earth we call the Madrona Woods.

With primal tugs,

I wrench out invasive ivy

and pat warm mulch

about the base of a fern

as I watch him propel up steep slopes

too treacherous for his comrades.

A tall, strapping form in boots,

hefting gear,

he could pass for a Marine.

Only I know.

He is tucking his tender little ones in for the night.

Gently watering the redwood sorrel and elderberry

he planted a few months ago.

Yes indeed, these woods are cared for.

Unlike the tangled bramble

where the Ted Bundy’s of my youth

tossed the corpses of their prey

and flesh turned to dust before anyone noticed.

Here the carbon cycle fulfills its greatest calling.

Fallen trees slowly become nurse logs

for the next generation.

By the time our grandchildren are grown

the tree downed by last winter’s storm

will be rich new soil.

I did not achieve world peace today.

But I had a fresh glimpse of the man I married,

liberated some ferns,

and felt the good Earth in my hands.

Roberta Riley 2007

Many a work day in Madrona Woods, third Saturday of the month…

We’d carry tools to our site for the day,

begin to pull out ivy, blackberries or other invasives,

to mulch or plant.