Dawn Potter: Piers Plowman
Who mutters the low notes, croons the old riversift,
water tumbling into stone and sand? Who trembles
the cows clustered in the thin shade of the high hill?
Margo Berdeshevsky: Here Is My Body
Invisible, on our lake, our dreamscape, the old blue heron lands.
John Burroughs: Waiting
Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind nor tide nor sea;
I rave no more ‘gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.
Carolyn Miller: Street Trees of San Francisco
despite everything
that keeps going wrong—the ginkgos,
opening tiny green fans.
Carolyn Miller: Rapture
When they said the world was coming to an end,
I thought about my brother, his long limbs,
his good shoulders and thick hair, his small
white teeth, his beautiful feet at the end
of the hospital bed.
Audio: Mary Oliver reads “Wild Geese”
Mary Oliver reads “Wild Geese” for Seattle Arts & Lectures’ 2007/08 Season at Benaroya Hall on February 4, 2008.
Bruce Lowry: Just Long Enough
My desire is only this—to die someplace the earth made beautiful all on its own, the way a first-grader makes the morning glory out of construction paper and Elmer’s glue, … Continue reading
Rachel Hadas: That Patch of Warmth
August. Midday. Look up: flawless sky
until a cloud sprouts; sidles; suddenly
blots out the sun. Wind troubles the trees
Dawn Potter: For David
The world is personal,
Dawn says. And what heart-scalded person
would think otherwise
Mary Jane White: Lindeman
you led me alone
into the sandhills, told me how you were named
for the lindens that grow like smaller oaks
or elms in Europe’s parks
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Dusk
Yet, while time takes its time to steal the light,
another music stirs, as if memory’s notes
had escaped their staff, & the past came to sing
beside me of its ordinary moments
Mary Jane White: Friend, You Count Yourself Faithless,
…the Sea and all her ships
are women you are too certain of —
who would not marry you for love.
