High Maintenance for the New
Year
Ah, but all is not well with me. The tall corn is now fallen and yellow. The
grasses have lost their copper sheen.
In spite of my desire to ignore the brisk unforgiving
coolness of the breezes, hibiscus have gone dormant. Shameless pitiful sticks, my eyes retain mere
glimpses of their former daily glory.
Showy flowers that bloom and fade so soon, not at all suited for lasting
arrangements, and so, perfect reminders of something ephemeral,
something I seek.
Still around the marigolds.
From the distance they splash low sunlight on to the light greens of
winter lettuce, the darker shades of perpetual spinaches. Tall sunlight still
filters through the yellow blooms, the artichokes from Jerusalem
when all is quiet and snowy and gray,
I will dig those long brown gnarly roots. I will cook them
with garlic and onions. I will eat them, the artichokes, this year.
But all is not well.
As I wonder if the mulch cover will protect the hopes for
the perennials in the garden. The
strawberries, did I choke them on purpose?
Did I do enough for them, did I weed enough, did I nurture
them enough? The pear trees, did the deer kill them?
The green caterpillars, will I kill them?
No, not all is that well.
As winter, one more time, takes away my light, my lifeline
and I must understand the stillness of the underground.
A memory stretches and sends probing tendrils to find a
resonance in the cold, the dark.
Finds nothing.
There is no lesson there, not yet.
My trade is still with the business of life.
I have not learned of death.
A partial vision of a revelation bounces against the walls
inside my heart. Ripples under my skin,
where rivers flow in vein currents and countercurrents. A possible meaning
forms:
"Maintenance!"
If only I could give
up maintenance. If only I could adopt the most precious tenet of mainstream
culture.
"Abandon maintenance and embrace
obsolescence."
Maybe then, I can understand and integrate my descent into
the depths of monochromatic coldness.
Maybe then I can envision a garden of deserted cars,
yellow stained broken sinks, glass less windows, boats, refrigerators with no doors,
old fashioned brass hospital beds, green with moss,
rusted iron, stoves abandoned, smothered by weeds,
exposed to the wind and the furies.
Fallen oaks, empty bottles, tin cans.
Dead carcasses of birds, putrefied, their feathers flown, eyes sunken inward for lack of juice.
Pokeweed structures, fractal and dangerous in their winter decay.
Enzymatic buried seeds.
Abandon maintenance.
Give up perpetuity in her entirety, the cultivation of
plants, attempts to prolong, to protect and to nurture.
Allow weeds to invade and choose their place. Allow lettuces, tomatoes, poison ivy to invade and choose their place.
Allow all seeds to germinate or not to germinate.
Give up matter, and all the implications of matter,
material, motherly.
Give up the control that stems from Matter.
Embrace rust, rot and decay.
Go down inside the tunnels.
Give a thought to the underground, to the underworld. Not a kind nurturing thought.
Just a clear, precise, cold, crisp as winter thought
to the circular porosity of volcanic rock,
the diamond cubic density of sand,
steady decay of seed,
deep reddish brown powder of rust and of rot
of all materials.
Celebrate then, in quiet ritual, this inferno.
Erica Marianna Weick
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