Iris Lennox

Tag: Beauty

  • Before We Cover the Wound

    In “Before We Cover the Wound,” Iris Lennox restores a wartime letter and confronts what healing requires before a wound can be mended.

    While watching A Private Life (Vie privée), a quirky little French film starring Jodie Foster, I heard a line that made me pause the movie and write it down: “We don’t cover uncleaned wounds here.” Later, I wrote this poem.

    At my oak worktable,
    I turn the letter
    face down.

    A strip of cellophane
    crosses the center fold,
    yellow as weak tea.

    Both ends curl
    away from the paper,
    exhausted and maybe
    a little crabby with age.

    I slide a thin blade
    beneath the upper edge.

    Three paper fibers rise.

    I stop.

    A damp brush
    clouds the hardened glue.

    The tape loosens
    one millimeter at a time,
    leaving a faint brown line.

    Drabby yellow
    and brown.

    Not my aesthetic at all
    but it reminds me
    of a living room from the 1970s
    I used to love.

    Underneath,
    the old tear opens
    from the margin
    through four lines of ink.

    For several minutes,
    the letter lies
    in two pieces.

    I turn both halves
    face up.

    Finally. Blue.

    The letter begins
    Dear Mother,
    and is dated
    January 18, 1945.

    Somewhere in Belgium,
    which is the Army’s name
    for every place
    it would rather not let
    a mother imagine.

    He starts with the weather—
    no one is afraid
    to hear about the weather.

    Snow reaches
    the tops of his boots.

    Coffee freezes
    in a cup.

    He drinks quickly now
    and writes that this
    counts as a promotion 
    in his unit.

    Then Eddie appears.

    Yesterday a piece of the war
    found Eddie below the knee.

    One fold of wool
    from his trousers
    is wedged in the wound,
    with enough mud
    to make Belgium
    smaller by one handful.

    My great-uncle cuts
    the cloth away
    with the pocketknife
    he keeps tied
    to his belt.

    He pours water
    from his canteen
    while Eddie calls him
    every name
    he learned in New Jersey.

    When he runs out of names,
    he grips my great-uncle’s sleeve
    and asks him
    to keep going.

    The water carries out
    brown wool,
    a sliver of metal,
    and finally
    only water.

    He opens his field dressing
    and presses the white pad
    over the place
    where Eddie’s leg
    begins again.

    He sleeps now,
    the letter says,
    with one hand closed
    around my sleeve    .

    Near the bottom,
    my great-uncle adds:

    I love you, Mother.
    There. I wrote it.
    Don’t carry on.

    By sunset,
    the softened glue
    rests in amber crumbs
    beside my wrist.

    A narrow strip
    of mulberry paper
    holds the torn edges
    fiber by fiber.

    The handwriting
    shows through.

    Under the work lamp,
    a thin white seam
    runs through the sentence.

    The ink enters
    on one side
    and continues
    on the other.

    —Iris Lennox

  • The Dig

    Abstract landscape painting with rolling hills, a solitary tree, and layered fields in muted greens, creams, blues, and warm earth tones beneath a soft sky. The flowing forms evoke memory, changing landscapes, and the passage of time.
    I stood at the glass door, watching.

Beyond the stone deck
and the birdhouse

two delicate blue eggs
lay nestled atop carefully arranged
blades of grass.

The field beyond the fence
was bright with spring.

A tree named Walter
lifted its branches into the morning.

Every tree within daily view
should have a name.

A dog bred to bear burdens
wandered lazily through the grass,

distracted by an over-dramatic cardinal

or maybe the way
the breeze had begun to smell like
spring.

The coffee in my mug tasted faintly
of hazelnut and milk.

Scrambled eggs cooled on a plate.

Cologne drifted through the kitchen.

The juice from a red grape
slid down the back of my throat.

The field was busy with singing.

Not birds alone.

Something larger.

Something hidden.

The busyness of living
moved through the grass
like wind moving through
tousled hair
or waves crossing the sea.

At the time,
I thought the field would always be there.
The eggs.
The cardinal.
Walter.
The dog.
The glass door.
The man standing somewhere behind me.

Months later
he disappeared.

Then the seasons continued
one second
one hour
one page
at a time.

Summer crossed the field.
Autumn followed.
Winter bent the grass flat.

One afternoon

I found myself standing
on the opposite side of the same field.

Far beyond the fence.

Far beyond the glass door.

Far beyond the woman
who used to stand in that kitchen
and watch.

The singing was gone.

The grass was gone.

The hill itself
seemed smaller.

Yellow machines moved through the earth

lifting,
turning,
leveling.

Steel teeth entered the ground.

Mud spread where pasture had been.

The field I remembered
was being dismantled
one scoop at a time.

A subdivision would stand there soon.

Roads.
Mailboxes.
Driveways.

Children who would never know
there had once been a field.

I watched for a long time.

Long enough for the machines
to continue their sweaty work.

Long enough to notice that
Walter was still standing.

Long enough to realize
that I was no longer looking
at the same landscape.

Or from the same place.
Or through the same eyes.

The field stretched between
what had happened

and what remained.

I stood,

watching the earth being turned over,
feeling the soil being turned over,
tasting the smoke and smothering

just a little.

"What if I take one step backward?"
I wondered.

"One more,"
I whispered.

Artifacts churned
deep and then deeper
burying and then
buried.

And I drove away
waving to Walter
in the rearview mirror.

— Iris Lennox

  • Hamilton Creek Bridge

    Sunlight sparkling on Hamilton Creek beneath the Hamilton Creek Bridge near Wildwood, Missouri, with clear water, spring trees, and limestone banks.
    Inspired by Hamilton Creek in Wildwood, Missouri, “Hamilton Creek Bridge” is a contemporary nature poem by Iris Lennox about clear water, limestone, and the quiet forces that shape the landscape over time.

    I stop where cedar shadows fall
    across the weathered rail,
    and lean above the narrow draw
    where water threads the shale.

    It finds a seam the color
    of old bone beneath the moss,
    then slips between the sleeping stones
    without a splash or pause.

    The creek is scarcely wide enough
    to trouble any map.
    A branch lets go. A single leaf
    drops through the sunlight’s trap.

    It circles once in amber light,
    then catches in a bend
    where grains of sand, as bright as salt,
    begin their patient wend.

    Rain gathers breath from oak and fern
    before it finds this place.
    It turns faintly acid as it falls
    against the limestone face.

    Not all at once.
    One crystal first.
    One edge too small to see.
    A hollow deepens grain by grain
    beneath the sycamore tree.

    A swallow skims.
    The bridge holds still.
    The afternoon grows warm.
    Below, the water keeps its hand
    around the selfsame form.

    I watch it pass beneath my feet
    with neither haste nor sound,
    wearing through the living rock
    the way roots enter ground.

    —Iris Lennox

    Curious about the history of the nearby landscape? Read Zombie Road: The Story Beneath Missouri’s Most Haunted Trail, an essay about Rock Hollow, Lawler Ford Road and the landscape beneath one of Missouri’s most famous legends.

  • The Wren Comes Once a Year


    The wren comes once a year to me,
    in July, toward the close of day,
    when heat still trembles in the trees
    and all the shadows stretch away.

    He chooses neither branch nor wire
    but lands upon the weathered gate,
    his little breast a pulse of fire,
    as if a bird could carry a date.

    I stand inside. I do not move.
    The glass is warm beneath my hand.
    He lifts his throat into the grove
    and sings what I don't understand.

    Last year, I wrote a lyric here
    when this same wren sang into night.
    Tomorrow lingered, soft and near,
    inside his handful of twilight.

    This year he comes. I write a poem.
    He tips his head and sings once more.
    I do not ask how he has known
    to find the same July-lit door.

    This year I keep the window closed.
    The curtain stirs against my wrist.
    Outside, the evening bends and folds;
    the hedge turns blue beneath the mist.

    The wren knows nothing of before.
    He doesn't count what I have kept.
    He sings beside the garden door
    where last year's fallen petals slept.

    Perhaps he came for no one here.
    Perhaps the gate was simply near.
    Perhaps a wren comes once a year.

    And still I wait until he's gone
    before I move or breathe again,
    while dusk collects across the lawn
    and one small branch remembers the wren.

    —Iris Lennox

  • Ghost Town

    Once home to more than two thousand people, Times Beach, Missouri, is now part of Route 66 State Park, its former streets winding through grass, wetlands, and trees.

    Grass grows high along the path,
    seed heads bending in the July heat.
    Cottonwoods lift their silver leaves
    and turn them over in the wind.

    Somewhere beyond the trees,
    the Meramec moves brown and slow.
    Cicadas start and stop.
    A turkey disappears into the sumac,
    leaving one branch shaking behind her.

    I walk where the path bends gently,
    following its long, deliberate curve
    through Queen Anne's lace and clover.

    For years, I've assumed the curve was shaped by the land.

    I think the trees have drawn it there,
    that roots and rain have persuaded the path
    to turn a little to the left.

    But the curve was here before the trees.

    This was a street.

    The slightly hidden marsh beside me 
    had an address.
    There were mailboxes here,
    porch steps, garden hoses,
    bicycles dropped in yards at dinner time.

    A woman shakes a white sheet in the sun.
    A screen door strikes its frame.
    Someone calls a child home
    before dusk makes the river invisible.

    I hear no names being called.

    Still, I stand in the middle of the old road
    while cicadas stitch their noise through the trees,
    and for a moment the grass seems crowded.

    They sprayed the roads with oil
    to keep the dust from rising.

    The streets were unpaved then.
    Cars sent the dry earth climbing
    into open windows and onto porches,
    over laundry, into kitchens,
    into the mouths of children playing outside.

    So they paid a man to settle it.

    He came with a truck
    and spread oil over the roads,
    darkening the dust,
    pressing it back into the earth.

    Such a small sentence:

    to keep the dust down.

    To keep it from settling on windowsills,
    on supper plates,
    on the faded blue jeans drying in the sun.

    The road kept what it was given,
    accustomed to service.

    Eleven summers pass.
    Children ride bicycles over it.
    Rain darkens it.
    The sun warms it.
    Women open their windows in April.

    Then the river rises.

    It enters the houses without knocking,
    climbs the stairs,
    lifts chairs from kitchen floors,
    pulls photographs from drawers.

    And when the water folds back
    into its comfortable rhythm,
    it leaves the secret in the mud.

    I walk here now
    with sunlight brushing across my shoulders.

    No houses.
    No mailboxes.
    No white sheets rising in the wind.

    Only the wetland,
    the mound,
    the old roads curving through the trees.

    They burned the poisoned earth eventually,
    two hundred and sixty-five thousand tons of it,
    and buried what remained beneath the grass.

    I've walked the hill where fragments of a town
    turn slowly in the earth—

    a blue cup without its handle,
    one white button,
    the rusted hinge of a closet door,
    a marble lost beneath a child's bed,
    the broken mouth of a jar
    that once held peaches.

    Things someone touched every day
    without knowing there would come a day
    when no one touched them again.

    Now coneflowers open in the sun.
    Frogs call from the water.
    A red-winged blackbird bends a reed
    almost to the ground.

    I have walked here for three years
    without knowing what was under my feet.

    The streets, trails.
    The mound, a hill.

    I watched deer step out at dusk
    where someone's back door used to be.

    Today I stop beside the tall grass.

    The wind passes over it
    and every green blade leans
    in the same direction.

    Then rises.

    Then leans again.

    As if the earth is trying
    to remember a name.

    —Iris Lennox


    If you'd like to know more about the town beneath these trails, I wrote about the strange history of Times Beach and its second life as Route 66 State Park here.

  • Nearly

    At half past two I cross the hall
    to fetch the book I left downstairs.
    The moon has laid a silver shawl
    across the floor, the walls, the chairs.

    And there you are.

    No—

    just my coat
    thrown on the chair the night before,
    one empty sleeve beside the oak,
    one shoulder leaning toward the door.

    The pipes knock twice behind the wall.
    Outside, the maple shakes its hood.
    A branch lets go. I hear it fall.
    I stay there longer than I should.

    The coat is mine. I know its weight.
    I know the tear beneath one arm.
    I know each button, cuff, and seam—
    yet cloth, for one breath, can feel warm.

    Still, something in the way it leans
    against the chair's familiar frame—
    the folded cloth, the empty sleeve—
    has nearly said a name.

    Nearly is a troublesome word.

    A letter nearly sent may wait
    inside a drawer, unseen, unread—
    but still, before it meets its fate,
    it knows the truth that wasn't said.

    Nearly home.
    Nearly forgotten.
    Nearly enough.

    I lift the coat to put away,
    inside the closet by the stairs.

    One hand finds mine inside the sleeve.
    I turn once slowly through the air.
    For one small moment, I believe—

    Its buttons touch my wrist.
    One empty arm rests against my own,
    and the smell of cologne
    nearly
    brushes my cheek.

    In the window,
    the glass reflects one of us.

    Wait—

    for one turn,
    perhaps two.

    So I turn once more.

    Then I return it where it lay,
    one cuff still folded toward the floor.
    The shadows gather where they may
    and leave me standing as before. 

    The window holds its square of sky.
    The pipes have all gone quiet now.
    The moon still silvers every wall.

    I reach for the railing.

    Behind me,
    the coat lets go.

    I hear it fall.

    —Iris Lennox

  • Question in the Sand

    This version of “Question in the Sand” appears in my collection, The Giving of Weight.

    A man kneels at the edge of the tide

    and writes

    WHY

    with one finger.

    The letters are large enough
    to be read from a distance,
    which seems ambitious.

    A message for pirates?
    For God?

    The sea,
    having answered
    several million questions already,

    continues
    with its own business.

    A wave approaches.

    Changes its mind.

    Returns to conference
    with the horizon.

    The man stands.

    His knees complain
    and then recover.

    He studies the word.

    The word studies him.

    Neither appears satisfied.

    Years have altered him
    in practical ways.

    His hair,
    for example,

    once committed fully
    to black.

    Now it negotiates.

    The wind participates.

    A gull lands nearby.

    It contributes nothing.
    Maybe because it can’t read.

    Another wave enters the discussion.

    The W loses a corner.

    The H remains confident.

    The Y,
    for reasons unknown,
    looks wounded.

    A woman appears.

    She carries her shoes
    with one hand.

    The other swings
    at her side.

    “How did you find me?”
    he asks.

    The question seems misplaced.

    She looks at the sand.

    At the sea.

    At the gull.

    At the word.

    “I wasn’t looking.”

    This answer lasts
    slightly longer
    than the W.

    The tide advances.

    The gull departs.

    The horizon keeps
    its own counsel.

    Together they walk north
    while the sea
    works patiently
    through the alphabet.

    —Iris Lennox

  • Route 66

    A bench possesses very few options.

    It cannot follow the river
    when the Meramec rises beyond its banks.

    It cannot seek shade in July
    or shelter in January.

    It cannot complain about mosquitoes,
    cottonwood fluff,
    fallen branches,
    or the weight of snow.

    Someone chose its view:
    One sliver of sky.
    The trees.
    A long curve of water
    moving northeast toward someplace else.

    When I first photograph it
    in Route 66 State Park,
    I do not yet know we will spend
    a year together.

    I am only walking a trail.

    The bench is only a bench.

    The river is moving quickly that day,
    green with spring runoff.

    Leaves unfold overhead.

    Somewhere beyond the trees,
    a train sounds its horn.

    I take a photograph and continue on.

    Then I return.

    A few days later.
    A few weeks later.

    Again.

    Again.

    The river lowers.
    The air grows thick enough to wear.
    Vines climb fallen tree trunks.
    Grass thickens.

    The air hums with insects
    so determined in their purpose
    they seem incapable of doubt.

    Autumn arrives carrying its familiar tools.

    Gold.
    Copper.
    Rust.

    Leaves gather around the legs
    and drift across the seat.
    The birds change shifts in the air
    and the shadows lengthen below.

    Then winter.

    The kind that introduces itself quietly at first.
    A single hard frost.
    Bare branches.
    A thin skin of ice.

    Then snow.

    Then wind.

    Then the sort of cold
    that makes a bright blue scarf question
    perfectly reasonable decisions.

    I walk a mile through a wind chill
    of thirteen below zero
    to take another photograph.

    The bench, meanwhile,
    has traveled nowhere at all.

    By then,
    a question has begun following me
    up and down the trail.

    At what point does a bench
    become an acquaintance?

    Not a friend.
    That would be absurd.

    The bench knows nothing about me.
    It cannot recognize my footsteps.
    It has never once asked
    how I am doing.

    Yet I find myself looking for it
    before I look for the river.

    I notice when a branch falls nearby.
    I wonder how it fared 
    when tornado sirens blared.
    I am relieved to find it waiting
    where I left it.

    The year continues assembling itself.

    Rain after rain.

    Season after season.

    Photograph after photograph.

    One afternoon I stand beside it
    and look across the water.

    A hawk flies overhead,
    followed by a kettle of vultures,
    circling.

    "Something is about to be eaten,"
    I say out loud to no one,
    and I'm a little bit surprised
    there is no answer.

    The trees are busy becoming
    whatever comes after this.

    For a moment,
    neither of us is in a hurry.

    Above the river,
    a branch sways gently in the wind.

    And light moves across the bench
    like a hand.

    —Iris Lennox

  • Overlook

    Three miles out,
    three miles back.

    A reasonable bargain.

    A narrow trail
    threading through stone,

    switchback after switchback,

    until the canyon opens
    without warning

    and the earth falls away.

    I stand there awhile
    kicking tiny pebbles
    just to see
    how far
    they will fall

    or how far I would
    before I step back.

    I sip filtered water
    in peace
    as a lizard does pilates
    against a tuft of pine needles.

    Lizards seem too busy
    for their own good.

    "Relax, have some water,"

    I advise
    as I drip some drops
    his way.

    I adjust my daypack and
    read the small sign
    bolted into the rock.

    The sort of ordinary things
    people do
    when they have arrived.

    Then I turn around
    and walk the trail
    from a new perspective
    before leaving the canyon.

    Or rather,

    my body left.

    My attention
    stayed.

    Days later,
    while folding laundry,

    a ridge appeared
    in the curve of a bedsheet.

    Weeks later,

    a line of shadow
    crossing a parking lot
    became the canyon wall
    at dusk.

    The smell of warm stone.

    The cry of a raven.

    The blue
    that picks you up
    and introduces you to
    heaven
    just before evening.

    I have been home
    for a month.

    The canyon apparently
    pays no attention to distance.

    It keeps turning up

    in laundry,

    in shadows,

    in the space between
    one thought
    and the next.

    For instance,

    Do the mules
    appreciate the view?

    And what became
    of that lizard?

    Did he finish
    his exercises?

    Did anyone else
    give him a puddle?

    Now, as I watch the rain
    fall outside my Missouri window
    I suspect

    an overlook is simply
    a place

    where we can see more 
    than we did before.

    —Iris Lennox

  • Slowness

    A breeze slips through the open back door
    and lifts the top page
    of my notebook.

    The paper rises,
    settles,
    rises again,

    a thin white animal
    testing its legs
    at the edge of my desk.

    The corner taps the wood.

    Once.
    Twice.

    Then the whole page
    breaks loose,
    rolls into itself,
    turns sideways,
    and skitters
    across the floor.

    If paper had knees,
    this one would be bruised.

    A pigeon on the back of an Adirondack
    tilts his head
    and watches the routine.

    I wait for judgment.

    He blinks,
    ruffles one gray shoulder,
    and looks past me
    toward an old oak tree.

    Seven out of ten,
    I decide.

    Generous,
    considering the landing.

    The page rests
    beneath the chair now,
    half-curled,
    one ruled blue line
    sprawling like a vein.

    Outside,
    a dog barks once,
    then again,
    farther away.

    Beyond the back door,
    a squirrel scrapes
    inside the ceramic pot
    where I keep meaning
    to plant basil.

    Somewhere down the street,
    a truck door shuts.

    I hum three notes
    from a song
    someone sang to me once
    and cannot remember
    the next line.

    How many songs
    have been whittled
    down
    to two or three words
    and the shape of a voice?

    The pigeon steps sideways
    along the fence,
    one pink foot
    then the other.

    My notebook waits open.

    The page under the chair
    shivers
    when the breeze returns.

    —Iris Lennox