More on: nature

BECAUSE IT WAS a Monday, the day their father, Pastor Eino Hililla, spent eight and sometimes twelve hours preparing the Sunday morning sermon, Lowell led his younger brother Jonas through the parsonage yard, past the cemetery. Past the dark walnut trees, through a thicket of manzanita, down to the dark tongues of water where they…

Matter, mother, Maria Names that come from the beginning With tractor or dragged plow or pick, shovel, spade, hoe, black, reddish, parched, mud-caked, the earth is hard to break. Men labor over it as over a woman virgin even after giving birth, laboring as on a sea whose waves close above him—foam, blossom—as men work…

————–Not the branches we cut each ————–windy March to hang with eggs ————–dyed red. Not those ————–we bless with palms ————–& smoke. These arced ————–spines & split limbs bud ————–through straining bark. Backs ————–humped & bent, bound. Does ————–God suffer these husked ————–velvet knobs? Stunted, ————–a wreath of tumors. ————–Yes, he does. Gather them ————–for…

Gregory Orr is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently Concerning the Book that Is the Body of the Beloved and How Beautiful the Beloved (both from Copper Canyon). Long known for his condensed and crafted style, in his recent work, Orr demonstrates a shift toward the personal lyric at its most stripped-down,…

Stirring among the pines. The sapling’s leaves like oval wings tremble. Between the whoofs of startled deer, echoing, an echoing clear creed of some unvanquished mystery— night-rising crows humbling their caws below the oaky whoo of the boreal owl. Below that, what? Threads of wood, a bed of pine, the needles strewn in love beside…

I was stopped on the sidewalk by pears glowing on their tree like antique ornaments with flaking paint, a green metallic shimmer, hinting at yellow, mottled with a few flecks of red. As light flickered over them, they seemed to flutter like candles in the leaves. But no—they were pears, and probably hard, I told…

Now the lone swan dips groundward and her wings beat more slowly, the scrape of oak limbs wicking the air beneath her breast, the arms of oaks open and out, a narrow hall between their reaching (this the route through which the trees’ separateness wavers and grows tense). She is a clutter of feather, vision,…

The river heaved our boat on its back. I loved how the narrowness of my life opened into that prairie of waves, big sky. One evening we saw the sun’s last rays lift an island from the water; rock and pines floated mid-air, unreachable mirage hanging like a painting of Saint John on Patmos dreaming…

Santa Cruz Island First water and salt scud tailing twenty yards off A receding tide. Or stones first, the tide’s Measure and break. Or the word seal, for instance, This dead one’s skin slicker brined hard And cracked. Cell. Follicle. Division And increase. Wind first. Or absence. First, We’re not sure. Then upright walking. Another…

After I decided the spectacular sewer pipes planted with hens and chicks were too tacky to keep, I started to love those succulent single moms, also called common houseleek and long ago planted on thatched roofs to protect homes from lightning bolts. Stone rose, sacred to Jupiter in the south, Thor in the north, emblem…