Poet Showcase

NEW!

An Anthology of New Hampshire Poets

Poems originally chosen for the online Poet Showcase curated by former New Hampshire Poets Laureate Patricia Fargnoli and W.E. Butts

“Poet Showcase is above all else, New Hampshire’s showcase. This wonderful collection reminds us of how we have been shaped by our state’s remarkable natural surroundings… It reminds us too of the power and promise than can grow to deeper and better understanding.”  NH Governor Maggie Hassan

The poems in this collection are accompanied and illuminated by short prose commentaries by the poets.

As I write poems occasioned by, say, a book I’ve read or places I’ve visited, I often weave my fascination with birding into the lines. This poem takes the notion even a step further. I was invited to North Dakota and the second gathering of state poets laureate. North Dakota laureate, Larry Woiwode, asked each of us to compose a poem on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition. This was my offering.

 

Western Grebe

      Aechmophorous occidentalis :  Sun-setting spear-bearer

On any one of his long-strided walks

near the Mandan settlement that first fall,

Meriwether Lewis encountered all manner of shorebirds

and ducks plying the sloughs.

Naturalist, explorer, he shot one of each.

Taxidermist, he sent specimens back East.

Diarist, he described each one shot to the last pinfeather.

I write in my journal

(a letter to you from the West)

…the wind that flattens the tall grass prairie

and keeps blackbirds and meadowlarks low,

deafens foraging waterfowl

to my slow advance.

I am seeing for the first time

for the first time! imagine!

long-legged, blue-legged avocets

giddily spinning phalaropes

the thin-necked grebe with its sharp bill and red eye

So would you, reader,

be my correspondent,

my accomplice?

My Jefferson.