Ashland, Oregon
PUBLICATIONS:
Various.
CONTEMPLATING MY FAILINGS ON NATURE
I don't write nature poetry.
If I open my drapes and watch
the sun dip behind sage hills,
how can I say the sun is like something,
or something else is like a sunset?
Even when I'm out in it, nature,
walking in the wetlands, maybe,
I don't feel the need.
There might be throngs of ducks
biting at water, chattering their bills,
and the sound is rain, or
from a distance, I notice
drab pelicans stock-still in the marsh,
their hulking shapes like Viking ships,
and it doesn't matter. That is no
metaphor. But sometimes
I must admit, when I'm home
and the news is on, I learn the oddity,
a mean truth. Early rains of winter
bring mushrooms, and every year two
or five or nine people (bored cooks,
amateur botanists) eat
a deathcap by mistake. It takes days,
but the toxin often wrecks the liver
before any symptoms hit.
One kind looks very like another.
This I understand.
—Amy MacLennan
first published in Gingko Tree Review