Author: jriyeff

state natural area poems #24: cedarburg bog a, b, & c

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a.

glacial lake

water dream

mud fossil

b.

tumbled rock above

glistening eyes below

twilit bog life

c.

geese call at sunset. white cedar,

tamarack—tall family. feathery

splays in moss, grass, sedge, peeping

over duckweed. basswood sleeps unstirring.

cedarburg bog was once a glacial lake. the bog contains six lakes, shrub-carr, and a string bog (typical of much farther north in n. america). birches and basswood live here, along with white cedar and tamarack swamp forest. on my way thru, i met a very talkative black-capped chickadee.

thanks to the university of wisconsin-milwaukee field station, wi dnr and friends of cedarburg bog for tending this land.

A Nomination for the Pushcart!

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It’s an honor and a pleasure to share that the literary journal Presence has nominated my translation of the Old English poem “The Ruin” for the 2021 Pushcart Prize.

“The Ruin” is a poem composed in Old English and copied down in the tenth-century Exeter Book, the first anthology of English poetry. My translation brings the poem into Present Day English but also “translates” the poem’s scene (an Anglo-Saxon looking at Roman ruins in Britain) to a modern one (a Midwesterner looking at the Middle Woodland mound in Lake Park, Milwaukee).

It’s good fun, if a bit morose, and I’m so pleased to have it nominated. Thanks, Presence, anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet and scribe, and Woodlanders!

“Meskonsing” Poem in Amethyst Review

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Here‘s a new poem of mine that’s near and dear to my heart. I wrote it about a trip to Man Mound in Sauk County, Wisconsin. Man Mound is the only remaining anthropomorphic effigy mound in North America, and it is tremendous and numinous and beautiful. And the Sauk County Historical Society has been preserving it for over a hundred years.

If you like, you can help preserve the mound and contribute to educational materials at the site etc. here. And if you read the poem, stick around and look at some of the others the Review has been putting out lately; they’re free and great.

If you’re interested in a bit more about the mounds, you can read my short essay on them here.

Thanks Amethyst Review and Sauk County Historical Society!

*Photo of Man Mound by Ethan Brodsky, courtesy of Sauk County Historical Society.

state natural area poems #23: cudahy woods in fall

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gill, spore, and stipe

they sound and found the forest

messengers of earth from below

puffball colony
dense polypores
gilled
canopy above

cudahy woods is where this whole “living found poem” project started back in march—a 40-acre plot of old-growth forest with an unnamed stream running thru. right next to mitchell airport. we’ve kept an eye on this forest periodically since march, and it’s been a gift to watch its communities shift, grow, and die back to make way for others.

state natural area poems #22, a & b: karcher springs

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a.

dried remnant of the year

seed capsules blow in the driving wind

yet your stream flows on clear

b.

graceful tumult at the boggy

edge. fringed gentian

crowns the cooling fen

karcher springs is a calcareous fen along a marl-bottomed stream sourced in springs flowing out of a wooded esker. what more can i say? thanks to the wisconsin dnr for tending this land.

state natural poems #20: meridian park a, b, & c

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a.

ferns waving flank

our footsteps, hornworts, bedrock

chainsaw echo on dolomite

b.

ankles ache below beech and hemlock

the sedge softness and alkaline marsh

tramping earth while we draw breath

c.

if beech trunks aflame

won’t tell us of heaven

what on earth will?

meridian state park is a forest, alkaline marsh, and sedge meadow on an isthmus between kangaroo lake and lake michigan in door county, wisconsin. the prominent outcropping of the niagra escarpment is something else, but so is the wood and the marsh. tremendous. thanks to door county for tending this land, and the workers who were there clearing trails as we walked them.

state natural area poems #19: bailey’s harbor boreal forest and wetlands

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a.

berms and hills

tumbling moss

forest going to sleep

b.

sprays of birch

over upright apes

gold in the air

c.

you push thru pines your height

and thimble berry dense

young in the boreal forest

d.

birch leaves radiant, frogs

and mushroom gills spread

moss mats thick on the ground

bailey’s harbor boreal forest and wetlands is exactly what it sounds like! a fantastic and barebones trail thru the woods with extensive bryophytes and currently-blazing fall colors. a newer section goes along the lakeshore. thanks to the wisconsin dnr for caring for this site!