Pat Valdata – Four Poems
Marsh Seasons
Spring: gray tree frogs harmonize
with Fowler’s toads
wet chorus of longing
Summer: greenheads deerflies
mosquitoes no-see-ums
pink splotches of calamine
Fall: saltmarsh hay dries
crisp as the wind
rustles like corduroy
Winter: cat lurks in phragmites
the color of snow
patient as an egret
Tools
The expert flint knapper holds
a hunk of white rock as big as
his left hand. With his right,
he smacks the large rock with
a smaller, harder one. Whack.
One flake falls off, exposing sharp,
shiny gray flint. Whack. Whack.
Whack. Flakes pile up at his feet.
Down one side then the other whack
he smashes the small rock whack
against the larger, creating whack
what we’d call a razor-sharp whack
edge on both sides, leaving one whack
rounded end uncut to form whack
a handhold. This, he explains, switching
now to a hammer made of elk antler
to hone the edge even more tap
is the Stone-Age equivalent tap
of a Swiss army knife. Anyone tap
with basic skill and a chunk tap
of flint can make a hand axe, just
as they’d done in this same spot
two hundred thousand years ago.
This archeologist can look at a
hand axe in a museum and tell
from the pattern on the edge
exactly how it was made, see
mistakes like one he just made,
because, he says, laughing,
that old feller and me, we’re
only human.
Total Eclipse
Crescent shadows fade
When the penumbra arrives
Sunlight gets weird
The heart of the umbra
Seems to come from all around
Birdsong stops
The magic of astronomy
Almost makes us believe in God
A bat flies by
When the light returns
Our human shadows lie down
Side by side
October Dawn on Jones Creek
Full moon lies low in the west,
Venus high in the east, blazing like a sun. A satellite
arcs north-northeast, smooth silent
pinpoint of white.
I rarely see the sky before dawn, but our old
dog wakes up earlier these days. The air feels warm
for this time of year, though frost is coming, even
this far south.
Too early for the great blue heron’s hoarse
call. Too late for owls. No geese stir. The sky glow
past the pines either a false dawn or lights from
a chicken house.
The dog wants to keep sniffing the dewy grass
but I need more sleep. We toddle inside. She can’t
jump onto the bed anymore. I pick her up.
Frost is coming.
Author’s Statement on Beauty
I try to be a steward of the gifts I’ve been given since we moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland: our yard, a bit of waterfront, and the creatures who live here. Many of them are conventionally beautiful: bald eagles, herons and egrets, bluebirds and nuthatches; towering loblolly pines; the river whose surface is sometimes a mirror, sometimes windblown. But I’m learning to appreciate the less conventionally beautiful as well: native plants most people consider weeds, like fleabane, a generous volunteer that opens small, daisy-like flowers on the hottest days of summer; or hoverflies, whose jaunty stripes whirr by as they look for nectar on those fleabanes. I’ve replaced as much lawn as I can manage with flowerbeds and a small pond that hosts a single frog. I don’t grow vegetables—we’re blessed with a variety of farmer’s markets—so I can indulge in my love of native flowers. I’m awed by the iridescent beauty of the smallest bees that pollinate them and by the antics of male carpenter bees, the zeppelins of the bee world, guarding their vibrant patch of sweetness. Except that I planted most of those flowers, I’m as irrelevant to these insects as I am to the stars I gape at on clear nights. And that’s a beautiful thing.
Pat Valdata is a poet, novelist, and former glider pilot. Her poetry manuscript about women aviation pioneers, Where No Man Can Touch, won the Donald Justice Poetry prize in 2015. A revised edition was published in 2023 by Wind Canyon Books. Her work has appeared in literary magazines including Ecotone, Little Patuxent Review, North American Review, Passager, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. www.patvaldata.com