By Don Colburn: How to Say Kwakiutl

 by Don Colburn

HOW TO SAY KWAKIUTL

Imagine a grizzly bear

with frogs in its ears and a raven

perched on its head. It helps

to have watched a great heron

at the ragged edge of the sea

before it flaps and somehow

lifts off. Or if, in the dark,

you can make out a yellow cedar

bending to the water – maybe.

Like the wind, the rain, the rings

in the treetrunk the great bear

was carved from, or a sound

you hear for the first time, so old

you know it tells more than one

story: Quawquawkeewogwah.

No use squinting at the scant

letters or sounding them out.

Listen to one who hears his name

without looking. Close your eyes.

Say what he knew by heart. 

(from As If Gravity Were a Theory, Cider Press Review, 2006).

American Life in Poetry: Column 287

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I love to sit outside and be very still until some little creature appears and begins to go about its business, and here is another poet, Robert Gibb, of Pennsylvania, doing just the same thing.

For the Chipmunk in My Yard

I think he knows I’m alive, having come down
The three steps of the back porch
And given me a good once over. All afternoon
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,
While all about him the great fields tumble
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky
To be where he is, wild with all that happens.
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots,
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. From What the Heart Can Bear by Robert Gibb. Poem copyright ©2009 by Robert Gibb. Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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by John L. Campbell

INSOMNIA

Chocolate coated vowels in four letter verbs
traipse across my bedroom ceiling, Gaelic
conjugations, St. Michael with muddy feet.
With my eyes closed it’s so quiet I hear
my soft slippers whispering to sandals
under my bed, KEENS itching for a walk.
They swap the smell of their souls, tongues
flap behind loose laced lips, tread rugs,
carpet, and ceramic tile where their steps
leave tracks on abrasive roads, trace
rubber and leather, one by man, one by God.
Y does a melt-down miffed at not being
voted the sixth vowel, tracking in sticky
dark chocolate,  words reading, “Get up,
grab a pencil n’ pad, jot this down.”

-First published in Verse Wisconsin  Issue # 104 October 2010

American Life in Poetry: Column 285



BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006


In our busy times, the briefest pause to express a little interest in the natural world is praiseworthy. Most of us spend our time thinking about other people, and scarcely any time thinking about other creatures. I recently co-edited an anthology of poems about birds, and we looked through lots of books and magazines, but here is a fine poem we missed, byTara Bray, who lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Once
 
I climbed the roll of hay to watch the heron

in the pond. He waded a few steps out,

then back, thrusting his beak under water,

pulling it up empty, but only once.

Later I walked the roads for miles, certain

he’d be there when I returned. How is it for him,

day after day, his brittle legs rising

from warm green scum, his graceful neck curled,

damp in the bright heat? It’s a dull world.

Every day, the same roads, the sky,

the dust, the barn caving into itself,

the tin roof twisted and scattered in the yard.

Again, the bank covered with oxeye daisy

that turns to spiderwort, to chicory,

and at last to goldenrod. Each year, the birds—

thick in the air and darting in wild numbers—

grow quiet, the grasses thin, the light leaves

earlier each day. The heron stood

stone-still on my spot when I returned.

And then, his wings burst open, lifting the steel-

blue rhythm of his body into flight.

I touched the warm hay. Hoping for a trace

of his wild smell, I cupped my hands over

my face: nothing but the heat of fields

and skin. It wasn’t long before the world

began to breathe the beat of ordinary hours,

stretching out again beneath the sky.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Tara Bray, and reprinted from her most recent book of poems, Mistaken for Song, Persea Books, Inc., 2009, by permission of the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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