The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Tue 3/13/2007)

[RetroLounge]

The Word

We ride up softly to the hidden
oval in the woods, a plateau rimmed
with wavy stands of gray birch and white pine,
my horse thinking his thoughts, happy
in the October dapple, and I thinking
mine-and-his, which is my prerogative,

both of us just in time to see a big doe
loft up over the four-foot fence, her white scut
catching the sun and then releasing it,
soundlessly clapping our reveries shut.
The pine grove shudders as she passes.
The red squirrels thrill, announcing her departure.

Come back! I want to call to her,
we mean you no harm. Come back and show us
who stand pinned in stopped time to the track
how you can go from a standing start
up and over. We on our side, pulses racing,
are synchronized with you racing heart.

I want to tell her, Watch me
mornings when I fill the cylinders
with sunflower seeds, see how the chickadees
and lesser redbreasted nuthatches crowd
onto my arm, permitting me briefly
to stand in for a tree,

and how the vixen in the bottom meadow
I ride across allows me under cover
of horse scent to observe the education
of her kits, how they dive for the burrow
on command, how they re-emerge at another
word she uses, a word I am searching for.

Maxine Kumin

****************



Maxine Kumin lives on a farm in central New Hampshire. She has published thirteen volumes of poetry, as well as novels, short stories, and essays on country living (including Women, Animals, and Vegetables). She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1973 and has been a poetry consultant for the Library of Congress and Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. She was awarded the Poets Prize in 1993 and received the Aiken/Taylor Award for Modern Poetry in 1995. She also received the Ruth E. Lily Prize in 1999. In 1995, Kumin became a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets but resigned that post four years later, along with Carolyn Kizer, in protest over the board's reluctance to admit poets of color. This act led to an entire restructing of the institution's bylaws.

****************

RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[Justpat]

1. Thank you so much.

I love her work. I was able to meet her and have dinner with
her many years ago when I was a writing student. She is one
of my favorites.

[wildhorses]

2. peaceful, tranquil with some melancholy and the quest

for that all illusive word...

very nice, thanks:)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My dear Retro........

Ah, lovely, and so descriptive!

The words fall away, and I can see the scene so vividly....

Just beautiful!

To search for a word...

Thank you.......:hug: