Since he was weaned, my son’s been hungry for the open sky—
so that now, at eighteen months, he’s a seeker and a maker of signs.
A simple knock at the air
comes first.
It means: open this door
and let me ascend the concrete steps
to that greater bliss and those long lines of sight.
It means: let there be light!
Or, [...]
New palms of life
Cup the swelling breeze,
Braided together with sunlight,
Clutching at vaulted
Translucence
And time unspooling:
Teach me to hope
Against the broken branch,
The gnawing worm,
The bitter wind;
Show me the comfort
Of moments
Enfolded and
Flowering;
Help me converge
The dark root,
The crystal dew,
The burning light;
Unlimber in me
The loveliness
Of morning, the grace
Of night descending.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
To read another Spring Runoff poem by William Reger, go here.
*competition [...]
Who strew the millet and sunflower seeds,
Attracting these red-vested jots
To the wintry paper of my yard?
Black and square in my overcoat,
I pass them by, an exact counterpoint
To their gratitude who left
The dark wind for this plenty.
Seek, seek, seek, they chirp,
And ye shall find the oil-fat seed,
The berry full and sweet.
Better to pass through sorrow
For a [...]
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 [...]
(written with love and in honor of my Nana upon the event of her passing in Sept 2011)
The cigarette flared red then dimmed as Nana took a drag. She and tapped its ashes into my mother’s pansy box. In the summer twilight, I could barely make out the silhouette of her shoulders as she leaned [...]
This segment is from a longer piece, Plato’s Alcove, which won an honorable mention in Torrey House Press’s 2011 Creative Non-Fiction Contest. You can read the entire entry here. Plato’s Alcove is about my first trip to the desert back in 1982.
In the desert one day I met Coyote, the Trickster-God. We greeted each [...]
Today is WIZ’s third birthday, and we’re in the mood to give gifts to our loyal readers. For its giveaways, WIZ chooses flicks that feature nature in some way. Our featured movie this time: Typhoon, starring Dorothy Lamour and Robert Preston.
This movie comes from an age when Hollywood trotted out the tropics when it needed [...]
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 [...]
HARK, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth [...]