V E R S E and I M A G E

+++++ — for Barbara

They were here, all this time,

in this same world,

here for the seeing:

green shag and starfield, clumps, pinheads,

frilled with lichen,

and poking up through them the green

first leaves of violet, wood sorrel,

for example, among the ephemera —

here, in the piedmont of North Carolina,

all the greens in creation:

a landscape within landscapes,

slow as,

quiet as,

as back along

the rims of lakes and drainages in the early Cambrian.

In this same old world:

the same creep and cling

and drill into the surface

with their fragile rhizoids, into rock fissures,

now bark, now exposed root,

into the Anthropocene and still

green between paving stone,

on verges, stuck fast

to rocks along the banks of Bolin Creek,

down a grit-and-gravel driveway.

A green gift

my friend gave me:

moss scrapings, from her yard

over in the next county;

in late summer

the waggly spore capsules

pop open, and a million spores float

off and up into whatever wind.

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+++++ — for Frances

One leaf falls from the hickory

+++++ outside my window—

+++++ a slow loop right,

an about turn, and squiggle—

so cursory a gesture, it looks

+++++ like something written

+++++ in an alphabet of leaves:

a charm against insects

and woodpecker; a plea

+++++ for all the leaves that fall,

+++++ blacken, and rot, and leach

into the earth, and rise again

to new petiole, new leaf,

+++++ singing the green song of desire

+++++ and the brown of thrift;

the whispery, creaky name

the tree gives itself;

+++++ or the name we have given it,

+++++ full of ourselves and our own

histories, as a child

writes her given name and sees

+++++ herself there, her first self-portrait.

from Field as Auditorium, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Community College Press; Hickory NC; © 2025.

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Maura High speaks the language of wild. She writes in an alphabet of leaves. Her poems sometimes withdraw entirely from the touch or consideration of human presence and become encompassed entirely by field, by forest – crownbeard setting seed in the wilding meadow, Bolin Creek about its business of undercutting a bank of clay, moss creating soil from stone. Maura translates for us the deep language of life and of time. Where did this come from? Where are we going?

As I read Maura High’s poetry, I consider the many lives I have overlooked, forgotten, ignored. I am reminded to listen for the soft peeps of sparrows and finches settling into the shrubbery at sunset. Listen closer – the seep of water in the dirt beneath my feet and the striving of rootlets and mycelia. Closer yet – the movement of seasons, long connections across time, encircling connections gathering life and nudging forward. From careful observation and contemplation of the unremarkable features of a creek, a tree, a flower, Maura creates an opportunity for us, her readers, to participate in the most remarkable story of all.

❀

Maura High was born in Wales but grew up on Planet Earth. She has established tender rhizoids in piedmont North Carolina but the wind is apt to blow her to distant climes at any moment. These two poems are from her newest book, Field as Auditorium, from Redhawk. She has also published The Garden of Persuasions, winner of the Jacar Press chapbook contest (2013), and Stone, Water, Time in collaboration with artist Lyric Kinard, Lyric Art Publishing (2019). Sample more of her poetry at MauraHigh.com.

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