Wilderness Interface Zone

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This one prompts physical reactions in me, spine and belly.

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I want to go there.

For fifteen years this lemon tree has bloomed
And offered up her fruit; our little maiden
Who sweeps the walk, housekeeper of the soil.
Her headdress in the wintertime is laden
With branches that bear golden offerings.
She’s our enchanted one, with perfect limbs
Producing flowers in the springtime. Her
Exquisite emerald leaves evoke soft hymns
From sparrows on the trellis. Daughter, bound
Into [...]

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Another of Carla Martin-Wood’s pictures that are worth a thousand words.

Deep in the sugar-blossomed orchard
spring catches in the throat of each bloom
pink with nectar promises
heavy with buzz of bees
dreaming honey-laden fruit to come
this ancient cherry tree
beckons with shade
a dusty wanderer who
turns from roadside Jiffy Mart
leaves billboard clutter
and afternoon sales calls behind
climbs the paint-peeled fence
that separates this holy of holies
from hum and drum of market-
driven life
to [...]

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Carla Martin-Wood has graciously provided stunning photos to brighten up WIZ during the Spring Poetry Runoff.   Enjoy.
To read Carla’s bio and poetry published on WIZ, go here, here, and here.

Snowflakes crisp the air.
From behind me, an afternoon plate
of sun brightens the furrows
made by the plow,
revealing yellow cobs
lost by the harvester.
As I walk the hardened rise and fall in the field,
I glide my boots from row-top to top.
Like The Little Prince who perched atop a small planet,
I can discover every high dirt bump is a [...]

“Look, here’s Fezzika,” my mother said, bending down to point out the Woodhouse toad tucked under the garden stone. We had discovered the amphibian’s house a few days earlier, and I was fascinated by the placement choice. She had dug into the soil under a cornerstone edging the flowerbed beside the main path through the [...]

About a week ago, I finally finished planting my garden.  I ran late (as usual) setting out some seedlings and all three attempts to start my typical heirloom tomato lineup from seed ran afoul of greens-craving kittens and rough winds.  So I bought hothouse starts, which as of this date are doing well, except for [...]

Today the secret names of everything
come back, the ancient names.
Tribe-of-the-morning names
call to me from the wind, which I know
as shut-your-eyes-breath,
hands-over-your-ears, gone-with-the-ice-song,
hymn-rising-out-of-cottonwood-sap.
Smell-of-dogwood; it is called,
smell-of-willow.
Daffodil has become again
small-pusher-of-earth-and-snow,
light-out-of-stone,
seawater-turned-sunshine.
This morning has its own name,
separate from all other mornings,
fire-in-the-clouds
waking-in-the-folds-of-mountain,
joy-of-long-shadows.
And now spring has brought
mist-in-my-breath,
shining-on-the-rocks,
quick-and-noisy-in-the-canyon,
to make soft soil in the garden
where I kneel for the first time
on the almost-warm-gift-to-growing
and work [...]