Women from the farms separate
the newly sprung from earth
and gather seeds from fruits
of their early harvest. Their fore-
bears stacked terraces by hand upon
the mountainsides, split and coaxed
stalks of bamboo to move water
from upland springs to where
the soil could not otherwise
be fed, except for rain. Their hands
are moss and stone, vine and resin
on rows of carved wooden gods
resting under each granary: they
guard each grain and frighten voles
that roam the fields after dark, that hide
from owls and kestrels sweeping the sky
of foggy webs. The women save the blood
from every slaughter and sacrifice,
then twist it into smoky necklaces.
The bees make homes near citrus
groves and pilfer another kind
of gold into each cell. No snow
falls here though it is north and
high. But sometimes frost burns all
the tender green; then we are helpless.
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.