sna poems #154: mcgilvra woods

April 11, 2026 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

easter monday we stopped by mcgilvra woods for a brief afternoon walk. the forests are just waking up ’round these parts, so not too many species out and about yet. but saw some vibrant hepatica and virginia spring beauties. there was cut-leaved toothwort all over the place but about to blow in a few days.

mcgilvra is a mesic forest of mostly maple and basswood, known for its spring ephemeral display, of which we saw just the burgeoning swell (cf. supra). exposed sandstone in the southern portion of the site, but i didn’t get to it. next time.

here’re some lunes, and, breaking usual form, a short accentual four-liner. <gasp>

only those humblest

to the earth

ready to begin

hepatica blows

sheltering

between cold root flares

sunlight

chill air

blossoms say:

not yet

Three New Poems in _Macrina Magazine_!

August 29, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

I’m very grateful to Macrina Magazine for accepting what is a quite a seriously mixed bag of poems—I think it shows a real willingness to experiment and be open to lots of different ways of coming at poetry. You can read them here, and stick around to read other stuff on the site.

In their varied ways, the set together says a lot about what I find valuable in life. There are some notes on the page, but: the first is a translation of an Old English poem that is set into an anonymous translator’s rendering of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, that features Weland the Smith; the second is a “tour poem” of a nature preserve in Sauk County, Wisconsin; and the third is an imitation poem in honor of the Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina set at a roadside shrine to the Sacred Heart in Door County, Wisconsin. Something for everyone! 🙂

sna poems #88: lost lake

June 13, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

lost lake is a kettle-like depression in a ravine, surrounded by alder thicket and oak woods. my walk was mainly on the slope headed down into the thicket wetland area. once i got into the hollow i didn’t have the proper footwear to keep going into the muck, so i trekked back up the slope to some larger quartzite boulders along a rivulet to take in the woods a bit.

tho’ i’ve never lived in columbia or sauk counties, my grandparents used to live in sauk, so my childhood impressions of the natural world are very much caught up in the sights and smells of this area. right when i got out of the car and into the woods, the scents made a very welcome homecoming. an excellent early-morning start.

(b.n.: i was trying out a new hand-held camera on this trip, so some shots are blurrier than i wanted or color a bit off…the experiment goes on.)

boulders and fern

smells of childhood

green silhouetted