~ Norfolk Botanical Gardens
Yesterday it was calving
of glaciers. Today, it is
the arms of sick starfish
melting into pools of jelly
on the beach. Sea urchins
have eaten a giant banquet
of kelp in warm ocean water.
I wonder how many people
ate of the largest and most
expensive bluefin tuna
purchased after the new year
in Japan. When we went
for a walk we saw a white
wading bird out at the end
of the dock. Behind the bank,
a row of loblolly pines;
crabapple, horsetail, white oak.
Bulbs waking in the ground
too early in season, a disc
of brittle ice sealing
the surface of a bamboo well.
We can't tell what month
and in what year we'll meet
our end and step onto that
raked pathway to the gods.
See how the sunlight breaks
into shadows scattered on stone;
how the mouths of orchids open
in their beds, remembering rain.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-2022). She is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.