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The Beauty of Form – Arthur Sze

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , , on February 27, 2026| 1 Comment »

Trout Lily, E&A Nature Trail, Elkin

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[ 2 poems by Arthur Sze ]
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Entanglement
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5
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Along the shore, bald eagles nest in the yellow cedars—
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my clothes reek of cedar smoke—
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I wrap clothes around glass jars of king salmon in my knapsack—
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standing on a dock, I board a floatplane—
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floaters in my eyes, wherever I go—
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wherever you go, you cannot travel faster than light—
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synapses firing in my body are a form of light—
 . 
threads of fugitive dye entangled in neural firings—
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scent of summer in the blackening leaves—
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a black bear swipes a screen door and ransacks a kitchen—
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we ransack the past and discover action at a distance—
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entangled waves of near and far—
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a photon fired through a slit behaves like a wave—
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we inhale, and our lungs oxygenate a cosmos—
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a fire breaks out of the secret depths of the earth—
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revel in the beauty of form.
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Arthur Sze
from White Orchard, new poems in The Glass Constellation, New and Collected Poems; Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend WA; © 2024
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Transpirations
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Leaving branches of a backyard plum—
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branches of water on a dissolving ice sheet—
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chatter of magpies when you approach—
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lilacs lean over the road, weighted with purple blossoms—
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then the noon sun shimmers the grasses—
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you ride the surge into summer—
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smell of piñon crackling in the fireplace—
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blued notes of a saxophone in the air—
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not by sand running through an hourglass but by our bodies igniting—
 . 
passing in the form of vapors from a living body—
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this world of orange sunlight and wildfire haze—
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world of iron filings pulled toward magnetic south and north—
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pool of quicksilver when you bend to tie your shoes—
 . 
standing, you well up with glistening eyes—
 . 
have you lived with utmost care?—
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have you articulated emotions like the edges of leaves?—
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adjust your breath to the seasonal rhythm of grasses—
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gazing into a lake on a salt flat and drinking, in reflection, the Milky Way—
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Arthur Sze
from White Orchard, new poems in The Glass Constellation, New and Collected Poems; Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend WA; © 2024
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Adam & Eve Orchid, E&A Nature Trail, Elkin

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 .  . . . . Last night, gazing
at Orion’s belt and sword sparkling in the sky,
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I saw how we yearn for connection where
no connection exists: what belt, what sword?
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from Ravine, Arthur Sze
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And yet when I try to separate things, pull them apart to understand, they feel like they are all connected. Like the lines in these poems. At first each is its own crystallized moment, its individual monoku of presence. I slow myself to read the lines again, calmer, unhurried, in sequence, and they begin to speak to each other. They entangle and combine. They spark little flashes at the back door of consciousness. Meaning wants to come in from the dark. I can’t necessarily tell you Meaning’s dimensions nor her Latin binomial, but I can say that she seems companionable. She looks and smells and speaks like someone I’d like to have come in and set a spell.
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Meaning, are you out there waiting patiently to be found, or are you nothing but a fancy my mind creates? I know your cousin Reality is not really comprised of infinitesimal billiard balls in orbit but rather clouds of potentiality. Nevertheless, Reality and mind do interact. Quantum superposition – the wave function collapses to a defined presence when touched by consciousness. This line of poetry is infused with meanings. I bring all my history and my own potentialities to its moment of reading. Who could foresee how all those elements might react? But they do. And Meaning and I leave the event arm in arm.
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Arthur Sze is the twenty-fifth Poet Laureate of the United States, appointed in 2025. He was born in New York City in 1950 and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife poet Carol Moldaw. The Glass Constellation collects poems from ten earlier collections spanning fifty years, as well as twenty-six new poems (sampled here). It is the winner of the 2024 National Book Foundation Science and Literature Award.
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The Glass Constellation is available from Copper Canyon Press, and you can sample two poems from Arthur Sze’s newest book, Into the Hush, at an earlier poste HERE
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Cranefly Orchid, E&A Nature Trail, Elkin

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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . every Saturday I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
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If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
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 .IMG_0768, tree
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Maura High – Field as Auditorium

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 30, 2026| 2 Comments »

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[ 2 poems by Maura High ]
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Excursions in Moss
+++++ — for Barbara
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They were here, all this time,
in this same world,
here for the seeing:
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green shag and starfield, clumps, pinheads,
frilled with lichen,
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and poking up through them the green
first leaves of violet, wood sorrel,
for example, among the ephemera —
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here, in the piedmont of North Carolina,
all the greens in creation:
a landscape within landscapes,
slow as,
quiet as,
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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
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with their fragile rhizoids, into rock fissures,
now bark, now exposed root,
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into the Anthropocene and still
green between paving stone,
on verges, stuck fast
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to rocks along the banks of Bolin Creek,
down a grit-and-gravel driveway.
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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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❀    ❀    ❀
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Reprise
+++++ — for Frances
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One leaf falls from the hickory
+++++ outside my window—
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+++++ a slow loop right,
an about turn, and squiggle—
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so cursory a gesture, it looks
+++++ like something written
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+++++ in an alphabet of leaves:
a charm against insects
 . 
and woodpecker; a plea
+++++ for all the leaves that fall,
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+++++ blacken, and rot, and leach
into the earth, and rise again
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to new petiole, new leaf,
+++++ singing the green song of desire
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+++++ and the brown of thrift;
the whispery, creaky name
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the tree gives itself;
+++++ or the name we have given it,
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+++++ full of ourselves and our own
histories, as a child
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writes her given name and sees
+++++ herself there, her first self-portrait.
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Maura High
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?
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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.
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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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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . every Saturday I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2021-10-23
 . 

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Saturday Share – Ropp and Tedder

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 13, 2025| 2 Comments »

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Saturday morning readers share:
Tabitha Ropp and Felicity Tedder
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In the Field
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The soccer field sits wide and open
light brown grass stretching over like it has all
the time in the world
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A class of students drop onto the grass
clipboard down
eyes peeled ready for anything we find
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Butterflies drift through the cool comforting air
never in a hurry
never needing a reason
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Birds are above us
calling out to the sky
as if the sky actually listens
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The breeze slips through the pine trees,
soft as a whisper, cool enough to make us forget
how heavy the day will feel
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For now the field is ours
still, quiet
breathing with us
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And we sit there,
letting the world be simple
for just a little while
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Tabitha Ropp
West Carteret High School
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West Carteret High School Soccer Field – photo by Jessi Waugh

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This is the assignment:
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To cap off a unit on the biosphere, students sit quietly in the back soccer field for an hour and document the biotic and abiotic limiting factors they observe. At the end of the lab, students are asked to construct a poem featuring their observations – any form is acceptable.
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These two poems I’ve chosen have compelling language and structure, and these students were happy to have their poems selected for publication. 
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Thank you for giving these students a platform to share their poetry. We as educators look to give students the chance to shine –  thank you for helping us with that goal and for sharing the voices of many North Carolina poets.
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– Jessi Waugh
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Always Active Biosphere
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A metal obstruction digs into resilient blades of grass.
Joyful adolescents race by.
My pine needles quiver as a black and white ball
strikes me straight on.
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Industrious squirrels race up my bark, in hopes
winter will arrive with fully acorned nests in which
to rest.
Whisps of colored leaves pirouette in the autumn air.
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Soft clouds meander by, masking the cheery rays
with their dreary faces..
A gust tumbles a soaring hawk. Diving sharply in an
elegant feathered display, its eyes fixed on its prize.
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No voices are near. A silence befalls in the sleepy hollow.
Nature, however, speaks loudest when left alone.
The chaos of existence echoes in every direction as the
wind slows to a deadly whisper.
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Felicity Tedder
West Carteret High School
I’m 14 years old, enrolled in Earth and Environmental Science, and on the day I wrote this poem, our class took a trip outside to observe the nature of our habitat, including biotic and abiotic diversity. The factors I noticed are what inspired my writing. I find nature compelling. Once all the noise pollution subsided, I noticed tranquil sounds produced by Mother Nature herself. This simply might just be an absurd thought, but hearing and witnessing the environment do the thing it does best, simply thriving, I knew I had to encapsulate it somehow. Through this freestyle poem from the perspective of my local habitat’s primary tree, a long-needled pine, I personified factors I noticed around me: things that a tree must feel, hear, and see as if it had a heart and legs. I imagine the vile intensity that the tree must feel, being besieged by the leftover impacts of man-made destruction. Disregarding these unrelenting pollutants, I hope this tree’s inner soliloquy brings others solace the next time they take a moment to analyze nature’s unabated, profound motives.
— Felicity
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Dusky Salamander in Carteret County – photo by Jessi Waugh

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West Carteret High School is in Carteret County, North Carolina, USA. We are a public 9-12th grade high school, with about 1100 students, in Morehead City (on Bogue Sound). Approximately 40% of students are economically disadvantaged. I teach Earth and Environmental Science, a required course for graduation since 2000. My students are all 9th & 10th grade, ages 14-16. I’ve been teaching this course for 12 years, off and on. I have a Master’s in Teaching Secondary Science, a Biology degree, and I held National Boards Certification until it expired. I like teaching this course and this age group; it’s my niche. I also teach Biology and Marine Science when needed.
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– Jessi Waugh
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Additional poetry by West Carteret students at Verse and Image:
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Thank you for visiting VERSE and IMAGE:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . every Saturday I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
Also note: after January 1, 2026 I will no longer be sending separate weekly email reminders.
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to VERSE and IMAGE using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2020-11-22
 . 

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