Category: in the moment

November Dog Walk

After school, if I can get out the school-door and home in time to catch the sunset, I take the dog for a walk through the woods. Dog-walking is one of my favorite things to do because it is so ordinary, so part of the ritual of daily life. And every dog-walking-day I see or experience something so exquisitely particular to the moment that it opens my heart.

I’m reading Matthew Zapruder’s, Why Poetry. He says this about stumbling upon poems when he was younger:

It was like plugging something into a socket, and electrifying my imagination, making me feel I was more aware, empathetic, thoughtful, engaged, alive.

Poetry makes dog-walking more meaningful; dog-walking makes poetry more possible.

#writeout

November Dog Walk

That interminable gray. All day,
the temperature hovers around 40.
Water, not able to freeze,
also does not evaporate. This
liminal space.
Perpetual twilight.
A single crow caws. A last-leaf
flutters to the ground
from the red oak, a species
that hangs on
long past when others
have given up.
The sun, hidden all day, slides
under a crack at the horizon.
And suddenly,
the Indian grass glows
golden;
the blue-stem:
rust.

– steve peterson

Towhee

So I was out for a walk through the woods and heard this scratching coming from under a brushy area and, after kneeling and peering under the brambles, found a rufous-sided towhee (first I’ve seen this season) scratching quietly away, which appeals to my sense of wonder about all those small and inconspicuous things.

During National Poetry month I’m exploring Amy Ludwig VanDerWater’s great book, Poems are Teachers, as a source of inspiration. The inspiration for this piece came from p. 117, “Try on a Pattern from Nature.” And, of course, the pattern is this scratching-for-sustenance behavior so characteristic of towhees (and me.)

Towhee

The towhee knows to scratch under the brush,
under the leaves. Though he is
discreet on this gray day in early spring
under a sky hidden by brambles, by clouds,
when I heard his faint scuffle
I knelt to the damp earth,
placed my elbows on the ground,
and marveled at the sustenance he draws from this
persistent turning, this upending of things
already fallen. I honor his quiet
unearthing of the hidden places.
He finds what he needs to live.

– steve peterson

How To Spot an Agate

photo by Steve Peterson

I sat down to read Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s (@amylvpoemfarm) terrific new book, Poems are Teachers, for inspiration for my teaching. As it happened, inspiration found me, first.

As I read, I savored teacher-poet, Mary Lee Hahn’s (@MaryLeeHahn) poem, “Riches”, and remembered an ongoing conversation I’ve had with one of the kids in my class this year, someone who appreciates agates and cool rocks at least as much as I do.

@MaryLeeHahn

Here’s what came of all of that: a reminder to slow down and gather with small stones.

How to Spot an Agate

First, you must find a place
Where the small stones gather.

Look to the beach
Where restless waves rock.

Go to the roadside
Where tires rarely tread.

Or, if courageous, to the graveled center,
Where hither ignores yon.

Then sit. Plant yourself, as if a tree.
And open your eyes.

Adjust your gaze.
Look past all shapes.

Look beyond every color.
Catch the glint, instead,

The brilliant shaft,
A moment’s reflection.

That jeweled spark?
That is what you seek.

Reach out.
Hold it to the light.

– Steve Peterson