Offering
–a golden shovel poem after Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City, 1885 by Erica Goss
When I
love myself, when I offer
myself to myself,
when I fly, as free as
birds do against the raw
naked blue of sky, I weave myself into material
so strong, so tensile, that a
torrent of bad days can’t unravel me; I last
and last, and I don’t disappear. I’ll tell you this: what chance
you have for assuming your most true shape, take. At
every moment, it is arriving, and transformation
is only just surrender to currents already carrying you. So before
you tell me how late the
day is, and how pale
your resolve, and how the setting sun offers only half-disc
hopes of
waning possibility, consider that the sun
teaches other lessons, too. Notice how it sets
and also how it rises and rotates and
floats and circles and shines, and let that
remind you how perfect the sun is, as it is, just as a cloud
is perfectly a cloud and nothing else. So when life spreads
its thousand shapeless threads across
your intended ways, see this as the true offering, take the
gifts, and weave yourself into your own resplendent beauty fringed with endless sky.
Answering the Call
–after Childe Hassam’s Nude in Sunlit Woods, 1905
In the river, her lover beckons—
Apollo: sun-soaked perfection.
Arms open wide, he
invites her with his smile
and his smooth, warm skin
to step into a world of light
from the silky-cool shadows where
she hesitates, still.
She is a young tree, rooted on the edge.
Resisting. But the water pulls until
she bends, slipping her toes
into the tugging swirl.
She hesitates, still.
So much to consider. So much to lose.
But to fail to live? for fear? She concludes:
I am no Daphne, and no laurel tree! Then
hesitating no more
she steadily strides
away from the bank
into the stream
into his arms, and
into the glorious,
glorious light.
Sapsucker
A poem should always have birds in it.
—after Mary Oliver’s Singapore
Or maybe just this one bird, I think.
This sapsucker on this big leaf maple tree
on this mountainside, on this day
when the sun is shining just so.
This sapsucker, regarding me warily
then shifting to the back of the tree
where I can no longer see it,
although I hear its pounding work,
making the tree seep sweet sap
that the squirrel comes to lap up
and the fritillaries dip their curled tongues into.
Maybe just this one is enough.
Jennifer Rood (she/her) is an Oregon poet and author of Present and Speaking Everywhere: A Collection of Found Poetry and Art (Not a Pipe Publishing, 2024). She served as the Artist in Residence for the Oregon Caves National Monument in fall 2023, and also served as President of the Oregon Poetry Association during 2020 – 2021. Her more traditional poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, The Literary Hatchet, Big Wing Review, Dipity, Encore, and others. You can see some of her found poetry/art on Instagram @jennrood100.
