Cover

Also by ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT

Poetry

Claiming Kin

The Forces of Plenty

The Lotus Flowers

Two Trees

Kyrie

Shadow of Heaven

Messenger: New and Selected Poems, 1976–2006

Prose

The Flexible Lyric

The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Speech, Rhythm of Song

Title

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the editors who first published these poems:

The American Poetry Review: Birch, Garter Snake, Hound, Lament, Milkmaid, Moles, Noble Dog, Oak, Spring, Stones

The American Scholar: Headwaters, Larch, My Mother, Sleep

The Atlantic: Fox, Hog-Nosed Skunk, Yearling

Blackbird: Lost Boy

The Cortland Review: Maestro

Granta: Geese

The New Yorker: Bear, Chameleon, Cow, Owl, Roof, Storm

The New York Times: Privet Hedge

Headwaters

HEADWATERS

I made a large mistake I left my house I went into the world it was not

the most perilous hostile part but I couldn’t tell among the people there

who needed what no tracks in the snow no boot pointed toward me or away

no snow as in my dooryard only the many currents of self-doubt I clung

to my own life raft I had room on it for only me you’re not surprised

it grew smaller and smaller or maybe I grew larger and heavier

but don’t you think I’m doing better in this regard I try to do better

PRIVET HEDGE

first frail green in the northeast the forest around us no longer

a postcard of Christmas snow clotting the spruce or worse

fall’s technicolor beeches sumac sugar maple death

even the death of vegetation should never be

so beautiful it is unseemly I prefer the cusps

they focus the mind

which otherwise stays

distracted knowing things when my friend said

knowledge does nothing for him I felt at once superior

and chastised I’d just deduced the five new birds in my yard

woodpecker size and stripes and red blaze but feeding on the ground

five yellow-shafted flickers can the soul be known by its song who hears it

what keeps it aloft what keeps it whole what helps it survive habitual

pride greed wrath sloth lust a list compiled by a parent always

needing something to forgive you for I meant

to ask the nuns to straighten this out for me

while I was among them in Minnesota their earlier spring

but I couldn’t guess which ones they are they dress

like everyone else no veils no starched white

no kneeling boards I was left on my own

to study the graveyard behind the privet hedge

their markers all alike as on a battlefield immense and calm

beneath an open midwestern sky nothing between

the pilgrim and the scoured horizon

STONES

birds not so much the ducks and geese okay not horses cows pigs

she’d lived in the city all her life some cats and dogs okay as part

of someone else’s narrative the posted photographs are someone’s

pets the figurines less figurative than graceful to behold the same