Wilderness Interface Zone » poetry about love and nature

hjerte by Elizabeth Pinborough

Patricia — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:00:42 +0000

if a heart broke once forever would it
not be a dead thing?

yea, a heart is a lively creature, filled
with quiet musings,
subtle thrummings,
murmurous hummings.

aye, she is rapturous and verdant,
swindling common sense
with fictive branches
white with blossoms.

yet, she is the taproot of things,
descending through
the earth warm
with worms, and moist.

nay, she does not die.

(Click image twice to enlarge)

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Elizabeth Pinborough graduated from Yale Divinity School with a Master of Arts degree in religion and literature. She desires to resurrect women’s voices from the past, and through her writing she seeks to create a space for feminist historical and theological exploration. Her poetic journeys include “A Shaker Sister’s Hymnal,” which first appeared in Dialogue and which now appears in Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poets. Most recently she collected a series of essays and photographs titled Habits of Being: Mormon Women’s Material Culture, which is being published by Exponent II in spring 2012. Her credo is, “Snails are people, too.”

Old Woman’s Instructions to a Girl in Love

Patricia — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:56:10 +0000

Catch a white mare and bridle her
With an ivy bridle; braid her mane
With marigolds; go in the slender
Light with her to the water tender
Where the fish rise and count the flames.
Free the mare; if she trumpets like a swan,
Say your beloved’s name and pray till dawn.

Mask your body with horsemint; turn
Away from the sun; do not go toward
It all day; do not wash or burn.
Fiddlehead of the hart’s tongue fern—
Seethe it in milk; eat it from a gourd.
If you meet him keep your body mute.
Pick no flower dove and eat no fruit.

Hare, Hounds, Hare

Patricia — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:00:56 +0000

(for James)

When the little girls on the playground
threatened the boys with a kissing,
and they, slick with danger, ran
like wry hares, he made short work of it,
got ready his cheeks, mistook a step.

Now such generosity is lost on them,
his awkwardness thought sabotage,
and untimely glances which have
followed him since loving boyhood
turned like Actaeon’s hounds.

It has been harder game for all
since the older, changed child gave out,
golden, the new rule: each should turn,
by moments, hare, hound, hare.
It’s a bad curse with two cries.

He gives tongue to rough myth or shrieks
in briars as dreamed dogs bear down.

Still may the old knowing that grows
men’s hearts fix him on a bone,
his shape no more dissolve mid-step.
Old form shakes him like this, by the blood.
He comes from folk who once wived as wolves.

February is love of nature, nature of love month

Patricia — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:48:06 +0000

February is a big month on Wilderness Interface Zone. First, in honor of Valentine’s Day, all month long we’ll be soliciting poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s) or other media that address the subject of love while including references to nature. Also, we’re interested in works about nature that include references to love. That’s a wide gamut. Submissions may include original work or favorite works by others that have entered public domain. So if you have a sonnet you’ve written to someone important–even and perhaps especially your dog–please consider sending it to WIZ. See the submissions page in the navigation bar above.

Also, February 24th is WIZ’s birthday. We’ll be one year old. Yay! If you have ideas about how to celebrate this important milestone, please e-mail your suggestions or offer them in the comments below.

Spring is definitely on the way. February is a good month to warm things up. Got love? Publish it abroad.