Robin Chapman
Praise More Than can be Told
And what’s left out, unseen, unnamed—
the shifting soil and rock, the fungal mesh
that knits the roots to living cloth; the tamed
path and homestead cellar stairs, its bush
of lilacs blooming in the undergrowth;
the hummingbird who comes to the red shirt
you wear, chokecherries, the chickadee who goes
ahead in the greening wood, the whirr
of a tractor’s plough far off; wild straw-
berries ripening in the poison ivy patch; high clouds;
the wind like a river pouring down the draw,
aspen's shaking grey-green leaves; turned clods
underfoot as you gain the ridge; skylined friends
as you descend again into the mystery of woods.
Root, Branch, Rock
In stripped midwinter branches
barter husks, catkins, crows
for the extra measure of light
that pours from skim milk skies
that their roots, greedy for growth,
might drink up to make new bones.
Rocks suffer the changing weather
that grinds them to sand, then soil.
Seeing desolation everywhere, we
go home to chase the crows, darken
milky skies with our quarrels,
squeeze more light from the stones
while that lit stone, the moon, reveals
rooted branch, rock, the field.
Bio
Robin Chapman’s most recent collection is Abundance, winner of the Cider Press Review Editors’ Book Award. Her poems have appeared recently in Prairie Schooner, Atlanta Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. She received Appalachia’s 2010 Helen Howe Poetry Prize.