Workshop: How To Craft A Nature Poem \ In Morning Light

Alan:  I don’t suppose it was a bad workshop, really, but the title was an irritant that stimulated, if not a pearl, at least a rejoinder.  Dick and Jane and their wretched dog plagued beginning readers from the 1930s through the 1970s.  I was so bored with them that I didn’t learn to read until my mother took me in hand, half way through third grade, and showed me that books could be interesting.

Workshop: How To Craft A Nature Poem

First, find some nature.

Bring it indoors –

quickly, before it dries

or blows away

or is rained sodden.

Lay it out on the table.

Sit down.  Look.

For a full three minutes

(feel free to use a timer).

Now pull out some words,

e.g. “sticks,” “coyote,” “raven,”

“cloud.”  Shape the

sticks etc. into a container

(don’t worry if it’s rough);

fill it with dirt (everyone likes

a little dirt), some blood –

what is Nature, if not boinking

and chomping? – and top

with your present emotion.

Smooth and polish

(this may take awhile).

Notice, to your surprise,

the sunlight through the window,

just like second grade,

when Dick and Jane swam

weakly before you and Spot

would run! run!  and you

yourself wanted desperately

to run away outside

and disappear.

Nancy: There’s always a day when I realize “this is it,” as the world around me shifts; the time for bargaining is past, the time for acceptance has come.

In Morning Light

All summer too much

seemed no more than enough.  Until

last night: the stars grew suddenly

so sharp and fierce that I wanted

to hide myself, to sit under a blanket,

wailing.

This morning I see

how one vole, fat and careless,

is enough for the harrier.  I see

the hummingbird, which should be gone,

embraced in the honeysuckle, which should be gone.

I see the blind dog stretched in delight

in the trapezoid of morning sun

on the kitchen floor.

Against everything ripe and sere, the asters

are an incomprehensible purple.

One more day, I think,

one more day is enough.