Law of Three

I arrive early enough to walk the river trail from parked car to garden cabin, pausing at the community garden I toiled in a few summers back (before giving in to the weeds). The porch is empty except one woman typing away on her laptop. The garden cat—a shadow slink in the periphery. My friend shows up next, then her class, one by one, in pairs, until we form a ragged circle. I am today’s guest. The day is warm, finally, after weeks of cold, and the breeze arranging the treetops whispers hoarsely of rain as bamboo rustles and clacks. I hoped the old ceramic Green Man I’d planted in the center of the plot would have remained, but only new rows lined by straw, an indent in the clay. Each student gets a handout and for an hour I speak about poetry. They are attentive and listen well, or make sure to appear so: If you think “Black Mountain Poets,” you must know expand your ideas out to include the land they worked, the visual artists with whom they collaborated, Albers’ learning as doing. And: M.C. Richards says that poetry often comes through “the window of irrelevance.”  I work to keep this loose lecture short. One student has brought her dog, who gets up and sniffs my shoes then resettles under the table. Another student lights a fire and boils water for tea. Thirty minutes left to work on a poem. Play around a little, I say. See what comes up. Place one thing next to another. Does a third thing arise? Some students head out to the river. Others gather round the fire. My friend pours out tea in mismatched cups. The dog returns to my pant leg for a sniff. I sit on a stonewall overlooking the garden and write abandoned garden plot. A pair of crows argues up in the swaying branches. I write: Green Man ceramic pressed into the earth. Gone.