Is it winter again, is it cold again, didn't Frank just slip on the ice, didn't he heal, weren't the spring seeds planted didn't the night end, didn't the melting ice flood the narrow gutters wasn't my body rescued, wasn't it safe didn't the scar form, invisible above the injury terror and cold, didn't they just end, wasn't the back garden harrowed and planted— I remember how the earth felt, red and dense, in stiff rows, weren't the seeds planted, didn't vines climb the south wall I can't hear your voice for the wind's cries, whistling over the bare ground I no longer care what sound it makes when was I silenced, when did it first seem pointless to describe that sound what it sounds like can't change what it is— didn't the night end, wasn't the earth safe when it was planted didn't we plant the seeds, weren't we necessary to the earth, the vines, were they harvested?
Section I is reprinted from October by Louise Glück, published by Sarabande Books, Inc. Copyright © 2004 by Louise Glück. Reprinted by permission of Sarabande Books and the author. All rights reserved.
Between forest and field, a threshold like stepping from a cathedral into the street— the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts, boundlessness opens, earth itself retextured into weeds where woods once were. Even planes of motion shift from vertical navigation to horizontal quiescence: there’s a standing invitation to lie back as sky’s unpredictable theater proceeds. Suspended in this ephemeral moment after leaving a forest, before entering a field, the nature of reality is revealed.
Copyright © Ravi Shankar. Used with permission of the author.
You are a Diné woman
A cosmic energy of earth and sky
Nihimá Nahasdzáán
Azhé’é Diyiní
Winter is over
So, we put our stories in the drawer
Then we take them out for the next winter
It is said stories are only told in the winter
So, the bears and snakes do not hear them
My father is not a traditional man
But he grew up as a traditional ashkii yázhí
He speaks the tongue of the sky and earth
of our people
He knows the ways of our land
But denies it all
One day I tell him
about watching coyote and lizard
stories as a young girl in boarding school
in my Navajo culture class
I tell him excitedly how the videos are now on youtube
but I still don’t understand them
because the videos are only in Navajo
I show him the cute coyote and lizard video
in hopes he will translate for me
He stops me the first ten seconds in
And tells me I shouldn’t watch it
Not because he doesn’t believe in cultural preservation
We are only supposed to watch and tell those stories during the winter, he says
Ohhhhhh, I say as I close the app
All the years my dad talks down on our traditions
I find it interesting, he still abides by the way of the seasons
because he knows snake and bear might hear
Or maybe he said it for other reasons
Copyright © 2024 by Amber McCrary. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 18, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
From Collected Poems: 1939-1962, Volume II by William Carlos Williams, published by New Directions Publishing Corp. © 1962 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.