Jose A. Alcantara: Divorce
He has flown headfirst against the glass
and now lies stunned on the stone patio,
nothing moving but his quick beating heart.
Arlene Weiner: After the Emergence of the Periodical Cicadas
bouquets of cicada brides whose courtship
made the sky sing so in May.
The wedding music stopped, these are left,
to be caught by maidens in seventeen years.
Michael Simms: Consider the Hummingbird
Consider the hummingbird
How like the mind it is
Paul Christensen: Rainy and Cold Today
The soul is hungry in spring, and there is only the crisp, silent air to feed it.
William Hathaway: The Quiet of the Sky
Quietly, though. The sort of view
people look at and say awesome
while taking pictures of their faces
with their phones with nature scenes
behind them…
Claude McKay: After the Winter
Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning’s white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We’ll turn our faces southward, love
Peter Blair: Vernation
On the road by the arena,
puddles fill ditches
and flaxen rushes wave
in March rain.
Bertha Rogers: When Winter — Lục bát
Here is an example of a traditional fixed form borrowed from Vietnamese folk poetry.
William Butler Yeats: The Wild Swans at Coole
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky…
Ed Bieber: Cleverness
Nature is the master here: boundless, unpredictable,
full of astonishments. The children come next. I follow.
Henry Beston: A Year of life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied.
Philip Levine: Red Dust
I do not believe in sorrow;
it is not American.
Audio: Wendell Berry reads ‘The Peace of Wild Things’
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be…
Lauren Camp: Leather World, This Bird, This Sky
I came here from temporary
and perpetual rages—the whole sky
of wind. Secret birds
take the ruin of garden.
Vox Populi 