Wilderness Interface Zone

(February–March 2000)
crimson-honey sky
across the Hokianga
crimson-honey tide
but no waka to pierce
the bay’s narrow hips
*
crimson-honey sand
across the Hokianga
crimson-honey sky
but only one cumulus
to lick the bay’s narrow tongue
*
crimson-honey night
across the Hokianga
but no moon
to walk empty shores
sip crimson-honey tea
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For Tyler’s bio and other Spring Poetry Runoff contributions, click here and here.
*Non-contest submission*

(For Beikake)
both in white sarong
I bend you through the font
watch fabric rise
on water troubled
by the currents of death
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Mateu, Matem (Gilbertese): “my death, your death.”
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For Tyler’s bio and his other submission to the Spring Poetry Runoff, go here.
*Non-contest submission*

Haere mai:
I’ve anticipated your soul-deep
craw. Stewed pork bones and potatoes
to tender verging on cream. Sent the kids,
brown bodies sliding between the breeze,
to gather more puha from the fenceline.
Sonchus oleraceus: slides from the tongue
into the boil just long enough to soften
the cellulose, give the broth enough bite
to open the palate, throw windows wide
on sense. To bathe [...]

Stand of Trees (by J. Kirk Richards)
I’ve been neglecting what it takes
to piece together dawn from old
snapshots and reminiscence faded
as the blush from Adam’s skin
when God’s question stunned
the garden and he slipped with Eve into
the shadow of God’s voice, their shame
a stand of trees backlit by cherubim
come hounds a-bay to flush them into
death, sin, recognition, [...]

by Tyler Chadwick
The crow lays roadside,
fully dead, its swollen body
trimmed with grass. Its head,
cropped with beads of dew,
cocks awkwardly to one side,
the top eye muting the sky
in a flat, milky gaze, beak
cracked in perpetual “caw,”
though no sound escapes
save the rasp of leaves
tripped by the wind
through this wooded suburban lull.
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Originally published in Black Rock & Sage [...]

My happy thanks to everyone who participated in WIZ’s People Month.  My list of folks for whom I’ve felt deeply grateful includes:
Th.
Nephi Anderson (via Th.’s gravelly voice)
Mark Bennion
Tyler Chadwick
greenfrog
green mormon architect
Elizabeth R.
And, of course, many thanks to WIZ’s loyal readers and commenters.
I appreciate each writer’s help keeping People Month on WIZ interesting and fun.  We’ll do it again next [...]

by Tyler Chadwick
 
1. First
“She’s like an apple
in a water balloon,”
the doctor says. They watch
their fruit unfold across
the screen in light movements.
Submerged beneath her sea
enclosed by silent walls,
slow fluid breaths inspire
her ripening, baptize
the room in innocence.
Within this matrix
of tranquility,
they sense her beckoning
through sound’s translucent waves,
calling from her still place
into time’s raging sea
for a Return. Then Light
ripples [...]

(For Leslie Norris)
By Tyler Chadwick
Day’s last reflections
catch on wind-swept ripples
as two geese throw shadows
across watered silence.
Embraced by echoes,
each circles the other.
Tracing this current,
I watch Hudson’s pair
venturing back
across the continent:
Her wings bear no scars
of hapless encounter
with fox or wolf or man;
his body carries
no hunter’s spray,
the lead that felled him
to the dogs. They bask
in this dusking plane,
watching [...]

(On “Pond at Thompson’s Station” by J. Kirk Richards)
by Tyler Chadwick
The sun has been misplaced.
Or, if you’d like to get more
Biblical, it’s returned
to the dove’s abyss—or
was that Milton? I can’t be sure
as I dance so near the beginning
with words so supple they
bend into themselves until
only the landscape remains:
the field flushed white, hills
seduced into bed
by cloud [...]

10 May 2008
by Tyler Chadwick
I wish I knew the names
of all these birds: I’m sure that’s a sparrow,
wings wound tight against the wind,
dropping to the tip of a cypress
before re-mounting the sky; and
two more there, circling the birdfeeder,
vying for seed. And there, a robin, breast flared
even at this hour,
sifting the xeriscape for a meal,
prouding its [...]