A Bow

The here and everywhere, the now and always of the poetic moment.

-- Seamus Heaney

Now without its leaves, that Red-twig Dogwood
could satisfy an appetite for order,

so unencumbered are its upswept branches,
no two alike but rising from a single

curvature of earth and leaf-strewn snow
which always was, if not in this one yard

then in that everywhere to which such words
as these are but an homage and a bow.
-- Ben Howard

A Creature Need Not See All Creatures

On Kodiak Island herds of bears,
in Arizona the leather rainbow iguana,
Or the Nevada mustangs, the blue bird
in eastern Washington,
the snow shoe rabbit, mountain goat,
I've never seen these creatures in the flesh
but do not have to see, knowing that
they exist means that they exist
in me as strong as the kick of a giraffe's
leg that can crush a lion's skull,
strong as jaguar jaws, powerful
as the flip of a whale's tail,
what lives lives in all.
-- Clifford Paul Fetters