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Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Dunce(Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and the LA Times Book Award; My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016), Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), which was the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, where she serves as the state's poet laureate.

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Attention!

I hold the staff of the Great Sage

while he stands on the gorge-brink

gazing at mountains.

He is at this moment lost

in the mist of Existence,

while I am but his attendant—

Existence-Attendant!

The name of one who stands

like a stick, thinking of nothing.

Errand

To find things out—

that is the great adventure!

To find out the writing on the birthday cake

was toothpaste.

To find out Musical Chairs

was for real.

Find out Lord made the world

then threw the leftover rocks

in a pile and left.

Nettles growing nearby

spliced themselves into

days—find it out!

Checkless griff. Bitter love.

Modern hell. Bloody tears.

Beneath an ordinary glance

dwells an explosive.

Go to market.

Find all this out,

find everything out.

Even if your last day is

incomplete, even if something up there

thinks you are marzipan,

keep finding out—

for the stork who dropped us off

in the wilderness returns,

but with a bigger maw this time

so he can accommodate us

and all that we have found out

even if the terriblest part

is so condensed

we bear a resemblance

to the night sky.

Little Stream

My heart was bright and shining

like a lobster boiling in water.

And then I was just a child

eating the leftover snow.

I’d lost my mittens and my belly button

was as good as gone, meaning

I couldn’t be born again, ever,

so I sat by a little stream

with my eyes closed.

I saw a woman carrying a child’s coffin

on her head. I saw a rat so friendly

he shined my shoes with his tongue.

I saw my mother leave the room, saying

“Now I am going to go drink some vinegar.”

I saw a surfer drink a wuthering wave

and go down gently into that good night.

I saw the daffodils praying together.

I saw a hummingbird cry out

for a comma between decades.

I saw the quick trimming the hair on their necks

and the wicks of their packaged feet.

I saw something small and in constant danger

of being blown away, like pepper.

I saw a monk set an umbrella on fire, for fun.

I saw an old man dwelling in a tiny fishing village

with a tangible vibrancy that was truly inspiring.

I saw a Venus flytrap eat a cheeseburger.

I saw my struggles were coming to a close.

I saw I would grow so old I would stop wondering

what life on Napa Rui was like, and forget

the first apple tree was in Turkey.

I had the constant feeling something of vital importance

had been lost sight of, was perhaps even gone.

It’s hard to say hello to every atom.

I got to know protozoans, though.

It took three days for my umbilical cord

to swim past. At the end,

the tattered carnation of my navel

seemed most like me, so I threw it in

and at once my eyelids opened,

never to close again.

Nixie

It began with a phone number.

Then a grocery list.

A postcard to a dead friend

and then a long letter

in the green hell of a long summer.

With queer little geometrical figures

in the margins.

Then winter came with the monstrosity

of a true artist, its snow didn’t know

whether to play Bach or Beethoven,

its light in a light all its own.

I called and called. I went shopping

but the black diamonds downtown

were not on sale, so I am writing

to tell you the ring you wanted

will have to wait, we are telling

stories around the brazier, it is

warm near the tripod and snug,

the hour makes a soft music

all its own, I wish more than anything

you were here beside us, and not

under the maple in Mr. Morioka’s garden.

I used to think everything had meaning—

and it does.

Origin Myth

It was midnight

anxious friends

Life continually

circled in cold

inaccessible serenity

around unhappy Earth

Then all at once

swallowed it

Ever after

the humming

of bees at noon

could be heard

Even as you swam

across the bottom

of your dark

suburban pool

Resin

I am going to die.

No such thought has ever occurred to me

since the beginning of my exclusive time

in air when I, having made up my mind,

first began to wrap it, slowly and continuously,

in strips of linen soaked in a special admixture

of rosewater, chicken fat, and pinecones

studded with cloves to stop them from dripping.

Nor is it likely I would ever have had such a thought

in the time required by me to finish the job,

if someone else had not first introduced the thought

into the process, thereby interrupting it,

however briefly. But who?