The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt

THE SUN UNDERFOOT AMONG THE SUNDEWSAn ingenuity too astonishingto be quite fortuitous isthis bog full of sundews, sphagnum-lined and shaped like a teacup. A stepdown and you're into it; awilderness swallows you up:ankle-, then knee-, then midriff-to-shoulder-deep in wetfootedunderstory, an overheadspruce-tamarack horizon hintingyou'll never get out of here. But the sunamong the sundews, down there,is so bright, an underfootwebwork of carnivorous rubies,a star-swarm thick as the gnatsthey're set to catch, delectabledouble-faced cockleburs, eachhair-tip a sticky mirrorafire with sunlight, a millionof them and again a million,each mirror a trap set tounhand unbelieving, that eithera First Cause said once, "Let therebe sundews," and there were, or they'vemade their way here unaidedother than by that backhand, round-about refusal to assume responsibilityknown as Natural Selection. But the sununderfoot is so dazzlingdown there among the sundews,there is so much lightin the cup that, looking,you start to fall upward.A HERMIT THRUSHNothing's certain. Crossing, on this longest day,the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling upthe scree-slope of what at high tidewill be again an island,to where, a decade since well-being stakedthe slender, unpremeditated claim that brings usback, year after year, lugging themakings of another picnic–the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctifiedfig newtons–there's no knowing what the slammingseas, the gales of yet another wintermay have done. Still there,the gust-beleaguered single spruce tree,the ant-thronged, root-snelled moss, grassand clover tuffet underneath it,edges frazzled rawbut, like our own prolonged attachment, holding.Whatever moral lesson might commend itself,there's no use drawing one,there's nothing hereto seize on as exemplifying any so-called virtue(holding on despite adversity, perhaps) orany no-more-than-human tendency–stubborn adherence, say,to a wholly wrongheaded tenet. Though tohold on in any case means taking less and lessfor granted, some few things seem nearlycertain, as that the longest daywill come again, will seem to hold its breath,the months-long exhalation of diminishmentagain begin. Last night you woke mefor a look at Jupiter,that vast cinder wheeled unblinkingin a bath of galaxies. Watching, we traveledtoward an apprehension all but impossibleto be held onto–that no point is fixed, that there's no footholdbut roams untethered save by such snells,such sailor's knots, such staysand guy wires as aremainly of our own devising. From such anempyrean, aloof seraphic mentors urge usto look down on all attachment,on any bonding, asin the end untenable. Base as it is, fromyear to year the earth's sore surfacemends and rebinds itself, howeverand as best it can, withthread of cinquefoil, tendril of the magentabeach pea, trammel of bramble; with easings,mulchings, fragrances, the gray-greenbayberry's cool poultice–and what can't finally be mended, the salt airproceeds to buff and rarefy: the lopped carnageof the seaward spruce clump weatherslustrous, to wood-silver.Little is certain, other than the tide thatcircumscribes us, that still sets its termto every picnic–today we stayed too longagain, and got our feet wet–and all attachment may prove at best, perhaps,a broken, a much-mended thing. Watchingthe longest day take cover undera monk's-cowl overcast,with thunder, rain and wind, then waiting,we drop everything to listen as ahermit thrush distills its fragmentary,hesitant, in the endunbroken music. From what source (beyond us, orthe wells within?) such links perceived arrive–diminished sequences so uninsistinglynot even human–there'shardly a vocabulary left to wonder, uncertainas we are of so much in this existence, thisbotched, cumbersome, much-mended,not unsatisfactory thing.