by Laura Parker Roerden Last night the stars made our hayfield into a bed. Twinkling and turning from light to dark, and back again to light in the dark tangle of knotted weeds and swords of grass, sometimes in synchrony, but often as chaos. The perfect flat disk of a full moon spilled shadow everywhere,Continue reading “The Fireflies”
Tag Archives: nature poetry
A Good Friday
by Laura Parker Roerden I wrote a poem: it isn’t much. It’s small like a bird, but it has hands that reluctantly open, palms up to receive shadow from starlight where monsters writhe and transform into angels through ancient story and song. I put the poem in a simple box and buried it; marked itContinue reading “A Good Friday”
All the Many Flowers
by Laura Parker Roerden A flower is not just a flower. It’s an invitation to dance, to fall into a time and a tempo not of your own wherein lies the meaning of being made of soil and sun, tapped lightly in place by fingers of rain. Don’t miss another post: including #FridayPoems and FromContinue reading “All the Many Flowers”
A Lonely Walk
by Laura Parker Roerden On a fine companioned afternoon, one never has to notice the stars shining side by side or a single blade of grass hunched over others, now safe as if the wind had thrown its weight, a thumb on a scale tipped for mercy. But in a stretch when lonely walks awayContinue reading “A Lonely Walk”
The Open Door
by Laura Parker Roerden There’s something available to us that sits beside hope, like an open door. Children know about it. You sometimes see them walk towards it. Often they carry it and place it on our laps, looking up at us with eyes flung wide open. “Here,” they seem to offer. “Take this.” I’veContinue reading “The Open Door”
A Barred Owl
by Laura Parker Roerden Several nights this week I have lain in bed listening to the call and response of three barred owls outlining each cardinal direction—save for the south— which is oddly missing in the chorus, as if the baritones had boarded a bus for Times Square for some dancing and Christmas lights, whileContinue reading “A Barred Owl”
The Ways of Water
by Laura Parker Roerden As a child, we had a hand pump over an artesian well by a white, double-decker chicken barn. It was the only water for hundreds of birds growing on that land. The pump required several hard thrusts of the handle to raise the water like spirit, to the surface. Then eachContinue reading “The Ways of Water”
Cold Poem
by Laura Parker Roerden When life crowds you with the call of too many mean words, words that line the very highway you are walking, words that tumble along ghost town prairies as dangerous tumbleweeds gathering seeds, spreading like wildfire and threatening to crowd out truth, try to find the center of the pendulum, though it swingsContinue reading “Cold Poem”
A Coming Hurricane
by Laura Parker Roerden I read today that a flock of seagulls was once trapped in the eye of a hurricane. The birds had sought refuge in the false calm of fair skies, but didn’t realize they now flew through a tunnel of destruction, all ways out blocked by certain devastation. Birds that sense plummetingContinue reading “A Coming Hurricane”
A Small Poem
by Laura Parker Roerden Small things sometimes call us home, like the two birds I saw circling the hay field this morning on my way back from farm chores. Their shrill vibrating whistle, a half warning, half invitation stunned me awake from a deep dream—even though I should have been sufficiently awake from an hourContinue reading “A Small Poem”