Student Poetry from
Writing Nature in the City
To see a wren in a bush, call it ‘wren’ and go on walking is to have seen nothing. To see a bird and stop, watch, feel, forget yourself for a moment, be in the bushy shadows, maybe then feel ‘wren’ – that is to have joined in a larger moment with the world.
- Gary Snyder
(Cover Art by Julie Laquer)
Things to Save
Save Darfur
and the ice caps
and koalas, nibbling off eucalyptus
save the coastline, and fancy-leafed Caladiums,
and lives
Georgia Peach Orchards, circuses
the small things though, too
like the way your head’s positioned when
you bite into a taco
or the feeling you have
when you just found out
that it’s
a snow day
the second you take off the blindfold,
the minute you walk into the hospital
room, and see your baby sister
for the first time
the day you finally get your
pictures developed
save the tide, when it’s
absolutely ginormous
and takes you and your best friend
under
entries in your journal from forever ago
when you act like you’re asleep,
waiting for the tooth fairy,
as your parents come and slip
a dollar under the pillow
or when you get on your bike for
the gazillionth time, sure you’ll fall again,
but instead keep on riding, because
you’ve finally learned
the first bite of grandma’s warm and gooey
chocolate chip cookies
don’t save the mosquito bites, but save
the moment you realized you got one
and the first time you canon-balled off
the diving board
and the way you feel after you just
ran a mile or two
save when you finally got to eat breakfast
on a school day
maybe even when you went to Rita’s and
got all your favorite flavors mixed into a
small-sized cup
baseball caps, genuine smiles, souvenirs
save those times where you sang so loud
in the shower
someone actually heard you
and, those times
when you gaze up to the clouds
and try to place
what they look like,
and while you can’t
it still feels right to be there
- Lindsey Norwood
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Ode to Vulpes Vulpes (Red Fox)
Rusty orange fur slinks through
The undergrowth.
Black paws pad softly.
Kindly gold eyes stare out.
Pointy snout sniffs as the bush parts
To an emerald field.
White-tipped bush of a tail twitches as the
Fox spots a meadow vole
The intelligence burns in a red fox’s
Eyes like a bonfire.
Their mastery of the wilderness
Brings stories to the mind and to the books
Their cunning is marveled
But the red sports a beauty
Unlike their gray cousins.
Of the fox’s cute and wild nature
It’s not to be contained in
Any way possible
When in danger
It’s a bloodcurdling scream that saves
Their pelts.
They are the tricksters of the forest
And no other member of the dog
Family can compare
To you, Red Fox.
- Lindsi Reisman
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Opal Globules of the Half-Moon Wave
Glade of Rhododendron-tulip poplar-hemlock
a chant for the clouded opalescent stillness
a square of secrecy surrounded by cars
constant conditioner hum and
tide-like traffic
translucently lit ivy flowing
held back like a wave about to crest onto the sparse ragged grass and cracked dust bald-spots
a bird lifts nervously from an oak
surrounded by writers in open spaces
the wild sticks to the trees
like an unnamed boundary to taunt
pipe-cleaner flowers poke up inquisitively
they’ve been used
a squirrel breaks rank
trots with a tail-twitch
pauses, leaps languidly out of site
his tail forms a perfect half-moon over the crabgrass
and someone giggles like a laughing gull on speed.
- Kelsey Detwiler
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