Here’s Company by Muriel Nelson (Poetry ’96)
Poetry alum Muriel Nelson has a poetry collection, Here’s Company, winner of the Idaho Prize in Poetry, out from Lost Horse Press. Read an excerpt below.
Spring and War
With mottled wet and dry
spots of moss and not,
spring like memory serves
and then misses.
Iryna’s flowering tree to the west
hisses in wind and does
what they call weeping.
It’s having its little pink cry for bees
while sun to the east
slices our fence
dividing light from darkness
to stripe the lawn at a slant
and wink at ferns as they unroll
their scrolls of freshness.
In shade above them, juncos pick
some moss from an aging plum tree’s limbs
as breezes move their blossoms to bless
and bless again those birds and everything,
sending so many bright petals adrift
now and later in rain that even today’s
grim news is hard to believe in such light.
