BOOKMONGER
Boutard cultivates
crops and poetry
In autumn, raking leaves
becomes my daily aerobic activ-
ity. This is a devotional act, too —
a chance to commune with nature
and breathe deeply, as I gather
up me the extravagant detritus
of oak, maple, cherry, dogwood,
hazelnut and magnolia trees, each
leaf a bright bit in the seasonal
kaleidoscope.
That’s why the title of a recent
release from MoonPath Press
couldn’t help but draw my atten-
tion. “Each Leaf Singing” struck
an immediate chord, and the poetry
within captures some of the plea-
sures as well as the melancholy that
comes with the turning of the sea-
sons and the passing of the years.
Caroline Boutard is a newcomer
to the tradition of poet farmers —
Robert Burns, Robert Frost, Wen-
dell Berry, to name a few. And in
this fecund volume, she writes of
the decades she has spent on Ayers
Creek Farm in the Tualatin Valley,
working alongside her husband,
Anthony, to grow corn, plums,
potatoes, greens, grains, grapes and
beans.
There are poems that celebrate
this cornucopia of plenty: “Ayers
Creek Seasons,” “Haiku: Flowering
Farm” and “Farm to Table.”
But it isn’t always a picnic.
Farming has its ups and downs,
beginning with the weather.
The poem “April Is Cold this
Year” captures the frustration of a
slow-to-start spring: “The chill has
leaked into our house, / frosting our
exchanges,” Boutard writes.
She chafes at her husband’s
inclination to stay indoors, “your
back to the window” and “warm-
ing yourself / in the glow from your
laptop.”
Other years, it’s “spring too
early, and winter too rough –” or
other factors that aggravate, the
contaminated run-off from a neigh-
bor’s property, or the gophers and
rabbits that decimate the newly
planted lettuce.
But more often than not, Bou-
tard captures not only the necessity
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of acceptance and adaptation, but
the enjoyment of living alongside.
“Geese slide over the treetops,” she
notes, and California quail parade
into the garden with decorum, and
starlings “cover the trees with iri-
descent smoke.”
Coyotes, wraith-like, move
across the landscape.
This week’s book
‘Each Leaf Singing’ by Caroline Boutard
MoonPath Press – 108 pp — $16
And the old family dog brushes
up against her and “smiled up
through cloudy eyes to argue / that
every hour held enough pleasure /
for both of us.”
Boutard dedicates this poetry
collection to her husband, who has
been diagnosed with a terminal ill-
ness. In a poem called “January
Lonely” she writes:
… I am caught
with our forty years in one hand,
and a plea for more time in the other.
My dear, I have such blankness
when I think about the future,
such wonder
at how we ever thought we could
prepare.
There may be no cures for her
husband’s condition, but if one
pays attention, palliatives abound.
There’s poetry in the laundry on the
line, in the herd of cows, the fra-
grance of orange, the taste of peach.
Ever the farmer, Boutard leaves
us with this hard-won wisdom
in a poem titled “Walk with Me
Through the Field”:
Believe in this land –
even through rubble
living things ascend.
The Bookmonger is Barbara
Lloyd McMichael, who writes this
weekly column focusing on the
books, authors and publishers of
the Pacific Northwest. Contact her
at barbaralmcm@gmail.com.
‘Each Leaf Singing’ is by Caroline Boutard.