The aspen glitters in the wind.
And that delights us.

The leaf flutters, turning,
Because that motion in the heat of summer
Protects its cells from drying out. Likewise the leaf
Of the cottonwood.

The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem
And the tree danced. No.
The tree capitalized.
No. There are limits to saying,
In language, what the tree did.

It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.

Dance with me, dancer. Oh, I will.

Aspens doing something in the wind.
~~ 'The Problem of Describing Trees' by Robert Hass from 'A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker'

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"So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall."

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Scaffolding by Seamus Heaney from Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966–1996 (1998 @fsgbooks) https://poets.org/poem/scaffolding

"She tore down the last fence by the marsh. Jane d’Eau is a marvel of catastrophe, trophe by trophe, cat
by cat; she doesn’t mind if you fish, but you better know when to swim for it."

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Jane d’Eau by Tanis MacDonald, forthcoming in Tall, Grass, Girl (2026 Bookhug Press) https://poets.ca/jane-deau-by-tanis-macdonald/

"What
is fire but just another need in a
long list scrawled down, torn up, then rewritten."

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T- helps me stack the firewood by Jennifer LoveGrove from The Tinder Sonnets (2026 Bookhug Press) https://bookhugpress.ca/shop/author/jennifer-lovegrove/the-tinder-sonnets-by-jennifer-lovegrove/

"There’s one spirit in countless bodies,
one oil in countless almonds,
one meaning in countless words
uttered by countless tongues.

Shatter the jugs. The water is one."

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Come out, come close. by Jalal al-Din Rumi, translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori from Gold: Poems by Rumi (2022 New York Review Books) https://poets.org/poem/come-out-come-close

"I
put
on my shoes
and stand just
above
the earth"

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AFTER by Gary Barwin (2026) https://www.facebook.com/moribund.facekvetch/posts/pfbid02xjbx3BkPU4YsVHinGwN6W1RMueuiUZ4riemNxASVzEumQG55AiQ9bE2Chg33wsKAl

"They are the landscape. They are the trees.
They throw up the dust in their dance. The skies become misty.
They rise up and lead each other away into the dusk."

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Elephant Armageddon by Gerard Malanga (2017) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/142206/elephant-armageddon

Pilgrimage to Oil Fields

https://subspacewagon.systems/pilgrimage-to-oil-fields/

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“ther as the nyght”

https://subspacewagon.systems/ther-as-the-nyght/

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As we lie down to sleep the world turns half away
through ninety dark degrees;
the bureau lies on the wall
and thoughts that were recumbent in the day
rise as the others fall,
stand up and make a forest of thick-set trees.

The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do
so many a dangerous thing,
are chugging at its edge
all camouflaged, and ready to go through
the swiftest streams, or up a ledge
of crumbling shale, while plates and trappings ring.

-- Elizabeth Bishop, "Sleeping Standing Up"

(Remainder of poem in next toot)

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