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[ with 3 poems by Rae Spencer]
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Adaptation
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Some days I hardly remember
what it is to fly
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what loss is
When morning feels like betrayal
and shoulders ache
with the sudden load of gravity
pressed into cruel bones
too human for wings
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As if I never once awoke
hair smelling of clouds
wound in wild knots
and damp with tears
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or slept
curled in a crevice of wind
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Other days I recall myself
grace confined to memory
in which I have never flown
and it was only ever a tale
from childhood
I was never meant to believe
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Rae Spencer
from Watershed, Kelsay Books, American Fork, Utah; © 2023
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A shift in warmth of Pacific seas, a wet winter in the South: throughout January a storm a week, sometimes two, but this afternoon we are braving mud to hike our favorite trail from Carter Falls to Grassy Creek. The little farm pond is full and we see the channel where it overflows to carve a deeper path through last summer’s grasses and sedges. Both white pine groves have evidence of freshets, scoured hardpan courses with needles layered thick along each side. We cross Martin Byrd Road to enter the woods that curve alongside the big cornfield and wonder what we’ll find. Even though the acres are planted in winter rye, how much soil has rushed off those slopes and furrows into Grassy Creek?
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The trail quickly turns downhill and we see the storms’ impact. Red field clay has silted full the first drainage swale and overtopped it to rush down the trail bed in a boiling soupy froth. Exposed roots and deep mud. Our trail crews clean out these erosion control features twice a year but one wet January has damaged the trail more than ten years of hikers’ boots. Too much water, too much incline, too much gravity.
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Neither will nor wisdom inform its seep, writes Rae Spencer of water. It must seek its level, it must flow, it must rush. Water and time alike, each of them relentless and not to be held back. Have I spent too much of my life rushing? Have I abandoned will and wisdom to be always doing, doing? Even now my dreams are filled with urgency, long hallways, behind each door a patient fretting to be seen, and I with no hope of catching up. Waking from such, who would want to get out of bed and get started?
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Better trail design can’t completely compensate for poor tillage and agricultural neglect, but the rest of today’s trail is actually in quite good shape. The outer berm has been mostly raked clear and there are several grade dips and rises that keep water from following the treadway. When we reach the more rustic forest bathing trail, it’s even better – consistent outsloping camber, plenty of runoff. Water’s gonna rush. Life too, I guess. How to prepare? How to respond? How to slow things down for a bit? A walk through quiet woods, a quiet hour with a book of poetry – maybe tonight my dreams will proceed more leisurely.
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Of Warbler and Quail
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Drab little she in the brush
Muttering her song to lure
Someone else
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But only I respond
Drawn across the dune
To listen closer
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As a child I spoke to quail
I whistled out their bobwhite name
To hear them shriek it back
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But this little warbler
outside my beachfront door
Her accent slips my ear
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Measures of water wisdom
Refrains of woven nest
Codas that fall silent
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Because I have come too near
To understanding
What is lovely on this shore
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Of daily tide
Of sandy soil and storms
Of quickening flocks
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That speak their sea-swept names
In secret tangled tongues
Of salty sail and oar
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And then they fly away
While I struggle, yearn to say
What I remember of briars
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Of dry summer streams
And winter dreams
Of silent quail
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Hungry among the thistle
Of home, my distant valley home
So many years from here
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Rae Spencer
from Watershed, Kelsay Books, American Fork, Utah; © 2023
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Memory – home – loss – the path forward: Rae Spencer’s poetry has a distinctly formal feel as she settles deeply into these themes. Formal in the sense of meticulous language, lush natural imagery and description, architectural lines, internal rhyme. These poems need to be read slowly as they linger in the moment before releasing one to ponder and discover the writer’s metaphors, and discovering one’s own.
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Watershed from Kelsay Books is an antidote to compulsion, to insistence, to the headlong rush into the next thing and the next. I am perfectly happy to pause and listen with warbler and bobwhite as the poet weaves from their stories one of longing for home (Of Warbler and Quail). I think I’m ready now for racoon to teach me how to live (Adaptable). At the close of Doppler Effect, I sit and listen long to the change in pitch of life I know I must expect, and prepare for, as my own parents age and travel their final days.
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Poetry, in its phrasing, its junctures, its juxtaposition, often moves at the pace of breath. Speak it aloud, pause when it needs you to. Stop and linger in the midst of these lines so that they may breathe into you.
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[hint: I re-type the poems for these posts (thank you to my freshman touch typing teacher), fingers slower than scanning eyes, speaking the words individually in my head, each syllable and carriage return (aka line break) – so often in the adagio the lines reveal secrets of how they mean.]
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Rae Spencer lives in Virginia, USA. As well as writing, she is a practicing veterinarian. Of Warbler and Quail first appeared in Bolts of Silk. Gravity first appeared in vox poetica.
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Gravity
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Water doesn’t want
It only weighs
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Neither will nor wisdom inform its seep
Downhill, settling to the lowest pool
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Rivers cascade and marshes ooze
Toward inlet and gulf
Where tides surge
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With the arid moon
Sere face lowered
In serene reflection
Over oblivious blue
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Depths that teem with tin and polyp
Oyster clades awash in brine
That neither murmurs nor sighs
Through a shell
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Held to the ear we hear
Blood’s heave
An eternal chorus
Singing sailors to sea
Dreamers to sleep
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Daughters to voice
Their bare feet anchored
In restless churn
On heavy, ancient shores
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Rae Spencer
from Watershed, Kelsay Books, American Fork, Utah; © 2023
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Really enjoyed this. Thanks for sharing her work.
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Thanks for visiting and for sharing. —B
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Regarding your hint, I have discovered something similar. I have been working on a project that has me typing out, sometimes rephrasing and parsing, various sacred texts. It is slow work, but I have no deadline. It is a project for me alone. But, completely unexpected, this slow methodical working with the words, some of which I have read many times before, brings a new connection or a new light for their meaning for me.
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Kindra, I certainly see the parallel, a form of lectio divina. Going deeper into the text and allowing it to deepen within you, as you say, creating new light and new connections. So rich. —B
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Lovely sensory poems filled with nature and passages of life and time.
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Thanks, Les. Always glad to hear from you. —B
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Her writing reminds me of Dylan Thomas.
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Thanks for dropping by, best pal. I see what you mean . . . —B
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Another lovely column. Thank you for the meditation and these poems. A much-needed antidote to the larger world’s woes. One moment at a time.
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Thanks for everything you share, Debra. —B
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