The Poetry Walk will be viewable in the Garden daily from dawn till dusk. Stroll through the Garden and experience the voices of local poets woven into the natural landscape.
The Poetry Walk is Made Possible by The National Endowment for the Arts:
I can’t spell
I can’t even read
I failed English classes
And now
You want me to learn the Latin
Names
Start in Spring.
Just one
Just one at first
Mertensia Virginica
It rolls right off your tongue
Bluebells a wild native
Like you
One a year
Maybe I could learn two
Go by seasons
You walk in the woods every day
Obolaria Virginica Pennywort
Just learn the Virginia ones
Cheating only one word to learn
Dyslexia isn’t a stop sign look at it
like you look at the plant’s details
Scrub pine there’s an easy one
Pinus Virginiana
Fall came
Hamamelis Virginiana Witch Hazel
And so it went until
I wasn’t counting
Anymore.
If I spent less time
in unstructured circumspection
and dreadful inference
I might remember
that circumference is nothing
but pi times diameter
and I might not have to rue
the mismeasurements I make
in fencing these apple trees
from noisy birds and sneaky
squirrels. I might not keep
repeating what a dolt
to myself as I continue
to overlook my own advice
and nurse my sore thumbs
from recutting and rebending
this eighteen-gauge wire,
when all these years I could
have eaten bushels of Yeats’
apples simply by dropping
a berry in a stream at dusk.
I used to smile
when they talked about
the tree huggers,
Don Quixotes of the woods,
youthful lovers of old living things,
defenders of timbers,
young bodies pressed
against ancient bark,
daring men with saws
to make their mark.
I understand now.
A tree of fifty years
is a special thing.
A tree of one thousand
links with eternity.
Some trees are made
for raising houses,
others for nourishing souls.
I love the old gnarled things,
whipped by winter winds,
nuzzled by May breezes,
opening their world-worn
arms to me.
Lately I have learned
that we are all related,
all wed in the subatomic
energy field of Nature’s
worldwide web.
We are kindred spirits,
linked by physics
in cosmic ways we cannot see.
I took a walk in the country today.
It was a lonely time
to think and feel,
a necessary time to heal.
I followed a solitary trail
along streams and
valleys and fields.
The forest seemed to beckon me.
Alone in my reverie,
free to do
a childish thing,
with no one watching,
I gently hugged a tree.
Regard how I touch the earth with little violence or violation,
how I flourish when wild, when cultivated.
I am one and many of the name Magnolia—
difficult to uproot. A transformer of light,
I produce sweetness; resist deadly flames;
swallow bruises and careless cuts,
thicken them into sacred knots of knowing.
On street corners and in fields, along many streams,
I provide sanctuary for locals to sigh and sing.
Linger with me; redefine time.
Color of our galaxy’s milky stars, my blossoms
arose before bees existed—nature’s first flowers
and evolution’s great mystery.
For millenia, my plump seeds have fed squirrels and possum;
together we witnessed mighty mountains form,
watched the terrible lizards go extinct.
My foliage and branches sometimes whisper recollections
of human savagery, overkill—but not my complicity.
With each age, I express new hybridity, yet remain
verdant, aromatic. Draw near as summer yawns
with breezes of my ancient fragrance, lemony and lush.
Salve yourself while lightning bugs flash,
rise into evening’s cooling blue.
Breathe.
October mornings we wake to raspy buzz and jingle—
the Lesser Anglewing’s salsa shaker egg, Two-Spotted
Tree Cricket, smoke-detector loud, and sweet chirp
of Allard’s Ground Cricket—or is it? We press “play”
again to hear a competing candidate for this trilling,
pronounced in a clear Midwestern voice: Say’s Trig,
he intones, Anaxipha exigua. When efforts to distinguish
overwhelm, we relish our insect musician names:
the Slightly Musical Conehead, the Dog-day Cicada.
I feel we are on the verge of something. A marriage
between cup and clasp. Two curves lean
into one another, stretch upward with cautious
yearning, as if on tenterhooks, waiting,
just hung out to dry, the wet woolen smell
on the edge between musky and rank.
The field guides agree it is hard to pin down
a goldenrod. We sort them into tribes by shape:
plume-like, club-like, wand-like, and elm-branched.
It can be hard to tell a wand from a club. Don’t forget
the flat-topped clusters. Asters, likewise, are tricky.
Leaves give clues: whorled, crooked, toothed or not,
grass-like or perfoliate. In astonishing profusion
the tiny white asters are almost unknowable.
What are we on the brink of here?
It could just be me, stridulating,
hatching out of my skin of knowing, naming,
claiming; empty of easy kinship. Fall is
alive with the strangeness of yellow
flower, red berry, swift dark flying,
rattling upriver, not toeing the line
but towing it, pulling up stakes,
uncinching the taxonomy of love.
An excerpt from Species of Concern, Published by Shanti Arts Publishing
In a small patch
Grass tall in blossom
The soft huffing of
A whitetail can be
Heard as she grazes
If one listens close enough
Her tail flickers
But to no alarm
As she senses no one
But slowly takes her fill
And savors the sweet grass
She has been here before
The sun bows down
Its last moments in a
Blue to dark blue sky
Its partnered clouds
In a race to see who
Makes it home first
Wildflowers who spent
All their good scents
During the day
Begin to close and
Store up more for
The next one
And waterfalls who
Do not know sleep
With muted sound
Will lull the gnarled
Trees and rising rocks
Through a peaceful night
Trout will rise for the last
Insects who dare to sip
On a little stretch
And mink will curl up
Where fireflies will
Offer small lights
To those who fear the dark
The trees are whispering today,
the storm aftermath moving
leaf against leaf.
Do they celebrate surviving the storm
or mourn the Uprooted?
Or do they just acknowledge
that Creation is a circle
endlessly spinning.
Appalachian rain
Crouched among white trillium
Hidden in the fog
Open window, and the dogwood
did not lose its flowers, in spite of
the week long rain. A giant
of an ebony bird sits on the tip
of resilience, petals by her feet,
as if this Sunday morning
were paying homage. I wish I
knew how she had learned balance,
instinct to adhere to hope’s frail twigs,
chest out, one eye fixed on an invisible
heaven, the other on her surroundings,
all on a narrow branch so towering,
you’d think the details of wing and beak
would somehow be diminished. No,
she persists. She persists.
At fifteen, I’d huddle behind the garage on winter nights
and listen to the dark. Hungry for owl call, coyote cry,
the realms beyond the woods’ edge and the languages
hidden there. My cigarette flashing red with every inhale,
the shock of nicotine and cold sharpening the landscape.
Five decades on, in the late light of a different forest, oak
and tulip trees blur to gray: slate, steel, pewter as true as the dead pine
lying across the path. There’s a world in that decay.
Listen: the pitch of life unseen—insect buzz, click, thrum. A choir
not yet quieted by winter, an ache for recognition
before the camouflage of silence. A squirrel, jowls packed with acorns,
eyes me from the stone wall. Neither of us moves. The twitch
of stillness a conversation in the settling dusk.
December’s brisk air startles my lungs.
See God in the little things
Big things are more rare
The redbud blooms, the woodthrush sings
His handiwork – everywhere
Love God for the little things
While working in his plan
Planting a garden, taking a walk
He’ll always hold your hand
Glorify God for the little things
He multiplies good deeds
He can easily make flowers
From what some might call weeds
Refrain
No one has an excuse
For not seeking His face
The truth lies in the blood
Just look all around and ponder our world
You will know there IS a God!
Grass withers and flowers fade
But the word of the Lord lives on and on…
So thank God for the little things
That happen every day
Like the joy that heartfelt laughter brings
From things that children will say
Know God sees the little things
And know He sees you too
To Him we’re not such little things
We’re all equal in His view
Refrain
No there is no excuse for not seeking His face
So be still and know He is God
Even in the remotest of places
The Word of the Lord lives on
Grass may whither and flowers may fade
But the words of the Lord lives on and on
The words of out Lord live on and on…
Low-down ground by the stream acts joyful.
Bluebells, trillium? Get out of town with your frilled
carillon. Pink Moon, Grass Moon, Egg Moon,
there’s no call to fling brilliance in this
of all springs. I can’t even with such beauty.
Can’t explain to the ardent lilac.
No words for love-crazed blue jays,
for the cat slinking through lemon-balm.
Calm down, iridescent mist swept
along by always-rising winds. The nerve.
The outrageous auxiliary verb: may be.
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