The Hidden Field

Some nameless sweetness
thumps into the palette
of my reverent heart.
Everything abides
in an extravagant,
strange apotheosis
of wonder, courting
the solitary, affirming the
heady purity
of starwort and whippoorwhill,
of sphagnum moss
and spider body.
Listen again:
a chorus of nothing
saturates the hidden field
where clouds invent breezes
and thundercolor births
its mysterious stories.

© Laura Sorrells 2011
all rights reserved

This is another found poem culled from words in the text of Hannah Hinchman's book on nature journaling, A Trail Through Leaves: Journal as a Path to Place. 

a poem by Margaret Gibson

Fox Fire at the Changing Tree

The burning that must
have been coming from me--

these are lines I'm stealing
from someone else's poem, just after

I've resolved not to lie, not to steal
to live in my evergreen

integrity as long as I can manage it
I'm much like these foxes

gathered on a night whose stars
might be flakes of snow

They have their burning torches
to lift and bear

down the road, fully camouflaged
once they've put on the stolen forms

of pious pilgrims
The bare, spreading tree above them

is fit for owls to inhabit
when a savory hunger makes them take

deadly aim
on any small rustle in the dry leaves

That's their true nature
however haunting their melancholy cries

But the foxes--for the love of me
(and it's exactly that)

I can't see why
I shouldn't want to to touch them, stroke them

I might just rub the ruddy silk
of their coats against my cheek

And often have, you tell me bluntly
That friction, however

slight, sufficient to make me
spit fire, gnash my teeth

and lunge for the soft parts of your body

lifting my chin moments after

to say hotly I didn't mean to
I didn't sense it coming

As if I were the innocent one
blindsided, bloodied

--Margaret Gibson

blue wingbeats

The alphabet of the unfathomable
spells out its blue
wingbeats of grace,
a tapestry of yes
inside the healing
persistence
of foxglove, the unassailable
remembrance
of rosemary.
A ladder of yes
spreads across
the ponderous deep
Aldebaran sky.

--©L.K. Sorrells 2011

This is another found poem, this one culled from the pages of Hannah Hinchman's amazing book A Trail Through Leaves: Journaling as a Path to Place.