nature

Instinct

Hunched, obsidian-eyed, and inches
from the curb—one paw gone, the other
           tight as a clasp—
           the animal,
           unblinking, breathes

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Emily Leithauser is a graduate of Boston University’s M.F.A. program. Her poems have recently appeared in Measure and Unsplendid, and a Baudelaire translation of hers was published in Literary Imagination. While in Boston, she worked as an editorial assistant to the poetry editor at The Atlantic. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is a Ph.D. student in English at Emory University. She studies late 19th and early 20th century poetry.

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Hunting on Thanksgiving

Along the Potomac

J.D. Smith

J.D. Smith has published two collections, The Hypothetical Landscape (1999) and Settling for Beauty (2005), and in 2007 he was awarded a Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. His first children's book, The Best Mariachi in the World, was published in bilingual, Spanish and English editions in 2008.

Smith lives near the Southwest Waterfront of Washington, DC with his wife Paula Van Lare and their rescue dog, Roo.

Remnants of Nature in Our Lives

Remnants of Nature in our Lives

From Tuliptrees

(For T.H., 1982-2007)

The West

I. Front Range

Lean men prone to heroic understatement,
they have a drawled, laconic way of speaking.
They know that for their debts there’s no abatement
nor boundaries to the vistas they are seeking.

No, there’s only the Front Range of the Rockies
behind which the westering sun is setting
on stallion breakers too strong to be jockeys
and water rights the Judge of all is vetting.

II. Jornada del Muerto

Tete Rouge Cache

Had I a wooden ship
to bear my love from me,
I’d fire it at its slip,
then warp it out to sea.
Or must I strew his ashes
on wild Wyoming passes
climbed in the Seventies?
The thought of that abashes
me and my aching knees.
He’ll sleep in prairie grasses
under his apple trees.

Two Climbers

Shedding our heavy packs,
we thought it no great feat
to storm a vertical mile,
then beat a steep retreat.

Our trails? Now needle tracks
from an infusion chair.
Gamely, he feigns a smile
just to ascend a stair.