I watch April for the breath of life;
stirring roots threading secret ways
through soil. The thrill, when I wake and find
dug garden beds dusted in wild Irish green.
Her crop is more diverse, resilient, more
matched to this soil and these waters
than any I will bring. I turn the earth,
interring new life back into its birth
and fold the [...]
Spring simmers beneath the snow
like subterranean hot springs.
Earth shivers, shooting daffodil spikes
through late winter’s crumbling crust.
New life is ready to blow,
shower the valley
with frothy white geysers
of apple blossoms.
For now,
spring simmers beneath the snow,
but in the bones of my feet
I feel the pressure
building.
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For a brief bio and to read more of Merrijane’s poetry on Wiz, go [...]
How long, I wonder, will I wait
for broods to gather round my legs.
And I’ll have feed. Every dry mouth
will fill, for ripening cheeks. I glean
from spare fields, following, with two
shallow baskets. My hands are old.
At ten I fancied to be old
enough to take my own train, wait
by myself on benches. With two
more years to [...]
Sophisticated trees line State Street,
elegantly avoiding one another.
They pose
with thin, black limbs
silhouetted against the sky
and roots sunk deep
beneath concrete.
Up the canyon,
the rabble crowds in close.
Scrub oak brushes up to aspen groves,
listens for whispered rumors.
Expectation spreads with the wind,
rattles bone-weary stands,
stirs the lofty thoughts
of quorumed pines.
Sap rises, buds swell, branches reach
to embrace dawning spring.
Back in the [...]
Wilderness Interface Zone would like to thank participants who put their hearts in our Love of Nature Nature of Love Month. The list includes:
Elizabeth Pinborough
Kathryn Knight
Gail White
Ashley Suzanne Musick
Sarah Dunster
Chanel Earl
Sarah Dunster
Mark Penny
Laura Craner
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Jonathon Penny
You all helped WIZ celebrate love and nature with fair fond tokens of well-worded affection. Thank you!
Thanks also go [...]
I caught a maple leaf
within my palm. Its body
frail as parchment, pressed
with brittle veins—
just a tinge of gold remained,
like some intrinsic breath
garnered from a springtime ray.
I placed it down for sedges
to reclaim. They cradled it,
until the snowflakes came.
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Karen Kelsay is the editor of White Violet Press, and the author of several chapbooks, including Lavender Song. [...]
As we walk—side by side—down the long sloping trail, we pass gray trees and black igneous boulders peppering the otherwise white, sedimentary landscape. The earth is a mirror reflecting the hot yellow sun that has so recently removed winter’s snow. I point out traces of vanished streams; you find lizard footprints delicately decorating their sandy [...]
There is no better talk
than
thoughts shared in violet hollows
where not so much praise as scent
not so much words as velvet—
soft petals on our faces—
speak our language.
So, love, make plain
what
you might wish in digging out
green hills for four-leaved omens
we might taste in stems of waiting clover
and I might see in hollows of your
throat, your lips, your [...]
After the electrical storm
rattles the windows
and spikes the sky ocher
and I go out in the dark
to douse the garden hose
superfluously watering the roses
a shock
to be blinded
by moon
full in the face
in the closed corridor
at the side of my house
and it is clear to me
like cool white fire
the you I know
still glows
in dark somewhere
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To read Paul Swenson’s [...]
Make
like a tree* and
grow, bloom and bear fruit,
give shade, give shelter, sow seed,
weather storms, dig deep,
breathe deeper.
Be useful
in your
death:
frame
well,
burn
bright,
enrich
the soil,
and,
mulch
made,
resurrect
a tree.
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*This is, of course, a variation on the common adage to “make like a tree and branch out,” and the less common adage, used primarily among canines (the dogs, not the teeth), “make like a [...]