This week’s poetry reading includes thirteen poems from The Naturalist. As always, the text of the poems are below and their titles link to the original post. This is the final poetry reading for National Poetry Month, but based on the positive feedback I have received, I’ll be doing more readings in the future. Enjoy! Pouring Tea Gold liquid back lit, by the sunshine coming and going behind frozen clouds, forms a glowing pillar above the dandelion surface braided first then, as the flow slows, a cylinder becomes wavy as impact climbs up the column back into the teapot. Three to four minutes before at one hundred eighty degrees, the clear water divided balls of rolled leaves, half on top, others below slowly breathing, curling into the space between, regenerating their sun-capturing plant form, but only in appearance while rays fell on deaf cells and shimmered like old bronze door knobs. Drinking Tea Fog forms in the late afternoon on wire-frame glasses and catches pale sun from between tall buildings, blinding the wearer from their journal. Ceramic cup scrapes its saucer, scouring inelegantly for its seat, finding it only to leave again. Tapping over and over like charcoal searching the walls of a cave. Forgiveness There is an old cast iron fence that I walk along to sit at a bar and drink burning whiskey or eat stale popcorn. Outside a gnarled dog, who has been taught not to love, pulls at his leash and collar and bares his teeth. It would be rude not to greet him. Grace Phantom form of a sparrow rests in the soft yellow grass, beside the tired storm drain. Collecting fallen leaves under her wing, holding them close to her white bones, hopeless against the coming June rain. Soon the leaves will break free, she will float away to feed flowers, consumed by the world, better for the love she gave it. Space #1 Pin pricks of light skitter the blue-black expanse, visible waves of invisible energy in between lift and pull the stars across the surface of the pond. Space #2 The tree you lean against branches into a galaxy of trees, grows in a forest long and dark as the sky, reaches higher until it ignites. Space #3 Heron pulls up from the water, her long beak tracing first the riverbank then lumbering clouds over head. Ducks walk on ice by the shore and pick at leaves and twigs floating slowly. All together, they take to the water as the sun finally finds an opening to the fish and bends light across the length of the current. Heron finds no comfort here, prefers to hunt in the shadows. She picks up her tired legs and draws a silent blue-grey band beneath the buckling willow. Space #4 As I move through these woods space feels more and more rigid, all other things are stubborn going about the tasks that make them— mouse is combing through grass for bugs, the oak tree is drinking sunlight and breathing deep breaths that float away as clouds. Owl was watching from the jagged leaves, but closed her eyes to get some rest. There are fungi turning death into toadstools for the elk and beetles rest in the mushroom grove and brawl in the dirt. The only thing that feels flexible is time, whiskers twitching in slow motion, each ancestor tree forming a silhouette around the branches I see now shaking as owl floats away. Space #5 Breathe in and out and let the calm water glint in your eyes, there are broken waves and broken driftwood and cracked shells on the rocky shore as well as feathers and other lost things and maybe thats a bone, how carelessly they have been placed here and there! Oh, how the spruce leans for the water, trunk bending uncomfortably over stones and what was once a spruce friend. Breathe and lets figure out all these little messes you have here, Lake. When was the last time you cleaned debris off your long white shore? Breathe! I tell myself all the ways I would make this lake better and none of them are right. I walk along the shore and feel cold and blessed and small. The Shape of Rain Weeks and no shadows from the arching sun behind the cloud wall just great bland buildings melting into the streets and soggy shoes drying at the bottom of the stairs away from the sounds of tea coming to a boil and cooling too far from warm blankets. The Shape of the Sun Cold wind from the water pulls ribbons of cloud from charcoal mountains down the city streets, morning light casting gold lines along the sidewalk, washing trash through the gutter, illuminating huddled bodies, backs to the glowing range, faces without sun. Recursion There is something in the sound of the woodpecker, in the weight of the moose shoulders, that is also in the branching of the maple and reflected in the roots below the green sea. The cracking sound of beak on bark echoes along the paths through the forest that fragment at each moment of past indecision, weaving in and out of this moment. There is something in the school of minnows, in the wildebeest migration across crocodile river, swirling tadpoles in thunderstorm pond, drying up into the sky that turns red then black then blue. There is something in flowers— each and every flower that unfurls and fades, falling onto the ground under shadow— that is like a memory, like a cloud of memories, bright and brittle as each neuronal flash. Hope Flowers open cautiously, joyously, ignorant of the forecasted rain, content to be as they will be in their time. One may be thought of as a tragedy— to see these delicate blues and yellows topple to the earth so soon and float away— but together they are a triumph endlessly spilling bright colors into this world. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit micah.substack.com
