Skip to content
Lucy Writers Platform

Lucy Writers Platform

  • Home
  • About us
    • About LWP
    • Editors
    • Writers
    • About Lucy Cavendish
    • Constitution
  • My Cambridge
    • Lucy Interviews
    • Lucy Features
    • Postgraduate Corner
      • My Research Articles
  • Write for us
    • Submissions and Contact
    • Special editions
    • Directory
  • Writing
    • Arts
      • Art and design
      • Books
      • Dance
      • Fashion
      • Film and Media
      • Music
      • Theatre
    • Creative Writing
      • Fiction
      • Flash Fiction
      • Poetry
      • Resources
    • Environment
    • General
    • Health and Wellbeing
      • Lucy Features
      • Short read
    • Interviews
    • Opinion
    • Politics
      • Features
      • My Feminisms
    • STEM

‘Under the 400-Year-Old Ponderosa Pine’ and other poems by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

17th May 202019th May 2020  Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg’s poems offer a solitary space for readers to meditate on nature’s quiet truths, a locus in which to reorientate the self and speak in a new language of trees, birds, waterfalls and winding valleys.

Under the 400-Year-Old Ponderosa Pine

What have your roots

died toward? A desert

of branches, rock for

the resting magpie,

a bundle of white flowers

at your base from the light

broken though lost limbs,

generations of pine needles,

all of you a miracle of swirl

sideways, bark that expands

in breath, branches extended

all directions, the space

you hold composed

of the first night chill.

When it is you first knew

the changing territory of the sky,

of light itself, a gesture of time

witnessing your passage

over this mountain?

Copeland Falls

Place a wintered leaf

of your old thoughts

on a flat rock. Wait.

The waterfall takes it in stride,

knows you’re just another person

who thinks she knows how to live.

Sit beside the willow storm-broken

teetering while water dives

under itself, a green tumble.

Watch what the pine, an arrow of desire

for the sun, does with time, its roots

threaded in eroding moss,

and snow melt now waterfall inside

waterfall, thunder on the horizon

churning us into the glassy old growth

of water, forest, air, browned coins

of aspen leaves on snow to come

the snow shoe hare, the relentless

ants, your worry or story:

all paper and skin. Listen:

The earth walks by falling.

Prevernal

The dogs stop. The deer over the loop

of the field pause. The absent-minded highway rises west.

A small plane returns over jaunty tops of trees.

What do they know that only my dream last night

glimpsed. All I can remember is seeing two turkeys

under the cedars in an ice storm all winter long

while spring-to-come makes itself a thin sheet

of wind threading through the empty trees,

vanishing with only a trace of frost

melting into all the green. The wheel of the season

breathes us in before rolling toward its next click:

what’s ready to bud out, like the sudden crocus,

warped and shining where a week ago

it was just my boots and me carrying the compost

bucket past so our remnants could freeze too.

Meanwhile, the damp ground laughs.

Meanwhile, the world resumes in birds.


About Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 23 books, including Miriam’s Well, a novel; Everyday Magic: A Field Guide to the Mundane and Miraculous, and Following the Curve, poetry. Her previous work includes The Divorce Girl, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet, a bioregional memoir on cancer and community; and six poetry collections, including the award-winning Chasing Weather with photographer Stephen Locke. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, Mirriam-Goldberg also leads writing workshops widely and coaches people on writing and right livelihood through the arts. She also consults with organizations and businesses on creativity resilience. To find out more information about Mirriam-Goldberg click here for her website. Or contact her on the following addresses: CarynMirriamGoldberg@gmail.com, CarynMirriamGoldberg.com and 785/766-7159, 1357 N. 1000 Rd., Lawrence, KS 66046.

About Sara Rivers

Sara Rivers is an artist who works in different media. She completed her foundation diploma at Brighton School of Art and her BA in Fine Art at Canterbury School of Art. She has also studied Art Therapy at St Albans School of Art, Hertfordshire. Sara founded the Creativity Centre, a space for outsider artists and those recovering from mental ill health, at Isledon Road (formerly Corsica Street), London. She is a founder member of the Otherside Gallery, and has created three short films, all of which were funded by the NHS. Sara is passionate about improving the services available to people experiencing mental ill health, and has led many campaigns against the continued cuts to day services in the borough of Islington. Sara is the current artist for Lucy Writers, and has designed all the artwork for the website to date. To view more of Sara’s work follow her new Instagram account @pixbysararivers and see her profile on Outside In.

‘Under the 400-Year-Old Ponderosa Pine’ and other poems were written for the series Flora & Fauna of Foreign Places, which was conceived and edited by Usha Akella for Lucy Writers.

Flora and fauna define our cultural sensibility; what trees and flowers we grew up with signifies ‘home.’ Transplant an individual to a foreign environment with strange trees and flowers, he or she is likely to feel ‘foreign’. Flowers are culturally specific in symbolism expressed in social events like weddings and funerals. 

As a recent graduate of a Creative Writing MSt living in America, Usha noticed that in addition to the gift of knowledge and friendships, her journeys to the UK sparked an interest in flora. For the first time, she noticed a passion to want to know the names of flowers and trees. Somewhere along the way between the limes of Trinity College and the walnut maple of Madingley Hall; between the splendid gardens of Rydal Mount and rolling vales of Cumbria, she had been infected with a green-eye. When she walks in her Austin neighbourhood, she is now incited to know the names of the wildflowers and trees that she took for granted visually. And she notices, how this new world seeps into her writing gradually. 

Right now, the early bloom of summer is upon most countries. So, it seems perfect to celebrate flowers, plants and trees as a theme for the poetry issue. In the next few weeks, Usha will be publishing poems by writers from around the world that explore, reflect on and appreciate the flora and fauna of foreign places, and what they mean to them.

Posted in Creative Writing, Environment, PoetryTagged: Cary Mirriam-Goldberg, Copeland Falls, Flora & Fauna of Foreign Places, Ponderosa Tree, Prevernal, Usha Akella

Post navigation

All About Sarah by Pauline Delabroy-Allard – a powerful tale of all-consuming love
Seeing Science in the Stars: Constance Naden’s sonnets and the night sky
  • Midwinter with Margaret Tait: Readings of Personae
    By Lucy Writers
  • Interview with Buki Papillon: ‘Know the rules, so that you can break them’
    By Emma Hanson
  • Poetics of Work by Noémi Lefebvre: an exciting, provocative piece of art
    By Elodie Rose Barnes
  • About us
  • Writers
  • About Lucy Cavendish
  • Write for us
  • Submissions and Contact
  • Special editions
This website uses cookies to help us understand how it is being used, allowing us discover how it might be improved.
Cookie SettingsAccept Cookies
Manage Cookies

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Analytics

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

SAVE & ACCEPT
Top